“Nope. And no dropships hovering over the lake and lowering a cable to pull your Dragon out of the water. That idea was never going to work, Joe. With the Dragon full of water, it would take three Falcons working together to lift you off the bottom.”
“Damn. What is your monkey-brained idea, then?”
“You know how I said the cockpit door might open if you were not so deep, if you were in less than a hundred meters of water?”
“Uh huh. Are you going to use the magical power of wishful thinking to lift me thirty meters?”
“Uh, no. Are you familiar with the expression ‘If Mohammed cannot come to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammed’?”
“Yeah, sort of. Why does that matter?”
“Because, in this case, if Joe cannot rise thirty meters, then the water level must drop thirty meters.”
“Oh, shit.” My already chilled body felt a shudder run up my spine. “What the hell are you going to do, Skippy?!”
“Joe, sit back, relax and behold the awesomeness. Although strapping in and beholding would be better. This could get kind of rough.”
There were multiple landing zones scattered north of the lake, in case one landing zone was defended by enemy antiaircraft systems, and they were all behind a hill north of the lake. The dropships had come in low all at once to saturate enemy air defenses, touched down only long enough to discharge the SpecOps troops and their equipment, and dusted off to the north along egress routes that Skippy had mapped to conceal them from Thuranin on the hilltops along the east shore of the lake. When two of the Falcons were twenty kilometers from the lake, they each fired two missiles. Dropping off the internal rails, the four missiles did not ignite their rockets and streak away at high speed. Instead, they extended their long, thin wings and engaged their small air-breathing turbine motors, circling back toward the lake. Their mission did not require high speed, indeed speed would be the enemy of success on this particular assignment.
To prevent enemy gunners from seeing one missile and sighting in on the following birds, the four missiles were not strung out in a line; they flew side by side. Even with only turbines powering their flight, they were moving at six hundred kilometers per hour when they crossed the northern shore of the lake and turned east south east, ducking down to skim the wavetops. In unison, they cut their turbines, closed their air intake doors and coasted until they were moving less than two hundred kph, then they pulled their noses up sharply and explosive bolts shed their wings. Guided only by the small tail fins, the four missiles reached the top of their unpowered arcs, slowing further until they almost stalled in midair. The last of their velocity was used to push the noses down, and the missiles fell to plunge into the water, leaving only small splashes as they impacted in a cluster less than fifty meters in diameter. Then they were gone, shortly after some of the Thuranin on the east shore had taken notice of them.
The four missiles descended rapidly, gathering speed as they sank into the icy depths of the lake. Even underwater, they communicated with each other, using tailfins to slow if one fell too far ahead of the others. It was important that they all reach their single target at the same time, otherwise the explosion of the first would knock the others off course and dissipate their own explosive energy.
Because the noses of the Thuranin air-to-air missiles were packed with high-density explosives, they were heavy and there was nothing inside the missile casings to provide buoyancy. Their mass and sleek shapes allowed them to descend rapidly, even as the water pressure steadily increased, acting as a counter to the pull of gravity.
All four missiles reached their target within two hundredths of a second of each other, and the four coordinated their actions, so the detonation of their four shaped-charge warheads happened within a nanosecond.
While a large part of Skippy had been trying to figure out a way to rescue Joe, and that large part grew increasingly frustrated to the point of going into useless cycles of self-loathing and self-pity, because he knew Sergeant Adams was correct about him and his limited usefulness to the team, another part of Skippy was devoted to assessing the tactical situation for Lt. Colonel Chang and feeding data to Major Smythe. A tiny submind of Skippy went off on its own, crunching less important sensor data that had been gathered by the Dragon before it was shot down. This little submind, which contained a million times more processing power than all the computers on Earth combined, was content to crunch data while Skippy’s main consciousness wrestled with important problems. The submind was aware of Joe Bishop’s dilemma, and of Skippy’s so far completely useless efforts to find a way to rescue the captain of the Flying Dutchman from a watery grave. Being on Team Skippy meant each submind performed their assigned duties quietly and efficiently, and if the subminds had doubts or disparaging thoughts about their fearless and usually overconfident leader, they wisely kept that to themselves. Perhaps a few especially bold subminds exchanged private communications on the overall subject of Skippy. And perhaps a very few of them composed humorous poems and songs about Skippy the not-so Magnificent, and had a good laugh while hoping the absent-minded Skippy was not paying attention.
