“I don’t know,” Winger admitted. “But there is one more thing we could try to speed up the boring.”
“What’s that?”
Winger was already checking out the config of the ANAD swarm loaded in the borer module. “We could re-config the borer ANAD and release that swarm to help out. It might speed things up.”
Tallant acknowledged the idea had merit. “It might also be too risky. Too much ANAD boring could trigger another fault slippage. It could make things worse…a lot worse.”
“True enough…but I don’t think we have much choice. I’m going to do it.” He tapped out commands through the main console to reconfigure the borer swarm, now located in the containment sphere at Gopher’s bow. “It’s a chance we’ll have to take. Time’s running out.”
Moments later, the borer module containment port opened and the embedded swarm poured out into the rock strata surrounding Gopher. As Winger had commanded, the swarm insinuated itself aft toward the main swarm, just beginning to open up a narrow tunnel between the geoplanes. The two swarms merged, coordinating their efforts.
“Now…we wait,” Winger muttered. He opened up a quantum coupler channel to Mole. “Al…Mole, this is Gopher, do you copy, over?”
Glance’s voice came back, strained and tired. “Gopher, we copy…what’s the verdict, Captain? Looks like Mole’s finished…no treads, borer smashed, pressure hull breached…we’d like to get out of this tin can.”
Winger knew how they felt, like being entombed and slowly suffocated. “Hang tight, Al…I’ve released Detachment ANAD to begin boring an escape route between us. And we’ve augmented the swarm with out own borer ANAD…it’s a risk, but it’ll speed things up.”
Glance’s voice sounded relieved. “Anything to get us out of here, Skipper. The crew’s okay for now…but I don’t know how much longer we can hold it together.”
“Copy that,” Winger replied. “Any chance you’ve still got your own borer ANAD on line? You could reconfig them to start a tunnel from your end…I’ve got the config already hacked out.”
“No can do, Skipper. The whole module’s smashed and we’ve lost containment. That swarm vanished in a hurry.”
“Understood. Just sit tight then…I’m estimating breakthrough in about eighteen hours. Get your crew ready to evacuate. How’s the air holding out?”
“We’ve got enough for now, Captain. As long as we can get out of here in eighteen hours. It’s tight but, worst case, we can button up our hypersuits and use emergency air.”
“Hang on, Al…ANAD’s on the way. Gopher out.”
The tunnel was ready in sixteen hours, faster than Winger’s original estimate. He had tweaked the swarm config constantly during boring, trying to squeeze even more speed out of the assemblers. Even ANAD had complained at one point:
***Control…if you keep changing my config, we’ll never make any progress. Let me optimize…then let me do my job***
Winger sniffed. Touchy little bugger. But he did as ANAD had asked.
He called Al Glance on the coupler.
“Mole, this is Gopher. ANAD tells me the tunnel is ready. Get your crew moving…I don’t know how long this rock layer will keep stable.”
Glance came back, “You don’t have to tell us twice, Skipper. Gibbs and Calderon are already in the tunnel now. They’re reporting back it’s a tight squeeze.”
“I’ll see if ANAD can help out a bit.”
The entire transfer operation took several hours. Glance, Gibbs, Calderon, Spivey, Klimuk and the rest of Mole’s crew made their way, clad in full hypersuits, through the newly bored tunnel and, one by one, were helped aboard Gopher through the geoplane’s lockout chamber at G deck.
Sheila Reaves and Mighty Mite Barnes helped peel off the helmet of the first of Mole’s crew. It was Gibby, grimy and haggard, but smiling broadly, glad beyond words to get out of the doomed geoplane.
“You are the most beautiful women I have ever seen,” he gushed.
“Gibby,” Barnes chuckled, helping him climb out of the tin can, “you’re obviously delirious. A little food and water will bring you back to your senses…but thanks anyway.”
One after another, Mole’s crew emerged from the still smoldering tunnel into Gopher’s lockout. Winger came aft and counted them off.
“Where’s Sergeant Glance?” he asked, when the last of the escapees had been helped out of his hypersuit.
