Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2017 09:26:19 -0400 From: George Gauthier Subject: Elf-Boy's Friends 53 Elf-Boy's Friends 53 The Southern Ocean by George Gauthier [The further adventures of characters from the novel 'Elf-Boy and Friends'] Chapter 1. Discovery Island The flotilla carrying the Commonwealth's latest Corps of Discovery hove to just off the lee shore of a sizable island in the Southern Ocean. This discovery looked to be the first important find of the voyage. The flotilla consisted of five ships: three frigates, a sloop, and an aerocraft carrier with a reduced complement of pilots, autogyros, flying wings, and incendiary bombs. The space thus freed up was devoted to extra supplies. The commander of the flotilla, Commodore Jan Dekker flew his broad pennant aboard the frigate Cormorant. The natural philosophers aboard the frigate Arctic Tern were practically salivating at the opportunity for scientific discovery in their respective disciplines of geology, botany, and zoology. Not for the first time the geologist Johan Klutz envied those with the magical ability to delve, that is to perceive what lay below the surface. It happened that both the captain of the frigate, Lieutenant Sir Nathan Lathrop and the earth wizard Jemsen shared that gift. On solid ground a delver perceived what lay beneath the surface of the earth: the strata and types of rocks and minerals, aquifers, caves and caverns, and artificial structures like cellars, mines, tunnels, aqueducts, and even water mains. He could also tell what lay on the other side of a wall. The navy called it sounding, but it was the same ability only directed at determining the depth of water under the keel and hazards like hidden reefs, rocks, or shoals. A sounder could also determine the nature of the bottom, whether sandy, rocky, muddy, broken shells, whatever. Both delvers and sounders could perceive in pitch dark, an ability with obvious military value. Indeed Nathan Lathrop's gift had once thwarted an attempt by trolls to set fire to the Commonwealth's invasion fleet while anchored in harbor. Still, even if he could not delve himself, Klutz had a trained eye for terrain, landforms, and geological structures. A geologist's hammer and a spade would unearth clues to what lay below. He was aching to set foot on the island and see just what it was made of. It was not a continental fragment, that was clear from the lagoon in the center. Yet it was not a low lying coral atoll either which were rings of islands and islets which rarely rose higher than a yard or two above sea level. From what he could see of the leeward coast the island looked to have an average uplift of more than twenty feet with a prominent sand dune over twice as high. First though they had to find safe passage through both the fringing reef which encircled the island and then into the lagoon itself, much of which, as they had already determined from an aerial survey, was dry at low tide. Around the lagoon lay the larger islands of the archipelago, if that indeed it could be called that. About twenty-one miles long by eight wide, the archipelago consisted of forty-three islands, one much larger than all the others combined. Later named Grand Isle, it enclosed the lagoon on the South, East, and most of the West. In places it was three miles wide from ocean to lagoon. Later surveys put the total land area at sixty square miles. Strong tidal currents had scoured three channels up to eight fathoms deep through the western side of the ring of islands into the lagoon. The flotilla anchored in the Southwest corner, in the crook of Grand Isle, where the water was five fathoms deep, enough to keep their ships afloat at low tide. Later surveys showed two small shallow passages at either end of the large northern island. Since the aerial survey had shown no signs of habitation, Dekker decided the islands were a no-man's land and could properly be claimed. For this purpose he made a ceremonial landing and planted the flag of the Commonwealth, declaiming the standard formula: "By right of discovery we take possession of this uninhabited and newly found land which we name Discovery Island. From this day forward, these islands and surrounding waters are and ever shall be the sovereign territory of the Commonwealth of the Long River. Long may the Commonwealth prosper." While the Navy surveyed the lagoon in small boats, naval infantry from the frigates and the carrier took the opportunity to stretch their legs and to march if only to retain their conditioning. They also practiced assault landings and fired their airguns at paper targets. Each frigate carried two dozen naval infantry, a mix of humans and elves, with another six dozen on the carrier, all of them frost giants. Dwarves avoided naval service and the sea in general. Their bodies were much too dense to float, given their thick bones and powerful musculature. More than any other race dwarves were denizens of the land. The Arctic Tern's longboat carried a party of explorers to a beach on Grand Isle. Aboard were the three natural philosophers, the twins, the journalist, the shapeshifter, and the druid. There was no military style chain of command among what was essentially a party of civilians, so everyone agreed to take their cue from the druid who was both the most magically gifted and the most knowledgeable about the natural world in all its aspects: geology, botany, zoology, meteorology, etc. As a weather and water wizard, Liam's gifts were ill-suited to exploring terra firma so he stayed aboard the Arctic Tern with Nathan. Aodh was in his forest ranger uniform, the twins in the scouting silks, Drew in his expeditionary outfit, while the Druid wore a simple tunic. All wore sandals against the rough ground. All of the landing party except the druid went armed with airguns, just in case. Dahl bore just his quarterstaff plus a brace of throwing knives. They had little of worry about. The archipelago was too small to support large terrestrial predators. In any event, their powerful magical gifts were up to any challenge. Klutz was a strong fetcher even if not nearly so powerful as Drew Altair. Both bore a pair of steel spheres and an edged disk. Aodh's sonic weapon worked in either of his bodily forms and when he morphed he turned into a black panther with tripled strength and poison claws, besides which, as a wir, he was virtually invulnerable in that he could recover from almost any injury. The twins could shield the whole party. As an earth wizard Jemsen could throw up a berm to protect them from attack or to form a trench while Karel could interpose a shield of hardened air. As he told the others: "As a matter of routine, in iffy situations I create a small air blade which hovers out of the way above and off to one side but handy if I need it. You see, I can throw up a shield instantly, but that also blocks the bullets from our own airguns. An air blade takes almost a minute to hone to a monomolecular edge so I like to prepare it ahead of time and keep it at the ready. So stick close if we have to fight an enemy rather than just protect ourselves." Indeed, the air blade was a fearsome weapon which could cut through just about anything or anyone, with grisly results. Klutz went to work with spade and hammer, examining the sandy beach and the rocks and soils inland. After conferring with Jemsen he announced in full professorial mode: "Now I see things as they really are. The first clue was a coastline undercut by limestone cliffs above a perched beach. The next clue was that the ground is riddled with pot holes and pits. The final clue was those irregular coral formations sticking up here and there which are called mushrooms for