The only consolation she had was that everyone else was doing the same thing. Cameron would sometimes be drinking with one hand even as he worked with the other. Even California natives took the heat and possible dehydration seriously.
Like Goudie had that first night, they started at the Lab and worked their way out, using their knowledge of the blast source to their advantage. Noriko fully understood why Goudie wanted them out here. While being mostly sure that it was sabotage, he didn’t have any proof of it—just a gut feeling and some circumstantial evidence. None of that could stand up in court and it didn’t tell them who the culprit(s) might be. Their job today was to first look for the incendiary device (if there was one) that might be scattered all over the desert floor. Their second, equally important task, was to figure out if the ley line had gone berserk and if so, how it might have played into the explosion.
Since they had never done anything like this before, their captain stayed with them after he deployed everyone else out. This was one of those rare moments where the Mægencræftas could work separately from the Dwolcræftas. They could see the ley lines just as clearly as their partners, after all, and it took no magic on anyone’s part to be able to do so. It worked out nicely this way as they could split up and cover ground much more quickly.
Hands gesturing as he talked, Banderas started them off at the base of the Lab hill. Even here there were traces of scorch marks, black against the red and tan rocks. “Now. You two know how most geologists measure an earthquake’s effects?”
Having just studied this, Noriko could give the answer off the top of her head. “Tilting of horizontal surfaces, fault displacements, general ground motion and architectural damage.”
Cameron gave her an approving look. “You’re on chapter sixteen, aren’t you?”
Now how did he…? “You too?”
“Yup, got to it this morning.”
Sidetracked, Banderas gestured between the two of them. “You’re both finding time to study? I’d meant to ask that earlier but it keeps slipping my mind.”
“Yes, well, at least I am,” Noriko confirmed. She watched her partner as she answered the question, somehow surprised that Cameron was diligent enough to study even with everything else going on. “Not at the rate I was going before, of course.”
“That’s understandable,” Banderas assured her. “As long as you’re still progressing, the Force won’t complain. Do let me know when you’re approaching midterms or finals, though. I’m required to give you at least two days off in advance so you can study. We want good grades from all of our members.”
That was a fact Noriko had not known. “We’ll take advantage of that, sir.”
“Keep it in mind. Now, back to this. Are either of you aware that if there is a surge along a ley line, that it will widen the stream?”
Cameron gave a slow blink. “News to me, boss.”
Actually it was news to Noriko as well. Why, she wasn’t sure, as it was perfectly obvious when she thought about it. The ley lines were like underground rivers. They had their own paths carved out in the bedrock, and they moved along that set course instead of going about willy-nilly. If something came along that was more powerful than the usual power stream, of course it would widen the pathway. “By how much?”
“Depends on how much power went through it. Now, we keep a measurement of the ley lines in our areas as a matter of course. We also keep an updated sketch of the ley line’s stream so that we know what it looked like.”
Noriko nodded understanding. Modern science had still not caught up enough to where it could register magical power as an energy source. There was no tool, no piece of equipment that could really discern merlins of power as anything except random electrical surges. It certainly couldn’t quantify or measure it. They had to rely on a Mægencræftas or Dwolcræftas readings, illustrations, and experience to measure anything. “How updated is it, Captain?”
“Documented, about two weeks old. Experience? Ten days.” He gave the two of them a pointed look. “The last people who took a look around the hill before the explosion were you two. Normally that wouldn’t be the case, because Main Base’s people come out here regularly to take a look, but, because of that flu, they’re badly behind schedule. I think that’s part of the reason why we got this gig.”
Noriko didn’t quite follow that. “Jack told us during our tour that the Lab team would cover for the Base and vice versa, though, if something happened? I thought we got this job because there’s only four people on station at the Lab.” It was a huge stretch of desert out here and thinking that just four people could patrol it all was ludicrous.
Banderas pointed to the area directly behind her head. “The Boron Mines are back there, as well as Boron City, if you can call it that. There are quite a few things that the team up here has to cover that’s just around the Lab area. Which is why, because we’re in between Lab and Main Base, its Main Base’s teams that have to take care of this area.”
“Makes sense to me. So you want me and Spidey to take an extra careful look, see if anything matches up with our memory.”
“Because of the explosion and the power that rocked through it, there’s going to be changes. But there are too many conflicting reports about the ley lines. We need to take measurements and drawings of our own, see where things actually stand now. Anything short of a large discrepancy won’t be something we’ll be able to see with the naked eye. We might have to take the numbers and illustrations we get today and match them up with what’s on file to see the differences.” Banderas handed Cameron a tape measure. “Do this in increments of every three feet.”
Noriko took up the other end of the tape measure Cameron handed her and helped him bridge the underground ley line.
“Sixteen feet, nine inches,” he said.
Banderas gave a command to his holoshades and jotted the number down. “Power level?”
“16 KMs,” Cameron reported. “Didn’t we get a report that one line was almost drained?”
