They Said It Would Be Easy (April Book 7)

by Mackey Chandler

"That sounds like a good start," Barak agreed. "When do you intend to set this break?"

  "I'll finish this shift, and you will do your full shift. After that we shall all take a double shift liberty. If there are any filters or fluids to deal with can you get ahead on them to have a full shift free?" she asked Alice.

  "You can count on it," Alice promised.

  * * *

  "I have a bogey," the shift militiaman informed Jon and Chen.

  "Elaborate," Jon ordered him.

  "Laser reflections indicate there is a submerged craft causing upwelling of deep water on a line here," he said, drawing a line along the center of an oval shape near the Aleutians. "The line points directly at where the Tobiuo would be in about seven hours, if it wasn't going to stop before then, but they wouldn't know that. In fact they are only about a half hour from stopping."

  "How deep is it? Chen asked.

  "We don't know," the militia man explained. "If we knew how deep it is we could give you an exact position within a few hundred meters, as long as it kept going straight. We've just never collected enough data, and if we had, it would depend on what class of vessel is down there. Some drive styles mix water more than others."

  "Give me a guess," Chen demanded.

  "Oh, anywhere from about here..."he drew a line across the screen with a finger, not needing the precision of a stylus, "to about here." The lines were a good sixty kilometers apart, south of the oval.

  "I can however give you a speed, from the rate at which the water anomaly spreads forward. It's going at about forty two knots, so he will be at the intercept point," he marked it with a touch, "in about sixteen hours if he is at the front of our guesstimated position."

  "So, he's not a danger to the Chariot. They'll have all the transfers done and lift again, likely before he is half-way there," Jon said. "However he'll be a hazard to the Tobiuo as she is leaving. She can't outrun him either. Although they may be within missile range while sitting on the surface. If he gets reports from the USNA command and targeting data he might try to catch both of them together with a ballistic missile, and he wouldn't have to surface to do that."

  "You are assuming it's a USNA sub. All we really have is a patch of deep water stirred up to the surface. It isn't tagged with any flag," Chen objected.

  "The USNA has tracking on the Tobiuo from their power plant. That's an exclusive as far as we know. The Russians, Chinese and Indians all may have ocean radar back in operation, but why would they be interested in a small civilian vessel?" Jon asked. "Only the USNA makes sense."

  "I can probably answer this very quickly," Chen offered. He called Jeff and brought him in on the current display, explaining where they estimated a sub was approaching.

  "Have you kept the submersible drone carrier shadowing the Tobiuo?" Chen asked Jeff.

  "Yes, I have. It's a couple kilometers away and about five hundred meters down. The Tobiuo is slow enough it has been pacing it on accumulator power. It hasn't run its fusion generator for about ten days."

  "Excellent. See the point on the plot the submarine seems to be following and the interception point?" Chen asked.

  "Yes, it's really moving isn't it?" Jeff remarked.

  "For the size they build their subs it's smoking," Chen agreed. "Here's what I'd like you to do. First, move your submersible right in close to the Tobiuo so they appear pretty much the same point on any tracking. Then I'd like you to instruct it to head for a point along the sub's line of approach back from its projected contact with the Tobiuo. Using the detectable power plant, to be seen. Can you do that, with it at five hundred meters?"

  "Sure, we can re-program it at that depth." He didn't volunteer how.

  "Thank you. I'll leave the feed open for you. If I'm guessing right the sub will stop or change course pretty soon. I don't think the USNA wants to trade a multi-billion dollar sub for a ketch."

  "I tell you what," Jeff said. "I'll have it go ahead to the intercept point, then it will adjust course and turn to meet the sub. That conveys to them that we know the sub's course. The device will only do twenty knots. We didn't build it for speed. But they of course have no idea it can't sprint faster. I'll tell my guy that handles this and it should be moving ahead to meet the sub in just a few minutes."

  "They are near stopping to wait for the shuttle to land anyway. The sub, or the people manning the sub, may think they are stopping to let the submersible go ahead to deal with the sub," Jon speculated.

