by Read, John
We slept in shifts as we kept in touch with Watson, who was working from the other end. Avro and I went to each dome’s substations and reconnected the fuel cells to the grid.
By noon the next day, everything was set up and we were ready to go. We met in the Central Control tower to push the button that would send the colony’s remaining power streaming through the coils in a last ditch attempt to quell the storm.
“What the hell!” I whispered to Jackson as a NewsFlash camera crew set up equipment in the already cramped room.
“John, if you’re right and this works, you’ll be a hero. If it doesn’t work, everyone here is going to die. The public has a right to know what’s going on.”
“If it doesn’t work, they’ll kill us!” I whispered.
Avro worked at a computer terminal while the rest of us stood by, supervising. Amelia joined us in the tower, no longer hiding after H3 had let us go.
I saw Robert Bowden coming up the stairs that led to the control room, followed by his personal cameraman. They were filming.
“Mr. Orville, is it true you’ve been inside the Alamo?” Bowden asked, kicking off an impromptu interview.
I turned and looked at Amelia. She nodded, letting me know that everything would be okay. “Yes, we’ve been in the Alamo,” I said.
“Weren’t you arrested? Why did they let you leave?”
“Once they found out we were on the storm taskforce, they invited us to their engineering control room. They’re trying to fight the storm, just like us.”
“There were rumors going around that the Alamo was causing the storm? What has changed?”
“Nothing has changed,” I lied, and then said truthfully, “we theorized that the Alamo was sustaining the storm with their nuclear reactor but this is not the case.”
“And what happened to the mob that stormed the Alamo? Are they safe? We heard there was quite a firefight.”
“Most of the protestors made it to the Presidio. I assume they are still there and holding out.”
“You assume?” Bowden questioned. “And didn’t they try to suffocate you?”
“That was crowd-control. Harsh but effective.” It disgusted me that I was defending the MDF’s methods but right now we needed sanity.
Avro looked up from the displays. “Polarity confirmation received, we’re ready to activate the system.”
“Translation, please,” Bowen said pointing the camera at Avro.
“Seriously?” Avro said, looking at Jackson.
Jackson shrugged and Avro continued, “When the storm began, the polarity of the Anti-Storm system, Project Bakersfield, was, ah,” Avro paused, “the polarity was off. It was a miscalculation.”
“But it’s fixed now?” Bowden asked.
“We think so,” Avro answered.
“You think so? That’s not convincing. How much of our power reserves are you using on this little experiment?”
“All of it,” Avro answered honestly. I wished he hadn’t.
The news camera panned around the room. Bowden’s face was expressionless. He moved closer to Avro as if to stop him, but Jackson held out his arm, holding him back.
“It’s time,” Jackson said. “Hit it.”
Robert Bowden looked terrified. “Are you sure you want to push that button?” he yelled. “You just told us that if you activate this system, we lose all our reserve power.”
“Yup,” Avro said.
“That means no more lights, at all,” Bowden said.
“You’ll have the batteries in your cell phones and cars,” I said. The camera turned back to face me.
“We’ll have no more air!” Bowden yelled.
“Oh, we’ll have plenty of air,” I said, throwing tact out the window. “To clarify, it’s the carbon dioxide that will kill you. We need power to run the CO2 scrubbers.”
I expected Bowden to ask about the plants that produced much the colony’s oxygen. But he didn’t. Plants need sunlight for photosynthesis so during a storm the trees and other plants don’t absorb CO2 or produce O2.
“That means we’ll have no more heat!” This was Bowden’s last argument. It was too late to turn back now.
“This is going to work,” I said, pointing at the camera, hoping to end the questioning.
“Activating storm abatement coils now,” Avro said. The room went quiet and we could hear the sound of the wind against the roof above our heads. A map of the planet showed Project Bakersfield’s basketball pattern turning from red to green.
“System active, power at two hundred percent,” Avro read off the display, “reserve power at ninety-five percent.”
