Men of Stone (The Faded Earth Book 3) by Joshua Guess

Author:Joshua Guess [Guess, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-03-08T22:00:00+00:00

18

The lights dimmed noticeably. Keene sat at his desk studying every scrap of the limited information they were able to glean from the outside world. He had overplayed his hand in sending out teams, that much was plain now. Stirring up trouble by encouraging the factions had been dangerous enough. Communicating with agents who still lived among the other citizens in Rezzes put those assets in danger, but the opportunity the sudden political upheaval presented was too good to pass up.

Adding assault teams passing themselves off as Deathwatch had seemed like such a good idea at the time. The consequences, in hindsight, were not worth the potential gains.

He tapped the screen of his terminal. “Joseph, what’s going on with the lights?”

“I’m not sure, sir,” the aide replied. “According to the status screen on my system, power reserves have been dropping for the last two hours. I didn’t get a notification about it. We’re now below fifty percent of our total storage capacity.”

Keene blinked in surprise. “Below half? How is that possible?”

There was a long pause before Joseph’s voice wafted out of the tiny speaker once again. “Sir, you should look at the external feeds.”

Annoyed, Keene flipped on the surveillance application on his terminal. It took him a few seconds to understand what he was seeing.

The exterior of the Block, normally flat gray from the photovoltaic coating that turned sunlight into electricity, was bright white. Over the line, he asked, “What is that?”

His question was answered before Joseph could respond. On the screen, a small swarm of drones flickered past one camera. Each sprayed a fine mist onto a patch of gray. “Oh, I see. They’re covering the solar paint. Send a crew out to start cleaning it off. Make sure they have cover from snipers.”

“A few already tried, sir,” the aide replied. “Whatever that stuff is, it bonds pretty much instantly. They scraped at it and the paint came off with it.”

Keene leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “Fine. Put us on low power mode and see if the engineers can coax more out of the algae tanks for the fuel cells.”

“Yes, sir,” Joseph said.

There was not much hope for any immediate increase in hydrogen production from the tanks. The genetically modified algae that produced the gas as a waste product were already set to work at peak efficiency. Adding new tanks would take time and the process required tricky balancing and specialized equipment to stop any room housing them from becoming a bomb.

Still, the tanks could provide enough energy to keep them going, if only at a limp. There was still time to prepare. To get things right. This was a possibility Keene had planned for.

Deciding to make his own contribution to the cause, he turned off power to his office and swept through the door at its rear. His sleeping quarters ran on their own Brick, which could be recharged through its wall mount. Keene disconnected the cable leading to the main power system to make sure it wouldn’t draw automatically.

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