Southern Carpathian Mountains, Romania
10 Days Out of Watership Down...
The El-ahrairah-One was coasting along above the Fagaras mountain range, following the Arges River deep into the Southern Carpathians. Below the airship, in every direction, stretched a seemingly endless sea of mountains with high, snow-covered peaks, separated by deep rocky gorges and scattered green valleys of conifers and meadows. Unlike any urban or coastal areas they'd seen so far, most of which had become unrecognisable, the Carpathians had hardly changed at all in seven hundred years.
Using the maps he'd found at the Olympus HAB, Alan had plotted a course that would take them upriver along the Arges, straight into the heart of the Carpathians. Although they had narrowed down the location of the first Crypt to Romania, the expeditionaries still had no idea exactly where it was up in the mountains. This complicated their mission immensely.
Going by gut instinct, Alan had figured that hauling all of the world's national treasures up here could not have been possible by air; the survivors of the Apocalypse would have needed some sort of land route to transport such a large stash into the heart of the mountains. Obviously, the Crypt would also have to be situated close to that route. And the only natural route that seemed to fit the bill was the Arges River, which passed close to Moldoveanu Peak, the highest peak in the Southern Carpathians. That was where they would begin their search.
Up on the observation deck, Alan was on lookout duty, trying to spot anything unusual in the landscape along the shoreline that might pinpoint the location of the Crypt with his binoculars. Hazel, Fiver, Pipkin and, surprisingly, Violet, who had finally gotten over her fear of flying, were also on deck to get some air, tired of being cooped up inside a cramped, stuffy cabin.
"This is so beautiful!" cried Pipkin, who couldn't get enough of a bird's eye view of the world far below, "I could stay up here forever!"
"Frith of Inle, how big is this world?" exclaimed Violet in amazement, admiring the view of the mountains, "Our parlin and great-parlin always said the Meadows of Fenlo ended at the edge of the Great Water after which there was nothing; and yet, there's a whole unexplored world out here! Hrair new lands, all just waiting for us since the beginning of time!"
"Mankind's early ancestors probably thought the same when they first began exploring beyond the seas," said Alan, smiling at the doe, "So did their descendants much later, when man first flew into space and then walked on the Moon. If there's any regret I have about civilization dying out, it's that it didn't last long enough for us to colonize other planets. Steven Hawking was right when he said mankind's evolution would end here unless we expanded beyond the Earth. Guess we waited too long." His own words left him with a slightly bitter aftertaste. If mankind had only gotten its act together and managed to colonise another planet, maybe the Moon, or Mars, or even Apocalypse, they wouldn't be the only human beings left in existence.
"And yet, here we are today, rabbits and humans working together, rediscovering a new world risen from the ashes of the old, which we can learn to share in peace," said Fiver, always the voice of reason, "Maybe Frith meant it to be this way." Hazel smiled warmly at his brother. True, everything his people and Alan's people had accomplished together filled him with a great sense of pride; but now, it all hang in the balance, with Crowley's marauders and the resurrected Woundwort out to destroy it all, drive them apart. He sincerely hoped they could find the first Crypt in time; at least that would put them one step ahead of the enemy and one step closer to rescuing Lucy.
Down in the main cabin, the floor was strewn with tools and electronic components. Derek was hard at work, cobbling together a peculiar contraption he'd fashioned out of the old vacuum tubes, transformers and other parts he'd scavenged from the Olympus HAB's workshop. Sam sat by his side, passing him the tools, while the rabbits looked on curiously.
"Exactly what do you expect to build out of all this fancy human hraka?" scoffed Bigwig, watching Derek solder several tubes together using extra wire from the airship's spare-parts box, building different circuits. He always thought it silly how humans liked to squirrel away so many things they found or built, while rabbits never needed to hoard anything inside their warrens other than winter flayrah, bedding and the occasional herbs for the sick, and all they needed were the teeth and claws Frith gave them for digging burrows or fighting.
"I'm making a ground penetrating radar," said Derek, not taking his mind off his work, "If there's a secret Crypt inside one of those mountains, we'll be able to see it from up here." Bigwig snorted; even an ignorant rabbit could tell there was no trickery in the world that would allow anyone to see through earth and solid rock. The chap's brain had definitely gone to the carrots, he thought.
"Will it work?" asked Campion, who had a far greater appreciation for human inventions. After all, he'd seen his human friends perform more than their fair share of miracles on numerous occasions. Derek shrugged his shoulders.
"Maybe," he said, "If the tubes are still good, if the capacitors aren't corroded, and if I can amplify the reflector signal enough, we just might get something." Campion rolled his eyes; all this human tech talk made just as much sense to him as feeding a lendri flayrah.
At last, Derek was ready. Sitting on the table in front of him was an array of different vacuum tubes, capacitors and transformer components mounted on an overturned bin lid he'd borrowed from the galley to use as a base, all connected together with a knotted pasta of wires, which formed the synchronizer and receiver unit of his radar. Also attached to the device on the end of a wire was a dome-shaped antenna, fashioned out of an old salad bowl lined with tinfoil and fitted with a GPR transmitter. The screen from an old ultrasound machine would project any image picked up by the antenna.
