You have to stay focused on the job, but you also have to check the horizon …
Tsunami, Drill Site #2, Contract Day 46
The rocky island just barely qualified for the name, a pimple on the ocean surface with a continuous shower of salt spray from the surf rolling in from Ocean 2. One of the new guys had earned himself the nickname of Malibu when he wistfully wished for his surfboard. There was a decided lack of palm trees and nubile maidens.
The big brains on Earth had done their job and come up with a solution. With good data, they could see just where the gas pockets were. The best site, and the second best site as well, were right next to gas pockets and therefore unusable. They had pulled this one back out of the wastebasket because it wasn’t.
“Jello, have you got the Can anchored down?” The Can was at the highest point of the island, which wasn’t very. That’s a hurricane bar out there, or I’m an otter’s maiden aunt, and it’s fixin’ to roll right over this little pimple.
“Doubled up the stainless steel wire ropes, Boss.” His gaze was on the Northern horizon just as hers was. Neither of them liked what they saw. A warmer planet with higher gravity and thicker air had more violent weather.
Tommygun was weighing one of the decisions which fell to the CSO on site. She could call down TARDIS from Swagman and pull everyone out, but there was neither room nor time to evacuate the equipment. They would have to secure it as best they could, with the real chance of losing something vital. If it wasn’t vital, it wasn’t on the island. Or, they could keep drilling until the weather got too bad, then secure everything and ride out the hurricane when it hit them. She didn’t bother hoping it might just miss them. Tommygun was a pessimist, so her surprises were all pleasant ones.
She flipped out her satellite phone and punched the speed dial for a video call. “Swagman, we’ve got some weather moving in. What’s the situation on the evac option?”
The Captain of Swagman was on the bridge. Ariel Wilson’s manner was as cool as it always was, but her trace of British accent was just a bit more noticeable than usual. “At this point the weather is rather marginal, but we might manage one flight to evacuate the people. I’d want to fly it myself.”
Sticks by her own come Hell or high water. Gotta respect the woman, but I’m not going there. Ariel Wilson would describe someone on life support as ‘rather unwell’. She had literally written the book on the RITA nuclear landers, of which they only had one.
“Copy. We’ll ride it out down here. Keep an eye on the weather for us, OK?” Tommygun said.
“Frequent updates, certainly. We’re not a weather satellite, but we’ll do our best for you.” Ariel said.
“Thanks. Catch you on the flip side.” Tommygun ended the call, gave Jello a sidelong glance. He was keeping his cool. “Get as much done as you can. Where are you on hurricane preps?”
It took about five minutes for him to run down all the things done and doing to make them as ready as they could be. She added a couple of things from memory, but in justice they were pretty minor.
Tommygun gave the hurricane bar a last look, sure it was getting closer and darker, then headed off to the rig, watching her footing on the dark wet rock. There were some spits of rain to add to the continuous spray from the surf, which she was sure was picking up a little.
The rig bulked up against the darkening sky as she approached. It wasn’t the tall lattice tower of the oil rigs of yore. The nuclear drill itself was hidden behind a thick radiation shield when it wasn’t down in the shaft. Reels of heavy cable supplying power and control fed down into the drill hole itself. The main power cable ran to the nuclear generator by the landing zone for the shuttle.
In a shelter to one side Auger was controlling the drill using a VR helmet. Tommygun made enough noise ducking into the small shelter to make sure Auger knew she was there, then tapped her on the shoulder.
“Auger, how’s it going?” Tommygun had learned a long time ago that the straight talk from the people at the coal face was the best source.
“All right, not great, Boss. There are fissures in the rock. So far, not big. Shooter is on the feed, says they’re not big enough to be a problem.” Her voice was absent, focused on what she was doing.
“Copy.” Tommygun kept herself from adding “Push as hard as you can.” because she wasn’t going to undermine Jello’s authority, and it was as sure as taxes he’d already told her the same thing.
She stepped up onto the steel plate of the drill platform, sized to exactly fit in a shuttle’s load bay. She did a walk around of the rig, looking for problems, human as much as mechanical. Periodically the bean counters back on Earth whined about the cost of people on deployment. Just as regularly they got told to shut up by Mister Jamie and the head office.
Tommygun didn’t do people maintenance with a wrench—well, not often, anyway. It still needed doing. She looked over Malibu’s shoulder at the heavy cable winch, saw the auto-tension was keeping an even strain, and he was watching it closely. She moved on. Hovering over shoulders didn’t help anything. The other winch operator was also doing a good job, though to be sure the ‘Boss is watching’ effect was undoubtedly at work.
She stood back and flicked through the readouts from the masks on the crew on the HUD of her Command mask. All green.
She watched for a little while, just getting the feel of the mood from the chatter on the mask frequencies. There was urgency there, but it was focused toward getting the job done as soon as possible, not the nervousness which bred mistakes.
The path between the rig and the Can was clearly visible from the comings and goings as shift changes. The steel wire ropes were all properly secured to the long steel pitons driven deep into holes in the rock and snubbed down taut.
This is me being thorough, not me being nervous. Tommygun had grown up on the Texas coast, and she’d seen some hurricanes.
She flicked to the Command channel. “Jello, get someone to secure down the power cable to the Can.”
“Copy, Boss.” She didn’t mark it against him. It took experience to know heavy objects still got picked up by wind and surf. Five minutes later a work crew locked out of the Can, grabbed sledgehammers and started driving spikes and moving rocks to ensure the cable wasn’t going anywhere. The Can had a backup generator, but the chance you didn’t take didn’t come back to bite you.
She prowled around for a little longer, but didn’t find anything else. She gave the Northern horizon one last look, didn’t like it any better, and locked in to the Can, unmasking and rubbing the marks off her face.
Sitting for a while with a cup of coffee, she thought about the things that could kill them and what she’d done about them, then turned in to get some sleep before shift change.
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