Hiccup had been working nonstop around the clock as best he could with his busted ribs and bum leg.
Once he'd finished freaking out about being trapped at an unknown depth and cut off from the surface he began to think.
The Vehicle Pod as its name suggested contained the crew vehicles, everything from the one-person Sea Glider submarines to the Knight deep sea exo-suits for each researcher as well as the various crates of miscellaneous parts for each one. After checking and arranging everything he could lay his hands on he came up with the following facts:
(1) Despite the free fall and rapid descent, the water, and mud had been an unexpected boon to him. An exo-suit had been knocked loose from its cradle but that was it thankfully, nothing else had been shaken loose otherwise he figured it'd have been much worse than just three broken ribs and his fractured leg. The Pod had become firmly wedged into the sea floor of wherever he was in its current position. That of course led to his next point.
(2) The Pod was stuck in a vertical standing. Even though the rest of the vehicles were still firmly kept in their cradles, he couldn't safely disengage them. If he did, he'd risk damage to the interior and make the hull even weaker.
(3) The crash had knocked loose several padded crates of supplies, one even had interchangeable arms for the exo-suits. This again was a help. His background was in engineering and construction, it was one of the reasons he had been approached for the IRS-O Project. His original role was to oversee Dr. Cross's inventions and make recommendations for enhancements and upgrades where feasible and document any other improvements that had to be made topside. He was quite adept at making good modifications with limited resources.
A subtle groan had him looking up and wincing as he arrived at his final point.
(4) He had no idea how deep he was, nor could he even safely say any of the vehicles would survive it. The Crawler Pod had been groaning ominously for the better part of an hour. Hiccup had been doing all he could to relieve the stress and tension in the hull while also trying to engineer an escape.
Then he had an idea midway through his third hour. He could use the pressure to launch himself up to a higher level of the sea inside the exo-suit, then using the thruster in moderate bursts, he would climb high enough to launch the emergency device built in.
All of which had led to now. In between his scramblings to retighten the hull of the Pod, Hiccup used a pulley and winch to hoist the loose black-painted Knight suit into an upright position. He checked the measurements of the Pod's interior and began working on the math as he looked over the suit. In its original configuration, it was approximately forty-five feet tall, thirty-nine feet wide, and one hundred and seventy-seven feet long. He used the system to hoist the suit almost ten feet from his current standing position and took some of the parts from the other cradled vehicles to make an upside-down breakaway dish attached to the suit's feet.
As he set about securing the suit in its free hang, he went through his plan again; He was essentially turning the Pod into a pressure cannon. Using homemade explosives, he'd blow out the hatches on the bottom and allow the rapid intake of water and pressure to push the suit upward like a missile.
All of it hinged on the rest of the Pod's hull remaining tight so the force was directed upward.
Another metallic groan echoed around him as he finished the eighth charge of ten, he looked up and swallowed as a steady trickle of water began to drip on his head.
Hiccup gritted his teeth and doubled his speed, he'd either launch soon and have one hell of a story to tell or be crushed in his iron coffin at the bottom of the abyss.