On the High Frontier

4. Trick or Trap (part 5/6)

"Char, I need to talk to your operations bureau liaison."

"Who is this?" Not checking the incoming ID, make that very busy. "Let's see, Annoying b... Yoshida." Nice to know he updates his contact names. "Where are you. We lost you ... that is we were worried about you."

"You were trying to track me. A private citizen. But that can wait. Your liaison."

"Enough, we need to ... What the void are you doing in there?" At least he checked the location eventually.

"You weren't going to save Sachi, so someone had to." Kimiko's companion gasps at her name. "But that's not why I'm calling. I need to talk to whoever's managing station operations for you. Your friends here are about to blow the power system to cover their escape."

"Then we storm them."

"If it were that easy you'd have done it already. Look I need to talk mitigation with your liaison."

"You've done enough damage already. We have the best out here everything will be fine."

Kimiko's tone drops and her voice is almost a growl. "Listen, You can work out your personal problems with me later. How many of the best are in here with me?" It was a fair bet. "This is real and imminent. If I'm not talking to an adult in operations in the next five seconds, once this is over I will find you and I will feed you through the nearest voidlock, personally."

Char has encountered this Kimiko before, and a few seconds later. "Hello, Daniel Garresh." Char's not kidding, Garresh is a legend in the department, and even better he likes Kimiko.

"Danny, it's Kimiko Yoshida." He starts to object. "Just listen please, no questions. I am inside the core facility, and things are bad. They have massively overcharged the continuity system and are isolating and sealing the power path to main hub five. They intend to blow the unit there to initiate a cascade failure across the P2 systems. You need to disconnect and insulate as many linkages as you can at your end. I'll try to spread the path by restoring the cross links. They're welding bus bars over the isolators and I can't undo that in time"

"This explains the spiking we've been seeing. Excuse me a moment. Manuel, George, You heard that, go get the teams on it. No time for subtlety. Set up a high coercivity super-conductor mismatch with a disconnect behind it at the hub 5 power link. We need a triple gap." Damn, where in void did that come from, magnets in the conduction matrix? A discontinuity like that, with a standing magnetic wave, it should reflect most of the power straight back. Exploiting the bane of power transmission, the best indeed. If they get it right the regular mitigation will be able to deal with the remaining overload and protect P2. "You hear that, Kimiko?"

"Yeah, it was nice knowing you." The feedback would however vapourise the core storage array.

"Don't you give up on me now Kim." He is one of the very few people who gets away with that particular nickname. "I need you to lock in the bypass fail safes on the continuity linkages, and put the booster bars across the incoming feed lines. The feedback should then ride all the way out to the void connects, where any overage the capacity can't deal with will disperse safely." It might work. Kimiko would argue with his definition of safely, but it's better than in habitation. "Of course stability will hate it, but it's time they earned their chex. Good luck" Finally, professionals. "Come on people, let's get this done." The call cut off, Dan's never much for small talk when there's work to be done.

Kimiko turns back to Sachi who is standing looking worried. "What's going to happen to us?"

"You are coming with me until I find a safe place away from these batteries for you. I'm then apparently playing with this big electronics kit." There is a moment of resistance in Sachi's eyes but she reluctantly follows as Kimiko moves on.