Dark Coup (25 page)

Sparky sighed.  “Roger,” he said.  “Not that there’s anything wrong with it.”

Tuttle laughed.  “It’s ok,” she said.  “The boys actually like hearing a female voice when they’re coming back from a mission or when they have to fly blind or by instruments alone.  They prefer our calm, cool, no-nonsense voices to the…alternative.”

Sparky was nodding his head at what she was saying.  It kind of made sense when he thought about it.

“You play video games,” Tuttle asked.

“Pardon,” Sparky said.

“Video games,” Tuttle said.  “Did you play any first-person shooter video games before the power went out?”

“Some,” he said, “why?”

“Most of the AI or communications interface voices,” Tuttle asked, “were they male or female?”

Sparky’s eyebrows went up.  “Female now that you mention it,” he said.

“I know,” Tuttle said.  “I was approached about doing a voice-over for a couple of games about a year and a half ago.”

“And,” Sparky asked.

“Couldn’t find the time to work it in,” she said.  “Would have been cool I guess but in hind sight kind of short-lived.”

They both laughed.

“So,” Sparky said, “who found the Ham rig up at Campbell?”

“Actually,” Tuttle said, “I did.  Women don’t go to the front lines but the fighting was over and they needed someone with
real
comms experience so I was there to go in after the fact.”  There was a pause as she caught herself from using names.

“My Lieutenant was there when I found it and we kept it under wraps for a week or two until I figured out how to use it,” she said.  “I came close to losing everything when the battery almost died.  I wasn’t sure if I had all the passwords changed to get back into the system yet and the power cable had come unplugged and I hadn’t realized it.  Linux needs a better low battery indicator, or at least the window manager that this guy chose needed a better one.”

Sparky snickered to himself.  Grounder was notorious for disabling as many popups and widgets as possible to make his working environment ‘clean’.  In this case it could have been great had the laptop fallen into the wrong hands.

“And I assume you didn’t just stumble onto the Colonel’s private communications with his handlers either,” Sparky asked.

“Um, yeah,” Tuttle said.  “That was quite a bit more work, but I try not to dislocate my shoulder patting myself on the back for that one.”

“Do tell,” Sparky said.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The plans that Chuck had handed over to Joel and Mallory were just a rough draft–basically outlines for what he thought each town might provide.  They also focused on what he thought the strengths of their existing populations were.

“The more I look at what you’ve put together,” Mallory said, “the more I like it.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’ coming,” Chuck said.

“Well,” Mallory said with a shrug, “up to this point we, Joel and I, have tried to stay out of people’s daily lives as much as possible.  I agree with the general direction of what you’ve drawn up and I think we’re going to need pretty much everything you’ve outlined here, eventually.  What I don’t necessarily agree with, is the three of us deciding how and where everyone is going to live and what they’re going to do for the rest of their lives.”

Chuck nodded.  “I can see that,” he said, “any suggestions?”

“Actually, yes,” Joel said.  “We need a community-wide activity where we get everyone together to talk about your proposals.  Allow people to offer up suggestions, what skills they have that aren’t being used right now, that sort of thing.”

Joel looked at his watch and muttered a curse.  “We did it again,” he said.

“What,” Chuck asked.

“While the quarantine was going on,” he said, “we missed Independence Day!”

“There is one thing
we
need to discuss,” Mallory said, “and that’s our fuel situation.  We need to talk to Mr. Carlisle about planting more soybeans for bio-diesel.  It’s the one renewable fuel that we seem to be able to control.  I just wish we had more diesel vehicles.  After the loss of the one fuel dump and the expenditure of the extra fuel to put out the fire, we’re in bad shape.”

“Eventually, we’re going to have to find an alternative,” Joel said, “either to petroleum, or to the cars and trucks that run on gas.  Even the gas we had in storage is going to go stale without re-treatment soon.”

“Agreed,” Mallory said, “and I hate to use this as an example, but until we get something else usable online, we’re in the same predicament we were in before the power went out.  We need something better, but we can’t put time, effort, or resources into something better because we need all the resources we have just to maintain our current standard of living.”