their shape. Friends, what we have here is a raised coral atoll." A raised or uplifted coral atoll was an atoll made of reef limestone which had been lifted by tectonic forces high enough above sea level which protected it from scouring by storms. The uplift of more than twenty feet had formed a rim line of low cliffs with deep notches, and jagged pinnacles in the shallow central lagoon. Sand dunes dominated the windward south coast. Its elevation allowed the island to develop real soils, the foundation for a full-fledged flora and fauna while its isolation meant that many of its diverse species were endemic to the atoll. In other words, it was a geological, botanical, and zoological treasure house. "So those are my first thoughts on the geology. Scolari, what are your first impressions about the botany?" "Well, we haven't gone but two or three miles, so this is very preliminary. I could spend weeks in this place and barely scratch the surface." The twins shared an indulgent smile at Scolari's enthusiasm. They themselves were life-long students of the natural world. Witness their popular series of field guides which included three titles so far on botanical subjects: tree identification, edible wild plants, and the identification and care of ferns, cycads, and bromeliads, decorative plants near and dear to their hearts. "Much of the terrain is covered by jungle and meadow and dissected by creeks flowing through mangrove forests as well as coral reefs and sand flats." "As you know mangroves are integral to the coastal ecosystem. They grow in coastal saline or brackish water and are admirably adapted to life in harsh coastal conditions with a complex filtration system to deal with salt. Their roots can cope with immersion in salt water and wave action and the low oxygen conditions of waterlogged mud." "The higher areas are thickly covered with a shrub which varies considerably in form. Some specimens are densely branched and form low and spreading bushes or short trees with furcated main stems which lie nearly prone. Others develop into a single erect trunk. Leaves range from small, fleshy and succulent to large, flat and not fleshy at all, but it is all the same species." "At lower elevations there is a mixture of trees, shrubs, herbs, and grasses. Just from what I have seen I would guess that might be a couple of hundred species of flowering plants, shrubs, and ferns on the atoll." "That's it for plants, so far. Your turn, Evander; what can you tell us about the fauna?" The zoologist Evander Blok was a specialist in herpetology, the branch of zoology concerned with reptiles and amphibians. He was thrilled to find that the atoll was the home of giant tortoises. "Reptiles are the dominant terrestrial fauna. Just the tortoises alone must number in the tens of thousands. The adults are big. Their carapaces measure over a yard long, and I estimate their maximum weight at 750 pounds. Their preferred habitat is a mixture of that brush Scolari mentioned mixed in with grasses and herbs which I am going to call 'tortoise turf'". "The numbers of tortoises are good evidence that these islands have never been populated or even visited regularly. A resource like that, so much meat on the hoof, so to speak, would never have gone unexploited." "Now let's not have any horseplay with these animals. They are not steeds for high spirited lads to ride like racing ponies. And yes that means you twins especially." "We would never think of doing such a thing!" Jemsen and Karel assured him with an air of injured innocence. "Uh, huh." Blok concluded by saying: "The island is also a breeding ground for the hawksbill sea turtle plus many species of seabirds, including terns, boobies, frigate birds, flamingos, herons. And we haven't even begun to assess the aquatic fauna." "On that score I have made some interesting observations with my psychic senses," the druid told them. "In the surrounding waters I found a half dozen species of cetaceans including dolphins, orcas, humpback whales, plus dugongs which aren't whales at all. Oh, and if you go swimming in the ocean, watch out for barracuda, manta rays, and sharks." "I hope there aren't any mosasaurs in these seas." Karel told Dahl. "There aren't. They could not compete with the local orcas. You see, as solitary predators single mosasaurs would be no match for a pod of orcas who would not tolerate the competition. Fortunately since they are mammals orcas respond more readily to druidical magic than reptiles so I can keep them at bay." "I hope these islands are never settled." Scolari opined. "They would be just the tiniest addition to the arable lands of the Commonwealth. Such as shame it would be to destroy a natural laboratory like this for the sake of a few farms." "I am confident that won't happen." Dahl told them. "The druidic order will likely petition the government to put these islands in our care as a nature reserve open to all investigators." "What a splendid idea!" Chapter 2. Land Crabs and Other Creatures Their camp was pretty basic; they had to make do with lean-tos rather than tents. Made of tightly woven fabric that would shed rain, the lean-tos had a pitched roof and three walls, with the open side facing away from the prevailing wind. The boys retired early, pairing off with their lovers: Nathan with Liam, Drew with Aodh, and the twins with Dahl in a threesome. The three older males sat around the campfire and talked shop, politely ignoring the barely suppressed sounds of sexual congress coming from the lean-tos. To be fair, the lovers tried to be less vocal than usual, but there was no doubt about what was going on behind the fabric walls. Suddenly the night was pierced by a shriek and then a curse as three land crabs got ejected telekinetically from the lean-to shared by Drew and Aodh. Naked, tumescent, and trembling with anger, the diminutive red-haired stalked into view, shaking his fist at the other lands crabs infesting the camp. He seized one with telekinesis and tore it apart, then flung away every one he could see away in an orgy of disgust and anger. "Someone ought to tell these infernal creatures that three is a crowd. We just got things going nicely, me and Aodh, when these things clambered onto our bed roll. One of them got between my legs and pinched my butt. I was just lucky that was all they pinched, if you take my meaning." "It's just outrageous having all these infernal land crabs crawling about. The damn things are everywhere. And they are not just underfoot. They will steal anything edible. At supper I set my tin plate down for an instant only to have a damn crab snatch a portion." Evander Blok nodded. "That is why they are called the robber crab or the palm thief. Their normal diet is fruits, nuts, seeds, and the pith of fallen trees though they will consume carrion or even each other opportunistically. Don't worry though. They don't hunt game so you won't have to worry about land crabs swarming all over you hungry for your flesh." "What a dreadful image to put into a guy's head! I'll be afraid now to go to sleep tonight lest I be haunted by horrid dreams. Anyway, you'd think the things would give us a wide berth, big as we are compared to them. Instead they seem fearless." "It's little wonder that they are fearless, Drew," Blok told him. "While juveniles use gastropod shells for protection the adults have no natural enemies, big as they are, generally a yard across and weighing as much as eight or nine pounds. They are the largest terrestrial arthropod reported in the zoological literature." "The adults are completely adapted to life on land. They breathe with lungs of a sort and will actually drown if immersed in water for too long." "Then it looks like the