Grumpily, he subsided and pulled the files over so that they straddled both of their desks. They sat so closely together that this wasn’t much of a stretch. He was still grumbling to himself about not being cut out for deskwork even as he picked up the one off the top.
Noriko steadily ignored him as she grabbed the second one. It was true that Cameron wasn’t the type suited to being indoors most of the day. That dark tan of his did not come from a tanning bed. If it was possible to do something outdoors, that’s where he would be.
He plugged in earphones into his computer, pulled up some e-folder, and started listening to it. If music helped him concentrate, then she certainly wasn’t going to argue with him about it.
Noriko settled more comfortably into her chair, grabbed a highlighter, and started reading. She was perhaps a third of the way through the file when she stretched her neck out, giving it a break from that slanted downward angle. As she looked up, she realized that Cameron’s file was still open on the first page. His eyes were closed, elbows on the table, head propped onto his hands. Had he fallen asleep sitting there?
Put out that he would dump the workload on her, she grabbed an earbud and yanked it out of his ear.
His eyes snapped open. “Hey!”
“Somewhere out there, a tree is working very hard to replace the oxygen you consume,” she griped, brows snapped together. “Now go apologize to it.”
Cameron blinked at her, confused why she was angry, then his eyes darted to the folder on his desk and back up. The light flickered on. “Ah. I’m not reading the file, Spidey.”
She rolled her eyes. “Obviously.”
“I’m listening to it.”
Her head cocked in confusion. “Come again? Listening?”
“Right. You know how in an emergency like this, they have all personnel involved with the site give a verbal report first? I’m listening to those.”
It had escaped her mind completely that those had existed. “But aren’t those files typed up and in here?”
“No, anyone that gave a report will make a more formal version of it themselves later. Sure, they’re supposed to basically type up what they said in their verbal report, but Jack warned me that they don’t always match up like they’re supposed to. You’re a speed reader, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, you read. I’m better with listening.”
The way that he had most of the textbooks on audio, and their out-loud study sessions, and his approach to their work today all clicked into an overall picture. “You’re an oral learner.”
“Yup,” he agreed easily. “And you’re visual.”
Now, finally, his behavior made more sense. In fact, every time that she had come into this room and found him with headphones on and eyes closed, he’d likely been studying. She’d thought he was just chilling to music. Really, did the man have to throw out confusing signals so much? “Alright. I’ll do the visual search, then.”
“Let me listen through this whole folder,” he suggested, “and then we can use the board to write out the highlights. See if anything doesn’t jive.”
It was the only sensible way to approach it. “Okay.”
Neither of them had any prior experience in investigating something. Not in real life. At boot camp, they’d had a course on investigation that had two different case studies. One of them had been a lab, where they’d had a “natural disaster” play out, and then they had to gather their own evidence, write reports, compare notes, and whatnot until they figured out what had happened. Since Noriko had limited experience in this, she decided to question everything. So she highlighted every number, every time and date, and what area. If nothing else, maybe a timeline of what people were doing when would help.
Three files in, her thighs started cramping on her, her neck was screaming with tension, and she literally couldn’t stand sitting in that position anymore. Gathering up all three files, she went to the large holoboard on the other side of the room. Taking up a stylus pen, she clicked it over to black and drew out a long line, marking out time in half hour increments for a full twelve hours before the explosion. Then she chose a red for the GF pair, writing out what they’d done and when. Clicking over to a blue to represent the Air Force engineers, she started filling in their information.
A pair of hands landed on her shoulders and with strong strokes, kneaded into the taut muscles. Noriko almost dropped her folder. “Ahhh,” she moaned in bliss.
“This is why I hate reading for a long stretch of time,” Cameron observed rhetorically. “Puts my shoulders into knots. So, if I see something on the board that doesn’t match with what I’ve heard, what color should I use to mark it?”
That did not sound like a casual question. Noriko was loath to lose those magic hands, though, so she didn’t try to see his face. “Why? Is there something that conflicts?”
“Yup, sure is. The GF pair reported that they sent 36 KMs to the Main Base generators.”
“Yes, and?”
“They also reported that doing it left the ley lines both equally running at roughly 48 KMs.”
Noriko’s eyes flew to the numbers she had just written on the board. “That doesn’t quite match with the report I read…”
“Right. The numbers changed a little. Also doesn’t agree with our own findings.” Cameron’s hands dropped as he came around her, picking up another stylus to encircle the numbers of the ley line and what was fed to the generator with a bright orange. “Something’s wonky here.”
“Maybe in their shock of what happened, they didn’t quite remember it right?” she voiced, doubting her own words. “And when they wrote the report, they’d double-checked, and that’s the more accurate account?”
“It’s possible,” Cameron allowed. “They’re only human, it’s natural to make mistakes when rattled like that. Also possible they goofed and they’re trying to cover for it. No matter what they say, it doesn’t make sense with what we found.”
That point was very true. “Maybe we should double check with Main Base and make sure that everything agrees.”