By drawing power from a line he'd hooked up to one of the airship's inverters and fitted with a safety fuse in case of short-circuits, Derek was able to connect his new homemade radar into the airship's battery bank. The antenna was mounted on the end of a retractable bracket fitted inside one of the empty holes in the belly of the fuselage, where the control cables for the undercarriage in the floats, both long gone since the airship needed neither, had once been, back in the days when it had still been a plane. Now, they could use the previously disused landing gear lever in the cockpit to lower or retract the radar antenna at will.
Doing one final check, Derek switched on his radar. The vacuum tubes hummed to life and lit up like lights on a Christmas tree. The cabin lights instantly grew dim as the radar greedily sucked up every amp of juice from the airship's power grid. Alarmed that he'd overestimated the power capacity and possibly risking frying the inverter, Derek quickly made several adjustments until he finally got the power usage down to manageable levels. Satisfied, he signalled to Hotdog up in the cockpit.
"All right, radar antenna down!"
Hotdog complied and lowered the landing gear lever; at the same time, the antenna mounted in the belly of the fuselage angled downwards on the end of its bracket, beaming its reflector signal to the mountains below. Inside the cabin, Derek powered up the imaging screen and turned to a rudimentary control panel of frequency-tuning knobs mounted on the main unit for amplifying signal strength and range.
At first, nothing but greyish mist appeared on screen, revealing nothing. But after several futile tries, Derek finally got a clear enough picture. Sam and the rabbits all gasped as they saw a blurred but definite outline of the mountainside's interior, showing multiple layers of rock and sediments of different densities, appearing in the form of different shades of black, white and grey. The ground penetrating radar was working. At last, they had eyes, not just on the outside of the mountains, but on the inside too! Derek raised his arms in a gesture of triumph.
"The Renaissance Man has done it again!"
The Watershippers all cheered wildly at their trusty engineer's greatest latest invention. Derek had given them the power of flying; he'd given them the ability to travel further than any rabbit had ever gone before; and now he'd given them the ability to see under the ground without relying on their sense of smell.
With the radar beaming away, they continued on their course upriver, towards the Moldoveanu Peak. There, they came to a small valley at the foot of the peak, where the river formed a lake, surrounded by a thin patch of trees. Further upriver, the river thinned out and formed waterfalls, so it was apparent that no boat could have ventured any deeper into the mountains. But other than being labelled on a map, there was no sign that man had ever set foot here before, much less a Crypt housing all of the world's treasures.
Passing over the lake, which they unceremoniously named Derek's Lake, in honour of Derek's ingenuity, they followed a zigzag pattern over the valley, inspecting every inch of ground with the radar. Nothing. Then, passing over the lake again, Sam noticed something on the screen, which wasn't part of the lake bottom.
"What's that?" she said, gesturing at a peculiar oval shape in the image, which was marked in black, indicating it was made of some high-density material, probably metal, "It looks like a boat."
"A boat?" scoffed Hawkbit, always the no-brainer, "On the bottom of the lake? Not likely!"
"Not only that, it is a boat, probably a river barge," said Derek, ignoring Hawkbit. Sure enough, looking out the window, they could see the large dark shape of the sunken barge, barely visible just below the surface. Looking closely, he recognised it as a freight barge, which had been a common sight on the Thames back in the 21st century, transporting cargo up and down the river. No doubt this was one of many barges used to ferry all the national treasures that survived the Apocalypse upriver, to their secret hiding place in the Crypt. At long last, they were on the right trail!
Doing a further sweep with the radar, they saw the lake bottom was littered with more man-made objects and machinery left behind from what appeared to have been a major construction site.
"Cor blimey, it's like a junkyard down there!" exclaimed Derek.
"By Frith! What kind of elil are those monsters?" gasped Violet, staring wide-eyed at what Alan recognised as the toothed blades belonging to the rusty husks of old bulldozers, excavators and tunnel-boring machines, which, to a rabbit's eye, resembled skeletal jaws from some enormous and utterly frightening elil, scaring poor Violet stiff.
"Well, not exactly monsters, but they can do a lot of damage to a warren when placed in the wrong hands," he said, patting the doe reassuringly, "Either that, or they can help built a massive underground hiding place inside solid mountain rock, like say, a secret Crypt chockfull of treasure. And I'm willing to bet all the Bobstones in the world, whoever carted all this machinery up here, did it for some reason."
No doubt these machines of Man that once used to wreak havoc on all animals' natural habitats had been used in the construction of the Crypt. And it didn't take a genius to figure out that, in order to keep the location hidden, the survivors of the Apocalypse, after sealing up the Crypt, had scuttled the barge, along with all their equipment, covering up all traces of their work. They had to be getting close. As if on cue, Bluebell's eagle eye suddenly spotted something else on the side of the mountain.
"Hey, you buckos, get over here now!"