only way to get away from the pestiferous things is to shinny up a palm tree," Drew suggested. "Sorry, but that wouldn't help, Drew," Blok replied. "Land crabs can climb trees too. The little ones do it to escape predation and the bigger ones to escape cannibalism." "Can't you do something Dahl? You're a druid. Command them to leave us in peace." The druid shrugged. "Crabs don't have much in the way of brains. Sure I could order them to move away, but they would soon forget why they left and resume their wanderings which would bring them back here before too long." "I've got this." Karel asserted confidently. "I'll surround our camp with a persistent wall of hardened air. Sir Willet applied his insights as to why globes of light can persist for hours to my own gift of air wizardry. So now I can make my walls of hardened air last for several hours even when I am not thinking about them or when I fall asleep. I will have to wake up during the wee hours to renew it." "Just make sure the top doesn't have a sharp edge." Jemsen warned him. "We don't want your wall slicing folks in half like it did those reptilian raptors a while back." "Very funny. I'll make it eight feet tall. As for the crabs caught inside the wall when it goes up, just police them up and toss them over to the other side." "Better leave that job to me," Drew said. "They cannot pinch my fingers if I lift them telekinetically. I'll just chuck them over. Problem solved." "Not quite." Evander Blok told them. "Land crabs live in burrows. Some might tunnel right under your wall." "Damnation!" "Don't sweat it, Karel." Jemsen told his twin. "I've got this. Once you put up your wall, I will form the sand and soil below to the consistency of concrete down say five feet. Will that be deep enough, Tutor Blok?" "It should be." "Just listen to ourselves," Aodh chuckled, "We have come up with a solution to a problem that requires the combined magic of an air wizard, an earth wizard, and fetcher all for a job well within the capabilities of non-magical carpentry." "What do you mean?" "I predict that those who eventually stay here to study the island will simply build their dwellings on posts protected by concave metal shields to keep the crabs from climbing up." "What if the crabs climb the stairs?" Karel wondered. "So? Raise the stairs like a drawbridge." The others shook their heads ruefully. "That's what we get for being so magically talented. Everything looks like a problem for magic to solve instead of just applying common sense." "Crabs aren't all bad," Blok told them. "Every environment needs scavengers to recycle nutrients to new generations of creatures. Besides crabs are good eating. You should try boiled crabmeat, Drew. The white meat comes from the claws and legs, the brown meat from the body. It's delicious drizzled with drawn butter." "No thanks. Crabs and lobsters just look too much like bugs. I won't eat the flesh of anything with more than four limbs." "Oh?" Karel teased, "What about those fried locusts served by the Medkari? You downed them readily enough." "Only after coaxing and just to be polite. I haven't had them since." The next morning the boys went for a swim in the lagoon. There was little danger there from sharks or barracuda, and anyway marksmen watched from the rigging of their ships. What a bevy of youthful beauties they were, slender, clean-limbed, hard-bodied, glabrous, and bronzed evenly by the sun, all except the wir, of course. Anyone with an eye for a pretty boy would thanks his lucky stars to watch them as they swam and wrestled and joked and splashed, more in good clean fun than with any lascivious intent for all the display of pretty faces and pert rumps. It was purely a personal choice as to which of these young males was the loveliest. The shape shifter was the most exotic. It wasn't only that his skin was pale rather than tanned. His features and the way he moved hinted at the black panther he could transform into. Though quite short for an elf-boy, the druid was otherwise typical of the Sylvan Elves with his raven locks, killer cheekbones, and green eyes. Auburn-haired Drew was the impertinent scamp of the bunch and even more given to mischief than the twins, which was saying a lot. If anyone stood out from this group it was Jemsen and Karel, twins so identical in looks that only their closest friends could tell them apart when they weren't wearing color coded sarongs: green for Jemsen and blue for Karel. Taller than the others, with tanned bodies and close-cropped hair the color of corn silk, they were a pair of rambunctious palomino colts who virtually exuded good health and sex appeal. The waters of the lagoon were much warmer than their pool at home which was fed in part by a spring. This swim was less for exercise than for enjoyment and relaxation. They lay back in the weightless aqueous environment and floated as best they could though they really had to scull lazily, keeping their limbs moving since physiques like theirs, all muscle and bone and sinew, made their bodies slightly denser than water. Despite the handicap of negative buoyancy, the boys were all strong swimmers and very much enjoyed the water. They also liked to horse around and engage in the grab ass games of which young males were so inordinately fond. Professor Scolari later told Aodh: "It surprised me Aodh to see you plunge right in like everyone else. I thought cats didn't like the water." "Ha! There's a botanist for you," Evander Blok chortled. "Any zoologist could tell you that it is really just house cats who avoid the water. All right, lions too. The other big predatory species such as jaguars and tigers love the water. They play in it and even hunt in it. That's true of panthers too, isn't it Aodh?" "You got it sir!" Indeed, the very next day during his morning swim Aodh hitched a ride on a hawksbill sea turtle he found swimming on the surface. It was a big specimen which easily outweighed the boy. "What a magnificent creature!" Aodh exclaimed. "Now watch as I take it for a ride!" Aodh grabbed the forward edge of its shell. The turtle continued paddling along, little caring that the boy had latched on to him. His slight mass and the hydraulic resistance of his slender body meant nothing to the powerful sea creature. Aodh had a lot fun sluicing through the water effortlessly, letting his legs trail behind, all while going faster than he could swim himself. The blue of the sky, the green of the waters, and the white of the clouds and the sandy beach painted the scene with a vivid palette of colors, one he would never forget as long as he lived. Finally the turtle tired of the sport and dove for deeper water staying down for so long the boy had to let go and swim up to the surface for air. "I am so glad no one thought to hunt that sea turtle for the pot." Aodh later said. "Just as well they didn't." Blok told him. "The sea turtle feeds on sponges and jellyfish whose bodies contain poisons which do not bother the turtle at all but could sicken anyone who ate of its flesh and might even prove fatal." "And here I had always heard that turtle soup was a delicacy." "It is -- if it is made with fresh water turtles." "Oh." The next day the boys and the natural philosophers swam with the dugongs. To maintain their dignity the three older males wore silk drawers and wrapped diving belts around their waists from which depended the scabbards of diving knives, short handle rakes, collecting nets, etc. Dugongs were fully aquatic mammals which inhabited swamps, rivers, estuaries, marine wetlands, and coastal marine waters. Of medium size they were about ten feet long and weighed up to two thousand pounds. Lacking any dorsal fin their bodies were shaped liked