Cameron gave her a sloppy salute. “I like your thinking, Spidey. Let’s double check the facts. Something smells here and it isn’t fried chicken.”
“Do not mention food,” she groaned, her stomach giving a petulant rumble. “It’s way past lunch.”
“Make the call to Main Base so they have time to get the report here today,” he suggested. “Then we’ll get lunch.”
“And cake,” she added firmly, tone brooking no disagreement. “I need sugar in order to face the rest of those files.”
“I do still owe you a chocolate birthday cake?” he suggested innocently.
Yum, that’s right, he did. “Motion carried.”
They finished their timeline right about quitting time. Everyone else was due to go straight home when they were done at the Lab, so there was no one to report their findings to. Noriko gave the board one last, lingering look before shutting off the lights and heading for home. Tomorrow’s shift was soon enough to report what they’d discovered.
Noriko did take the remainder of her chocolate cake home with her. There were certain things in life that a woman was not willing to share. Chocolate was one of them. She had another slice for desert after dinner and didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty about having two slices in the same day.
As she lingered over the desert, she reflected back to what she and Cameron had found. The truth of the matter was, the GF pairing had lied. They must have. Their reports conflicted, for one thing. The written reports stated that they sent 36 KMs to the base, leaving 52 KMs behind in each line. But if their verbal reports were to be believed, they’d sent 36 KMs to the base generators, which left 48 KMs in the ley lines. Both ley lines were at more or less equal strength, with the number so close they hadn’t bothered to note the difference. Main Base reported that they had received 36 KMs from them and all of the power was immediately stored in the generators. That much, at
least, was confirmed.
And yet…and yet when her team had gone in that night of the explosion, they’d found 28 kilomerlins in one line, barely 2 kilomerlins in the other. Such a disparity was not possible. If Goudie’s math was correct, then what the ley lines should have been was equally 20 kilomerlins a piece. There were approximately 10 kilomerlins missing that should have been there. Even with the uncertainty of the explosion, they should have been there.
Eating chocolate usually helped unwind her, made whatever stressed her out more manageable, but in this case a whole cake wouldn’t do the trick. Noriko was very much afraid that the answer to their initial question was this: in the case of the test cell explosion, Wesson and Landers had played a hand in creating the disaster. Either through idiocy, laziness, or criminal intent, their actions had made the explosion much more intense than it should have.
At this moment, the only questions she had were these: Were their actions intentional? If so, what had been their goal? Had they intended to blow up the test cell or were they after a different outcome?
When she made it back to work the next morning, she found both Banderas and Jack in front of the board. She stopped dead in the doorway, not quite sure how to interpret their expressions. Both men were taut, as if ready to spring into action, mouths slightly agape with surprise or suspicion, she wasn’t sure which. It felt as if she had just walked in after an argument had exploded, the silence was that deadly.
Not sure if she wanted to walk into a room where angels feared to tread, she nervously cleared her throat and offered, “Good morning?”
Banderas’s head snapped around. “Arashi. Are these numbers accurate?”
Alright, if he had already read the full timeline, she now understood his reaction. “Cameron and I double checked them, sir. I admit it doesn’t paint a good picture, so if you want to triple check them, I won’t be offended.”
“I want to quadruple check them,” Jack stated in a toneless way that nevertheless made the fine hairs on her arms stand up. “Noriko, show me where you found these numbers.”
Now very glad that she had highlighted everything the day before, she readily went to her desk, pulled the reports, and showed both men the numbers. They grew progressively more quiet, a deadlier sort of quiet that made her glad they weren’t armed at the moment.
Cameron came in mid-way through this briefing and perched on the edge of his desk. When Noriko finished, Jack turned to him and asked quietly, “The orange letters that conflict with the others on the timeline. Where did those come from?”
“Verbal reports,” Cameron answered succinctly. “I marked time and file, if you want to listen to them yourself.”
“Pull them up, Powers,” Banderas demanded.
Double tapping his desktop to wake up the computer, Cameron obligingly pulled up the files and turned his speakers up high enough so everyone could hear them.
Noriko didn’t pay a lot of attention to what was being played. After all, she had listened to it twice yesterday. Instead she watched the reactions of Banderas and Jack. They became increasingly agitated as they listened. Banderas clutching his fist tighter and tighter until his knuckles were white. She didn’t know the man well enough to gauge how he would react next. Was his temper such that he would strike something? Should she be ready to duck?
“That was the last file I listened to,” Cameron announced, hitting pause to stop the recording. “We didn’t get through all of it yesterday. Partially because we went back to double check things.”
“There were many reports to wade through, we didn’t expect you to get through all of them,” Jack assured him. Even though the words were reassuring, the tone spoke of graveyards.
Not sure if she wanted to know the answer, but still unable to stop herself from asking, Noriko put voice to the doubt that had plagued her all night. “Sirs. Did the GF pairing in the Lab cause the explosion?”
“It certainly looks that way.” Jack stared hard at the timeline as he said this.
Banderas made a sound like a volcano ready to explode. “I’ll be in the gym.” With that announcement, he whirled and stomped off.