“Meteorological Center reporting,” Jackson said, “Winds at two hundred knots.” He paused. “Winds at one hundred ninety knots and declining.”
“It’s working!” yelled Bowden. We listened to the wind. After a minute, the sound was noticeably less intense.
“Reserve power down to sixty percent,” Avro read.
Sixty percent! The colony’s hydrogen was rushing through the fuel cells like fuel out the nozzle of a rocket. We were draining power faster than I thought possible.
“Meteorological Center reporting,” Jackson said. “Winds at one hundred fifty knots and declining.”
Bowden faced the camera. “It’s a race against time here in Central Control. Will we run out of power before dissipating the storm? Only time will tell.”
Earlier that day we had reviewed the power requirements of our improvised system. We decided that operating the system at twice the level required to prevent a storm was the best starting point. As the winds died down, we planned to reduce the power input. Avro made that decision and reduced the power.
“Reducing system consumption to one hundred percent,” he read, as he worked the digital controls on his display.
“Winds at one hundred ten knots and declining,” Jackson reported.
Bowden whispered to the camera. “Less than a minute to go. Are we in for a sunny day or a dark and slow death?”
I’m not sure how Bowden decided that there was only one minute left. Maybe a countdown made for good HV footage. I looked over the displays, doing some mental calculations of my own. The situation reminded me of a seventh grade math problem where you had to calculate how long it would take to drain a swimming pool.
“System at one hundred percent, reserve at thirty percent,” Avro read off the display.
“Winds holding at eighty knots,” Jackson reported, reading a display that showed wind speed graphed over time.
“Jackson, if we kill the power now what do you think will happen?” I asked.
“According to the meteorology folks, if we don’t bring those winds all the way down, they could go right back up,” he replied.
“Reserve down to seventeen percent. What’s the wind speed?” Avro asked, sounding frantic.
“Winds are holding steady,” Jackson reported.
“Avro, boost the system strength to two hundred percent,” Amelia suggested. “It’s all or nothing!”
“No!” Bowden yelled. Avro ignored Bowden’s protest, agreeing with Amelia. One hundred percent was enough to prevent a storm but apparently not enough to dissipate one.
Avro slid his fingers along the console. “System back at two hundred percent, reserve power at fifteen percent, fourteen, ten, five percent, three percent, one percent.” The room went more silent than ever. “Reserve power depleted.”
Our world darkened. Terror swept over me as I realized that our fears had been realized. Did we just do H3’s dirty work? Perhaps we’d never find out.
The holovisions in the pavilion flickered and turned off. Lights around the room dimmed as battery-powered emergency LEDs flicked on. The displays remained illuminated. Central Control must have had limited battery backup.
“Jackson,” Avro said. “Wind speed, please.”
Jackson read from his display. “Winds at sixty knots,” he paused, “and climbing.”
“Well, there you hav
e it,” Bowden said into the camera, “an epic failure.”
“I’m filming you,” said the cameraman, “but we’re not transmitting.”
Chaos erupted in the Central Control tower. Jackson got on the radio with the metrological center, yelling at them about their inability to predict the weather. Avro muttered to himself about how our calculations could have been so off. I was just trying to hold off Bowden, who was overwhelming me with questions I couldn’t answer.
“Well, shit,” Amelia yelled, loud enough to silence everyone. “You guys are just bursting with issues.”
“Have a tissue,” Avro replied, trying to break the tension. The Central Control tower usually held only two or three people and you could walk across the room in under four paces. With six people up here, we were practically on top of each other. The room had warmed with the additional bodies, but without power, it would be freezing up here in a matter of minutes.
“Let’s work the problem,” I said, a bead of sweat trickling down my face. “Bowden, will you to go down to the pavilion and report the news in person. Half the colony is going to show up on our doorstep, and we need to distract them so we can get out of here.”
“The hell I am,” Bowden said. “People are looking for someone to blame, and I say that’s you!” he pressed his finger into my chest and moved in so close I could smell that he was sweating too.