“Right after the explosion,” Banderas confirmed. “But of course we fixed that immediately. Even with power levels that low, unstable ley lines right next to each other are not wise to leave be. 16…16 is good. It was just at 15 when we left. It means the line is growing to healthier levels again.”
The other ley lines, the ones that had gone berserk, were also reported to be slowly regaining their usual power levels. Noriko was relieved to see that these lines were following the same trend without needing a team to babysit them.
As they walked and measured, the captain drew out what he was seeing. His strokes were quick and sure. Because they were all linked to the same page via their holoshades, she was able to follow what he was doing. It turned out that her captain was a capable artist. He’d never be able to make a living off of it, but it was clearly detailed and in proportion.
It was a time consuming task, a little on the side of drudgery, and they were at it for nearly a half hour before Cameron got bored enough to start chatting. “Spidey, you get calls from telemarketers very often?”
“No.” She now felt highly disappointed about that, too.
“Shame. Fourteen feet, three and a half inches, Cap.”
“I’ve been wondering,” she eyed him sideways as they stood again and moved three feet, “did you come up with that on the spot?”
“No, didn’t have to,” he responded, a wicked gleam in his eye. “It’s a legitimate theory.”
“Get out.”
“Really, it is. It’s old now, like I think it was first published in the late 80’s, but it was written up by a guy named David Icke. My uncle had some of his books on the shelf. I used to read them as a kid just for laughs. There were some really crazy elements to it.” Cameron shrugged. “My uncle’s a great guy, but he’s super paranoid and loves conspiracies. Like, any conspiracy will get his attention. So when a telemarketer calls me up, I have a ton of conspiracies I can throw at them. Gets them off the phone every time.”
> “And here we thought you were able to come up with that on the spot,” Banderas drawled.
“Not quite that creative, Cap,” Cameron denied with a grin.
“Huh. And that very bright color of purple nail polish on your toes? That isn’t some outcry of your creative spirit?”
Far from being uneasy at this direct question from his boss, Cameron’s grin grew wider. “Nope. I crashed Spidey’s girl party. In revenge, she painted my toenails.”
Banderas’s expression gave the impression that getting a pedicure was the same as being tortured. So when he gave Noriko a questioning look, she assured the man forthrightly, “He’s odd, but we can work together, and at least he’s never boring.”
Cameron preened. “She called me odd. I love you too, Spidey.”
Flicking her sunglasses down an inch on her nose, she stared at him. “Let me guess. You’re one of those people that thinks ‘normal’ is an insult.”
“It totally is. Normal is boring.”
“Uh-huh. I figured that was the case. Ten feet, eleven inches.”
Their captain seemed not so secretly relieved at their bantering. Clearing his throat, Banderas gestured for them to move on to the next spot. “So Lars mentioned that you know how to climb metal, Noriko?”
“That’s right, sir. It’s an old exercise from my Jr. High coach. He had all of us do it.”
Banderas stopped drawing long enough to study her for a silent moment. “Why are you so good at feeding multiple people power at once?”
“That was the point of the exercise,” she informed him with a slight smile.
Cameron added nonchalantly, “That and she can pretend to be Spiderman at Halloween.”
Ignoring this sideline, Banderas asked, “How difficult is this to learn?”
“Difficult for a Mægen, not much at all for a Dwol. Why?”
“I think it would be beneficial to teach the others how to do this. Yours is one of the most seamless transitions I’ve seen for multiple partners. I think, out of the Tehachapi area, only two other people can rival you, and both of them have at least a decade of experience in the field. It’s a practical exercise that increases skills, and I’m always looking for those. What’s the timeline for learning this? For a Mægen?”
Noriko found this praise to be highly flattering, and she had to fight to keep a blush down. “I learned the basics in about a week, sir. Of course, I was very new at it, only thirteen when I started. I think a trained adult could learn it faster. After that, it takes months of practice before you can actually go up any distance. Just going up the steel beam in the training gym takes concentration on my part.”
“That’s what, a twenty-foot climb?”
“Somewhere in there, sir.”
“Hmm.” Banderas went back to sketching and pondering at the same time. “We might not be able to start this immediately, we do have a case to solve after all, but I would like to do this soon.”
Cameron knelt, Noriko following his lead, and they measured. “Three feet, ten inches. Cap, this is a heck of a lot smaller than near the Lab.”
“Yes, it is.” Banderas stopped sketching and really looked at the area. “We’re about a mile out now, I think. This should be enough information to be able to answer the question. But at first glance, what do you two think?”
Pointing down at the ley line, Cameron immediately answered, “This was the width of most of the ley lines. I don’t remember it being much wider than this. The Lab’s lines were a little wider, but I don’t remember them being as large as we were measuring.”
When Banderas looked to her, Noriko confirmed, “I don’t remember it being that big either, Captain. And if memory serves, the change in width was much more gradual. This…this is more abrupt. It went from ten feet to four within two measurements. It reminds me of a shock wave, like the one up at the test cell. Or it could be the point of a power entry.”