Gibbs shrugged. “Sarge was right behind us…he wanted to bring along some gear from our Stores lockers…thought we might need it.”
Winger was annoyed. He linked in on the coupler circuit. “Glance, this is Winger, do you copy? Glance, this is—“ but his last words were suddenly interrupted by a shuddering vibration that went through Gopher’s hull.
“It’s a slide!” someone yelled.
“We’re moving!”
“Hit the deck! Cover yourselves…and get that lockout hatch closed NOW!”
ANAD’s tunnel had loosened just enough rock to weaken the friction holding the local plates in place. Gopher was sliding again, sliding down and to the left. The shriek of tortured metal tore through the air and a series of staccato bangs sounded as the rock plates shifted and heaved, releasing their pent-up energies.
All they could do was hold on and try to ride the tremor out. To Johnny Winger, it was like being caught in a towering ocean wave…or perhaps trapped in roiling molecular forces…trapped and carried along by forces that couldn’t be stopped.
Then, almost as suddenly as it had started, the tremor was over. Amid groans and settling dust in Gopher’s lockout chamber, Winger took a call from the command deck.
“Wings, this is Tallant…what’s going on back there? Everybody get aboard…anybody trapped outside?”
Winger told her about Al Glance. “I’m signaling now…but I’m not getting anything on the circuit. Plus, I need to find out what’s happened to ANAD.”
“Remember, we still need the borer to be re-populated. The sooner we get the hell out of here, the better.”
“Amen to that,” Winger said. “What’s our depth?”
There was a pause, then, “Densitometer’s reading nearly eight thousand feet…Jesus, I don’t believe it myself. It’s a wonder the hull’s still holding together.”
Eight thousand feet…a mile and a half below the surface, below the sovereign territory of Nepal!
Winger shook his head. “And the treads…still operational?”
“For the moment…but we need to get going. This is a pretty unstable area…and we haven’t made it any better by boring tunnels all over the place.”
Winger switched over to ANAD’s coupler circuit. “ANAD…do you read me? Do you copy? Where are you?”
For a few seconds, there was nothing but a dizzying swirl of images in the back of his mind...the staticky fritz of entanglement waves collapsing into probabilities…then the image became clearer. He was in a tight lattice, a geometrically precise formation of tetrahedral atoms extending to infinity in all directions.
***ANAD thought you would never call...after the tremor, my swarm was dispersed…we are re-grouping now…much turbulence and strong oscillations are slowing us--***
“ANAD, listen to me…we don’t have all of Mole’s crew aboard here…Sergeant Al Glance is unaccounted for…he may have been in the tunnel when the tremor hit. I want you to recon the area…detach daughter swarms and give me a report. Max propulsors…fold effectors for fastest possible transit.”
He tapped out the config commands on his wristpad and squirted them over the coupler circuit.
***ANAD understands…re-configging now…can you give me a vector to last known position of the target?***
Winger gave the assembler what he had, which wasn’t much.
Several hours later, the full realization hit Johnny Winger like a freight train.
“Face it, Wings,” Tallant was telling him, as they both slurped up some protei
n drink concoction in Gopher’s tiny galley. Taj Singh was there too, at a small table with Deeno D’Nunzio, both sorting out rations for the geoplane’s now expanded crew.
“Al’s gone. It’s been three hours. The original tunnel ANAD bored collapsed in the tremor.”
“I know…” Winger was glum. “Maybe he never left Mole. Maybe he’s still stuck inside…we should—“
“—we should make our report and get underway again,” Tallant insisted. She lay a gentle arm on his shoulder. “We’ve got a mission…we all knew there could be casualties. We’re still forty-two hours away from our target.”
Winger was tight-lipped. He knew she was right but it hurt all the same. They both knew what it had been like to be entombed underground in a dead geoplane. “I know, Dana.” He took a deep breath, wondering if there was something else they could do. But there was no feasible way to reach the stricken Mole and the mission was in danger of falling too far behind the timeline. They had until 4 December to make their strike. After that—UNSAC had said more desperate measures would have to be taken—increasing the risk of Chinese retaliation…or worse.