“I think we’re finally to the point,” Joel said, “where it’s critical, though.  We have to take the time; we have to devote some resources to it.  We don’t have the luxury of not doing it right the first time and just doing it ‘right now’ because there may not be a second time to fix it.  I’m not hugging trees; I’m trying to save my own butt!”

“I know what you mean,” Chuck said.  “We can use coal for a good long while, and as we’re able to raise our technology base it’ll be cleaner and more efficient.  Unless we make a jump directly to electric vehicles though, coal power isn’t going to cut it for transportation.  We can’t even use it for rail transportation since the closest line is probably the power plant where we’re getting the coal
from
.”

“And that doesn’t even take into account the fact that the roads will eventually start to deteriorate,” Joel said, “if they aren’t already.”

“So we need to talk to Carlisle about more acreage for soy,” Mallory said with a sigh, “and we really need to find some alternative energy sources, sooner rather than later.”

“We’ve got to be more open-minded about alternative methods of transportation, too,” Joel said.

Mallory shook her head.  “It’s a good thing Mathis blew himself up with the fuel dump,” she said, “or I’d kill him myself.”

…

Joel and Chuck were walking back to the section of camp where the Chuck and Sheri were lived after the meeting with Mallory.  The cooling breeze outside was nice after being cooped up inside Mallory’s office.  Inside, Joel had longed for even a ceiling fan to circulate the stuffy air.

“Can we build a coal-fired power plant here in the park,” Joel asked suddenly.

“Can we,” Chuck repeated, “theoretically, yes.  Should we?  Absolutely not, no question about it.  It doesn’t make sense when there’s one already built only twenty miles away.”

Joel’s shoulders slumped.

“Why,” Chuck asked.  “The way you asked just now, it almost sounded like a spur-of-the-moment question.”

Joel scratched his chin and made a face before he answered.  “Mallory’s right,” he said.  “We’re in a catch-22 with regards to power.  We have
got
to find alternative resources but both until we do and in order to develop new and renewable energy, we need electricity.”

Chuck nodded.  “I didn’t spend a
lot
of time while I was there,” he said, “but I did take a look at the power plant itself while we were picking up the first load of coal.  It may be possible to get one turbine back online using good parts from the others.  My biggest concern is the windings.”

Chuck explained a little, without going into too much detail, when he saw Joel’s confused look.  “A turbine generator works by transforming mechanical energy, spinning,” Chuck said, “into electrical energy, either by passing the wound wires through or over a magnetic field or vice versa. Unless you want a science lesson, just accept it as fact and one of those scientific laws, just like the one that shorted out the grid last year in the first place.”

“Fair enough,” Joel said.  “So why are you worried about the windings?”

“Because the wires need to be a few things,” Chuck said.  “They need to be clean and free of oxidation, carbon deposits, that sort of thing.  They need to be a solid, continuous wire from beginning to end in the winding and the winding needs to be, well, a winding of wire and not a chunk of copper.  My fear is that the windings have either become fouled–which will
really
cut down on their ability to induce a current; there’s a break in the wire somewhere from when they shorted out; or there’re points where things have fused together.”

Chuck shook his head.  “If the coil is shorting out,” he said, “then you won’t get any current out of the generator and just end up shorting everything out internally again and have to start over.”

“Is it something you think you could take on,” Joel asked.

“It would be a full-time job,” Chuck said.  “I’d have to get back to you on that.  It’s not just my decision to make.”

…

“The gear assembly’s been busted for a couple of years,” Ian Fowler said to Eric, nodding to the stationary windmill blades at the top of the tower.

“We had a real bad windstorm and the brake didn’t get set ahead of time,” Ian said.  “I don’t have the tools or the spares to fix it, but if you do can have both it and the tower.   I suppose you could use it as a template for more if you wanted to.”

Eric had approached a dozen farmers with windmills, or more accurately wind pumps, on their land, driving one of the smaller pickup trucks they had whenever walking was out of the question.  He’d siphoned some gas from each of the remaining vehicles they’d brought from Earl’s group to top off the tank in this truck, but knew he wouldn’t even be able to do that much longer.

