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Chapter Fifteen
Plan D
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Zimsky yawned and stretched his mouth and throat. Beads of sweat were beginning to roll off of his face and neck, as were they with the others. Josh and Braz were sitting at one of the computers. All were in the navigation compartment, save Beck and Iverson. Iverson was now resting as Beck took over navigation of Virgil for the next handful of hours.
"Okay, this time it's going to work." Josh whispered as they wrote the new equations into the simulator.
"Here you go....beautiful." Braz agreed.
"Yeah, mm-hmm." Josh nodded, watching the screen. "Come on, baby. Come on, daddy wants to see the sky again."
SCENARIO FAILURE followed by the annoying little buzz that mocked them so severely. Josh let his head fall, sighing and trying to think of another plan.
"Okay, okay, okay. Let's try again." He stated. Braz rubbed his head tiredly. "Your torque is R cross F..."
"No, your R is too small, Josh."
Zimsky circled around them. Serge sat behind the duo, observing their progress, here to lend support and mathematical assistance where it was needed, even though geomagnetics and engineering were not his all time specialty.
"Right." Josh pointed at him with a dawning expression of mock realization. Zimsky was laughing behind them.
"Wait, hold on." Braz stated. "What are you laughing at?" he snapped.
"No, I mean, it took me and four hundred of the world's smartest people to come up with the first plan." he argued.
"You want to help?" Josh asked.
"No." Zimsky answered firmly. "I want to turn around and go home."
"It's not going to happen." Braz stated.
"Well then we're going to die." Josh turned and glared at him. Zimsky shrugged. "True."
"All right. Let's start from square one. Let's start from square one." Josh turned back to Braz.
"Okay." Braz nodded.
"The bulk modules--depends on density. Your torque, is R cross F, but you have to integrate volume."
"But, here, here...just consider this." Serge added in, leaning forward in his chair.
Zimsky was pacing behind the trio, his own plan formulating an idea as he did so. The words of the others were lost for a few moments as he contemplated his idea.
"Now, we got this..." Braz commented.
"Okay, now, R cross F, we're putting in Pi, what's V?" Josh asked.
"Oh, for God's sake." Zimsky spat. Braz stood up and spat.
"All right. I'm hitting him again."
"No, no, no. Braz no, look, I have a theory." Zimsky pleaded, running behind the centered cage of the room that blocked off the more dangerous components in the compartment. "Are you interested?"
"Yes. We're interested!" Josh sighed in exasperation.
Zimsky poked his head over onto the other side of the cage.
"Then let me smoke a cigarette and I'll tell you."
~
Zimsky lit his cigarette and took one long inhaling breath of a Marlboro.
Oh, thank God." He sighed as if in ecstasy. Josh, Serge, and Braz eyed him expectantly until at last Zimsky became aware of their presence again.
"Hmm? All right, fine, look." he stuck the cigarette in his mouth and started programming coordinates and equations into his computer. "Look, we have to use wave interference, okay? Because one explosion won't do it. Think about stones in a pond. You drop a large stone into a pond, you get a big splash, and then that's it, it's over. But, drop a smaller stone," the screen began to demonstrate this, "wait until the ripples weaken, then drop another, and another, and another, and...fluid dynamics 101. The ripples reinforce themselves in geometric progression."
"Hm, the whole bigger than the sum of the parts." Braz observed. "Then we'll have five two hundred megaton explosions..."
"Instead of one big bang." Zimsky wrapped it up, nodding his head.
"So," Josh started. All eyes turned to him without his realizing it. "We hot wire the nukes."
"Yes." Serge nodded.
"As one does, we seed them through the core...at locations that have to be accurate by the inch. We detonate them in a sequence that has to be accurate to the millisecond...then we outrun the biggest nuclear shock wave in history."
"Right." Zimsky responded with a stressed tone.
"Yeah." Braz answered shakily, his expression holding a thought that summed up his thoughts on this plan quite well.
Serge simply nodded his head with mock eagerness and readiness, his lips pursed in thoughtfulness as his eyes gazed into the floor dreamily.
"I mean, that should he fairly simple." Josh finished with mock confidence.
~
Project Destiny Base--Alaska
The walkway retracted as the warning siren sounded through the base. Destiny was charging up to make her debut into the Earth's core. Those in the observation station prepared themselves for the moment they had all been waiting for.
"Destiny should now be diverting to the central." came one board specialist. There were a number of other different readings being announced as Destiny reached her full potential in power. Switches were armed, buttons were pressed, and history was being made. They believed.
"Final calibration-"
"-on both transmission systems..."
~
Deep Earth Control Center
Rat was still swimming through the intranet data sites for a link to Project Destiny. But every time he got close the same window would pop up. 404 Error, Access Denied.
