Tunnel Rat-Chapter 387: Mother and Daughters Reunion

"How's their boiler holding up?"

Conversation stopped as the sound of a huge explosion came from the hole in the cavern, echoing in the chamber and sending the bats off to look for a quieter place to sleep.

"Not so good, I'm thinking."

Beers were raised in the air, a toast to the other team. They were still drinking an hour later when Sledgemonky, Pillbug, Two-Screws, and Team Two came walking into the cavern. Sledgemonkey poured himself a beer and then looked at the broken machines.

He turned to Two-Screws, "My, but this race is exciting. Brave engineers, piloting their speedy earth-drilling mechanical diggers through tunnel after tunnel, using their expertise to beat a group of ratkin miners using picks and shovels. Is this your idea of giving them a sporting chance? Because by my estimates using Senior Engineer Milos's little gadgets, he's over a third of the way here and getting close to the halfway point."

"What? How?!"

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"How would I know? High explosives? Mechanical Moles? He's known for being a little unorthodox in his methods."

Two-Screws added, "Crazy, but highly effective. Lot's easier to forgive a little damage when you get results."

The Chief glared at Two-Screws. "Don't encourage this bunch. They'll do the damage and then forget the results part. But the main point I want to make is that you still have a chance. He hasn't moved for two days. Maybe hitting the same hard layer of Gneiss as you all did? But it won't bet on him sitting still for long. You need to get your asses in gear. Leave the drinking to the two impartial judges of the event."

One engineer pointed to his machine, "If you could impartially suggest a way to install a new, custom-made power train, we'll get moving again."

"Or a drill head!"

"Boilers. We need to work on boilers."

Pillbug looked at the three teams, "Maybe my perspective is warped from hanging out with Scavengers lately, but I don't see three busted machines. Just a whole shit-load of spare parts. You wouldn't find those girls sitting around on a beach full of wrecked ships for long."

The engineering teams looked at each other, stroking their beards and considering Pillbug's idea.

"I suppose we could consider it a three-way tie..."

"It's the honor of the whole Guild that's at stake."

Almost as one, they finished their beers, pulled out their tools, and got to work, dismantling their broken machines and designing the replacement. They had a race to win.

Not terribly too many miles away, Milo was busy with the problem of the large, foul-smelling pile of Scarab bits. They had worked hard to leave no trace of the corrupted creatures unscoured. The pile of broken eggs was covered in coal, and a fire ignited that would burn for two days. The snake's nest was dealt with similarly, but Milo hoped to recover any metal from it later for resmelting. The mix of odd alloys in some of the pieces intrigued him. The snake itself was now hundreds of ingots stacked up to make a playhouse. The scarab pile was first sprayed with waste fuel and then a layer of burning coal. When this finished burning down hours later, Milo and Brutus carefully shoveled it into carts that the girls pushed to the furnace and dumped. When they were finally done loading the furnace with the metal scraps and fuel, Milo got the furnace going, and they all took a break.

Brutus insisted on a good scrubbing for all of them until their fur shone. He double-checked Buttercup's bandages and declared her completely healed. Milo's foot was also declared ready to travel on. Happy, clean, and tired, they sat around a campfire by the wagon, listening to the snores of the moles. Milo and Brutus took turns reading the book on training scarabs, and the girls worked on their letters. Georgie was happy to patrol the camp and stand watch.

The next morning, Brutus was making puffcakes when Georgie let out a long howl and several barks before racing out of the smeltery area. After a moment, the girls did the same, yelling "Mama!"

Brutus handed Milo the frying pan, "You're on puffcake duty, I'll go escort our guests to our humble abode. He raced after his daughters, as eager to see his wife as they were.

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Milo grabbed a second frying pan and started making another batch of batter. Ten minutes later, he was filling plates with tall stacks as the group from the Hollow arrived. Buttercup and Rosie brought Gendifur over to the camp to show her their letters and the stack of drawings they'd made on the trip. Milo got everyone a big plate of puffcakes and syrup. The girls started eating, and Gendifur came to talk to him. "You managed to teach the girls how to read?"

Before he could answer, he was enveloped in strong arms and hugged. She sat him back down, only mildly bruised. He saw she was crying and trying to hide it, "We've been so worried about what their limits were and how far they could recover. If they can read, that opens up so many options to teach them other things and help them progress. Thank you for that." She went back to her girls, sitting between them and listening to their stories about fighting scarabs and snakes and being heroes. She glanced at Brutus, and he nodded slowly and said, "We've got a lot to talk about. They have some big choices coming up, all good ones."