  They watched the screen, knowing Jeff's submersible was in play, but he wasn't providing tracking. Nothing happened for about twenty minutes. Then the oval of disturbed water stopped spreading south. In another ten minutes the oval grew a knob at the end which distended and started a new line off to the south west.

  They all let out a sigh of relief.

  Chen had a sudden thought, but he didn't share it with the others. He'd never asked Jeff explicitly if that drone carrier had any sort of armament. He'd been bluffing. He wasn't sure Jeff was.

  Chapter 8

  "It will be coming in from the south," Li informed his guests.

  "Don't most things orbit with the Earth's rotation?" the Canadian scientist asked. Peter had never volunteered the man's name, as he had his own.

  "Yes, but the shuttle assumed a polar orbit so it won't have issues reentering over hostile territory. This way they come down over the ocean, without needing to overfly anyone," Li explained. "It isn't as difficult a maneuver from a lunar insertion as radically changing direction from LEO."

  "Who's hostile to you?" The fellow asked.

  "The safest is to assume everybody but Japan and Tonga," Li assured him. That shut him up.

  "I see it," Peter said. He had good vision. It took Li another fifteen seconds before he found the tiny spark on the horizon. It climbed in the sky from their perspective and dimmed as it bled off speed.

  "They'll pull up and do a vertical drop on the main jets, then roll forward and drop it on its belly using the thrusters when they are near the surface," Li said.

  "I'm surprised they don't just come in and skip across the surface on their belly," Peter said.

  "In theory they could, dragging the tail and holding the nose up with the front thrusters," Li said. "They may even try that, someday. When they have a second shuttle in case it doesn't work."

  The shuttle threw a great deal of spray up landing about a kilometer away. Then as the spray started to settle there was a roar and a smaller plum of water blew out behind her.

  "What was that last little burp?" the Canadian asked.

  "They blew the main exhaust clear," Li explained. "In case water gets in between the time it shuts down and the time a mechanism slaps an aluminum disk over the hole to seal it. Flushes the air too for that matter. It has to pump down to a vacuum in the drive to start back up. It needs a few seconds for it to cool down enough that the aluminum doesn't melt where it touches the hot throat."

  "And it snatches it off when it fires up again?" he asked, demonstrating with a hand.

  "No," Li said, amused. "It just vaporizes it when you fire it back up again."

  The shuttle made a lesser noise and turned its nose toward them a little.

  "He gave it a push to meet us part way, but the Tobiuo is much more maneuverable. If you will excuse me I'm going to ease us up against her," Li said.

  Li took them around the shuttle with it off their port side. His guests inspected it with some interest from less than a hundred meters away. Li cut close just to give them a good look at it. Then he eased in from behind while crew hung every fender they owned off the port side.

  The portion of the shuttle highest from the water opened, but slid on rails away from them, rather than fold open and present a big area for the wind to catch.

  Two lines were thrown across, fastened at the front and rear of the open hatch, before a gangway deployed from the shuttle. The gangway ran the length of the open hatch and swiveled from the rear of that opening to the ship. It was almost long enoug
h to reach the Tobiuo, but when it neared the rail an extension slid forward another couple meters.

  Two crew ran forward and dropped gas piston braces from under the front edge of the gangway and gave a signal to the operator in the shuttle. The device stayed planted where it was supported on the Tobiuo and was free to float and pivot on the upper shuttle end.

  A fellow in a jumpsuit climbed unseen steps and hesitated, timing his step onto the gangway as it moved. The motion that high up was amplified from the small roll they were experiencing in calm seas.

  Once he did step onto it he didn't run down it, he slid with both feet planted solidly on it, squatting, and came off the end like a gymnast doing a dismount.

  "You're going to break your bloody neck someday doing that," Tara, growled at him.

  "Yes, but until then it's so much more fun than sliding on your butt!" he agreed. "You are Mr. Martens," he said right away, looking at Peter. "I've seen your file, all of it," he emphasized right away. "I'm Gabriel. Consider me your control for this operation from this point. I'll be with you and Dr. Houghton until I hand you off to Chen, face to face." He looked at Houghton and seemed to know who he was too, or assumed it.