They all crowded around Bluebell, staring out the window. Sure enough, up on a nearby mountainside overlooking the valley, where the vegetation thinned out to mere weeds and shrubs, they could see a peculiar line running along the side of the mountain, which, from afar, resembled a road.
"Don't get too excited, it's probably just a fault line in the terrain," said Hotdog dismissively. Alan however, wasn't so convinced.
"Take her round," he ordered, "We're going to get a closer look."
Hotdog piloted the airship alongside the mountainside, until they were hovering just above the target. As Alan had expected, it wasn't a natural-occurring fault line at all.
"What in Frith's name is that?" asked Fiver, looking at a strange pattern of crossed lines, forming squares along the side of the mountain. He had never seen anything like it before.
"Looks like a...giant slug trail, doesn't it?" suggested Bigwig, who had never seen anything like that before either. But Alan, casting one look at the strange sight, burst out laughing.
"Slug trail, my eye! It's a railway track, you bloody pillock!"
Although partially obscured by landslides and vegetation, they could see it went on for quite a distance, starting from the edge of the valley they'd left behind them, leading somewhere high up on the mountain. And as there was no railway line marked on the map, one needn't guess where it led to.
"We're following that railway track until we find where it ends," said Alan. It seemed their luck had just changed from better to best. "With a little luck, it will lead us straight to the honey."
Maintaining as low altitude as they dared in order to retain visual, the El-ahrairah-One followed the railroad track through the mountains. It wasn't easy; centuries of erosion and landslides had wiped out entire lengths of the tracks, causing them to keep losing sight of it. Then, passing over a plateau on the far side of the Moldoveanu Peak, the train tracks ended abruptly at the foot of a cliff.
Hotdog and Derek manoeuvred the airship downwards, until it was hovering just above the ground. Alan jumped out first with the mooring line and secured it around a nearby tree, while Sam, following right behind him, did the same with the second line. With the airship secure, the Watershippers disembarked.
They looked around the plateau. There was nothing. Other than a few scattered trees and shrubs, there wasn't a damn thing to be found. From a ravine to the west, the rusting, half-buried old train tracks came up onto the plateau, leading up to a large mound of fallen earth and rock at the foot of a steep cliff, above which towered the massive Moldoveanu Peak. They simply dead-ended into a wall. The expeditionaries were baffled.
"Well, what is this?" asked Hawkbit disdainfully, staring around at the empty plateau, "Where is the Crypt?"
"There's nothing here," put in Strawberry, looking terribly disappointed, "We must have made a mistake. This can't be the right place."
"If you ask me, I'd say we've been bluffed all along," scoffed Hawkbit, now getting really annoyed, "Can't you see, you duffers? There are no Crypts! It's all just a bunch of ancient lies someone cooked up! Maybe it was El-ahrairah who started the tale. What better way to salvage his tarnished reputation after getting his people into trouble with Frith by falling in with King Darzin...? Ow!"
"How dare you accuse our Prince of such deceit!" yelled Blackberry, who had cuffed him over the head, "The Prince of Rabbits would never lie to his own people to protect his image! That's something only the scummy likes of Cowslip would do. Then again, Hawkbit, you wouldn't have a problem lying your tail off, if it meant saving your own neck..."
That was the wrong thing to say. Infuriated at the accusation, Hawkbit lunged at Blackberry and, in an instant, the pair was caught in a furious brawl.
"You insufferable rotter! I'll chew your ears off!" yelled Hawkbit, cuffing Blackberry across the face.
"And I'll claw your good-for-nothing face open!" growled Blackberry, throwing Hawkbit off of him and pinning him to the ground, as the two rabbits continued to exchange blows.
"Stop it!" cried Pipkin, seeing his friends brawling, "Please, stop fighting!"
But the fight wouldn't stop until Hawkbit and Blackberry were restrained and forcefully pulled apart by Bigwig and Holly respectively.
"Control yourself, Hawkbit, or I'll beat the hraka out of you!" growled Bigwig, his angry glare making it perfectly clear that he wasn't joking. "And that includes keeping your big mouth shut!"
"The next fool to pick a fight will be one very sorry rabbit!" snarled Holly, "Now fall back in line, Blackberry! That's an order!"
"That insolent, flea-bitten miscreant was insulting our sovereign Prince!" retorted Blackberry angrily, wondering why Holly and Bigwig weren't helping him pummel the living daylights out of Hawkbit, "You can't just ignore such blasphemy...!"
"Be that as it may, fighting amongst ourselves isn't going to help us!" said Hazel, who'd heard the commotion and come to see what was going on. "Stand down, Blackberry!" Finally, Blackberry calmed his nerves, yet continued to glare daggers at Hawkbit. The latter merely lowered his head, regretting his outburst.
"My apologies, Hazel-rah."
Ignoring the bickering that was going on, Alan had walked over to the cliff face where the train tracks led to. All he could see was a large pile of basalt rocks and earth, probably from an old landslide, overrun by vegetation, and above that the towering wall of the cliff that led up to the mountain peak. Why would someone build a railway line that simply dead-ended into a wall?