Master Clawhammer was walking around and around the huge room, investigating smelters, blast furnaces, and clay kilns. Of the most interest was the huge blast furnace for making Dark Steel. Milo took him a plate of breakfast, knowing the craft master had a reputation for missing meals when buried in a project. He chewed quickly, talking.

"This is amazing! I know the theory, and I've seen things like this in another Hollow, but nothing this size. And with ample fuel and ore, we could turn out hundreds of ingots a day. Even more, if we had continuous shifts working. It's a continuous process of adding ore, fuel, and limestone, then pouring off the slag from the middle and the molten metal from the bottom. Not sure what the hell we'd do with all that metal, that's an enormous vein! But it would sure be fun to fire this sucker up and get to work."

Milo was happy to see his enthusiasm, "Trust me, the Deeprock Outpost will take anything we produce here. And up in Shadowport, they were very happy whenever I found old cables and parts made of deep iron. They bought every bit of it I found. And I'm sure the Caravan Master will enjoy finding new markets in other Hollows."

Clawhammer looked around at the cavern, obviously of dwarven origin, gesturing at it, "And what are the dwarves going to say about us claiming this area? If it were another Hollow, we'd go by 'Finders, Keepers' but these are different folks with a different outlook."

Having dealt with the dwarven guilds in Shadowport, Milo agreed. "Normal dwarves, I'd be worried about. But not the Engineers. We'll work out the details, but they'll be happy to see the Hollow working these ancient halls and supplying them with metal. They have a lot to offer in return. And the Scavengers will agree with the old law. They love finding treasure, and I'm certain that none of them want to mine or work with steel."

"I like the sound of that. Now, tell me what you have going on over there?" He pointed to the large clay furnace that was smelting the scarab scraps.

"Cleaning up an infestation of corrupted creatures and reclaiming the metal. It was a hard fight, and some of them were deadly and partially constructed of incredibly hard metal. Let's see what we have."

With extra hands, the work of lining up the molds and filling them with molten alloy went quickly. The metal was white hot and shimmering. Clawhammer urged his apprentices to take extra care, "Burning off a foot or hand isn't pretty and takes a long time to regrow." Milo's foot itched just thinking about his own mishap. Besides the ingot molds, Milo had found dozens of molds for making long rods of different sizes, some as small as a quarter inch. The long rods were the start of making wire, and he'd seen wire-drawing machinery in one corner. It was a far cry from the mechanically powered machines at the outpost. These fed a thin rod into a slightly smaller hole, and the wire was drawn through by turning a crank. Repeating this with smaller and smaller holes would produce smaller gauges of wire. The Hollow already used a procedure like this to make copper wire, much of which was used by Professor Arlothe in his experiments.

Clawhammer watched with interest as the molten alloy was poured into the ingot molds and then the wire and rod molds. He glanced at his gaggle of apprentices. "Idle hands lead to disaster. I'm going to keep these whelps busy mining coal and iron and hauling it here. But a little wire drawing won't be bad either. Slow process, but Arlothe would love to have some new materials to experiment with."

Milo agreed; he wouldn't mind having a few spools himself. He had plenty of room in his arcane workbench, and you never knew what sort of project he'd be working on in the future. "Sounds good to me." He and Clawhammer discussed the finer points of blast furnace operation and directed the apprentices and miners to begin gathering ore, limestone, and fuel. Clawhammer wanted the furnace cleaned and inspected before they started, and every vent or tube checked over twice. The cavern was soon a beehive of activity with everyone working.

Milo took the opportunity to take a walk and investigate a small mystery. Georgie accompanied him as they traveled up to the T intersection and began exploring down that way. Brutus had said it continued for at least a mile, and he hadn't reached the end when he turned back. The tunnel was well made, a permanent thoroughfare, and not a mine tunnel. The partially rusted rails down the middle meant refined metal was heading somewhere, and somewhere was in the direction he needed to go. The next mile was through softer rock, with small rockslides and piles of stones falling from the ceiling. Eventually, the way was blocked by a collapsed archway. Investigating and climbing around, he found a small gap in the stones that let him see through to the other side, where the tunnel continued to a T intersection where a large statue stood. It was too far to see the wording on the base.

"What do you think, Georgie? Time to see what that Red Eye can do?"

His watch lizard thought over the question, gave a 'Woof' of encouragement, and backed off a hundred feet to watch.