cylinders tapered at both ends with a downturned snout at the eating end which gave it an endearingly homely countenance. The creatures were herbivorous, harmless, gentle, and slow moving. As Evandor Blok had told the boys: "The manatee and the dugong are both fully aquatic mammals but belong to the order of Sirenians rather than Cetaceans, that is the whales. You can tell the dugong from the manatee easily enough. The dugong is equipped with a tail fluke like that of the dolphin, whereas the fluke of the manatee is shaped like a paddle. Sirenians are often called sea cows because their diet consists mainly of seagrass though they occasionally eat fish, jellyfish, sea squirts, and crustaceans." Under the watchful eye of the philosophers, Aodh did not try to hitch a ride on a dugong -- not that he missed much of a thrill. Dugongs poked along often stopping to vacuum up their fodder. Chapter 3. The Submersible A few days later the expedition dropped anchor at quite a different lagoon. The enclosing atoll was low-lying all right with a maximum elevation of nine feet, but the ring of land was almost entirely continuous. Atolls were almost always a discontinuous string of islands, islets, reefs, and shoals. The rim of the as-yet-unnamed atoll stretched unbroken for 40 miles. The rim of dry land varied in width from a few hundred yards to one and one-half miles totaling ten square miles. The lagoon measured thirteen miles North to South and up to eleven East to West, for an area of forty-six square miles. The single passage opened to the North through a gap of less than four miles and even that was partially obstructed by three small islands. Soundings later showed depths in the lagoon ranging down to two hundred feet though mostly much less. Numerous coral heads present hazards to navigation, but otherwise it was an outstanding anchorage especially in comparison to the shallow reef on the ocean side of the atoll which was no anchorage at all. The atoll offered nothing new to the natural philosophers, just more of the same. For the Navy though it was quite a different story. Liam in particular could hardly contain his excitement at finally getting the chance to show off and field test his new toy, a submersible vehicle hitherto kept secret from nearly everyone else. It was transported aboard the aircraft carrier in a cradle down in a launch bay a little above the water line. With the Arctic Tern safely at anchor, Nathan Lathrop left his ship in the hands of his executive officer and accompanied Liam and the others via a longboat over to the carrier. Reaching the submersible's launch bay they saluted the superior officers who were standing by for the demonstration, Commodore Dekker and Dahlgren, his flag captain plus the captain of The Sovereign of the Seas Commander Wright King. Dekker did not wait for introductions, he did the honors himself. "Here we have the famous twins Jemsen and Karel." he said holding out his hand and greeting them warmly. "In the flesh!" Karel confirmed. "And this auburn-haired twink is the award winning journalist Sir Drew Altair while the cute kitten next to him can be none other than the shape shifter Sir Aodh of Llangollen." "Correct, sir." Nathan told him. With the introductions done, Liam addressed the group, gesturing grandly and declaiming: "Behold the CNSS Albacore." Outwardly the submersible was shaped like a fat spindle, but inside the hydrodynamic outer hull was the crew space, a steel sphere entered through a hatch at the top. The volume inside the outer hull but outside the pressure hull was filled with buoyancy tanks, cargo space, and the control rods for directing the rudder and diving planes. Small portholes all around allowed for visual navigation in shallow water. "The submersible is propelled by telekinesis, so in that respect it's a lot like an autogyro only for flying underwater," Liam enthused. "No rotors of course, but it can do something an autogyro cannot -- hover in place -- once it achieves neutral buoyancy either by letting sea water into ballast tanks or by expelling by forcing it out of the tanks with a piston." "The helmsman or operator virtually flies the vehicle to the desired depth using control surfaces called lift planes. Now since the control surfaces push against water which is so much denser than air, it takes much more effort to steer than an autogyro. A control stick suffices for an aerocraft but to turn the diving planes of a submersible you need the mechanical advantage of a wheel. That was a big surprise for me when I started training on the prototype submersible and later on the Albacore." "Near the surface you guide it visually by looking through the ports. At depth or at night, you rely on magical sounding, so the submersible takes two magical gifts to operate." "How do you keep the air fresh?" Karel asked. Liam nodded. "That is a perfectly understandable question from an air wizard. The answer is that fans constantly draw air through scrubbers where chemicals combine with the dead air and return only oxygen and nitrogen. That give us a dive time of about three hours. Then you have to surface, flush the cabin with fresh air, and recharge the scrubbers with fresh chemicals. The best part is that you can recycle the compounds which the scrubbers use. Exposure to the heat of a solar stove breaks the chemical bond formed with dead air and makes the batch ready for another cycle." "All right, what powers the fans?" "The forward motion of the submersible spins a small turbine mounted outside the hull. Through mechanical linkages it turns the fans." "Ingenious" "So who thought this up," Drew asked. "It wouldn't be our friend Eike again, would it?" "Actually it would be, or rather him and his collaborators. A lot of other clever people worked on submersibles, like the guys who figured out the air scrubbers or the pistons." "Now the Albacore is a research submersible, rather different from the submersible warships which will be going into service shortly. Although more than twice the size of the Albacore, given their short radius of action the warships will not operate independently. Instead they are transported in the bay of a tender till they are launched for a mission." "While submerged just under the surface they draw fresh air in through a long pipe called a snorkel. Once they dive deep the warship version uses the same alchemical scrubbers as the Albacore." "This warship version, how is it armed?" Commodore Dekker prompted Liam, though he himself already knew the answer. "Sir, the submersible warship carries eight torpedoes in niches in the outer hull which can be launched either from the surface or while lurking concealed just below. The captain acquires targets and observes his surroundings through a fully rotating periscope." "These would be the incendiary torpedoes that have been in service for a few years now, deployed on frigates in the anti-shipping role, right?" "Actually the submersibles carry a pair of Long Lance torpedoes which rely on telekinetic energy alone to hole a target vessel. Their warheads are giant four flanged spear heads made of tough steel whose pyramidal shape allows them be extracted more easily than a blunt ram and slammed back again into the target." "Actually" Nathan noted, "the Arctic Tern and her sisters also carry a few Long Lance torpedoes. An incendiary torpedo destroys the target. The Long Lance can help you capture it." Liam nodded then continued. "Also, for surface attack, a gun crew can raise a magnetic cannon from beneath a hatch in the outer hull to bombard an adversary with incendiary shells or to rake her deck with canister shot. Shell and shot are a lot cheaper than torpedoes and the submersible can carry a lot