Once again, Alfred Wedar ran over the newest version of his speech to the press.
I am pleased to report another six months of production quotas met in under half the time. This truly is a demonstration of the effectiveness of our… something, something, Proxi Energy Station 01 is the best.
In truth, the speech was a work in progress.
Then thank in order: Proxi Sector Command, station managers, station managers’ spouses, operators, operators’ spouses, Alovan High Command but NOT their spouses since Admiral Miller recently divorced and we still need EXTRA FUNDING DON’T FORGET TO ANNOUCE CANDIDACY FOR THE HEROIC WORKER’S PRIZE. Maintenance is still screaming about extra funding and I do want some sleep tonight.
Holding a hair comb and a glass of water in his hand, Wedar walked to the control room. The station was currently on night mode, operating with a day-night cycle for the benefit of planet-side tourists and inspection crews. At this time, the station control room (really a glorified set of computer desks) would be staffed by a couple technicians. Wedar liked to show the cameras one or two graphs of energy production to placate the Proxi-based industry execs, before they turned back to figuring how far along they were on their production quotas. In any event, the control room was the same direction as the press.
Wedar held the comb in his teeth to free a hand, opening the door to be greeted by the unique smell of dehydrated coffee rations mixed with slightly singed plastic wire covers. One of the technicians glanced up, then pre-emptively said, “One sec,” before flicking the switch to start processing a report on energy production.
Wedar was always impressed with this sort of efficiency, and how the technicians would actually use their experience on the job, rather than passively gain it like most other people he worked with. However, it did lead to awkward silences with nothing happening. The techs seemed fine with it.
I guess silence would be most of their job, Wedar thought.
The majority of the processes in the control room (and the whole station really) were automated. Wedar tried to strike up conversation, putting his glass on a nearby desk and the comb back in his hand.
“Why do all you engineers use those flimsy plastic cups?” he tried, intentionally mislabelling their job.
The two technicians smirked at each other in mutual amusement before one answered,
“Risk assessment forms.”
Assuming it was some in-joke he would either be disinterested in or figure out later, Wedar ignored the reply and went back to combing his hair in silence. For a PR guy, Wedar felt he wasn’t a great conversationalist.
After a couple seconds, the energy readouts showed up on the screens for the techs to check. Half a second after that, physical copies started exiting the machine. Wedar placed his free hand under the slot to grab the bundle when they finished. When the last paper (recognizable due to the large Alovan Solar Industry emblem) came out, Wedar scooped up the bundle, took his glass and went to exit.
“Wait a sec,” the first tech interrupted.
“What?” Wedar stopped and turned back around, “The press are scheduled to start recording in 10 minutes.”
Wedar knew that it was closer to 20, but he wanted to hurry them up.
“This says we’ve got a massive drop in energy demand, uh, 40-ish percent.”
“Well I won’t show that figure then,” Wedar replied, trying to find a good graph.
The tech snatched the bundle.
“It’s not that simple, we-” the tech snapped, before she realised she didn’t actually need the physical readout and dropped it haphazardly on her desk, to the dismay of Wedar, who would probably need to sort those pages later.
“We need to find out where that’s coming from. If there’s some problem in a relay, we need to shut down energy transport ‘till we can fix it.”
“Can’t you wait 20 minutes?” Wedar inquired.
“Why?”
“Well, if I say energy production is fine when it’s been shut down, I’m a liar, but if it’s shut down after the press record my statement, I was technically telling the truth when I said it.”
The technician gave a pronounced look of confusion and disapproval.
“I know,” Wedar sighed.
Delaying repairs would be an asshole move, and extremely dangerous. Energy relays are too important to mess around with. While they were basically just docking ports for mega-batteries with miniature Network Jump engines, a slight fault could mean hundreds of energy shipments being lost in space, or worse, reappearing in the middle of some very expensive relay infrastructure.
Wedar reluctantly went into damage control mode.
“How bad?” he sighed.
“Can’t tell until we find where that reduction is coming fr-”
“On it,” the other tech interrupted, focused on his terminal.
The seconds until the other tech got the information seemed to take way too long.
“Who else knows about this?” inquired Wedar.
“If anyone else had found out, they would have immediately told us to shut down transportation. So probably just us. Which might be a cause for concern by itself.”
“Well at least we can deal with this in-house for the time-” said Wedar before the other technician interjected.
“Okay, we’re down on stations Roller, Wenlin and Trommel plus one classified station, and,” a pause, “fuck, the entire Zeta sector.”
“What the hell?” the first tech exclaimed, “That’s like twenty fucking relays.”
“Get this, stations Bebus and Compel are still sending operational pings, even though they should be using the downed network.”
“I didn’t get any notice of relay rerouting.”
“We might have a comms blackout or –”
At this point Wedar stopped listening to their jargon babble but could tell that his previous goals of getting some sleep in the coming hours had just been killed. After a few more seconds, Wedar picked up that the techs were going to call the station managers.
The first tech’s computer switched to display a black screen with large white text AUDIO ONLY and NOTIFYING RECIPIENT. Fixated on the screen, Wedar placed his glass back down on the closest tech’s desk.
Unfortunately, the two techs and Wedar were too focused on the call to notice the alert that a shipment had recently been returned from Bebus energy station. While it was receiving energy shipments just fine, all other station operations had recently been placed under new management. The tech closest to Wedar noticed the glass he haphazardly placed and glanced in annoyance at him. Because of the glance, she saw out of the corner of her eye that the shipment return from Bebus had been scanned to find a large crate of explosive material where a depleted battery should be.
While the technician had a faster reaction time than the new managers of Bebus station anticipated, nothing could have realistically stopped the detonation from vaporising the lower levels of the Proxi station, including the residential quarters, its current inhabitants and both the primary and secondary energy reserves. This meant that the lights, the call being placed, and the artificial gravity in the control room were given short boosts of extreme power. Theoretically, these systems would have breakers to prevent this, but they had also been vaporised moments earlier.
Wedar crumpled to the floor, subject to around 3 times the amount of gravity he was used to in a room bathed in light. It felt like every piece of his body was being compressed into the ground. Straining to retain consciousness, he looked up as his glass of water shattered from the force, shards embedding themselves in his chest from the half meter drop. This new, vivid pain forced him to give up on trying to stay conscious. Just before his vision went, he saw that the two plastic cups of the technicians had simply fell to the floor without breaking.
So that’s why they use those...
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