Noriko let out a breath she wasn’t aware she’d been holding. Phew, so he wasn’t the type to punch people or things. Well, no doubt the punching bags in the gym were likely to take some abuse, but he didn’t indiscriminately hit things.
Jack watched him go and commented rhetorically, “I thought for a moment he’d punch a hole in the wall again.”
Again?
Cameron’s face split into a slow grin. “And when was the last time he did that?”
“About five or so years ago. When he missed the birth of his last daughter because of a bad train wreck that was caused by an engineer’s carelessness.” Shaking his head, Jack moved past the memory. “We just came in to check on you two, to make sure that you knew what to look for, but it seems that you found more information than we did yesterday. I’ll confirm with Banderas, but we might have the team stay here today and plow through the rest of the reports. I have a feeling the answer is going to be here rather than at the Lab.”
She, for one, was relieved to hear it. “Sir, having never done this outside of a simulation, I have to ask: did we miss anything?”
“I won’t know that until I review the reports.” Jack unbent enough to assure her, “But I think you’re on the right track with this approach. If nothing else, you certainly gave us the right questions to ask. That is half the battle in mysteries like these.”
20th Merlin
“Cameron. Is there any particular reason why you’re lying on the floor and nuzzling the tiles?”
“The floor is cold.”
It took a second for her to translate. “Your brain is overheated and the floor is cold, so it feels good?”
“It’s a good floor,” he purred, still nuzzling the tiles.
Noriko had learned how to file things under the mental heading of: Powers, Cameron, General Strangeness Of. It was safer for her sanity that way.
Granted, after three straight days of crunching data and reading reports, she rather understood why his brain had overheated. The reports were all starting to sound the same, her brain wanted to confuse numbers because some of them overlapped while others disagreed entirely, and they still had to double check what the others had read yesterday. Because of the direness of the situation, Jack had split them into two groups: Lars and Lizzie on one, she and Cameron on another. They read the same files the other person did, double checking each other’s findings, and then double checked again with the sources to make sure the information was correct. Part of this was to make sure that they had all of their legal ducks in a row.
Part of it, too, was because no one wanted to believe that a GF pair had caused such horrible destruction.
Even on the best of days, Cameron was not a studier. He openly admitted that. He was a man of action, so reading (or in his case listening) day in, day out, for three days was hard on him mentally.
“Someone should have warned me,” he whimpered against the tiles.
“What?” Lars asked him, shoving back from his desk with a tired sigh. “That this job occasionally calls for you to play investigator? And doing that requires a boatload of paperwork?”
“Yes. That.”
“Hate to tell you this, man, but going to the civilian side instead of the GF would not have saved you from the paperwork. You’d be stuck doing it either way.”
“Lars would know,” Lizzie inputted absently, still bent over the file on her desk. “He started out as a civilian contractor.”
“Worst mistake of my life.” Lars apparently had enough of reading and stood up. “Alright, walk me through the timeline one more time.”
“You hoping we missed something?” Cameron asked him, turning his head to find a different spot on the floor.
“Yeah, I am.” With a stylus, Lars air-tapped the holoboard under each point as he read them off. “Seven o’clock, the full team of engineers and tec
hs arrive and prep for the test. Seven-fifteen, the GF pair arrives to clear the ley lines of power. Should we write their names down?”
“I don’t want to confuse them with the other pairing that work at the Lab, so I think we better.” Lizzie popped out of her chair and scribbled their names in: Wesson and Landers. “Alright, so they arrive and transfer power from ley line to Base generator. According to their report, they were only there for about an hour.”
“Check in with the other test cell, which they went to next, confirms that.” Noriko frowned at the board. That seemed like a very short amount of time to do that much power transfer. Maybe it really was a case of carelessness on their part? Not wanting to say something stupid out loud, she kept the thought to herself.
“At eight-thirty they report to the lead engineer, Bill Collins, that they were clear to test. Collins stated that they finished off prep, did a final check of the system, and then actually started testing at about nine o’clock.”
“And the test cell blows not even a minute after they hit the switch,” Cameron said, still flat on his back. His eyes weren’t even open, but he was clearly paying attention.
“Our assumption is that Wesson and Landers did something, and that’s why the ley lines went unbalanced and blew. But then why would it take another half hour to explode?”
That was a good point. Noriko frowned at the board. “Good question.”
Lars gave her a bleak grimace. “We need an answer to that question before we can do anything to these douchebags. When we find a pairing that’s careless like this, we don’t let them off the hook. We don’t want them recklessly going around pulling stunts like this. Even if it had been accidental, they might do serious damage later.”
A very valid point and one that Noriko was not inclined to argue. She stared at the numbers, the way the timeline laid everything out, and fervently hoped that she would never become like these two. Maybe she was still new to her job, and this strange place called the work-world, but she took pride in what she was doing. She enjoyed it, even though it had proven to be more stressful than she anticipated. Doing something like that, where people’s lives were in danger, seemed anathema to her.
Call to Quarters (A Gaeldorcraeft Forces Novel Book 1) Page 19