Picking up a stone, he noticed it was unusually smooth and glazed for a stone broken off a cliff face in a landslide, which were usually sharp and jagged. It was almost as if a power tool, probably a drill bit, had scraped it off. On the other hand, it might just be the result of the wind and rain eroding the rock over hundreds of years. Or was it not? Only one way to find out. He hurried back to the airship.
"Deke, beam your radar into the side of the mountain, in the vicinity of that landslide!" he called, "Let's see if there's anything hidden underneath."
Onboard the airship, Derek powered up his radar again and pointed the antenna in the direction of the cliff wall. After a few tries which yielded nothing but a blurred image of pure solid rock, he finally managed to amplify the frequency enough to penetrate deep enough into the basalt. His face formed into a smile.
"It's hollow!" he called, "The whole mountain's practically hollow, lads! And there's something in there!"
The image projected onto the screen revealed, what looked like, a vast network of giant tunnels spread throughout the interior of the mountain, appearing in the form of static, which were the radio waves of the radar passing through empty space underground. Among the layers of static, they could also make out numerous rectangular shapes in black, indicating the presence of metal plating, possibly containers of some description, definitely man-made.
Their hopes renewed, Bigwig immediately ordered his Owsla on digging duty, much to Hawkbit's chagrin. The rabbits attacked the landslide with a vengeance, shifting away the mounds of earth, while the humans helped clear away the larger rocks and boulders. At last, they had cleared enough debris away, revealing the opening to a cave – which was tightly bricked up with slabs of granite. Obviously, whoever had concealed the entrance with the fake landslide was taking no chances.
"We'll never be able to get through this," said Alan grimly. The granite slabs probably weighed a ton each and were completely solid. Worse still, the expeditionaries had no digging tools for penetrating through solid rock onboard the airship. And even if they had, it would take weeks to pick their way through that granite wall. Unless, of course, one had a skilled engineer with a talent for chemistry handy.
Hurrying back onboard, Derek began gathering all the materials he needed. From the engineering compartment, he opened up a locker which contained the large glass bottles of homemade sulphuric acid that was used for producing hydrogen gas by mixing it with iron filings, which made the airship float. Luckily, he'd made a large enough batch, enough to re-inflate the balloon three times over. He could easily afford to sacrifice half of it for his latest project – one which he'd done once before four years ago, albeit under more primitive conditions, saving his friends' lives from the humanoids of Cowslip's warren.
Grabbing a couple of gallons of the lethal substance, he turned to look for his next vital ingredient: nitrate salts. Going through Alan's science kit, he found a large jar of sodium nitrate used for soil testing, which would do nicely. Also grabbing a couple of fireproof sample bottles, a camping stove and some glass tubing for making a still, he hurried out.
Setting up shop in a secluded spot behind a large rock, away from the airship, Derek set up his still and lit the stove. With Alan's help, he mixed carefully measured quantities of sulphuric acid and sodium nitrate in a bottle and placed it on the fire. This, in turn, would create nitric acid, which could be collected in another bottle by distillation. Then, the two ingredients could be mixed together to make nitroglycerine – the key ingredient for making dynamite.
Everyone held their breath while Derek and Alan worked, wisely keeping their distance. The slightest slip, a minor misjudgement of ratios in the mixture and the whole plateau and everyone on it, airship and all, would go bang! Finally, after several hours of nerve-wracking work, they had a full gallon of pure nitroglycerine ready to be put to the test.
Using a pick and a hammer, Alan carved a small hole in the rock at the foot of the wall. Then, very gently, they poured the nitroglycerine into the hole, forming a small puddle. The final touch was a makeshift detonator made from a sawn-off flare head mounted on a block of candle wax.
Placing the block on the edge of the nitro puddle, Alan lit the flare, which whooshed to life, yet the wax prevented the flame from making contact with the nitro underneath it. But not for much longer, as the heat of the flare quickly began melting the wax. In ten minutes, the block would melt completely and the flame would make contact with the pool of nitro, triggering an explosion.
"All right, everybody, get clear!" shouted Alan, "Back to the airship now!"
They hurried back to the El-ahrairah-One and piled into the cabin. The airship took flight again, Hotdog flying them to a safe distance away from the plateau, out of the range of the blast. The seconds ticked by.
Suddenly, a violent explosion shook the plateau. A wave of loose earth and shattered rock flew across the plateau, unsealing the entrance to the cave. No sooner had the dust settled than the Watershippers made their way back down and, excitedly, hurried back to the mouth of the cave. The explosion had cleared away most of the landslide and had blown the granite slabs inward, causing the wall to collapse. The way in was finally open!
Stepping over the still smouldering debris, they entered a towering dark cavern inside the cliff. The beams of light from the humans' flashlights illuminated the scene, revealing the continuation of the train tracks, which led to some sort of depot or offloading station built inside the mountain, where the train that once run on this track delivered its cargo.
