“Why do you think you didn’t see them? I mean, in those bright red jackets, they’re hard to miss.”
Hodges responded so quickly his words almost ran into each other. “I was inside the test cell. Inside, where the engine was sitting.”
“So you couldn’t see anyone? The engine was blocking your view or something?”
“Yeah, must have been because of that. I couldn’t see anyone because of where I was.”
Noriko hissed out a breath. That was not what Hodges had declared in his verbal report, or his written one. “He said in his initial interviews that he was working 1A that night more than 2A and only came over to help for a half hour before the test.”
“And he wasn’t anywhere near the run tanks or engines.” Cameron had a sharkish smile on his face. “Cap, can we pull him into the trial based on this?”
“You bet we can.” Banderas gave an approving nod. “Chappell’s good at this. In focusing on one thing, he’s making Hodges admit to being there, and contradicting his own story.”
Conrad didn’t let any signs of victory show up on his face. “Well, that makes sense, you can’t see around that huge engine. I mean, how big is that thing? Several hundred tons?”
“Huge, I know that much, and the test cell isn’t exactly small either.” Hodges actually smiled, as if he were perfectly at ease and knew that he was going to walk out soon. “You can see why I miss a lot, when I’m up there prepping for a test.”
“So what all do you do? To prepare for a test?”
“Well, we check all of the lines, make sure they’re airtight. Then we check and double check the fail safes. Takes a couple of guys to do that. We have a whole checklist of things to do, sometimes it changes depending on what type of engine we’ve got in there.”
“So you did business as usual with the 2A engine? Nothing unusual or different there?”
“No, just the same ‘ole, same ‘ole.”
Conrad turned to his partner and asked, “You getting all of this, Ben?”
“Sure am,” Ben assured him, hands just busy typing up something on a holo keyboard that only he could see.
“To sum up,” Conrad started ticking points off on his fingers, “you were actually there near the engine on the night of the test, you personally handled the fail safes, and you were there for most of the prep time before the test fired. Is that right?”
Hodges must have realized his goof as his eyes shifted away and the relaxed posture went abruptly rigid. “Well, I didn’t mean to say that, just that I was there part of the time. I was at 1A part of the time, too.”
“Sure, sure, didn’t mean to say differently. So, last question for you.” Conrad’s easy smile went stiff. “What was the reason? Corporate sabotage or does your belief in natural progression play into it?”
Hodges shifted in his chair, one leg coming up behind the other so that his ankle hooked behind his knee.
“Ahhh,” Banderas cried in soft victory. “He’s got him.”
Wait, what? Noriko didn’t see how this change in body positioning meant something.
“Captain, please share with the class,” Cameron drawled.
“It’s a sign of constraint when they do that,” Banderas answered, his whole body leaning forward in anticipation. “Hodges is holding something back.”
When Conrad didn’t get an answer, he pushed. “Did you not understand my question?”
“I don’t understand,” Hodges denied, nervously scratching at the palms of his hands.
“We think the reason why Wesson and Landers sabotaged the test cell ley lines was because they were paid to do so. Because of corporate sabotage. At least, there’s evidence that they have more money than they should from their spending habits.”
Hodges’ head jerked back in surprise. “There is?”
Noriko was very glad that Katie had found that, as it was what cinched their case against Wesson and Landers. Although it did beg the question: Just how thorough was her research for trial? And how much power did that woman wield, that she could get their bank statements?
“Is that why you helped them?” Conrad pressed. “Because you were paid to do so by some corporation?”
Hodges lost his cool. He slammed backwards in his chair, ramming into the wall. “I want a lawyer.”
“Okay, man, that’s fine. You’re not going to answer my question?”
“I want a lawyer!” Hodges screamed, eyes wild.
Banderas gave a satisfied smile, like a glutton after putting away a feast. “I do love it when they lawyer up. It means we have the man dead to rights. Makes Conrad’s and Ben’s lives a little harder, though.” Turning, he smiled at them, in the most jovial mood that he’d ever displayed. “Excellent work, you two. I will make sure this goes on your records. Also, I’ll talk to the proctor for you and get you out of trouble there. You caught the one person we needed to find for this case to come to a close, they can’t blame you for skipping a test.”
Knowing proctors as she did…Noriko was not convinced. They tended to hold grudges.
A call beeped in and Banderas tapped his Bluetooth. “Banderas.” All coloring wiped out of his face in an instant. “WHAT?!”
Noriko did not like that response. It meant something had gone very, very wrong. Internally, she started praying: Please not another berserk ley line, please oh please.
Banderas gestured for them to follow even as he hung up the call, burst out of the room and sprinted down the hallway.
“What’s happened?” Noriko demanded, hot on his heels.
“The main generator in Tehachapi just went off-line and sent power surging through the main ley line in town,” Banderas snapped over his shoulder. As he ran, he slapped a hand against a large red button near their office doors, sending an alarm blaring. “I need everyone on hand, MOVE!”
26th Merlin
Noriko piled into the van so quickly she nearly did a nose dive for the floor and only just caught herself on the bench. Her team poured in like a tsunami wave, but, even still, Jack had the van in motion before the back door was properly closed. The van tires squealed as they went on two wheels out of the parking lot and raced for the mountains.