more of them." "Another mission for a submersible would be to surreptitiously scout harbor entrances and defenses like barrier chains or to attack the anchorages of swarms of fast attack boats." "What is the role of the submersible in the Navy's grand strategy?" Scolari asked. "Surely it is not a commerce raider." Dekker shook his head. "No, even though that is the obvious role for such a vessel. Surface raiders have the space to take the crews of their prizes captive and later parole them in a neutral port. That is impossible for a submersible which can only sink the vessels leaving their crews adrift in their lifeboats. Anyway, commerce raiding is the strategy of the lesser naval power, not the preeminent power which the Commonwealth is. No, our submersibles would target enemy combatants." "What enemy?" Aodh asked. "Where would the threat come from?" "That is just it; we do not know," Dekker told him, "but that was just what we all thought before the trolls invaded Valentia. It's the very reason for this expedition, to find out what is out there in the Southern Ocean. If we do encounter a powerful navy, we will try diplomacy and stress that our expedition is for the peaceful purposes of geographic exploration and scientific investigation." "What if they won't buy it?" "Our flotilla must avoid an engagement at all costs, never no mind our pride. The hostiles might be looking for a fight, but we are not. Our orders are to refuse battle no matter how craven that might make us look and to slip away. Our weather wizards can always conjure up a convenient fog bank for us to disappear into. Our fixed-wing long range scouts would then follow them back to their naval base. We would then surreptitiously insert a reconnaissance team to get the lay of the land." "OK, but the Albacore is just a research submersible, so it is unarmed. So what happens if a Kraken wraps its tentacles around the Albacore and tries to drag her down into the depths?" Aodh asked, only half facetiously. "Aodh, you have a vivid imagination. As far as anyone knows, the Kraken is a monster out of legend, a giant octopus or maybe a colossal squid as big as a naval vessel. I mean what could it feed on? Whales?" "Just to put your mind at rest Aodh, the Albacore does have a defense system designed to discourage overcurious sea creatures. We wouldn't want an amorous sperm whale trying to mate with the Albacore, now would we? See there, what look like a pair of lightning rods on prow and stern? They poke out through insulating sleeves which allow a lightning caster like Tutor Blok to throw a levin bolt through the hull to scare off your Kraken or to electrocute it if need be. That is just temporary until replaced by a system which mechanically generates a charge of static electricity." "How deep can she go?" Dahlgren asked. Unlike Dekker he did not already know the answer. "She can dive safely to four hundred feet, with a margin for emergencies. The pressure hull was welded not riveted, so it has no weak spots except the hatch. I am told that a weld is actually stronger than the metal it joins. You must know something about that, Tutor Blok." "I do indeed, Liam. A brother and a cousin are welders since our gift runs in the family. Arc welding, to give the technique its full name, is fairly new. Its first use was in building steel bridges, but now it is being used to erect steel-framed buildings. It employs my own gift of throwing lightning bolts only stepped down to a much smaller current, one which a welder can sustain continually for hours." "Arc welding is just another example of how the Commonwealth's industrial economy potentiates magical gifts. After all, aside from its military application, throwing levin bolts has no real use in civilian life, except rarely for self-defense. Now that might have been a welcome lifesaver in humanity's difficult early days on our planet of refuge but no longer. Arc welding provides a well paid livelihood for those with the gift and will result in stronger ships, bridges, and buildings. It's a win-win situation." "Much the same could be said of my own gift of sounding," Nathan ventured. "At first it was of use mainly to prospectors and miners. It was only when our big cities developed that delving came into its own as a profession. Underlying the bricks or paving stones of our city streets is a network of water mains, sewers, storm drains, waste water drains, and even chilled water mains. City ordinances prohibit excavation work until a delver inspects the area and approves the dig." "Sailors now have three uses for the gift. First, a navigator can sound the depths to detect hazards to navigation like rocks and reefs. Second, for an officer of the watch delving serves as a kind off night vision to see in utter darkness. Third, we can now use sounding aboard submersibles to navigate the depths and to direct torpedoes at enemy vessels." "Well said," Dekker concurred. The trio of natural philosophers went up in an autogyro for an aerial survey of the lagoon and only then went aboard the Albacore. The submersible could not accommodate all of them at once, only two passengers at a time plus the standard two man crew, in this case Liam who propelled the submersible and Nathan whose gift of delving would guide in deep waters where little light penetrated though that was not a problem in the shallow waters of the lagoon. The zoologist Evander Blok was in seventh heaven as the Albacore navigated the waters of the lagoon. Here was a way to swim with the fishes and not even get wet. Being inside the submersible let him make sketches of what he found including notes about the colors for the water color paintings that would later document his finds. "Wait till we try her out in the open sea." Liam assured him. "You will really get an eyeful then." "I can hardly wait." Ironically it was geology not zoology which benefited most from their first series of operational dives in the open ocean. The flotilla had sailed southward heading toward a pillar of smoke rising above the horizon, likely from an erupting volcano. Long before the volcano came into view chunks of rock floating on the surface repeatedly clunked into their hulls. Sailors hauled some of it aboard the Arctic Tern for Klutz to examine. "Friends, what you see here floating on the surface is pumice which is a lightweight sort of volcanic glass. It is formed when super-heated rock hitherto under pressure is violently ejected from a volcano followed by rapid cooling and depressurization. Gases dissolved in the rock expand creating a frothy bubbly texture. Pumice is actually lighter than water and will float for a long time. It is said that large volumes of pumice can form rafts many miles long which persist for months and can be a real hazard to shipping, though I have never seen that myself." "Don't sound so negative, Johan. There is a lot to be said in favor of pumice," Professor Scolari noted. "As a botanist with a Green Thumb, I can tell you that pumice is often mixed with potting soil to provide better aeration which promotes growth." "Isn't pumice also used in construction?" Jemsen asked. Klutz nodded. "So speaks the earth wizard. Yes, as an additive to cement pumice combines with lime and aggregate, a matrix of sand, gravel, and stones, to form a concrete which sets under water. That makes it perfect for building sea walls, jetties, and docks. Even in ordinary construction on land builders will often use lightweight cinder blocks made with pumice instead of ashes." Sailing on the flotilla soon found the source of the pumice, the undersea eruption of a seamount striving to turn itself into an island. Explosions of steam and hot gasses blasted rock and ash high into the