Probably a mountain cave originally, it had been expanded deeper inside the rock and reinforced with high, waterproof concrete walls, much like a city's tube station. An assortment of abandoned equipment, including sealed barrels of fuel oil, spare rails for the train tracks, empty packing crates and boxes, a disassembled aircraft engine, a power-winch and, joy of all joys, a brand-new barge sitting on a train hopper car that stood on the tracks. Unlike the decaying Olympus HAB, everything here was in a remarkable state of preservation, literally frozen in time.
"This must have been where all the art and treasures were offloaded," said Derek, staring at the empty packing crates on the edge of the tracks.
"So where the bloody hell is it?" asked Hotdog in exasperation, staring around the empty station. Other than the machinery left behind, there wasn't a single item of value to be found. Then, they spotted a second entryway behind the hopper car leading into another chamber. This one was sealed tight with a massive, nuclear-blast door, impossible for the Watershippers to penetrate.
"Just our rotten luck," muttered Alan, staring hopelessly at the sealed blast door. Designed to withstand even a nuclear explosion, there was no way they could get it open, even if they had a million gallons of nitroglycerine handy.
"We can't fail now," said Hazel, refusing to give up when they were so close to the prize. Not when they'd come all this way, gone through all this trouble to find the Crypt, only to be stopped by one final obstacle. "There has to be another way in."
They spread out, searching the chamber top to bottom for a way past the blast door; a hole, an air duct, anything. There was absolutely nothing. Not so much as a pinprick could be found in the door or the surrounding walls. However, there was something else.
"Eh, guys, you better come look at this."
They all hurried over to where Hotdog stood petrified, staring at something fixed to the wall behind a protruding I-beam that held up the roof of the chamber. The humans' eyes widened as they noticed the tell-tale high-explosive-hazard sign on the armoured box. Above it, where the wall met the ceiling, was another. The whole chamber, they realised, was rigged with explosive devices, planted in key locations, enough to bring the whole chamber down. Alan paled; if their own explosive charge which they'd used to break in had been a little stronger, it might have set off these explosives too, causing a cave-in and sealing up the Crypt forever.
"Looks like a self-destruct system, in case this place was found by the wrong people. Someone definitely wanted to make a point," he said, "Everybody keep away from the walls and don't touch anything! There could be a booby-trap or some other hidden trigger somewhere that sets these things off. Hey, I said don't touch that, you idiot!" Strawberry, who was about to nudge the explosive with his paw, as if to test if it was still live, hurriedly backed away.
There was nothing else they could do there and none of them were too keen on remaining in an underground room filled with explosives any longer. Bigwig was about to usher everybody out, when, suddenly, Sam noticed something.
"Wait, what it this over here?"
What she had originally mistaken for some sort of container sitting on a barrel beside the blast door, she realised was actually a control panel mounted on a pedestal. A way of opening the door! Pulling the safety cover off, she found a rudimentary control console, no bigger than a bank ATM, including a screen and retractable keyboard.
She tried pressing a few keys on the keyboard, but nothing happened. The screen was dark, dead, without power. Opening another smaller cover at the foot of the pedestal, they found a corroded, long-dead battery, which used to supply power to the system. Fat lot of good it would do them now. But Derek smiled; fixing broken things was his specialty.
"All we need is to rig a power line back to the airship, to give this thing some juice, and we're in business."
Using a utility cable on a spool they'd found among the discarded machinery, they jury-rigged a power line that run all the way across the chamber and out onto the plateau, all the way back to the airship. While the rabbits busied themselves unwinding the cable, Derek got to work splicing it into the control panel's circuitry, while Hotdog did the same on his end, connecting it to the airship's batteries. At last, it was ready.
"All right, inverter on!" called Derek over his radio.
Making sure the inverter was set on the same voltage as the original battery, Hotdog powered it up, sending an electrical charge along the cable and into the blast door's control console. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then, the screen suddenly flashed as the system rose from the dead after hundreds of years. A prompt command appeared on screen:
'WHAT ARE THE NAMES OF EL-AHRAIRAH'S MATE AND CHILDREN?'
Alan smiled. Only one simple game of Twenty Questions, lagomorph style, to win and the prize was theirs. Time to choose their contestant.
"You're on the job, Dandelion!" he called to their renowned storyteller, who eagerly stepped forward, ready to lend his services. With Sam at the keyboard like a secretary taking dictation, they started the questionnaire.
"Laurel, Greenweed, Hawock, Whitethorn and Themmeron," said Dandelion. Sam typed in the answer. The console hummed, almost pleasantly, indicating they'd gotten the answer right. Almost immediately, the next question appeared.
'WHO WAS EL-AHRAIRAH'S CAPTAIN OF OWSLA DURING THE FIRST BATTLE OF THE MEADOWS OF FENLO?'
With Dandelion giving all the answers flawlessly, they continued with the questionnaire. After answering a further dozen questions without a hitch, they finally got to the last two questions:
'WHAT WAS THE DATE ALAN JOHNSON TIME TRAVELLED TO IN THE FUTURE?'