As they went through the town, Noriko couldn’t help but notice that there wasn’t a single building that had its lights on. A blackout? “Was the power surge bad enough to knock everything in town offline? Or…” They left the main part of town, opening up her view past buildings and to the mountains that surrounded the town.
Noriko’s eyes went to the windmills that were spread out like a carpet of needles on top of the mountains. Not a single one moved. The full impact of what she was seeing made her stomach sink and then twist into a Gordian knot. If no power was being generated, not from the windmills, not from the ley lines, then there was literally nothing being sent to the coast. “This is not good.”
“This is in fact a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day,” was Cameron’s flat take. “To quote one of my favorite storybooks. Now. Cap, we got a plan?”
Banderas didn’t rattle off an answer but instead looked at the two of them steadily. “You told me your max is 78 kilomerlins before, but is that your absolute max?”
Somehow, Cameron managed to smile as if nothing were wrong and shrug. “Nope.”
“So what is your max?”
“Well, Cap, depends. How long you want me working? The 78 KMs I can do for about three hours, or I can top out at 80 KMs for one hour. Your call, boss.”
Again, Banderas didn’t respond immediately, but instead look at Noriko. His eyes demanded confirmation.
“I can keep up with him, sir,” she assured him. She’d likely collapse on the spot doing it, but she COULD do it.
“They really, truly didn’t rank either one of you right,” Lars whispered, as much to himself as to anyone else.
Banderas pulled up a map of the generator on his holoshades and then threw it to theirs. Noriko put hers on to see it. They called it a generator, but, in fact, the
re were five—four smaller ones and a large receiving generator that was a connecting hub for all four. They looked small on the diagram, but she knew from the scale that they were in fact huge—two stories each with 300-foot diameters.
Jack turned from the phone call he had been on and reported, “Generators are offline but only because they did an emergency shutdown. No damage to any of the units.”
Their captain’s eyes closed and his mouth moved in a silent prayer of thanks. “I wasn’t sure what we were going to do if any of them were damaged. Right now, we have far too much power lashing about to put it back into a ley line, the generators are the only other safe place for it to go. Alright, people, here’s the situation: we have nearly a megamerlin or more power surging through the two main ley lines that run along the foot of the mountains.”
Noriko thought she’d been nervous before, but this news made her borderline panicky. A megamerlin?! It would take the dozen teams stationed in Tehachapi working for hours before they could parse that energy level down to where it was supposed to be! And they might not have that time. Odds were something would burn out or explode before they could get there.
“Charlie and I are heading for the north ley line, we’ll batten it down so it’s no longer surging. Lars, Lizzie, you’re working with us. At my signal, they’ll turn one generator back on—funnel every bit of power you can into it, but don’t blow us up in the process. Comprende?”
“Si, El Capitan,” Lars joked, smile beyond strained.
“Good. Cameron, I understand you hang out with Noriko’s friends, you ever work with them?”
“Just little things, Cap, like the climbing trick.”
“Good, so you have some experience. I’m pulling another partnership from the Team Dawnflight. For this, you need people you know. Sam and Teddy will be with you. They’ll work to batten the line down and keep the power from surging into the generator while you feed merlins into it.”
“Roger that.” Cameron looked to Noriko, manner confident, or trying to look that way. It was the tension in his shoulders that spoiled it. “At least we get to work with friends this time around.”
“I’ll take any silver lining I can get right now.” Noriko sent a quick text to both of them that read: Heard we’re partnering up with you. You on your way?
She got a reply almost immediately from Sam: ETA looks like we’re a minute behind you. Which way we playing this? Who’s catcher, who’s batter?
You’re catcher, we’re batter. Although baseball terminology seemed beyond strange to use in this situation, Noriko wasn’t arguing the point now.
Kk.
Some part of her mind that still operated logically reminded her that in her gear bag was a certain present she needed to use. Digging it out, she took off radio band, phone, and Bluetooth and dropped them all into the protective box before clamping it shut. Glancing up, she caught Jack’s eyes and reported, “I won’t have any equipment on me during this.”
“Afraid of frying it?” he asked, almost rhetorically as he didn’t wait for a response. “Good idea. I know John and Khanh will appreciate the thought. We’ll coordinate with you through Cameron.”
The van jumped a little as it sped over a speedbump, then again, jostling its passengers. Noriko paid it little heed as the most overwhelming sense of power washed over her skin, making it prickle and crawl. It felt like a thousand fairies with needles were stabbing all over. The previous experiences were nothing compared to this.
They skidded to a halt, Lars hit the van door hard enough to make it bounce, and they all tumbled out. Noriko was at that point glad she had skipped lunch, as if she’d had anything in her stomach, she would have lost it. Her feet were barely on the ground and it was so statically charged with energy that it gave her vertigo.
Cameron grabbed her around the shoulders in a vise-like grip, a shield snapping up around them as he did so, keeping the worst of the power at bay. Glancing up, she found that he was just as white and shaken as she felt.
