Chapter 30 Losham
LOSHAM
The drilling had started two days ago, and the crew Losham had tasked with breaking into the sand enclosure was no closer to breaching it than when they'd begun.
Losham stood in the cramped service corridor adjacent to the mysterious glass chamber, watching the construction crew struggle with equipment that seemed woefully inadequate for the task.
Dust hung in the air, coating everything in a fine gray film, and the constant whine of diamond-tipped drill bits grinding against concrete was giving him a headache.
"We've hit another problem," Grovdan said, approaching with a tablet clutched in his grease-stained hands.
The Russian engineer had been brought in specifically for this project, one of the few people on the island with experience in structural demolition.
His expression suggested the news was not good.
"What now?" Losham asked, not bothering to hide his irritation.
"The walls are not standard construction." Grovdan turned the tablet to show him a diagram covered in notations. "We assumed reinforced concrete, yes? Standard stuff. Drill through, shore up, proceed. But this..." He shook his head. "This is something else."
"Please explain."
"The concrete is embedded with a steel mesh, very dense, very tight weave.
But that's not the real problem." Grovdan zoomed in on a section of the diagram.
"Beneath the steel mesh is a layer of some kind of composite material.
Carbon fiber, maybe, or something similar.
Our drill bits are wearing down before they can penetrate more than a few centimeters. "
Losham stared at the diagram, frustration building in his chest. "So, get harder drill bits."
"We've already gone through our entire supply of diamond-tipped bits.
I've ordered more, but they won't arrive for another week.
" Grovdan lowered the tablet. "And even then, I'm not certain they'll work.
This composite layer is designed to resist exactly this kind of intrusion.
Whoever built this enclosure did not want anyone getting inside. "
That much was obvious. Navuh had constructed this chamber with the same paranoid attention to detail he applied to everything else.
Multiple layers of protection, redundant security measures, and biometric locks that responded only to his retinal scan.
Whatever was buried under that sand was something Navuh considered either extremely valuable or extremely dangerous.
Perhaps both.
"What about going through the floor?" Losham asked. "Or the ceiling?"
"Same problem. The enclosure is essentially a box within a box.
The walls, floor, and ceiling are all constructed the same way.
Concrete, steel mesh, composite layer. All except the glass wall.
" Grovdan scratched at his stubbly chin.
"And there's another issue. The structural analysis shows that this chamber is load-bearing.
If we compromise the walls too aggressively, we risk collapsing the entire section of the building above us, meaning the lord's mansion. "
Losham suppressed a curse. He couldn't bring down Navuh's mansion to satisfy his curiosity.
The island's occupants were under the impression that Navuh was still there, managing things from the harem.
Dave was instrumental in maintaining the illusion, but there was a limit to what he could do and how many people he could compel to silence.
It was impossible to hide the noise generated by the crew drilling under the mansion, but it could be explained away.
Yet it would be impossible to explain the entire building collapsing.
"There must be another way," he said.
"There is one option." Grovdan didn't sound enthusiastic. "We could try to cut through the glass itself. It's thick, tempered, and reinforced, but glass is still glass. With the right tools and enough time, we could create an opening."
"How long would it take?"
"We need to be careful, so several days at least. Maybe a week. We'd also need to be careful about the climate control. The interior is maintained at very specific conditions, and we could trigger some kind of failsafe if we breach the enclosure."
Losham frowned. "What kind of a failsafe?"
Grovdan shrugged. "Given that there must be something very valuable inside, there's probably also a mechanism to destroy it so it wouldn't fall into enemy hands."
It was exactly the kind of thing his father would do. He would have booby-trapped his secrets to prevent anyone from stealing them.
"I don't want to risk collapsing the mansion," Losham said. "Order what you need for cutting the glass."
The guy nodded and retreated to his crew, barking orders that sent his men scrambling.
The thought that Navuh had kept this from him rankled.
Losham had served his father faithfully for centuries, had risen through the ranks to become his most trusted advisor, and yet here was proof that Navuh hadn't trusted him enough to share this secret with him.
He also hadn't told Losham about the submarine.
What else was hidden on this island, and where?
Whatever this was, Navuh had first hidden it in the harem, and after the flooding, he had transferred it to his mansion.
It was important enough to build an entirely new chamber to house it.
Important enough to make it almost impossible to access without his personal authorization.
Important enough to compel the guards who had retrieved it from the harem to forget what they had taken out.
No one remembered anything.
In fact, Losham was surprised that someone had remembered something being retrieved from the flooded harem at all. Perhaps Navuh hadn't been as thorough in covering his tracks as he'd thought.
Still, his father had gone to extraordinary lengths to protect whatever lay beneath that sand, lengths that suggested the contents were more valuable than anything else on the island.
Losham had to find out what it was, no matter how long it took.