At the Edge by Justin Bell & Mike Kraus

Author:Justin Bell & Mike Kraus [Bell, Justin & Kraus, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Muonic Press Inc
Published: 2019-01-17T22:00:00+00:00

***

Now.

Tuesday, September 10th.

The Rocky Mountains.

Boots clomping down the echoing metal grate steps, Travis made his way down into the bowels of the compound, the narrow rectangles of pale white light running up and down the corridor, shining a faint glow along the metal and concrete passage. Jumping down the last two steps, his boots slamming on concrete, he moved forward, eyeing the door to the control room. He heard Pete’s footfalls close behind him, both of them moving quickly and with determination.

“Mr. Goddard, good of you to join us,” Welk said as Travis swung into the control room, suddenly surrounded by walls of circuitry, technical devices and dozens of strobing yellow and green lights.

“Apologies, Daniel,” Travis said briskly. “We were dealing with a near riot up above. People are on edge.”

“Then by all means we should put them at ease. I’m sure getting the orbital antenna up and running would go a long way toward resolving that little issue.”

“Understood,” Travis acknowledged.

“At this point,” Welk continued, “while the antenna itself is assembled and functional, we still struggle with point-to-point connectivity to the console.” He walked over to a terminal screen embedded on the wall, just above an extended keypad. There was some pale green text on the screen, asking for the input of a command, followed by a blinking cursor.

“I can type the full text of War and Peace into that screen and nothing happens. I need to have remote terminal access to bounce the signal into orbit and access the command line of one of the satellites. This is essential to the next stage of our operations.”

Travis nodded. “We can make it happen. We diverted resources from the cabling and underground work in order to construct the antenna, but now that it’s finished, those engineers can be moved back to this work.”

“I want this to happen within twenty-four hours,” Welk said insistently.

“We’ll get it done in eight,” Travis replied with confidence.

Welk smiled widely. “Is that a fact?”

“We’ll make it happen, Daniel. I know how important this stage of the project is, and you’re exactly right, this step forward will help morale in a big way.”

Welk looked at him out of the corner of his eye, a slightly mistrustful look on his face.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Travis,” he said, “but you’re being surprisingly agreeable. My understanding was completing connectivity and establishment of this end-to-end circuit was exceptionally challenging, which was part of the reason it was being pushed back. Is that not the case?”

“It is the case,” Travis replied, “but I just got done meeting with a group of people, about a quarter of our population here, I’d say, and they’re petrified, Daniel. They’re frightened and desperate, and we need to do something to take the edge off. If allocating our entire engineering force in this task for a short burst of time will help with that, that’s what we’ll do.”

“Very well,” Welk replied. “Keep me posted.”

Travis nodded and walked from the control room back out to the hallway to begin conversations with the engineering team.

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