T he nice thing about having one of Nelly's kids for a computer was that it could check in with mom to see if it was okay to interrupt a Grand Admiral. A moment after Megan asked Lily to do that, she had Kris's attention.
"Admiral, we likely have a problem down here in the basement."
"Talk to me, Megan."
"While we were trying to dig our way out to connect to the Iteeche net, we discovered evidence that someone is trying to dig in to us. Actually, someone is trying to dig in from three different directions."
"Three directions?" Kris asked.
"Yes, ma'am. The side facing the Imperial Palace is the only one not being sapped."
"Get up here. We need to talk."
"Should I bring the IT guy who was working with me, or leave him behind to research the problem more?"
"Bring him up here," Kris ordered.
Five minutes later, Megan and Walt stepped out of the elevator. Meg distinctly heard the redhead swallow hard.
Everyone who had been there when Megan left was still there, Kris and Jack, Bruce and Abby, Grampa Trouble and Gramma Ruth, Amanda and Jacques, as well as Admiral Tong. Megan was used to working with them.
While Walt might have worked with a few of them one at a time, this was a mighty big bite for him.
"What seems to be our problem?" Kris asked without preamble.
Megan quickly briefed them on the dancing mining nanites.
"You're sure that's evidence someone is trying to sap our walls?" Jack asked.
"We dug a tiny tunnel toward the Imperial Palace. No dancing. We dug them out from the three other walls. A real dance party," Meg said, simply.
"Gee, and I was thinking of paying Ron's Chooser, Roth, a visit this afternoon," Kris said, dryly. "It would be a shame to have no palace to come back to."
"Yeah," Jack muttered.
"Anyone know how to counter a sap?" Abby asked.
"As luck would have it," Megan said, "Walt likes to play a game involving just those skills."
The full attention of the room turned on the IT guy. His face turned about as red as his hair.
"What do we need to do?" Kris asked.
"Ah, first we have to locate the sap. That may not be as easy as it sounds. Whoever they are, they're not making a lot of noise."
"Nelly?"
"No problem," Kris's computer said.
"Then we have to run a counter-sap and ruin their day," Walt said. "Exactly how much we want to ruin it will depend on what they're doing."
"Yeah," Jack said. "Don't counter saps usually involve matters getting lethal?"
"Yes, sir," Walt said. "I assume that someone up here will decide whether we send them to the hospital or to the morgue?"
"No doubt," Kris said.
"Three saps, you say?" Jacques said, applying sociology to the question that bugged Megan. "Are we facing three groups that each decided to pick a wall, and somehow managed to pick a different wall, or is there a central consortium backing the diggers?"
"I tend to think one group," Kris said. "Three separate groups digging at three different sides just sounds like too much of a coincidence."
Most of the heads around the table nodded agreement.
"Megan, you and Walt head back down," Kris ordered. "Nelly, coordinate with your kids to see of they can find who's bossing our diggers. We'll decide what to do about our mole problem after we know what they're doing. Obviously, Meg, holler if it looks like they're dangerously close."
"Will do, Admiral," Megan said, and with Walt at her elbow, they headed for the elevator.
"Should we pull in more resources?" Walt asked as they plummeted down the outside of the castle. The view out of the glass elevator was spectacular, but maybe a bit harrowing. Especially now that they knew someone out there really wanted to blow them to pieces.
"How many mining nanites do you have?" Megan asked.
"What you've seen is what I've got," Walt admitted.
"Then let's hold it close."
Soon, they were back down in the fourth basement. By mutual agreement, they headed for the north wall, the one that had the server farm. That was closer to the north west corner.
This time, they started digging two-thirds of the way to the northeast corner. They had little time for a game as they designed a new set of sensors for the head of the probe, right behind the diggers.
The sensors reported back more of a conundrum than an answer.
"It doesn't sound like anyone is digging with picks and shovels," Walt reported, puzzled.
"Maybe they're using a drill of sorts," Megan offered.
"If they were, we should be hearing some sort of mechanical noise, either from the power source of the drill, or the dirt removal. Something should be clanking a bit. Hold it. Now I'm not hearing anything."
A few minutes later, the puzzling sound started up again.
"Okay, Lily, they've stumped the humans. What have you got?"
"There is a low sort of repetitive noise off to the west," Lily said. "There is a similar noise to the east, but it's very distant. Likely the eastern wall assault. I cannot place the noise, but I suggest you drill thirty degrees to the west and five degrees down."
Walt redirected the diggers.
A few minutes later, Lily suggested another thirty degree turn to the east. "The sound is getting louder, but I cannot place it. The harmonics are strange to us."
A few minutes later, they struck daylight. And water. Their probe was left high and dry as a stream of water washed away the dirt in front of it.
They quickly pulled it back and got a mole’s eye view of someone digging a tunnel through the dirt with a high-pressure stream of water.
Then they had to back up again as the hose washed more dirt away. While one Iteeche operated the water, another Iteeche, behind him, wielded a vacuum hose, slurping up the mud and water and sending it out of the tunnel.
Walt pulled the probe back several meters until it seemed to be out of the direct path of the Iteeche, then had it dig at an angle to strike the tunnel a few meters back from the digging head. It turned out the tunnel was lined with some sort of plasticized plant fiber, something like bamboo.
They punched through that to get themselves a rear view of the diggers. As they'd seen before, there were two Iteeche operating the pressure hose and the vacuum. There was also a third Iteeche pulling along a flat cart covered with the tunneling supports.
There was a sort of duck board for the floor of the tunnel. It had brackets that the sides could be clamped into. The sides had their own set of brackets the overhead could be locked into. The result was a tunnel big enough for three Iteeche.
Make that four Iteeche. Another one was pushing up another load of supports. He was pushing it because there wasn't enough room in the tunnel for him to get out once the new load was in place. Likely, the three diggers would have to reach the end of a load of supports before they could crawl back out.
"Notice something?" Megan asked.
"They're digging a tunnel," Walt answered, stating the obvious.
"Yeah, they're digging a tunnel, but notice how much spray they have in the air." Several sprayers were attached over the first fifteen meters of the water hose. They misted large droplets into the air. Between the back splatter from the digging hose and the sprayers, the air was heavy with water.
"Yeah?" Walt asked, still not seeing what Megan was.
"When we attacked the head high mucky muck on Zargoth, he was hiding out deep in a bunker. The only approach to that bunker was through a room with a thick water spray. The Iteeche know we have nano spies. They can't fight them, but they sure can drown them."
"So, they're spraying the face of the sap to make sure we don't attack the diggers with nanos."
"Yep. Nobody ever accused the Iteeche of being dumb," Megan said.
"That's going to complicate stopping this, huh?"
Megan shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not. We'll have to wait and see."
With one tunnel located, it was only the work of an hour and a half to locate the other two. Once more, it was time to talk to Kris Longknife.