"That would be 10th March 2791," said Alan with a yawn, growing tired as such easy questions. Sam typed in the answer; but in her excitement, she accidentally mistyped March, missing the c. Without noticing her mistake, she hit the execute key.
Instead of a pleasant hum, indicating a correct input, there was an ominous blare from the console. All around them, they heard a crescendo of rapid beeping; the explosive charges positioned around the chamber were live and armed! On the bottom of the screen, a red display popped up, showing a 60-second countdown. By entering the misspelled answer into the console, they'd unknowingly triggered a safety sequence meant to keep any intruders from breaching the Crypt.
"What in Frith's name is going on here?" shouted Bigwig, unnerved by all this blaring and beeping, "What have you done?!"
"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" screamed Sam, realising her mistake, "I didn't mean to! I just misspelled it...!" But the beeping sounds only intensified as the timer steadily continued its countdown.
Derek made a move to yank out the cable and cut the power to the console, but Alan, figuring whoever set this trap would have taken that into account, stopped him.
"Don't! You cut the power and it will just set them off instantaneously!" he shouted. There was only one thing for it now.
"Everybody, run!" he shouted, "Get the hell out of here, all of you. Now!"
Nobody needed telling twice. They all turned and bolted for the exit, hoping they could get clear in time before the timer reached the end of its countdown. All except Alan, who turned his attention back to the console. He still had a job to do.
"Everybody down!" shouted Derek, as they came running out of the cave and falling flat on their faces, bracing for an explosion. He protectively held Sam against him, hands over both their heads in case of flying debris. They all held their breath...
The timer was down to 45 seconds. And there were no commands on screen to stop it. Yet Alan could see the question prompt was still active, waiting for the correct answer. It seemed the only way to override the sequence was to finish the questionnaire.
Feverishly, he typed in the correct answer, this time without a spelling mistake. The console gave a hum, confirming the input was correct, however the beeping of the bomb detonators didn't cease. Meanwhile, the timer was down to 30 seconds and counting. At last, the console brought up the final question:
'WHAT IS THE INHERITED TITLE OF EVERY CHIEF RABBIT OF THE WARREN OF DARKHAVEN?'
Alan froze. He knew from Drake's journal that the founder of Darkhaven was Hemlock, but as to the honorary title handed down to his heir, who had assumed the chieftaincy of that warren after his death, was a total mystery to him. Woundwort, a warlord, went by the title of General during his rule in Efrafa; but did the line of Darkhaven Chief Rabbits go by the same title?
The timer was down to 15 seconds. The detonators on the explosives were beeping more rapidly now, their indication lights blinking more intensely; they were reaching the end of their countdown. Even if he made a run for it now, there was little chance he'd make it out in time. He stared furiously at the screen.
"All right, Alan, you bastard, think!" he muttered aloud to himself, "What kind of fancy title would Hemlock like to go by? General? Or was it something else? No, he lived for war, so it has to be General. Woundwort did, so his ancestors should." He poised his hands over the keyboard.
"No, it's the Dark One!" interrupted a voice suddenly. Turning in alarm, he saw Bluebell, who, for some reason, hadn't made a run for it with the others. That rabbit was bat-shit crazy, Alan thought.
"What the bloody hell are you still doing here?!" he yelled, "Run for your life, you fool!"
"It's the Dark One!" Bluebell repeated, "Remember Fiver's vision, Alan? The Dark One shall live again..."
Alan could have slapped himself at his stupidity. The Dark One, of course! The postscript in Drake's journal had also mentioned it, as a prophesy of a warrior rabbit who'd one day rise to finish Hemlock's work, who, of course, was the resurrected Woundwort. But, in the heat of the moment, he, the blithering idiot had forgotten all about it!
With only five seconds left on the timer, Alan punched in the answer. The console hummed once more and then, as quickly as it had started, the beeping on the explosives stopped. The explosion never came. The whirring sound of electric motors coming to life somewhere behind the walls was heard and the blast door, sealed for centuries, began to rise on its hydraulic mechanisms, revealing a second pitch-black chamber beyond.
Alan collapsed on the floor, pale as a ghost and sweating torrents. He looked at Bluebell.
"You crazy son of a bitch have a real death wish, you know that?" he said good-naturedly, "But I'm really glad you decided to stick around, you duffer. I thought I was up hraka creek for a minute there."
"Well, I don't seem to ever get my wish, do I? So what do I have to lose?" asked Bluebell humorously, who already had a reputation for escaping death whenever Alan was around. "Just don't tell Violet I said that, or she'll have my tail." Alan chuckled, shaking his head.
"Not a chance, old chap."
By that time, the rest of the Watershippers, realising there was no explosion coming, cautiously re-emerged back into the chamber, shaken but utterly relieved. Violet glared at Bluebell.
"What were you thinking, Bluebell?!" she shrieked furiously, "You could have been killed!" Bluebell cringed; he'd never seen his beloved mate look so cross before.
"I only wanted to help Alan," he said lamely, "Besides, it was no big deal..."
