Rachel left the Operations Room and walked down the corridor. Drefnig had things under control for now and it didn't look like General Markov was going to take a break any time soon. She couldn't understand his stubborn bull-headedness. Cassendra had told him his life was at risk but he still wouldn't listen to common sense advice. Rachel hoped his stubbornness wouldn't kill him.
Raising a hand to her comms unit, she opened a call to Parker. 'Hi Parker, did you manage to find my daughter yet? I'm getting kind of worried.'
'Hi, Rachel. No, not yet, but I'm sure she'll turn up soon.'
'What makes you say that?'
'I caught a couple of glimpses of her on various visual logs in Tower Two. She was fine, just walking around and singing to herself in various places.'
'I need to have a serious word with her when I find her. Do you know where she is now?'
'No. She's difficult to track. I've seen her on four different levels so far but she hasn't used the Air Route or the stairs.'
'How is that possible?'
'I'm not sure. Could Lisa have got her hands on your gemstone? She would be able to use it if she had it, wouldn't she?'
'She doesn't have it. She did use it earlier, but I took it off her. I have both gemstones now.'
'Okay. Well, I'll let you know next time I pick her up on any of the visual logs. I wouldn't worry about her for now. She didn't seem to be upset.'
'She's never upset. That's what I'm worried about. She's a bright girl but she's not blessed with much common sense sometimes. I don't think she understands how much danger we're all in.'
'That sounds like someone else I know.'
Rachel didn't know what he was talking about at first but then her face flushed. 'Hey!'
'Sorry, Rachel. I'll keep an eye out for her. Try not to worry.'
Rachel shook her head and ended the call. Her daughter was not the easiest of children to manage. Rachel had hoped it would be easier to control a teenager than a six-year-old but it wasn't turning out that way so far.
Brushing a hand through her hair, she headed for the nearest Air Route. It felt good to be out of the Operations Room for a while. Sometimes she just needed to take a walk and get some fresh air beyond the confines of the Operations Room's walls.
A dozen soldiers walked past her in the corridor, carrying heavy equipment sacks between them. Rachel nodded towards them. Everyone was busy in the White Spear today. A thought occurred to her. Suddenly she knew where she wanted to go next - the Satellite Control Room. She hopped into the Air Route and headed for level 288.
* * * * *
It was quiet when she arrived at the Satellite Control Room. None of the satellite platforms had been usable since Commander Mark Lance had revealed himself to be one of the Augmented and infected most of the systems with viruses and malware.
Commander Ling Tyler sat at one end of the long table that had once been host to Jake and Alice. Alice had avoided the place ever since Jake had died, and it had become a ghost room, a place where nobody wanted to go. Tyler was one of the newly promoted commanders. She hadn't been present in the White Spear when all those things had happened. Maybe it was just what the place needed - a fresh pair of eyes, unencumbered by bad memories.
Tyler watched status updates scrolling across a bank of consoles that wrapped around her seat. Her black hair was cut short, revealing her small, perfect ears. She looked like she was concentrating on her readouts but she looked up when Rachel walked in.
'Commander Henson,' Tyler said with a nod.
Rachel glanced around the empty room. The last time she had been here, she had found Jake Harris lying dead on the floor with Ice on his face and beard. He had always been good to her. The memory still haunted her every time she closed her eyes.
'Is it just you here?' Rachel said.
Tyler nodded, her black eyes reflecting in the lights. 'There's not much happening. I'm just waiting for the purge to complete.'
'Any idea how long it'll be before we get the satellite platforms back online?'
'At least a week.'
'So long?'
'The purge will complete in a few days, but I wouldn't advise trying to use the platforms so soon after that. We're still not sure what Lance did while he was connected to these terminals, but we know he had bad intentions. We should run every diagnostic we can think of, just in case we missed something. I'd be tempted to get copies of the original firmware and verify the existing systems directly against the original. That's the only way we'll know for sure if something has been changed.'
Rachel grimaced.
'What?' Tyler said.
Rachel didn't answer at first. She looked at the consoles mounted on the back wall, and then turned back to Tyler. 'We can't really trust the original firmware. Some of the supply chain sources are far less credible than we had hoped.'
'Really?' Tyler rested her hands on each side of the blue projected keypad in front of her.
'I'm afraid so. You'll need to find another way to verify the systems.'
'Okay.'
'Have you spoken to Alice Penning? She can give you an update on all the work she's been doing to clean out malware and viruses from our weapons systems and droids. She has her hands full right now.'
'Yes,' Tyler said. 'I did speak to her a while ago. I'll catch up with her again soon so we can align our strategies.'
Rachel stood in the doorway, looking at the readouts on the consoles that hung from the ceiling on flexible black poles.
'Is there something I can help you with?' Tyler said, turning her head to one side. Her shoulders were thin for a soldier.
Rachel nodded. 'We're going to need more power. Can we still control the solar arrays?'
'Yes. There's no problem with the solar arrays.'
'What is the maximum power they can deliver to the White Spear?'
'Maximum? I need a bit more context. What else do you expect to work at the same time? Do you mean the maximum they can deliver and still be prepared to launch satellite strikes once the purge is complete?'
'No. I mean absolute maximum. All of the solar arrays. Forget everything else.'
'Okay... give me a minute to work it out.' Tyler pulled one of her consoles closer, staring at its display as she typed rapidly on the projected keypad in front of her.
'How much can you get?' Rachel said.
'Hmmmm...' Tyler sat up straight and leant closer to a larger console on her right. 'Well, currently we have three solar arrays directing power to the White Spear receivers. Each array has around one thousand collectors, but we're not using anywhere near all of that. The arrays are used as a cluster so if one fails the others will take over. The Dome Shield uses around one third of our current power input. The tower shields use another third. The rest is for redundancy and will automatically be used to support the Dome Shield if one of the arrays fails.'
'Do we have any redundancy for the tower shields too?'
'No. Not with the current configuration.'
'Isn't that a problem?'
'Not really. No shield has ever failed. We've never lost a solar array either.'
'Never?'
'Not that I'm aware of.'
'I want shield redundancy anyway. It's a risk we can't afford to take.'
'I can bring another solar array online if you like.'
'How many solar arrays do we have.'
'Altogether, around twenty, I think. Let me check. Twenty-three. Some of them don't work though.'
'I thought you said the arrays had never failed?'
'They haven't, but some are old and were shut down long ago because they had a low power output compared to the newer ones. They haven't been used for hundreds of years.'
'Who built the solar arrays?' Rachel said, twining her fingers together behind her back.
Tyler stared at her with a blank expression. 'Who what?'
'Who built the solar arrays? Have we done any physical maintenance on them?'
Tyler glanced down at her console. 'I'm sorry, Commander Henson, I don't know. There are no records of anyone performing physical maintenance anywhere outside of the Dome Shield.'
'Never mind,' Rachel said, waving her hand in a dismissive gesture. 'I want all the arrays providing power to the White Spear. Can you do that?'
'All of them? Do you know how much energy that will be?'
'I'm hoping it's far more than we could possibly need.'
'No. It's way more than that. I'll have to check if the White Spear can even handle that much power input. We might overload something.'
'Yes, check it out, but I want the absolute maximum on primary and redundant systems. Tell me when it's done.'
'Okay. I hope you know what you're doing. That much power could cause as many problems as it solves.'
'Let me worry about that.'