The submind assigned to the lowly duty of compiling and analyzing geological data collected by Joe’s Dragon did the best it could to make sense of the incomplete information. It had a chuckle at a particularly funny song mocking Skippy while it finished creating a detailed view of Gingerbread’s subsurface structure and, because it had nothing else to do, it started looking at the lake in which Joe Bishop was trapped.
And it found a curious fact. The amount of water flowing into the lake from the main river from the north, and various streams coming down the hills to the east and west, was a known data element. The amount of water flowing into the lake from underground springs could be estimated with a high degree of accuracy. The submind also had solid data on the volume of water flowing out of the lake to the south. Based on the temperature, humidity, sunlight and chemical composition of the lake water, the submind knew how much water was lost to evaporation over the lake surface.
And the numbers didn’t add up, even when the math was double and triple checked. The lake level should be higher, but it wasn’t. Which meant the lake must be losing water to a previously unknown outlet, and that needed to be investigated.
When the submind completed its investigation, it became extremely excited and immediately attempted to get the attention of Skippy. It was ignored. When the submind repeatedly tried to notify Skippy, it received increasingly annoyed replies that Skippy could not pay attention at the moment because Skippy the Magnificent was busy working on important things and whatever the lowly submind wanted, it could not possibly appreciate the vast scope of the crisis Skippy was dealing with. So, shut the hell up, please.
The argument dragged on for seven agonizingly long nanoseconds, until the submind had enough and shouted the Elder AI equivalent of HEY DUMBASS. That got Skippy’s attention. And a microsecond later, after Skippy absorbed all the pertinent data and performed his own analysis, Skippy had a plan to rescue Joe.
The warheads of the four missiles directed their explosive energy at a shelf of rock two hundred twenty meters below the lake surface. The rock was composed of a shale that was softer and more brittle than the surrounding granite, and had been steadily eroding away over thousands of years, since the lake had been formed by a retreating glacier. The shale had become porous, with numerous cracks which allowed a measurable amount of water to seep out of the lake into underground caverns. That leaking water, originally a drip, drip, drip, had become a steady flow within the last three thousand years. Eventually, the shelf of shale would crumble completely, allowing a substantial part of the lake to drain away.
Eventually was not fast enough for Skippy The Not-Known-To-Be-Particularly-Patient. He accelerated the erosion process using the energy of four powerful warheads, with their shape charges focused on what scans showed was the weakest point of the shale layer.
The warheads h
ad the advantage of pushing against water already under high pressure, allowing very little of their energy to be wasted in other directions. The shale shattered under the hammer blow.
On the western shore, Lt. Reed and the others huddled under an overhanging tree root, taking shelter from the Thuranin who were advancing down the slope above. The root was thicker around than her waist, curving out two meters from the base of the towering tree. At one point, the root had grown to encircle a boulder, but that rock had been dislodged and rolled down the hill to rest against another tree below. With the boulder gone and twigs and leaf debris almost filling in the gap above, the root provided good cover, with escape routes on three sides. Major Smythe had called to assure the crash survivors that Captain Xho and SpecOps team were coming in hot to rescue the three pilots. Whether the Merry Band of Pirates would arrive before the Thuranin was still a good question. Between the three pilots, the most powerful weapons they had were knives in the ankle holsters of their boots. Those short blades were intended to cut away stubborn straps and anything that could get snagged in the cramped cockpit of a dropship, not to fight attacking aliens who possessed advanced technology.