“Listen, there’s something we didn’t tell you,” I said to everyone in the room. “One of the engineers in the Alamo has another plan to stop the storm, and he’s confident it will work.” I didn’t tell them it was Watson, and if they had asked, I would have lied. There was no way they’d trust Watson given the current situation.
“Well, what is it?” Bowden asked, stepping back and throwing up his hands.
“Thanks for keeping us in the loop,” Jackson said, obviously angry, but he appeared ready to listen.
“We don’t know,” I said. “But the engineers in the Alamo have resources that we don’t.”
“You don’t know?” Bowden exclaimed. “Everyone has only a few sols left before we freeze and suffocate, and you want us to help you, even though you have no idea what you’re doing?”
Avro stood up from his chair and answered Bowden’s question, “Yes.”
“Why?” Bowden barked. “You’re asking me to confront a group of people who think they’re about to die and tell them what? That you’re going to try one more thing?”
“It will give them hope,” Amelia said with a shrug.
“Bullshit. You want to get to the Alamo because you think it will increase your chances of survival.”
“They’re no better off in the Alamo,” I said.
“It’s true,” Avro said. “The Alamo’s nuclear reactor can keep a few hundred people alive at most. But the Alamo is supporting thousands of people now.”
“Is that true?” Jackson said, looking at me. “Is the Alamo doomed as well?”
“It is,” I confirmed. “In a few sols both the Alamo and the circumferential will need to reduce the population to a level the systems can sustain.”
I didn’t really think about this reality until just now, but as the CO2 levels rose, we’d need to either cut some people off, or let everyone die at once.
“Barbaric,” Bowden said.
Avro grabbed Bowden by the shoulder. “There’s a saying in Navy Search and Rescue: ‘So that others may live.’ In a week, people might volunteer to die so that others might live to wait out the storm. That doesn’t make them barbaric. It makes them heroes.”
“I never thought about it like that,” Bowden said.
“What do you say, Bowden? Will you help us?” Avro asked, putting a hand on Bowden’s shoulder.
“I’ll talk to the people,” Bowden conceded.
“Thanks,” I said, and Bowden motioned to the cameraman to follow him down the stairs. We waited until he left the room.
“So what’s the plan?” Jackson said, “I can only help if you keep me in the loop.”
“I recommend you join us at the PDC. With the temperature dropping up here, you’ll need to evacuate anyway.”
“Whatever you need,” Jackson said. “But why the PDC?”
“We need to take a jeep into the storm and access the Alamo from the outside. We can’t let anyone know what we’re up to,” I said.
“Wait, you have a key to the Alamo?” Jackson asked.
“Yes, Jackson,” Avro confirmed. “We have a key to the Alamo.”
We set Jackson up at Jimmy’s dispatch station in the observation deck. Jimmy was nowhere to be found. He had probably joined the protesters in the pavilion. As a union man, he was never one to walk away from a picket line.
Everything we had at our disposal had a limited life. Whatever charge was left in an item’s batteries was all we had to work with. Our jeep had a few hundred kilometers of range and both aircraft were fully fueled and charged. Most of the electronic doors would work for another week but the airlocks needed to be operated manually. The spacesuits were fully charged and would last about eight hours each.
Avro, Amelia and I suited up and piled into the airlock. We checked our comms, but besides that, none of us spoke. We had no idea what Watson had in mind and it wasn’t worth speculating.
The winds whipped at our spacesuits as before and we were constantly brushing dust off our visors and sensors. Kevin’s drone had stopped sweeping our staging area but we still managed to get the garage open.
I drove this time and Amelia rode shotgun. Avro sat in the back. We drove past the remains of the nine o’clock dome, observing the debris strewn about the vicinity. We then reached the service door on the southwest edge of the Alamo.
Avro hopped out and used Watson’s key on the terminal beside the Alamo’s service airlock. The hatch opened.
