GVH-IL: Get them out!

Writers: Paula, Eimi, Chelle
Date Posted: 29th June 2010

Characters: Alrog, Dalion, Micel
Description: The process of rescuing the miners begins.
Location: Garnet Valley Hold
Date: month 9, day 17 of Turn 5
Notes: Mentioned: Fieyaz

The sight reminded Alrog of the time as a child, when he and his brother
had found a tunnelsnake's nest. It had been Rorin's idea to pour boiling
hot water on the nest. How the newly hatched little tunnelsnakes had
squirmed and scrambled to get away from the boiling death! The only
difference was that this time it was humans and the water was icy cold.

He was trying to keep some sort of head count when miners poured out of
the mine, but he lost track. It was all so chaotic. "Where's the
Foreman?!" he called.

"Up thatta way, sir!" someone yelled from the crowd. The miners, once
out of the tunnel, immediately began to put their chips back in the box.
They knew how important it was to know who was down there.

"Come on lads!" the Foreman was barking, waving his arms to try to get
his men to keep walking in an orderly fashion. "You boys there, stop
staring like an idiot and keep moving! We need everyone to assemble in
the designated area!"

"Dalion!" Alrog called the Foreman and pushed throught to him. "Do you
have anything to report?" He was anxious to hear what was going on.

"Sir, it's a mess down there," the foreman said with a shake of his
head. "There's water coming in from somewhere. Near as I can figure,
we must have hit a spring or something."

Alrog nodded. "Did everyone get out?" was the next anxious guestion.

"I would guess not, sir, but I don't have exact numbers for you. Micel!"
he called to one of the miners standing towards the front. "Are
all your team accounted for?"

He had been frantically waiting, but now they had all finished running
out and it wasn't hard to see the hanging disks. There were five disks
missing. "No sir. Five men are still down there."

Just at that moment, a figure came limping out of the tunnel. "Four
sir!"

"Shards and shells! Any idea where they were working?" Alrog swore
softly and asked.

"Down in the west quadrant. Tunnels four and five." Micel answered
quickly.

"Isn't that the lake-side?" Alrog asked.

"It wasn't the lake's doin', sir," Dalion protested, not that it
mattered much. "Geologists cleared that tunnel. This is water we've
never seen before." Some hidden aquifer they had no idea had been there
perhaps.
"But those tunnels are new, sir. There's not many places for all that
water to go."

Micel piped in. "Frankly those boys are gonna drown if we don't do
somethin quick. We gotta get that water outta there or we need to dig
the boys out."

"Right," Alrog nodded. "We need pumps. How much water is going in? Are
our own pumps enough?" he asked. "If not, we should ask minecraft hall
for borrow theirs."

Plans were forming in his minds: get the pumps and enough man to use
them, rescue the trapped miners, find were the water was coming in and
plug it.

The foreman was sure they had pumps aplenty in their own area. It was
just a matter of shuffling them around where they were needed. "There's
an extra pump in the Bottle-neck Mine we could use. Since I assume all
mining will be halted until this mess is taken care of, they won't be
having much need of it."

"Good. Borrow, beg, or buy whatever we need. Just get those men out
of there," Alrog asked.

Micel left that to the foreman. He quickly began organizing a crew
to begin digging the holes that the pumps would go down. Every second
counted.

Since Alrog wasn't actually a miner, he knew he needed to leave the
things for professionals. But it was hard just to stand and watch, unable to
help.
Perhaps when the pumps were up, he could help with the pumping. That
didn't require skill, just muscles.

"Sir it might do good to ahh..tell your Lady to go tell the women," one
of the miners spoke up. He knew as soon as the sirens had started, the
women would have started to go crazy with worry.

"I'll do that. And check if Fieyaz has gotten any word back from the
Weyr," Alrog said.

Last updated on the July 17th 2010

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GVH-IL: Get them out!