“Thanks,” she gasped.
“Take advantage while you can,” was his only response. He was already leading them both toward the generator just in front of them.
Noriko stumbled along with him, trying to get her bearings as they moved. From here, she couldn’t see more than two generators. They were large enough that they blocked her view of anything else. The concrete all around the base was already cracking in large fissures from the pressure, and there was a hint of scorch marks.
As they half-jogged forward, electricity jumped from one transformer to another, arcing like lightning, although fortunately it didn’t shoot away from the transformers. The sizzle and pop of the electricity made her jump and a painful tingling raced along her skin.
Banderas was shouting at Jack as he ran forward, “I thought these things were shut down!”
“They’re supposed to be, I’m on it!” Jack shouted back, racing for the far left side, where the control room was supposed to be.
The ley lines were completely exposed to the air, power coming out of them in visual waves, like a heat wave off a desert floor but far more sinister and dangerous. The air held that charge that felt like mild electrocution, Noriko’s skin stinging at the sensation. If she had smelled her hair melting, it wouldn’t have surprised her. There was sand kicked up in the air too, hovering like dust motes, only far more thickly. It obstructed the line of sight in every direction, although of course it was worse right next the lines. The closer she got, the more she saw that the edges of the open ley line were melting.
Cameron stopped five feet from the edge and looked to her with a maniacal grin. “Ready?”
“Max-max or max?” she double checked, and prayed that he wouldn’t say what she knew he would.
“Max-max.”
Yeah, she knew that would be his answer. Gulping, she chose to sit seiza style again rather than risk falling over later.
“Dying request, Spidey.”
“Shoot.”
“Warn me before you collapse.”
She’d think he was joking if the situation wasn’t this dire. “You do the same. Alright, ready?”
“Ready.”
“Three, two, one, go!” So saying, she drew power heavily from the ley line and sent it to him. Because of the emergency of the situation she couldn’t hone the power as she normally did before sending it on, so it was half-raw and must have felt very prickly to him. Cameron didn’t even flinch, just took it all on.
Her immediate focus had once again been on the ley line out of control, but of course for one to be out of control, another would have to be robbed of all strength. Cameron immediately diverted the power she gave him into that drained line. It went from nearly nonexistent to glowing ever so slightly as it was revitalized.
From the other side of the line, Banderas and Charlotte did the same thing, although being Level 5s they didn’t have the ability to handle as much power.
Another van in GF red screeched up, and people poured out of it. Noriko nearly wept at seeing Sam and Teddy racing her direction. Also, being Level 4s, they would be able to handle power like she and Cameron could, and the more power that was put back in place, the better.
Sam grasped her shoulder briefly in greeting but wasted no time on words. She glanced at Teddy, who gave her a nod, and then she started transferring power into the drained line as her brother fed it to her. “I’ve got damage control,” she informed Cameron in a professional, clipped voice. “Batter up!”
“Cap, generator’s okay?” Cameron checked.
“Only the one right next to us.”
Cameron didn’t need another nudge. He promptly turned his attention to the generator to his immediate left and started pouring power into it. It whirred to life, making a distinct hum that was almost subterranean in its volume.
Even as she fed her partner power, she wondered about the other four. Were they only temporarily offline? One of them at least had damage to it, from those sparking transformers. Were the o
thers as well? There was no way in heaven that a single generator could take on the load of the other four.
Jack came sprinting up although he stopped ten feet away, a prudent measure as he had no means of defending himself from a power overload. “LA dispatch has called! They’ve lost six inches already and the backup generators are threatening to overheat. What do I tell them?”
“We’re feeding power into a generator now,” Banderas relayed crisply. “They should be seeing it shortly. Jack, what about the others?”
“Generator 3 is offline until we can repair it, but the others are functioning.”
“Cameron,” the captain jerked his chin to indicate the generator next to them, “get this one. I’ll focus on the other one.”
“Got it, Cap.”
Noriko kept feeding power, kept up the insane wash of merlins and transferred them to her partner, and tried not to either pass out or lose focus. She caught Teddy’s eye once and he looked just as overwhelmed as she felt, but also just as determined.
The tsunami of power that greeted them slowly dissipated as it was either fed into a generator or returned to the other ley line. It felt like years, decades, for this to happen. Without a watch or phone on her, Noriko couldn’t begin to tell how long they actually worked. Streams of sweat poured from her temples, under her arms, and down along her spine.
Two more teams poured in, all of them joining in the efforts, and then two partners focused on burying the exposed ley line and replacing the broken cement. Noriko counted it as a victory as she watched this happen, because if they had the manpower to spare to do that, then the situation wasn’t nearly as dangerous as before.
Jack tapped her shoulder and then pulled her gently to her feet. “Up you go. You’re done.”
“Stick a fork in me, that kind of done?” Cameron gasped. He had his hands braced against his knees, sucking in air with ragged pulls.
“More like ‘you’re done in,’” Jack corrected dryly. “Either way, to the van, both of you. Get checked by medical. I don’t want you collapsing.”
Call to Quarters (A Gaeldorcraeft Forces Novel Book 1) Page 24