“I’ll get ANAD back aboard…and start him replicating more borer bots. You start the report…we’re due to contact Singapore Ops in another two hours anyway…we’ll have to report our first casualty.”
Tallant went back to the command deck, while Winger contacted the assembler swarm.
“ANAD, call off the search…if you haven’t located any remains by 1830 hours my time, re-assemble and return to the ship. I’m sending configs for re-populating the borer. We’ve got to get moving again.”
***ANAD has already detached a small element with borer config…I sent them toward your position thirty one minutes and twelve seconds ago. Prepare module for loading…the swarm should be nearing your position***
Winger could only marvel at the prescience of the nanoscale assembler. ANAD had already anticipated the next step and divided his swarm to grow more borer bots and continue the search for Mole and the lost Al Glance at the same time.
“Thanks, ANAD…but my order stands. 1830 hours is bingo time…return to the ship after that.”
After two hours, even ANAD had to call off the search. The CC1 was gone and Mole would have to be abandoned.
Johnny Winger held a brief memorial service in Gopher’s galley. When it was over, he gruffly ordered everyone back to duty stations.
“Let’s get underway,” he said, taking his position on the command deck. “Borer on line?”
ANAD had returned to the ship and Winger had approved the swarm to remain outside containment. A smaller swarm had populated the borer module and was standing by. The main swarm had collected above and behind Winger and Tallant on B deck—the command deck—looking like a faint mist sparkling with pinprick bursts of light.
“Just stay out of the way,” Winger had ordered the swarm. “And don’t touch anything.”
ANAD seemed petulant in reply: ***ANAD standing by for duty…you’ll be needing me before long anyway…it’s better to be loose and primed for config change…ANAD can respond to emergency calls faster that way***
Winger ignored the tiny assembler as best he could. “Borer up to speed?”
Tallant replied in the affirmative. “Borer ready and tread drive primed and operating.”
“Give her the gun.” With a jerk, Gopher started off, burrowing along at a stately two miles an hour. “How long to the next turn?”
“Heading change at Namse Pass in one hour and twelve minutes. Course is plotted and laid in.”
It was a sobering realization that Winger had next. “That means we’ll be in Chinese territory in about three hours…or rather, under it.”
“Injun country,” agreed Tallant.
Operation Tectonic Strike was about to enter its final approach phase.
The heading change came off without a glitch. Gopher tunneled ahead on a course of zero seven five degrees, heading north by northeast through hard igneous rock layers, at an average depth of six thousand feet.
After the course change, the geoplane would traverse a dense inclusion of extremely hard basaltic rock directly below the rugged Valley of Flowers, a region of steep ravines and snow-capped peaks dotted with monasteries, tent camps and goat herds, a land roamed by hardy Nepalese and Tibetan peasants for centuries. Once they crossed the sere and desolate borderland of Tibet, the approach course took them in a straight line across the foothills of the Gangdise Shan range directly under the Paryang valley, some ninety miles inside Chinese territory.
The stratigraphic and topo maps all indicated the same underground terrain for Gopher’s borer to chew through: amorphous basaltic lava smashed northward and compressed over hundreds of millions of years along the margins of the great Australian and Eurasian plates. Extremely hard and dense, composed of a geochemical stew of magnesium and calcium oxides, the rock layers made perfect tunneling material, save for the fault and fracture zones, which were unstable enough to try and avoid.
Forty hours after making the course change at Namse Pass, Dana Tallant took a navigation hack off the quantum signal grid broadcast by Singapore base and announced her findings.
“Paryang valley dead ahead, Wings. Ten miles and some change.”
Johnny Winger had been drifting in and out of a light doze in his commander’s seat, sporadically field-stripping and cleaning a small coilgun on a drop cloth in his lap. He startled awake at Tallant’s announcement.
“Show me,” he said, wiping sleep from his eyes.