She and her two companions had not been looking at the lake, so they missed seeing the four missiles plunge into the water. When she turned her attention back to the lake to scan the eastern shore for threats, the ripples where the missiles had splashed into the water had already been swallowed up by the wind-driven waves. So, the three humans laying flat on the forest floor were startled when they felt a faint shock through the ground beneath them. “Was that a missile?” Reed asked, and the three visually scanned in all directions; none of them saw a smoke plume that was characteristic of a warhead exploding. Then she saw a circle appear on the surface of the lake toward the eastern shore, white foam racing outward from an area that began about fifty meters in diameter. The circle was a slightly raised dome of water that was at first smoother than the surrounding water. When the eastern rim of the circle hit the far shore, water surged up a meter in a splash, then fell backward, bringing forest debris with it. Already, the circle was becoming indistinct, as waves disturbed the formerly smooth surface. “What the hell is that?” Reed asked. “I’m calling this in,” she announced, although surely the SpecOps team could also see the lake surface.
“Wait,” Captain Zhau whispered as he grabbed her forearm. “Lieutenant, look at the far shoreline. Is the lake level dropping?” He asked skeptically.
Reed used her zPhone’s imaging magnifier feature as a telescope. Zooming in on the far shore, at first all she could see was roiling water where the surge of water had rushed up onto the shore and into the first rank of trees lining the lake. Then she turned her attention farther south along the shore, where the outer rim of the splash had not yet reached. Rocks in the water there had a sharply defined color line; dark at the water level and light gray, almost white above.
The separation line was now clearly above the water. “I don’t remember seeing those rocks exposed when we got out of the water,” Sami stated.
“That sandbar wasn’t there either,” Zhau pointed to a new peninsula extending out from the eastern shore. It was grainy sand and pebbles, and as they watched, the sandbar grew as the lake level dropped. “That can’t be a wind shift,” she observed. “This lake isn’t large enough for wind to pile up water on one side.”
“And the wind is blowing toward the east,” Sami agreed. “Hey, look!” She pointed excitedly toward where the circle had first appeared. Now the lake surface was disturbed by what appeared to be a whirlpool that was gathering speed and strength. “What in the world could be going on out there?”
Chapter Seventeen
In the sunken Dragon’s cockpit, I felt a deep, low vibration, accompanied by an ominous booming sound. For a moment afterward, everything went back to the chilly depressing calm, then the Dragon began gently rocking side to side. “What is happening, Skippy?” I demanded. When the absent-minded artificial DUH-ntelligence told me he planned to lower the lake level thirty meters, I feared he would do something brilliant and impractical. Just then, I had a terrible, hair-raising thought. “Please tell me you are not using some orbital maser platform to boil away the lake water.”
“Huh. Wow. I hadn’t considered that. Maybe I should-”
“Maybe you should not,” I protested. “Heating the water that much would cook me also.”
“Hmm. Oops. You may have a point there. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, I am not using masers. Unfortunately, because that would be awesome! Hot, but cool, you know?” He chuckled.
“Awesome, yeah. What are you doing, Oh Genius One?”
“Draining the lake, Joe. Not all the way, I calculated the surface will drop forty two meters before it reaches temporary equilibrium and begins to refill.” He explained his plan to me.
“That is incredible, Skippy. I know there can be caverns beneath a lake, my aunt lives in the Finger Lakes of New York state, and some of those lakes are undermined with caves that were dug to extract salt, or something. My aunt always worried about an accident might create a hole that could drain the lake away.”
“An accident, or a Skippy!” He chuckled. “In this case, Joe, the entire region here is riddled with caverns. The reason this lake is so deep, I suspect, is that a glacier came through long ago, and the weight of the ice collapsed the roof of a cavern here. The caverns that still exist below the lake have more sturdy roofs, except for the weak spot I found, of course.”
I had to admit that his plan was inventively awesome. I also feared he might have forgotten a thing or two in his rush to take action. “Let me ask you a question, Skippy. Millions of gallons of water are now rushing out of this lake, right?” I used my arms to steady myself against the Dragon’s rocking side to side.