"Come on," he hissed, chewing a Hot Pocket as he went from screen to screen, desperately trying to get somewhere with his search.
~
Virgil
"Cut the rouge...the red wire above the circuit." Josh read from Serge's notebook. Braz was working on one bomb as Serge worked on another. Josh was here for morale support and French translation, since that was what most of Serge's book was written in.
"Okay. Okay." Braz went.
"Wait!" Serge yelled. "Below...not above!"
Josh frowned and squeezed his eyes closer together. This light was no good for reading. "No, no, wait! Hold it." Josh yelled. Braz hadn't heard Serge and was beginning to cut. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, cut it below."
Braz's head fell back onto the floor, exhausted and happy that he wasn't the one responsible for killing them all.
~
Deep Earth Control
Rat was still not having any luck as he hacked into every thing and anything he could find on the net. His frustration was bringing him to the point of tears. His face tensed up in stress and irritation.
"Please," he begged.
Purcell waited in his office, letting his fingers dance idly as he waited for the signal to come in that Destiny had been fired.
~
Alaska
"Extensions A, B." Jean announced from his position on the board. "Here we go. F, check." The power columns on Destiny grew in frequency and strength. "Increase power to reactors ten through fifteen."
"We're almost there, folks." James announced through is com.
~
Deep Earth Control
Rat was failing miserably. Every site was a dead end. He couldn't get so much as a scrap of a direction to head to after this. He was pushing himself against a dead end, and Rat knew it. Tears began to fall now at last onto his paled and frustrated face.
~
Virgil
46 Hours in, 2600 Miles down
"Okay guys, we're closing on the inner core." Beck announced as Braz, Josh, Serge and Zimsky marched through the corridor and into the cockpit. Iverson was in his seat now, looking tired but ready to go.
"The nukes are ready. Timers are on." Josh stated. Braz went to his seat and started to work on his computer.
"Great. Let's start dropping them." Iverson came in.
"No." Zimsky argued. "The bombs are not built for these pressures. That's why they were in that pod. If you send them out now, out of that casing they'll be crushed instantly."
"Oh that's wonderful." Beck stated.
"I'm assuming we have a plan D." Iverson continued. Josh nodded.
"Plan D is Virgil's compartments. We put a nuke in each section of Virgil, and then eject the individual sections one at a time. They should stay in tact long enough for the nukes to go off."
Serge's gaze turned to Brazzelton, who was shaking his head.
"What?" he asked.
"Virgil's not designed to eject undamaged compartments." he informed them.
~
A long 'map' of Virgil's inner setup was displayed across one of the many computer screens in the cockpit area. It showed the hydraulic gear pump, piston, and the locks for the separate compartments.
"Okay, these are the ejection mechanisms holding each compartment in place." he stated. The red line running beneath the compartments and into the attachment locks went green as he spoke. "They're all connected by one master hydraulic gear. Kind of like keys on a key ring." he turned to the others who nodded. "What we have to do, we have to unlock the piston. That will release the compartments so the bombs can be jettisoned."
"Where's the master gear?" Zimsky asked, raising his head. Serge held a questioning expression on his face. Braz sighed, a harbinger of more bad news.
"In the crawl space we used to get out earlier."
"What?" Serge breathed.
"Well, what the hell is it doing there?" Zimsky spat.
"I built the ship in three damn months. I didn't think I'd be intentionally sabotaging it. I'm sorry!" he laughed roughly.
"So one of us has to go in there." Josh stated. Zimsky rubbed his temples, not believing what he was hearing.
"Correct."
"Into the crawlspace that has core fluid at nine thousand degrees." Beck laughed in mock humor.
"Yes." Braz answered matter-of-factly.
"Can you flush it with liquid nitrogen?" Josh asked.
"We don't have enough at this point."
"Nine thousand degrees?" Zimsky came in. "And our suits are built to withstand...?"
"Half that. Probably."
"Right. Half that." Zimsky nodded his head as if he believed he should have known that answer.
"So what you're saying is that, whoever goes into that crawlspace isn't coming back?"
Serge looked up with some trepidation. He didn't like the idea any more than anyone else. The problem was, who were they going to chose?
Author's Note: This freaking sucks. My computer is working against me. My disk drive is full of dust so it isn't reading my disks correctly, meaning that I've probably lost all my chapters for the sequel of this story and the next chapter. Also, and for reasons I can't understand, my pause button has ceased to perform so I can no longer pause the damn DVD as easily as I could before. MY COMPUTER IS WORKING AGAINST ME!!! WHY!?!?!?! [breaks down into a sobbing mass]
*sniff* Please review.