“Your instincts and memory are good,” Banderas approved. “I think you’re right. Let’s get back to the van and verify this information. Frank Goudie will prefer hard numbers to prove his theory, I think.” Lifting his radio band to his mouth, he pushed the team frequency. “Everyone gone out about a mile? If you have, meet back at the van.”
There were various affirmations from different members of the team as they walked back. Banderas took them a slightly different route, crossing over the other ley line in a circuitous route. As he did, he peered down hard toward the ground. “Huh.”
Noriko hadn’t been paying any attention to him until he uttered that sound. The inflection struck her as slightly wrong. She, too, immediately studied the ley line under their feet. “It’s not as wide as the other one. Can there be a natural reason for that?”
“Not one I can think of off-hand,” Banderas said, tone still odd as if he were responding to her on auto-pilot while his brain whirled in a different direction entirely. “Perhaps the explosion messed with the ley lines, but I wouldn’t think so. The one experience I have with a situation like this, both ley lines were overloaded with nearly identical levels of power.”
That made perfect sense. All ley lines were kept at more or less the same level of power. It was the easiest way to keep them all stable while siphoning off power to feed the coastline generators. An explosion wouldn’t prefer one ley line over another, not when they were within the same proximity of the blast. In theory, they should have overloaded with the same power levels.
The overloaded lines on the old Mojave Highway and the other line near the weigh station just off the main highway had looked just like this—one line much wider after its surge and the other narrowed in comparison.
Her blood ran cold for a moment and she shivered despite the intense desert heat.
Jack had stayed in the cool interior of the van as they went out and worked. He had not been idle, as he was on the phone when they arrived. To whom, Noriko wasn’t sure, but he had a strange look on his face.
Banderas caught it too as he stopped halfway inside and asked, “What?”
“Mr. Goudie apparently mentioned the possibility of sabotage to the higher-ups today. They’re now insisting that we stop using any personnel from either the Lab or Main Base until we can prove that it was not sabotage.”
While Noriko understood that, she couldn’t help but ask, “What about Mike Yockey? Or any of the others that were in the control bunker?”
Shaking his head, Jack assured her, “They’re more or less above suspicion. Only the truly insane would stick around for the test after sabotaging it to blow, after all. But they did ask us to be cautious, to only get information from them, not to give it.”
That seemed a little wrong, somehow, but Noriko couldn’t very well say so as the newest person on the team.
Perhaps some of that showed on her face, as Banderas assured her, “None of us think they’re responsible. Don’t worry about it. We just need to focus on finding out what actually happened and who was responsible for it.”
That was true. Only partially satisfied, she climbed into what was becoming her seat in the van and sat down. Taking another water bottle out of the van cooler, she started guzzling it down.
“Alright, people,” Banderas held out his hands. “Give me your sketches. I want to see what you found.”
Lizzie popped the retractable table out of the floorboard and pulled it up and into position. She flicked on the holoprojector, which gave the GF symbol on a field of red for two seconds before coming online. Everyone synced their holoshades with it, so that it was easy to compare everything. Five different sketches popped up, side by side, aligning into an overall grid of the immediate area. Banderas put his down with everyone else’s. Almost instantly he frowned. “Powers, Noriko, give me yours too.”
They hadn’t taken any sketches or measurements on their own, though…? Puzzled, she handed hers over promptly.
Banderas took over controlling the system and pulled the file from two weeks ago to compare with the others. Cameron’s was
used for the second ley line.
Novice she might be, but the difference was obvious even to Noriko’s eyes. The line near the Lab looked ragged, as if someone had taken a ton of water and tried to force it through a firehose. The other looked almost pristine and neat in comparison. “Captain, I’ve got a bad feeling that this is what the lines near the weigh station would look like now.”
“You would be absolutely correct,” he answered quietly. “It’s extremely rare lines look like this. I’ve been in this career for nearly twenty years and I’ve only seen it one other time.”
Charlotte glanced up at him. “White Sands.”
“White Sands,” he agreed grimly. “Charlie and I have seen this before. A great deal of power was shoved into the ley lines, setting off an earthquake, and it looked just like this.”
They all went taut in their chairs. Jack leaned forward, tone brisk and professional. “For what purpose?”
“We never figured out if it was intentional or accidental, to be honest. But the result was massive damage to the White Sands Base. I still think some fool kid, who was new to handling power, drew too much from the ley line all at once and then panicked when he couldn’t manage it. It was shoved back into the ley line in one go, causing something that looked a lot like this.”
“Javier, I need an answer: was this sabotage?” Jack demanded, nearly sitting on the edge of his chair.
“I can’t give you an answer, not yet. I need numbers. We need comparative data of sabotage attempts like this, and we need to completely eliminate the possibility that what happened at these ley lines was linked to natural events. Only then can I say for certain. What did Goudie figure it up to be?”
“He wasn’t sure either. He said it depended on what you found out today.”
The captain was not happy about this. He kept rubbing at his chin and grimacing. “He’s gone home for the day by now, surely.”
Considering it was almost seven o’clock in the evening? That was very likely.
Call to Quarters (A Gaeldorcraeft Forces Novel Book 1) Page 16