  Well, nice to finally have a name. Li thought.

  "Is Gabriel your real name, or a operational handle?" Peter asked, scrunching his eyebrows together.

  "My birth name," Gabriel assured him. "And as far as I know, the only Gabriel on Home, so if you ask for me quite a few people will know who you are referencing." But he offered no surname.

  Li wondered what the problem was. Peter didn't seem pleased. Then he figured it out. Peter was perhaps thirty or a bit older. Gabriel looked to be about eighteen. Well he'd better get over that.

  "Pleased to meet you. We're all set and have all our gear on deck," Peter said, waving his hand at it.

  "We'll load you as soon as we unload the Dionysus' Chariot," Gabriel said. "We'd rather not reconfigure the gangway back and forth. If you want to lend a hand that would be appreciated."

  Gabriel turned back and signaled the fellow standing in the shuttle to start. He was sticking up waist high to the upper end of the gangway and immediately tossed a box down the slick surface. Somebody was feeding them to him from out of sight inside the shuttle, and the crew on the Tobiuo formed a line and started passing them across the deck to the companionway.

  While they were watching the shuttle land somebody had rigged a similar slide down the companionway, and the boxes disappeared down into the boat very efficiently. They moved a hundred ten cartons in fourteen minutes, and their passengers did decide to help, but Dr. Houghton looked to be in lousy shape.

  When the last box was below they threw a line down and pulled the passengers luggage up the ramp. The crew brought four large hard cases that took all four of them to get up on the gangway and the shuttle crew didn't pull the cases up hand over hand. They had a winch to drag them up. There was a fellow on each side to ease them down to someone inside the shuttle hold. The hard cases were followed by a couple dozen normal foam boxes and some large burlap sacks.

  "I didn't realize this was a freight run, besides picking the Doc up," Peter said.

  "It's a short load," Li assured him. "We got medical things, vaccines and cancer drugs. Now we'll haul them all the way back to Australia. We gave them frozen beef in the big insulated chests, coffee beans and dry stuff in the bags. But if we'd met them down closer to Australia we'd have sent some fresh stuff too, vegetables and fruit. It was just too long a trip up here to deliver it in good condition."

  "I can't imagine it will sell for enough to cover lifting it," Peter said, frowning.

  "You're right. As usual, all the real value was coming down," Li agreed. "That's probably somewhere around a hundred sixty to two hundred million Australian dollars of goods we just put below. But that doesn't mean we want to send her back totally empty."

  Peter was visibly stunned at that figure. "And they told me they'd pick us up even if they had to send the shuttle empty both ways this time."

  "Now you know how valuable your Dr. Houghton is to them," Li said, smiling.

  "You'll give him a big head," Peter complained, since he was standing there listening.

  "No." Houghton objected, "You'll scare the crap out of Herr Doctor. I know now I better damn well perform, after finding out what a shuttle flight to pick me up is worth."

  Li handed Gabriel the diesel injector manifold the crew had hurried to remove. It was an aluminum casting and shattered and bent at one end, unsymmetrical now, but cleaned up nicely.

  "Do ask that be passed along to Jeff please, and a functional one made or this one repaired if they'd rather. It doesn't have to be an exact copy. Just so it works."

  The crew had the surface of the gangway flipped and locked back down. The surface was now a gritty non-slip surface, the very opposite of what was on the other side. Gabriel jumped on it and ran up the incline and into the shuttle. Peter got up with more caution, putting a hand flat on it and stepping up. He offered a hand to Dr. Houghton, but Houghton waved him off. Peter turned his back on him, oblivious to the distress on his face, and walked up the incline without looking back.

  Houghton looked back at Li. "Thank you for the ride," he said, and set his mouth in a hard line. Li was sure that wasn't what he really wanted to say. Houghton was scared, and wanted to ask for help, but he'd stifled the fear and just said something to cover up his awkward hesitation looking back at Li. The shuttle and the boat were barely rolling, and there was a very mild breeze, but the gangway was only a half meter wide with a ridge on each side barely a hand's breadth high, and no hand rail at all.

