Nanotroopers Episode 17: Lions Rock

by Philip Bosshardt

  Winger whistled. “Manta-class…that means Chinese. Somebody knew our rendezvous point. Any more contacts?”

  Balderis studied the traces on his waterfall display. “Negative, Skipper. I’m not hearing the blade count of the Mantas now…they may have withdrawn. As for—“

  He stopped in mid-sentence. They had all heard the thud of a distant explosion. Balderis’ fingers flicked buttons and switches on his scope, changing his display. He re-positioned his earphone headset, leaned forward to listen more intently. “Definitely an explosion, sir…several kilometers away, at least three thousand meters, bearing one nine oh degrees. That’s gotta be a submarine…I hear bulkheads collapsing, metal bending sounds…something big’s been hit.”

  “The Mantas?” asked Galland. She was dabbing at a small cut on her forehead.

  Winger shrugged. “Who knows? I just hope it’s theirs and not ours. But this neighborhood doesn’t seem like a good place for Mole to hang around. Let’s get out of here…BOP, get the borer back online. We’ll take her down fifty meters below the seabed and circle the R point, then listen again on the other side of this valley. Our escort must be somewhere around here.”

  The borer operator came back, “Lieutenant, borer does not respond. We’ve lost containment…detecting compartment breach…no ANAD activity present inside the lens.”

  Winger checked Erromango’s display over his shoulder. “Borer’s been damaged…must have been that avalanche.”

  Galland shook her head. “We can’t ascend all the way to the surface. Mole’s got the buoyancy of a brick. And we can’t descend below the seabed. What can we do?”

  Winger took a deep breath. “DSO, status of our treads.”

  Julie Rice checked. “Treads online and operable, sir. Now at idle power—“

  “Sensors, any signatures from those Mantas?”

  Balderis checked. “I don’t think so, sir. Hard to tell with all the rocks and mud sliding and falling. But I don’t have any indications...SAP’s not flagging any previous contacts.”

  Winger looked at Galland. “If we can burrow out of this mudpile, we can make like a turtle and crawl along the seabed”

  “To where? We need an escort. We need that UNISEA sub.”

  “She may not be here,” Winger said. “I just hope she wasn’t that sound we heard…the explosion. There may be more nasties around than we know about. DSO, engage treads. Let’s see if we can push our way out of this mudpile.”

  The drone of the treads straining and whining against the tons of debris atop Mole could be heard throughout the ship. For a few moments, Winger held his breath. Come on, baby…come on…come on, you can do it.

  Then, the ship lurched forward and a great cheer erupted on the command deck. Rice chopped the treads back to a steady rate and Mole wallowed and wiggled her way clear of the mudfall from the avalanche. Clouds of silt surrounded the ship but inside nobody could see that. Smiles and nervous chuckles broke out on the command deck.

  “Speed and course, sir?”

  Winger looked over at Balderis. “Any contacts now?”

  Balderis held up a hand, indicating hold on, please. He fiddled with dials on his display, re-set his headset, listening intently. “Yes, sir…very faint, but definitely there. I make one contact, bearing three one eight degrees, best range more than eight thousand meters…astern of us, sir.”

  “Mantas?”

  “No, sir…heavier blade count…stronger return. Signature resembles a submarine…I’d say Chinese…probably Ming-class attack boat…heading this way.”

  “DSO, pick up our speed. Maximum rate on the treads.” He frowned, rubbed his face. He was tired, dead tired, but they couldn’t relax now.

  “We’re being stalked, “ Galland said what everybody was thinking. “We can’t outrun a sub, Wings. Where can we go?”

  Winger had already decided. “We’ll try to play dead for awhile, play cat and mouse…all the way to Singapore base if we have to.”

  “Singapore! That’s hundreds of kilometers from here.”

  “Have you got a better idea?”

  Nobody did. And so, Mole began her journey across the seafloor of the South China Sea, heading south by southwest, away from Mindanao, across the northern shores of Borneo and Brunei, heading for the bottom of the Malay peninsula. Quantum Corp eastern base was at Singapore and there was still no sign of the UNISEA submarine that was to have been their escort at R point.

  The geoplane had twelve hundred kilometers to cover…at a best speed of three kilometers an hour. Playing cat and mouse with a Chinese submarine, surging forward for a few minutes, then stopping and going quiet, zigging and zagging around hills and seamounts and ravines, Mole crept cautiously toward her destination, all the while hunkering down among coral beds and lava hillocks and pods of squid and whale, trying as best she could to disguise herself in the shadows and murk of the seabed.

  Johnny Winger did the math in his head and knew it would take days for the geoplane to make it to Singapore, if they made it all. All he could hope for, all any of the Tectonic Sword detachment could hope for, was that their geoplane would hold out, that the treads and their air and water and supplies would hold out.

  Mole was a tough little critter, he told himself. But another voice reminded him: there were a thousand and one things that could still go wrong and she had never been designed for duty like this.

  TO BE CONTINUED

 

  About the Author

  Philip Bosshardt is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He works for a large company that makes products everyone uses…just check out the drinks aisle at your grocery store. He’s been happily married for 25 years. He’s also a Georgia Tech graduate in Industrial Engineering. He loves water sports in any form and swims 3-4 miles a week in anything resembling water. He and his wife have no children. They do, however, have one terribly spoiled Keeshond dog named Kelsey.

  To get a peek at Philip Bosshardt’s upcoming work, recent reviews, excerpts and general updates on the writing life, visit his blog The Word Shed at: https://thewdshed.blogspot.com.