All told, there were six of them.
There was a snag getting into the main air lock. It was computer controlled all right, but on leaving, one of the Earthers had jammed the door from the inside with a steel bar.
It gave Maria a chance to catch up with the rest of us. Being behind Conan in the tunnel, she’d had to take the long way around to get to us.
The Japanese plans showed an emergency air lock, human sized and manually operated, on the other side of the structure. Two of our humanoid drones got us inside in a few minutes. I hadn’t thought that they would be of much use, but those manlike drones were turning out to be very handy.
On the way down, we started hitting major snags. On retreating, the Earthworms had done the same thing we had done in the iron layer to open up the old exploratory shaft. Only they had fired rail gun needles entirely around the circumference of the big tunnels, completely blocking them with metal vapor and spray, cutting off any possible counterattack.
What’s more, they never logged these tunnel modifications, even with their own computer. Not that we could contact their computer, or anybody else. Blasting the tunnel walls, ceilings, and floors had also blown away all the data conduits as well.
The mining tunnels were a vast maze that had been dug, not to any preset plan, but according to what was convenient at the time, depending on what metals had been selling well on Earth. It was mapped, but the blockages in it were not.
We were forced to backtrack, and take side tunnels, only to run into obstructions again, and backtrack again. And again. And again.
It was extremely frustrating.
Hostages, our own people, maybe even our own relatives, were under the threat of massacre, and we were spending hour after standard hour, day after day in Dream World, running up and down empty tunnels. We never saw the enemy or any of our own forces, either.
And all the while, we couldn’t find out what was happening in the real world. Had our politicians given in to the enemy’s demands? Were our people stranded on some deserted planet? Had the bastards carried out their threats and wreaked havoc?
We just didn’t know.
At least, it gave us plenty of time to work out every possibility that we could think of, to run simulations of them, and to figure out what would work, and what wouldn’t.
If we had had a full load of rail gun needles ourselves, I would have tried to blast one of the obstructions away, and worry later about if we were draining the air out of a pressurized section that our people might be in, but we didn’t.
Our two tanks with rail guns had less than thirty seconds’ worth of ammunition each.
I was about to order us back to the shaft and up to the surface, to collect up any ammunition we could find around the fixed rail guns around the lid on the shaft. Osmium is pretty tough stuff, and probably wouldn’t have been hurt by the Search Light. I didn’t know for sure, but maybe it would fit our guns.
Then Kasia had an idea.
“This debris they blocked these tunnels with. It’s fairly cool. They had to have done this at least a day ago.”
“So?” I said.
“So twelve standard hours ago, Conan was still picking up data from their computer. It didn’t know about all these tunnel closures. This business of sealing off the tunnels must have been done by local commanders without telling their general staff about it. Our stunts must have had the effect of completely discrediting their leadership. They were bugging out without the brass’s knowing about it. There’s a good chance that Conan’s still in contact with that computer. That means that the data buss goes back to their computer by some other way than these main mining tunnels. If we go back and find that conduit, we can follow it and find a way to their computer, which has to be close to the transporter receiver, where they first came in, and their main base.”
“Good thinking,” I said, “and while we’re back there, we can see about getting some more ammunition for Zuzanna and Maria.”
Zuzanna said, “You mean to tell me that there was more ammunition, back at the shaft head?”
“There might be. And if there is, I don’t know if it will fit. It’s stuff that the Earthers brought with them.”
“You could have told us about it, dammit! Going into combat when you’re practically out of ammunition is not a pleasant prospect!”
“I didn’t think about it. I was worried about the hostages, and didn’t see what good a rail gun would be in freeing them. Then again, you could have asked,” I said.
Her reply was censored by her computer.
So we turned around and spent three standard hours getting back to where we’d been fifteen hours before.
We had to go back outside to determine exactly where the conduit entered the lid that covered the shaft. Then, we had to peel open three similar conduits on the inside before we found the right one.
Conan said that he was doing just fine, that the hostage situation was in negotiation, and that it was likely to be dragged out for days, yet, or maybe years, since both sides had brought politicians, diplomats, and lawyers with them. For the time being, all fighting had come to a dead stop, except for two bloody battles, one between Hindus and Moslems, and another between two African groups whose names he couldn’t pronounce.
Forty-one percent of the enemy now had cholera, but none of the sick had died of it yet. The medics were very proud of that.
And the Gurkhas were still sitting this one out.
Zuzanna and Maria took most of our drones and searched around the rail gun platforms. It was only when they sent some of the humanoid drones up to the guns that they found that they were linked with a series of conveyor belts that delivered ammunition to them. Those belts were full of rail gun needles.
Zuzanna gave all of her old ammo to Maria, loaded up on the new stuff, which looked just like what we were used to, and let out a ten-second blast at a nearby tungsten dune.
“It works just fine!” she reported.
Then they filled their guns and hoppers with more ammunition than they could possibly use in any conceivable situation in the tunnels.
I guess that when you’ve been hungry for a while, you eat a lot.
An hour after we got to the surface, we were heading back down, moving slower this time, and stopping now and then to make sure we were still following the right conduit, and getting an update from Conan.
We still hadn’t been able to get in contact with our own forces, which was probably just as well, since we were figuring on breaking the cease fire that the negotiators from both sides had agreed on.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
An Assault by the Back Door
Mining machines, and the tunnels they cut, had gotten bigger over the years. Most of those still in use cut a domed, flat-bottomed tunnel that was forty meters wide and forty meters high. Besides extracting a huge amount of material for export, either as unrefined metal, or as finished products from our automatic factories, or as anything in between that would sell, they left you with a big and very long room that was useful for all sorts of things, be it for living space, or for factories, or for warehouses.
The earliest mining machines had to be shipped here from Earth. Since they had to fit into a standard canister that the Hassan-Smith transporters could handle, they could cut a tunnel that was only slightly more than four meters in diameter, and was round bottomed, at that.
This was the sort of tunnel that we were following, tracing the data cable back to the Earthworm’s big computer. The small size wouldn’t have been a problem for the Earthers, since they were mostly infantry backed up with small vehicles. For us, it was a pain, and our tanks had problems going along the rounded floor below them, but we did it.
It was a tight fit, and once into it, we knew that we wouldn’t be able to rearrange the order in which we went through. I figured that we would probably have to blast through the air locks that I was sure had to exist between the small tunnel and the computer room that probably was situated immediately behind it.
At least, the small tunnel came out less than three hundred meters from the location of the transporter receiver that used to be connected to the old probe, and if I had been the engineer in charge, that’s where I would have put the computer room, and the command headquarters as well.