Tallant pointed to the profiler. It showed a simulated elevation view of the rock layers surrounding the geoplane, overlaid on a live, high-resolution sat image of the terrain seen from space. Gopher’s position was indicated with a flashing star.
“We’re here—“ she pointed with her finger. She scrolled the view more to the northeast. A dun-colored grid of low buildings came into view, their roofs bright with recent snowfall. “That’s the monastery at Paryang valley, dead center of all the entanglement waves that Q2 triangulated. Red Hammer Incorporated. I make the distance at about ten miles.”
Winger nodded. “Alert the crew. Sound battle stations, too. Let’s start ascending. Take us up to about five hundred feet. Rock layers?”
Tallant checked the stratigraphy maps. “Pyroxene and feldspar, mostly. Same stuff ANAD’s been boring though for the last six hours. There is a small fracture in one plate…looks harmless enough.”
“Give it a wide berth,” Winger ordered. “I don’t want any tremors now...at least, not until we’re in place and ready.”
Tallant complied and steered the geoplane upward toward the surface. B deck inclined ever so slightly, while Winger made the announcement to the crew over the CMQ.
“This is Winger…listen up…we’re ten miles from our surface objective. We’re going to full battle stations on my command…button up your tin cans and load up your weapons. We’ll be at the jump-off point in two hours and ten minutes.” He sounded the alarm klaxon, which echoed through Gopher’s hull…three sharp blasts on the horn.
Soon, bodies were stirring and scurrying through all seven decks.
“Come on!” yelled Deeno. “Get your fat asses in gear! We’ve got atomic butt to kick!”
“Small is all!” someone yelled from inside the access tube.
“I can’t wait to get the hell out of this big friggin’ metal condom!” shouted Gibby, as he snapped down his hypersuit helmet.
“Yeah, Sarge…we’ll squirt you out like you know what—hey! Gimme another MOB canister…I’m going in with everything I can hang on this tin can.”
The next phase of the mission would be the riskiest. Once the geoplane had reached the jump-off point, near the surface and several miles from Paryang valley, Winger would command the borer to cease operation. From this point, ANAD would be re-configged and commanded to exit the hull and form a protective barrier around Gopher, in an attem
pt to shield the assault team from what would come next.
When everything was in readiness, the mission plane called for ANAD to bore a series of small pilot tunnels radiating out from the jump-off point, in an attempt to generate a severe earthquake at a tectonic focal point that had been identified near the base. If calculations made by SOFIE and the geos were correct, the energy from this artificially induced tremor would nearly destroy the Red Hammer installation and every other standing structure inside Paryang valley.
The trick was to place Gopher and the assault team where the seismic shock waves wouldn’t also destroy the geoplane. If the network of fracture zones and the pilot holes worked as calculated, a series of tremors up to magnitude 8.5 could be expected to roll through the valley.
Winger had no intention of letting Gopher be trapped in any sliding rock layers when that happened. In fact, contrary to the mission plan, he had already decided to surface the geoplane completely and try to ride out the tremors hunkered down somewhere in the snow-covered valley overnight.
“Approaching the surface now…” Tallant reported. Gopher’s deck had angled upward sharply. “Sixty feet…now, fifty feet—“
Winger checked the time. “It’s just after midnight topside. According to the maps and sat views, we should be coming up in a ravine about ten miles southwest of Paryang valley.”
Moments later, the geoplane lurched forward and her forward speed suddenly dropped off.
“Surfacing…!” Tallant said.
“All stop…secure the borer, secure the tread drive. All ANAD to containment—“ he turned to the flickering swarm hovering in a corner of the command deck. “That means you, too, pal.”
***ANAD requests permission to remain outside of containment…the tactical situation requires rapid response--***
Winger had to admit the tiny assembler had a point. “Okay, ANAD, you win. But stay out of the way.”
***ANAD is a vital part of this mission…it’s my job to assist all team members with their duties…and to secure the perimeter of the detail***
Winger snorted, climbing out of his seat. “I don’t need regulations quoted back to me, ANAD…even if you are right.”
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