  Was the man afraid of heights, or something else? Li hesitated, unsure what to say.

  Houghton looked at the gap between the vessels like he was crossing between skyscrapers. The two vessels alternately compressed the fenders between them, and eased apart, as the water rose and dipped in time to the swells. Then Houghton abandoned all pretext of nonchalance and scrambled up the gangway on his hands and knees, head tucked down like he didn't want to look.

  Peter was all the way to the other end and had stepped down inside before he turned and saw Houghton crawling up to him. The man was half way already, so there was little point in going back for him. He just waited and gave him a hand off the other end. Peter made eye contact with Li across the gap. Instead of making fun of the Doctor's fear he looked embarrassed he hadn't seen the problem. Li just nodded at him and turned away. Houghton wasn't his problem now.

  Li had to give Houghton credit for proceeding against his fears without demanding help. He wasn't sure if it was a fear of heights or drowning. He decided the fellow would do OK on Home.

  The crew threw off the lines, folded up the supports, and the gangway lifted and pivoted away. Li was away from the wheel, but Tara was standing there and he gave him a wave to move them. He rolled the wheel a bit and eased a little power on to back off. The stern swung away from the shuttle and he increased power and backed away. The crew rushed to remove the fenders starting at the back. The fellow locking the gangway down in the shuttle finished, and gave Tara a wave. He dropped from sight as the hatch started crawling shut, sealing the shuttle up.

  To the west of them Jeff's submersible turned to the southwest like it might follow the sub and then turned its generator off that let it be tracked, accumulators freshly charged. It continued the turn and slowed down, headed back to the Tobiuo to shadow it. No reason to let the North Americans know that however. It might be effective in protecting it again although it wasn't designed for that purpose.

  The drone carrier could discharge its accumulators all at once, on command. He'd included that capacity to destroy it in case it looked like it would get captured, or if it reached the end of its usefulness and was too hard to recover. No need to tell anybody that. What he needed now, Jeff decided, was a dedicated escort submersible. Much sleeker since it wouldn't need to carry drones, and much, much faster.

  If a submarine coul
d do forty two knots he wanted at least sixty, and a bigger warhead of course. He'd read something about releasing air to sheath the hull of a submarine in a layer to reduce drag. His couldn't possibly carry enough air, but if you had a big enough laser on the nose...wouldn't steam do the same thing? Jeff had some guys who could advise him, if he just made a few sketches.

  * * *

  "I've spoken with my mother," Myat said, "and she has conferred with her co-wives. They agree I may act as their agent with you, to accept a deposit of money to manage just as Chan Aye did. While they agree with your thought that there are many new widows here, who would do business with us, they are concerned there may be opposition to us doing so. It's a difficult thing to explain."

  "Not at all difficult!" Huian assured her. "My own husband was not taken with the idea at first. We are Chinese and it isn't common to our people's customs either, but he does a great deal of business with a Japanese gentleman. That man could reject his own prejudices sufficiently to entrust his wife with a separate funding and freedom to handle them at her discretion. He has had good success doing so, and my husband observed that. Nothing recommends a different course of action like success!"

  "How true," Myat agreed. "And it's easy to rationalize opposition to something as a moral imperative, if it will just incidentally be a competition to your own livelihood."

  "But no reason to take to the streets with a trumpet to announce your intentions," Huian counseled. "If you allow word of mouth to gather a following among your female allies, then if someone should raise an objection later you have prepared a body of supporters, who have an interest in seeing you are not obstructed."

  "You echo almost exactly what my father's third wife said," Myat agreed. "She pointed out how many people the three of them know socially, or to buy services and goods for the household. Most merchants respect purchasing power above other concerns. A word here...a word there...among a limited group. One may hope it spreads."

  "How do you wish me to move funds to you?" Huian asked. "I can move funds from Russia, Tonga, Japan, Australia or North America, in order of ease. I can have physical gold couriered to you if you wish. That's how my husband has funded me."