"No big deal?!You could have been killed, you idiot!" shouted Violet furiously and everybody was shocked to see she was actually crying, "I've already lost Speedwell; I've lost my children too. One of these days I'm going to lose you as well, all because of your reckless stupidity, Bluebell, damn you!" She broke down sobbing. Realising how upset she was, Bluebell nuzzled his mate.
"You're right, Violet, it was stupid," he said remorsefully, "I'm sorry. It won't happen again, I promise you." At last, Violet calmed down somewhat. Although noticeably still upset, she could tell Bluebell was sincere in his promise. She had watched vigilantly over him all these seasons and he had every intention of honouring her efforts.
The Watershippers turned back to the now open blast door. They could see a dark chamber beyond. Stale, bone-dry air, which hadn't been breathed in centuries poured out of the darkness. Even after more than 700 years, the chamber had held its pressurization. Overwhelmed with anticipation, the Watershippers entered.
As they entered the chamber, bright overhead lights, activated automatically by motion sensors positioned around the entrance and running off some sort of long-term radioisotope generators built for the ages, not unlike their own HAB's power grid, flashed to life, illuminating the scene. The humming sound of fans sucking air in and out of air ducts, which was the Crypt's climate control systems, was heard.
The sight made them all gasp in amazement. A vast, domed cavern towering several storeys high and which seemed to go on for miles stretched out before them. Reinforced with concrete walls coated in thick layers of waterproofing paint that had kept the humidity out all these years and sturdy overheard girders that held up the roof, the chamber was built deep inside the bowls of the mountain where it had remained undisturbed all these centuries.
Sitting in neatly positioned rows throughout the chamber were dozens upon dozens of heavy shipping containers, which the survivors of the Apocalypse had stashed down here during Hemlock's reign of terror on mankind. All of mankind's surviving treasures and most prized artefacts of the ages, of all nations, all stashed together in this one room.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Crypt of Wealth!" muttered Alan, mouth agape with wonder, "We've just made history!"
The Watershippers couldn't contain their excitement and eagerly began opening some of the shipping containers. Each one was like finding a priceless treasure.
The first few yielded mostly antiquities; Green, Roman, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Mesoamerican, Chinese, from every great civilization that had ever existed. Pieces of architecture, bronze, stone and marble sculptures, works of art, weapons, amphora and other great relics of the past, neatly packed in protective cases bearing the names of museums or private collections from where they came, and all perfectly well preserved.
"By Jove, it's like Aladdin's cave," exclaimed Hotdog, examining the solid gold death mask of a pharaoh he'd found lying in a padded box. Any one of these artefacts sold on the black market back in the 21st century would make any man filthy rich. And now it was all theirs!
"I feel like Long John Silver," Sam, her eyes wide with awe at all this wealth in treasures and art surrounding her. She, who had been poor most of her life, could never imagine seeing something like this, let alone the realization that she and her friends were now the sole owners of it all. In the blink of an eye, the four of them had become the de-facto richest human beings that had ever lived! Compared to this, an oil sheik's entire fortune was a labourer's wage, Bill Gate's money a pauper's allowance, and Elon Munsk's business empire a humble backstreet store.
"Now we know what the Monuments Men must have felt like when they entered the salt mine," said Alan, thinking back to the stories of the recovery of all the stolen or missing artworks at the end of the Second World War, which his father used to tell him as a boy. Although he was certain this was, without a doubt, the biggest treasure discovery in history.
They continued exploring the Crypt, finding more and more treasures. Other shipping containers contained paintings, each carefully wrapped in flannel zip-cases to protect them from dust and humidity. Renaissance, Rococo, Surrealism, Neoclassicism, Baroque, Romanticism, Impressionism, Cubism, Dada, all the art styles of the ages, in the form of hundreds of masterpieces that had once been the pride and joy of all the museums and art galleries of the world. The humans couldn't resist unwrapping a few.
The rabbits couldn't help but admire all these beautiful things made by the hand of Man unveiled before their eyes. Although the concept of art had little meaning to them, the sheer beauty of it all literally mesmerized them. They all muttered expressions of awe when Alan unzipped a case, pulling out none other than the crown jewel of all art, the famous Mona Lisa itself, looking as if it hadn't aged a single day while in storage.
Further amazing discoveries included boxes of jewellery and precious gems, china and crystal sets, tapestries, silks and the finest carpets imaginable. Derek began cheering like a madman, when he opened a container filled with several perfectly preserved antique cars. In addition, they found several artefacts which were too big to be packed inside containers, including several statues, frescoes, tram cars, a Victorian steam locomotive, a World-War-II U-boat and, joy of all joys, the fully restored Vasa warship.
The final touch were several armoured vaults, chockfull of gold bars, enough to build a whole building out of solid gold. The total sum of all the gold bullion on the entire planet! Not surprisingly, there were no banknotes or any other form of currency to be found, as money had been rendered worthless after the Apocalypse. All the lost treasures of the world had survived all these centuries, safely sealed away inside this crypt.