Ian had been the first to have one that he would be able to take a look at and reverse engineer.  He’d had a general idea of how they worked, but having never actually seen one in action or taken the transmission head apart, he was at a loss as to how he was going to put one together for the horse ranch.

“Mr. Fowler,” Eric said, “if I’m able to fix this one and duplicate the gearbox, I’ll be more than happy to give you this one back.  I’m not here to take advantage of you; I just want to figure out how the blasted thing works and find out if I can make another one.”

“Well,” Ian said with a chuckle.  “I’d appreciate that, but I won’t hold you to it.  We have the other one for now, and the solar backup is working ok.  When do you think you’ll start taking it apart?”

“I’ll be out tomorrow with somebody who actually knows what he’s looking at,” Eric said, thinking of Kyle, “to take the cover off and see how broken it is.  He’ll want to get a good look at it before we start disassembly.”

Ian nodded, they shook hands, and Eric headed back to the airport.

…

“Any idea how deep the well is at the ranch,” Kyle asked.

“Travis said it was less than eighty feet,” Eric said.  “I think he said they hit water at thirty and they drove the well another forty or so and they were still in the aquifer.”

Kyle looked like he was doing math in his head.  “A lot is going to depend on how badly the gearbox is damaged,” he said.  “It’s been a long time since I’ve even seen one much less tried to fix one.  Travis’s farrier may have to end up fabricating some replacement parts before it’s all said and done.”

“If he ends up with a working wind pump,” Eric said, “I don’t think he’ll complain too much.”

“What,” Kyle asked when it looked like Eric was thinking of something new.

“Just thinking of things we could do,” Eric said, “different skills we could provide on the road.  How much does one of those gearboxes weigh?”

“Depends,” Kyle said, “could be up to a couple hundred pounds for a really large, high-volume pump.  Why?”

“Carrying full heads would be heavy,” Eric said.  “But carrying full-size wooden templates that we could manufacture on-site…”

Kyle was nodding.  “It could even be fully assembled so we could prove that it works and we know what we’re talking about,” he said.  “Of course, they would need to have a blacksmith or the tools locally to make the parts.”

“How else could we make the parts,” Eric mused aloud, relishing the chance to sink his teeth into a problem he knew he and Kyle could solve.  “Or do we need to just find a blacksmith and bring along a portable forge?”

…

“I can’t fix it up here,” Kyle said, “but we should absolutely be able to fix this.”

Eric craned his neck around Kyle to get a look at the gearbox and see if he could figure out what was wrong without having to ask.  It took him a minute, but he finally saw the disconnected arms between two large gears on either side of the housing and a sliding pulley at the end of a rod that should obviously rise and fall.

“Ok,” Eric said.  “So tell me what happened.”

“You said that they didn’t set the brake before a bad windstorm, right,” Kyle said.

“Right,” Eric nodded.

“This model,” Kyle said, pointing at the still stationary blades, “has a brake that you engage from the bottom.”  Kyle pointed to a rod that locked the hub of the wind wheel.

“See the spring here,” Kyle asked as he pointed to the base of one of the blades.

Eric nodded again.

“That keeps a certain amount of tension on the blade,” Kyle continued.  “But when the hub is locked, it allows the blade to do what is called
feather
, or twist out of the way.  That way the tower doesn’t blow over in a really bad storm when the hub is locked or…”

“Or the gearbox tear itself apart because the wind wheel is spinning too fast,” Eric said.

“Exactly,” Kyle said.  “Usually the blades will feather if the wind gets too strong, even if the hub
isn’t
locked, but it looks like that didn’t happen in this case.  The pitman arms, those’re the long arms here that actually do all the work and pull the pump rod up and push it back down, they broke at the end where they connect to the main gears.”

“Do we have to take the whole thing down to fix it,” Eric asked.

Kyle shook his head.  “Technically, no,” he said.  “But we need to disassemble it to make sure nothing else is cracked or broken and see if there is any way we can cut copies with the torches at the airport.  It would really be best if the pitman arms were forged, too, so having the farrier make those would be ideal.”