“Yup. It’s draining even faster than I expected, because the force of the water flowing into the caverns under the lake is partly collapsing the roof there.”
“Uh huh, great. Two questions, then,” the Dragon rocked almost thirty degrees to port, and when it settled back down on its belly, it was still tilted about ten degrees. “All this water flowing underground won’t damage the Elder conduit thingy you are hoping to find beneath our feet, will it? Or block our access to that area?”
“Hmm. Well, shit. Thanks a lot for ruining my happy mood, Mr. Buzzkill.”
“Well, shit? For crying out loud, Skippy, how the hell can you be so-”
“Hey, give me a freakin’ break, will ya? Damn it! For crying out loud, I dream up an amazingly incredible plan to drain a gosh-darned lake to save your ass, and all you can do is,” his voice became that of a whiny toddler, “have you thought of this, or this?” He sighed. “Jeez Louise you can be a nag. No, I hadn’t thought about that, Joe,” he grumbled. “This monkey-brained thinking is kind of new to me. Let me crunch some numbers here. Uh, uh huh, uh huh. Ok, it looks like there is no danger of flooding the underground facility where we might find a conduit. Maybe not no danger, it’s, hmm. Crap. There is a danger, I guess. Ah, nothing we can do about it now, right? What, uh, what is your second question?”
“This Dragon already hit the lake bottom, then rolled down an underwater hill until it came to rest here, wherever I am now.”
“Yeah, duh. Joe, do I need to explain the concept of gravity to you? I’ll keep it simple for your tiny monkey brain. Gravity is-”
“My question, Mr. Genius, is will the force of water now flowing out the drain you created, knock the Dragon off the ledge or whatever I’m on?”
“Uhhhh-”
“Uhh? Because I do not like the idea of being inside this Dragon, while it tumbles down another like hundred meters and then falls through a hole into an underground cavern where I will be buried forever.” He didn’t answer immediately. “Skippy?”
“Well, shit. Uh. Oopsy?”
“Oopsy?”
“The good news is you do not need to worry about falling into a cavern deep beneath the lake surface.”
“Oh, good,” I breathed a sigh of relief, and instantly regretted using the extra oxygen.
“Because the Dragon’s cockpit door will buckle inward from the water pressure and you will be crushed before you fell halfway down to the drain hole.”
“Oh, great. Thanks a lot.”
“No problem, Joe, I know you could use cheering up at a time like this,” he said happily.
“Cheering up?”
“Yeah, sure. Death would be instant and painless. Hmm, no, not instant. Quick, anyway. Two, three minutes, tops? Ugh, maybe that isn’t so painless. It would depend on how fast it takes you to pass out from drowning. Since I am not a meatsack, you will need to tell me how long that will take, given your body mass, oxygen supply-”
“Really? You need to mention the word drowning right now?”
“Perhaps I should stop trying to lift your spirits, and stick to the facts.”
“Ya think?” The Dragon rocked suddenly, then skidded to port. There was a grinding sound as the belly scraped on something beneath.
“Ohhh-kaaay, somebody got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” he complained. “Don’t be so cranky, Joe. From the limited scans you completed before getting shot down, I have a partial view of the underwater terrain in your area. But, as I do not know your exact location, I can’t predict whether the Dragon will be pulled off whatever surface it is resting on. However, I do have some good news. There is a sort of gully below you; that gully is deep enough that if you fall down there, the Dragon will not be lifted out and carried through the drain hole.”
“Good news, then?” I asked anxiously.
“Ah, maybe not so much, Joe. The bottom of that gully is currently below crush depth for your cockpit door. If you get knocked down there before the lake surface falls substantially, it will be adios muchacho for you. And, hmm. If you are in the bottom of the gully when the lake finishes draining, you will still be too deep to relieve pressure on the cockpit door enough to get it open. This was poor planning, Joe. You should have warned me.”
Zero Hour (Expeditionary Force Book 5) Page 31