air, fortunately without lobbing any of the heavy lava bombs which could very well damage their ships. A Navy flyer took Klutz and his comrades up for an aerial view of the eruptions then returned to the carrier. With some trepidation, Liam and Nathan took the Albacore in as close as they dared, giving Klutz a good look at the underwater eruption. The submersible rocked with the turbulence of the pressure waves generated by the explosions. The noise of the eruptive blasts made the steel pressure hull ring like a bell, while the heat from the lava was something awful. "With the temperature as high as it is, we dare not take her any closer." "That is fine by me, Liam. Fascinating as this all is, I am in no way inclined to martyr myself for science." "Is this really an island in the making," Nathan asked. "Yes, but it is not necessarily a permanent one. Many of these newly thrust up islands don't last long once the eruption subsides and the waves and storms go to work on the poorly consolidated cone of rock and ash. A few years, and it is all washed away." "Anyway let's return to the ship before we get cooked." The flotilla sailed onward and reached the erupting volcano but did not stay long since there was no sheltered anchorage. The shore of the island was all sheer cliffs and knife-edge ridges left by landslides. Klutz and his colleagues flew over the volcano in an autogyro but managed to set down only twice, on a couple of comparatively level spots. Klutz did make one significant find: lumps of a very strange rare mineral called reticulite which was a volcanic glass formed much like pumice by gas bubbles when lava was cooled so abruptly that the gasses dissolved in the lava could not escape. Now whereas the bubbles in pumice were of microscopic size, the interlocked and fuzed bubbles in reticulite were the size of an insect. They formed a lattice or a foam so delicate that it could be crushed between the fingers. What made Klutz's finds particularly satisfactory was that hitherto the Institute of Life and Geological Sciences had possessed only two samples of reticulite. The four Klutz had collected would triple that, which was quite a feather in his cap. In his best professorial tone, Klutz informed the others: "With a porosity of 98 percent reticulite is the least dense rock known to science, but it cannot float on water due to its open structure. It polishes up nicely to a lattice of rings with a golden sheen. Reticulite is just one more example of how very beautiful geological samples can be. Amethyst geodes for instance. I really don't know what people see in tiny gemstones especially those clear diamonds used in jewelry which are just flashy bits of glass as far as the layman's untutored eye can tell. Industrial diamonds at least have a practical use." The sole point of interest for the other members of the expedition was watching a stream of red-hot molten rock shoot out of a lava tube from atop a cliff and pour into the sea while water flashed into billowing and hissing clouds of steam. Chapter 4. The Giant Kraken! "Good morning, Sailing Master Crawley," Liam greeted his old comrade in arms. "I see that we are we still traversing this huge warm current which is pushing us westward even as we sail south." "Yes, but we won't be in it for much longer now, Liam. Reports from aerial scouts indicate we will soon pass out of the current and into a region of calm seas with deep blue water of exceptional clarity. They estimate underwater visibility at 200 feet. Strangely there are clumps of floating seaweed everywhere even though we are nowhere near land." "What do you make of this current, Crawley? It is fast, a steady five knots, fifty miles wide, and my water magic tells me that it is two to three thousand feet deep. That would make the flow of this river in the sea greater that the flow of all the rivers on land." "You don't say." The sailors of the flotilla had not yet realized but they had crossed the boundary of great gyre in the ocean, a counter-clockwise circulation that encompassed a huge expanse of sea twelve hundred miles east to west and six-hundred north to south. "Calm seas sounds good to me." "Ah Liam, that shows that you are still something of a landlubber at heart for all the time that you have sailed with us. Calm seas mean there is no wind to ruffle the surface. We might soon find ourselves becalmed and have to ask our weather wizards to whistle up a wind to fill our sails." "Well, that is why they are aboard, weather wizards, to call a wind, to calm a storm, or just to predict the weather. That includes me too, since I am as much a weather wizard as I am a water wizard." "You war wizards are actually four or five kinds of wizards or mages rolled into one. You yourself are a strong fetcher, excellent at magical concealment, and much better these days at repeatedly generating white fire." Most war wizards could hurl a blast of subatomic plasma called white fire only two or three times on a given day then had to wait for their magic to recharge. Liam could now do it seven or eight times. The same mental disciplines which Sir Willet have devised to help Karel had strengthened Liam as well. White fire [the plasma at the heart of the sun] was the ultimate weapon. Nothing could resist it: no armor, no walls of stone, no earthen berm, nothing. White fire attacked matter at a fundamental level disintegrating it, reducing everything to a cloud of highly energetic subatomic particles. During the war in Amazonia Liam had destroyed a column of troll reinforcements four thousand strong with white fire. Even stronger now, his ability with white fire made Liam potentially one of the most destructive persons on the planet, though still behind Count Taitos Klarendes who could hurl white fire indefinitely, though no one was sure why only he could. A day after entering the great gyre, the Albacore was launched to explore the ecosystem hosted by the floating seaweed. Lines of the weed stretched for miles along the ocean surface, kept afloat by air bladders, nodules the size of a grape filled with air. Small creatures of all kinds sought sustenance or shelter amid the weed including a very odd fish, six or seven inches long and camouflaged to resemble the floating seaweed; its body and fins were covered with weed-like protrusions while its skin was mottled and spotted yellow, green, and brown though it could change color rapidly. The camouflage concealed the fish from its prey for it was a voracious ambush predator and a cannibal. The submersible was about a mile from the flotilla which was poking along on reduced sail. The zoologist Evander Blok had his face pressed to a porthole observing a giant oarfish feeding on krill. One of the stranger denizens of the deep, the oarfish was named for its narrow ribbon-like shape. It was the longest boney fish in the sea. This specimen stretched more than sixty feet. "They grow them big way out here." Drew Altair observed. "Indeed, the phenomenon is called deep-sea gigantism for the giant species characteristic of the deep sea: the oarfish, the deepwater stingray, and the spider crab. This expedition is our first chance to see the phenomenon at first hand. Some of my colleagues dismiss reports of giant creatures as tall tales of drunken sailors, but I always thought there really might be very large creatures in the outer ocean. After all, we of the Commonwealth really know so little of the oceans." "Oh, oh." Jemsen interrupted. "Something is approaching, something big." "How big?" Liam wondered. "It's hard to be sure about size without something nearby to compare it with, but it is much larger than our submersible. It could easily be as large as a naval vessel." "A whale then?" "No, I