Derek had been smart enough to bring Sam's mobile phone from the airship. Using its camera, the group couldn't resist taking a few memento photographs. With the humans and rabbits posing together in groups with all the different pieces of art they found, they snapped picture after picture like enthusiastic tourists; Sam and Derek holding the Mona Lisa between them, Violet and Bluebell, the former trying on the Crown Jewels and the latter the coronation Crown of King Louis XV, Hazel and Fiver posing before the Bruges Madonna, and Hotdog sitting cross-legged on a pile of stacked gold bars, like King Midas.
After several hours of sightseeing and fooling around, the expeditionaries finally decided to cut the tour short. They had found the first Crypt all right, but they still had a good number of problems ahead of them. First and foremost, they were not to only ones who were expected to arrive here. Crowley and Woundwort could not be very far behind and were bound to show up sooner or later. And unless they could come up with a course of action, all their efforts to find the Crypt would be wasted.
"What can we do?" asked Derek, "We can't exactly move all this lot out and take it with us!"
All this time, it had never occurred to anyone, what they would do with the goods if and when they found the Crypt. It was obvious they could never manage to move the contents of the Crypt to a safe location using only their small airship. They could try saving a small fraction of it, maybe some of the smaller objects, but how could they even choose, when every single artefact in this room was of equal historical and cultural importance as the one next to it?
"Then we hold our ground here and defend what's rightfully ours!" said Bigwig, who was determined not to let their prize fall into enemy hands. The siege on Watership Down was the last insult to his honour as a warrior and Owsla officer anyone was going to have at his expense. He looked around the Crypt; there was only one way in and there were many hiding places in here to spring an ambush, "This place is defendable enough. Let that riff-raff just try and set foot in here and we'll pick them off, one by one!"
"Not when my daughter is still being held hostage by them you're not!" said Alan sharply. Now that the Crypt had been found, his one and only concern was Lucy. Once Crowley's men realized someone else had beaten them to their prize, there would be trouble. At least, now, they had one good bargaining chip that just might secure her release. "You're not putting her life in more danger than it already is by trying to hold this Crypt!"
"You're not seriously going to just hand over all of this to those thugs for Lucy, are you?" asked Hotdog incredulously. Alan couldn't believe his friend.
"By God, I will!" he said reproachfully, "No treasure in the world is worth letting my daughter end up impaled on a stake like a side of beef on a meat hook, period!" Hotdog seemed to want to protest, but the reminder of what had happened to the Watershippers' does and children forced him to hold his tongue. Alan was right; they couldn't risk any harm coming to Lucy in retaliation. But, some of the others had different ideas.
"They're not going to release Lucy, even if you handed this place over to them on a silver platter!" said Bigwig, "They're just going to take what they want and then kill her anyway! We can't give in!"
"So we just leave her to her fate?!" snapped Fiver crossly, "You'd sacrifice one of our own, and a child nonetheless, just to gain an advantage over the enemy?"
"I don't like it any better than you do, Fiver, but this is war and we have to think like soldiers," said Bigwig, defending his opinion, "Sometimes a soldier has to make difficult decisions. If they capture this place, it's another victory for the enemy and yet another defeat for us! This can't be allowed to happen!"
"Bigwig! How can you say such a thing?" snapped Violet crossly, "So you're just going to let them kill her?"
"It's for the greater good!" put in Hawkbit, but regretted it as soon as it came out of his mouth, noticing the reproachful glares his friends were giving him. "We can't let the enemy find a weakness in us that they can exploit! We must hold our ground at all costs!"
"But we can't hold this place forever!" exclaimed Sam, realizing the futility of it all, "Even if we had enough firepower to fight them off, they would eventually overcome us by starving us!"
"It's not that I share Hawkbit's sentiments," said Campion, "but I'm afraid he had a point. Crowley might be willing to bargain if he wants this place so badly, but, you can bet your life, Woundwort will not. I know him too well; he will use her to seize control of this place and then kill us all, Lucy included. He'll never keep his end of the bargain. It would be a fool's folly to try and strike a deal with him!"
"Crowley and his thugs will pillage and destroy everything here! The world's entire cultural heritage – our cultural heritage – will be lost!" said Derek, in spite of himself, "If we just stand aside and let them, we will not only be admitting bitter defeat, but it will also be making us accessories to a major war crime!"
"I don't intend to let them," said Alan, who, listening to Campion's words, had suddenly come up with an idea to rescue his daughter, while at the same time, prevent all this treasure from falling into enemy hands and possibly destroyed. Thanks to the explosives planted around the entrance to deter any looters, and with some cunning strategy, he could make any attempt of Woundwort to double-cross them backfire in his ugly face, "I intend to give our friend Mr. Crowley a real taste of defeat soon enough!"
Author's note: Another chapter up! Originally, there was more exploring around the Crypt and more national treasures mentioned, but, ultimately, I decided to cut it short for pacing reasons. Coming up next, another encounter with the enemy! Enjoy and please review!