I pulled the jeep into the Alamo and activated the airlock. The airlock worked as designed, pressurizing the chamber while blowing the dust off of us and the jeep with a tornado of forced air. The airlock had power. Someone knew we were coming.
The interior hatch hissed open, revealing the inside of the Alamo. We recognized the long white hallway that led to the nuclear reactor.
In the distance, someone in the corridor rushed toward us. It was Watson. We got out of the Jeep, took off our helmets and nodded our hellos.
“Thanks for coming. I’m sorry it came to this.”
“It was close,” Avro said. “We almost had it.”
“Are you sure draining the reserves wasn’t part of H3’s plan all along?” I asked. “Somehow I feel like we’re being played.”
“You and me both,” Watson said. “But I assure you, this next idea is all me.”
Watson paced around the vehicle, looking into the jeep’s bed. “Thanks for bringing the jeep. We’ll need it. Back it up to the steel door. I have a package ready for you.”
“You’re kidding,” Amelia said, knowing exactly what the “package” was. Watson probably wanted us to steal the nuclear reactor and plug it into the central dome. This would save more lives in the circumferential by letting the folks in the Alamo die. I thought of Kevin and the other colonists in the Presidio. Could we just let them perish?
It reminded me of the trolley dilemma from a philosophy class I had taken. There are five people riding a trolley. The trolley is about to crash, killing all five people, except that you could throw a switch leading the trolley down a safer route. However, the safe route has an innocent person tied to the tracks. The person at the switch is forced to choose: let five people die, or deliberately take a life. Except in our case, there were thousands more people tied to the tracks.
Before our minds filled with the philosophical implications, Avro spoke up. “What the hell are we supposed to do?” he asked bluntly.
Watson looked at each of us in turn. “What happens when you drop soap in water with pepper floating on the surface?”
“Pepper shoots to the side of the bowl,” Avro answered, glaring at Watson. �
�Anyone who passed the fourth grade knows that.”
Watson nodded. “Think of the nuclear material as the soap and the dust storm as the pepper.”
We immediately understood Watson’s plan. But he was taking the dilemma to a whole new level.
“Do you have a plan to go along with this?” Amelia blurted, as we all climbed back into the jeep.
“I do,” Watson replied, sitting in the back beside Amelia. “But you may not like it very much.”
“This ought to be interesting,” Avro said. I tapped the accelerator, driving the jeep further into the Alamo. I turned the jeep around where two hallways intersected and began backing down the hall, guided by the jeep’s reverse camera.
“What’s the plan, Watson?” I asked.
Watson’s plan was crazier than I could have possibly imagined. “We need to get the nuclear reactor into an MAV. Once the vehicle reaches the upper atmosphere, we blow it up.”
“You’re kidding,” I said, hitting the breaks, but I noticed Avro perk up. He sat in the front passenger’s seat, looking back at Watson who sat behind me.
“I’m serious,” Watson said. “The fallout will kill the storm. No doubt about it. The original design of Project Bakersfield involved the use of dirty nuclear weapons. The effective range is only three hundred miles, but that’s enough to get the solar panels back on line. From there, we’ll run Project Bakersfield the way it was designed.”
I backed up through the steel door, stopping five feet from the reactor.
“That’s brilliant,” Avro said as we got out of the jeep. “But how are you going to blow up the MAV?”
“With these,” Watson said, reaching for a duffel bag and tossing it to Amelia, “I swiped them from the soldiers.”
Amelia looked into the bag. “Breaching charges,” she said, looking impressed.
Watson’s plan used the last substantial source of electrical power on the planet. As soon as we disconnected the reactor, everyone in the Alamo would be after us. Avro looked at me and nodded, convinced the plan was sound.
“I brought you these as well,” Watson said, reaching behind the reactor.
“Holy shit,” Amelia said with a smile. “Where’d you get these?” Watson handed Amelia and Avro each an MDF high-powered assault rifle.