don't think so. Its shape keeps changing in an odd way." "Maybe it's Aodh's Kraken." his twin joked. Holding his hands up and wriggling his fingers Karel told them: "Writhing tentacles would explain the shape changes, right? Maybe we should get out of here while we still can." "Let's not scoot away just yet." Evander Blok urged. "I really need to take a look at that thing, whatever it is. It might be a whole new species." "Famous last words." Karel quipped, only half in jest. His twin shared his unease. "I've got a bad feeling about this too." Drew asked how fast the creature was moving. "Maybe eight knots, which is twice as fast as we usually cruise." Liam shrugged. "Maybe so but our slow cruising speed is deliberate, to allow for unhurried observation. Don't worry. It we have to move fast, we can do it. With two powerful fetchers to propel her, we can drive the Albacore through the water at maybe sixty knots. That is over a mile a minute to you landlubbers." "We may have to." Blok told them. "The literature says that both the giant octopus and the colossal squid can move really fast. They fill a cavity in their mantle with water then contract muscles to squeeze water through a siphon to propel themselves at high speed with a water jet." As if the creature had heard Blok it engaged its water jet and closed with the submersible before anyone could react, grabbing the vessel with two very long tentacles, then pulling itself in close to hold it with its eight arms. As Blok later explained appendages with suckers along most of their length were called arms. Those with suckers only near the end were called tentacles. So technically an octopus had eight arms and no tentacles while a squid had eight arms plus two tentacles. With all ten appendages around the submersible it was trying to figure out what kind of creature this was, shaped like a fish but with a hard shell. Its normal diet was large finny fish like tuna and sharks which it tore apart with a beak shaped rather like that of a parrot. "It's a colossal squid all right. The body alone must be one-hundred-forty feet long. It uses the two long tentacles to grab and the eight arms to hang on while it kills its prey with its beak." "I can make it let go of us by delivering a jolt through a lightning rod. Unless someone has a better idea..." "Don't look at me," Jemsen said shaking his head. "I'm an earth wizard so I am wholly out of my element." "Me, too," Karel said. "An air wizard can't do much underwater." "And while I may be a war wizard," Liam admitted. "I cannot bring my powers into play -- not while I am sealed inside this submersible." "It looks like Axel was right!" Drew exclaimed. "Maybe there is a rule which says that any time we run into monsters, we won't be in a position to bring our strongest powers to bear. The first time was with the dragon, the second with the mosasaur, and now third time's the charm with this damned Kraken." "We'll find a way, rules or no rules," Karel told him confidently. "Can the chatter!" Blok told them. "Liam and Drew get ready to go all out. After I give it a good jolt to make it let go, take us out of here as fast as you can." Blok grabbed the handle of one of the lightning rods and sent a charge at the squid. The zoologist did not want to kill it outright, and he wasn't sure that he even could, it was that huge. So he throttled back to less than a maximum electrical discharge, hitting the beast with just enough of a jolt to make it let go -- which it did, as much startled as injured. Seizing their opportunity the fetcher duo put on a burst of speed and shot away from the squid. That gave them a head start, but it came after them, turning backwards to trail its tentacles while it engaged its water jet. "Damn, it's catching up." Jemsen reported. "Maximum speed," Liam told him, but even their concerted efforts could not push the submersible fast enough. Hydrodynamic hull or not, the Albacore just was not built for speed. Nor did the squid give any sign of tiring. "This isn't going to work." Karel cried. "Water is hundreds of times denser than air. We need to take her up and fly through the air. You guys are strong enough to hold her up, aren't you?" "You want the two of us to make this heavy submersible fly through the air? That's a mighty tall order." Drew told him. "It's our best chance and maybe our only one." Jemsen pointed out. "And once we are in the air, Karel can direct an air blade at the monster." Grabbing handholds for a better link to their vessel, the two fetchers concerted their powers and headed for the surface. They burst out of the water and took to the sky reaching for altitude but not quite fast enough. One of the long grabber tentacles reached out and wrapped itself around the stern of the submersible. Karel used a hastily formed air blade to cut them free, slicing off the end of the grabber. Though the air blade did not have a monomolecular edge, it was still sharp enough to do the job largely because it pressed through boneless flesh against the hull. Freed from the monster's grip, the submersible flew up leveling off at four hundred feet, the club end of the tentacle impaled on the spike at the stern. Holding her aloft by sheer telekinetic force the fetchers turned the Albacore around and headed for the carrier. In their underwater run they had been heading away from the flotilla which now lay six miles in the opposite direction. Lookouts on the ships could not really make out what was happening till the Albacore got close enough to be recognized. That was when the crews realized that what was flying at them was no aerocraft at all but the submersible. Heads swiveled to follow her flight as she approached abeam of the aerocraft carrier and landed heavily on the flight deck with a loud thunk. That brought the flight operations officer running, righteous in his wrath which he vented on the crew of the Albacore as they crawled out the hatch. "What the hell do you think you are doing cluttering my flight deck with a damn submersible? Get that thing outta here." "Sorry, sir" Liam told him, "but this was an emergency. We had a Kraken on our tail." "A Kraken? You mean a monster out of legend? No way in hell!" "Then what is that thing impaled on the stern spike?" Blok asked. "It is obviously the flattened club or tip of a grabber tentacle of a colossal squid." "By Hercules' pizzle, it's exactly what you said it was! Look at the size of that thing! All right. I'll grant you that your story is true, but we really need to clear the flight deck." Tired though they were, Liam and Drew lifted the submersible and laid it atop the rear elevator which lowered it to the hanger deck where a pair of pilots pushed it out of the way telekinetically. Meanwhile the crew of the Albacore reported to the captain of the carrier, Commander Wright King. That worthy listened to their story with incredulity till Liam told him flatly. "Look, this is not a joke. We did not land a submersible on your flight deck as a prank. Nor would I, as a naval officer awarded both the Shield and the Sword of the Commonwealth, ever intentionally deceive a superior officer." "And don't look now," Jemsen added, "but the Kraken has turned toward the flotilla, though currently it is just swimming toward us, not jetting through the water on an attack run." His mind made up Commander King sent his ship to general quarters. The rest of the flotilla followed suit, even before they got an infrasound message to explain things. "You five had better hop over to the flagship and brief the commodore. I can have an autogyro ferry you over." "Thank you sir, but there is no need. After our exertions Liam and I are fairly well tuckered out but not so much that we cannot hop the short distance over to the Cormorant on our own power." The twins held onto Liam while Evander Blok held Drew as the two fetchers lifted themselves by their flying yokes and sped over to the flagship. Commodore Dekker and his flag Captain Commander Dahlgren accepted their story immediately and at face value. But then, Liam especially was a known quantity. "I hope you won't have to destroy the Kraken." Blok urged him fervently. "We will if it continues its approach. From what you tell me, it's big enough to be a threat to all our ships, even the Sovereign of the Seas. Once it wraps its ten tentacles around a ship's masts it can capsize it dumping the crew into the sea, easy prey for its ravenous hunger. Let me tell you that no damn squid is going to feed on sailors of the Navy of the Commonwealth. Not on my watch, it isn't." Blok let pass without comment the layman's confounding of cephalopod tentacles with arms. The plan the officers came up with was to engage first with Long Lance torpedoes. Propelled telekinetically and guided by a sounder, they would spear into the flesh of the monster and very likely kill it. If that attack failed, their both war wizards plus war mages orbiting overhead in autogyros would wait for the creature to surface then attack with white fire and levin bolts. One cocky war mage aboard the Cormorant bragged that his ball lightning would auger a pair of holes four feet wide right through the creature. It was not really possible that even a monster as large as the Kraken could survive such attacks and get through to the ships, but, just in case, Karel firmed up a parabolic sun mirror which would focus the rays of the sun into a heat beam which would cook the colossal squid like a lobster boiled in a pot. So the monster would surely die before it reached the final line of defenses, those against hostile boarders, composed of swivel guns, air guns, and edged disks with firecasters standing by to hurl streams of flame or great clinging balls of fire, something they very much hoped to avoid given the threat of fire to wooden sailing vessels. Unfortunately, as long as it stayed underwater the frigates' main anti-shipping armaments, their magnetic cannon, were useless. Nor could the ship depress their barrels low enough to engage the Kraken even if it surfaced close to the ship. Commodore Dekker told them. "Too bad about your pet monster, boys, but we dare not take chances. As for you Evander Blok, you will always be celebrated as the man who went mano a mano with a mighty Kraken and lived to tell the tale. You too, Karel." Just then a yeoman handed the commodore a note. He read it first with a frown, then with raised eyebrows, and finally a bemused smile. He explained: "There is both good news and bad news. The bad news is that the druid reports that the Kraken is too enraged for him to turn it away from its pursuit of the Albacore. It is one thing to influence the creature when it was only curious about the Albacore. It is quite another after it had suffered both a strong electric shock and amputation of the tip of a tentacle." "The good news is that it looks like your friend the shape shifter has thought of a way to fend the Kraken off long enough for the flotilla to get away. We might not have to kill it after all." Maybe it was easier for a landlubber to think outside the box, but Aodh's idea was for the water wizards to push the Kraken away with a fast-moving current strong enough to counter even its jet propulsion. If they could just fend off the monster, the flotilla could sail away without killing it. Aodh later told them that the germ of his idea was Liam's stories about Dekker's own standing wave tactic which he devised to keep troll longships at bay and unable to close with and board his old ship the Petrel. "All right." Dekker decided. "But we will combine Aodh's suggestion with our defensive plan. If the current can halt the Kraken, fine. If not, the fetchers and sounders controlling the Long Lance torpedoes will guide them into the current, using its speed for even greater momentum and spear the squid. Problem solved." Aodh's tactic worked. Infrasound messaging allowed the water wizards in the flotilla to concert their powers and generate a current moving toward the Kraken as fast as its own water jet could propel it, bringing it to a standstill. The beast tried to break out of the counter-current, but the wizards kept it hemmed in. Finally, tired from its earlier exertions and loss of blood and in pain from its injuries the Kraken broke off its attack run. When told that the Kraken had given up its attack, the commodore nodded sagely. "In truth it is we who are the interlopers in these seas, and I think we have troubled the poor beast quite enough. Let it be." Dekker's order was passed via infrasound messaging to the water wizards: "Release the Kraken!" Once the current stopped pushing it away the colossal squid drifted along nursing its wound. Unlike with a sea star, its kind did not regrow amputated appendages, but it would get by just fine nevertheless. From then on the aerial scouts had orders to keep their eyes peeled for Kraken and any other monsters this calm blue sea might throw at the flotilla. Sounders kept vigil at night. Months later, after the Corps of Discovery returned to base, the Navy awarded Aodh its Exemplary Service Medal which was given in recognition of an ingenious solution to a vexing problem rather than for valor in combat or success in command. Previous winners had devised a speedy pallet system to replace the slow break-bulk system of loading supplies, an improved system of personnel records using notched cards to keep track of skills and abilities like languages and magical gifts, and more secure ciphers for secret communications. Thanks in large part to Drew Altair's reporting, it wasn't long before the Exemplary Service Medal acquired a nickname: the Order of the Kraken. Author's Note The geography of the raised coral island is based on that of Aldabra Island. The low atoll with the nearly continuous rim of dry land is modeled after Diego Garcia. Both lie in the Indian Ocean on Old Urth. The ocean gyre is modeled after the North Atlantic Gyre on Old Urth, the clockwise circulation of the Gulf Stream, the North Atlantic Current, the Canary Current, and the North Atlantic Equatorial Current, which surround and define the Sargasso Sea. The encounter with the Kraken was inspired by the Disney version of Jules Vernes' "Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea". A terrific movie! If you have enjoyed this story and others like it, consider making a donation to the Nifty Archive. They take credit cards. Point your browser to http://donate.nifty.org/donate.htm This story is entirely fictional, with no resemblance intended to any person living or dead. It is one of an occasional series about the further adventures of the characters introduced in the fantasy novel 'Elf-Boy and Friends' and published by Nifty Archive. The chief protagonist of the novel, Dahlderon, elf-boy and druid, appears in these stories in a supporting rather than starring role. Each story in the sequence focuses on one or a few of the large cast of characters in the ongoing saga which now exceeds Tolstoy's War and Peace in word count, if in no other measure. Readers who like these stories might want to try my two series 'Daphne Boy' and 'Naked Prey' in the Gay/Historical section of the Archive. My 'Jungle Boy' series of Hollywood tales is posted in the Gay/Authoritarian section. The series 'Andrew Jackson High' relates the trials and tribulations of five of its gay students. For links to these and other stories, look on the list of Prolific Authors on the Archive.