Free Web NovelChapter 74: Underground (II)
The west secondary access went in at noon.
Simpler than the primary, a narrower shaft with the same ladder integration, emerging inside the building perimeter at the base of the west blast wall with a hatch that was flush with the floor and locked from below.
The exit position gave anyone using the secondary access a covered approach to the building interior from the west face which was the cleanest external approach based on Gareth’s route map.
Rei was on the west face anchor confirmation and she ran it the same way she ran everything now, systematic, twice over, hands on each anchor, no movement until confirmed.
Michael was watching her work when Dr. Kang appeared beside him.
She looked at Rei and then at Michael. "She’s good at this," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"The precision component of medicine is the same principle," Dr. Kang said. "You check what needs checking in the correct sequence and you don’t move to the next step until the previous one is confirmed.
Some people have the temperament for it naturally." She paused. "She does."
He looked at her. "Are you recruiting her for the clinic."
"I’ve been teaching her for three weeks," Dr. Kang said simply. "The formal acknowledgment of that seemed appropriate." She looked at the west access hatch going in.
"She knows the basic assessment protocol, wound management, medication administration, the triage priority sequence." She paused. "She’s been learning it the way she does everything. Quietly and thoroughly."
He thought about Rei in the barracks three weeks ago barely speaking and looked at her now with her hands on the anchor points and the focused certainty of someone who had found what they were good at and was holding it with both hands.
"Tell her," he said. "Formally. That she’s part of the clinic."
Dr. Kang looked at him. "I just did," she said. "Before I came to find you." She paused. "I wanted you to know."
He looked at her and she looked back with the precise eyes and the particular quality of someone who kept him informed because she’d decided he was worth informing and not for any more complicated reason than that. ƒreewebηoveℓ.com
"Thank you," he said.
She nodded and went back to the clinic.
[Bond Event — She Told Him About Rei: Dr. Kang. +1 Bond Point. Current BP: 7 — Dr. Kang.]
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Cole and Gareth had their planning conversation in the cleared apartment two doors down at two in the afternoon.
Michael was not in it. He knew it was happening because Cole had told him it was happening and because the pulse showed both signatures in the cleared apartment for forty minutes with a third signature he identified as Damon joining them after twenty.
He stayed on the sixth floor and worked on the east face blast wall sequencing for tomorrow and let them do it.
They came out at two forty and Cole came to Michael in the hallway.
"Evacuation sequence is designed," he said. "Gareth had a structure already. I modified three elements and he accepted the modifications without argument."
He paused. "Damon is the practical test case. We ran the timing estimates against his movement speed and build."
"What’s the sequence," Michael said.
Cole gave it to him clean and direct. Medical cases first down the primary shaft, Dr. Kang and Rei managing the descent. Children if they had any currently they didn’t but the sequence accounted for it.
Then the non combat population, Anya, anyone injured. Then the combat population in reverse priority order with the highest capability fighters going last.
Cole and Gareth both listed themselves in the last group without discussing it, Damon had noted this and also listed himself there without being asked which Cole mentioned with the particular neutrality of someone noting a fact they found significant.
Michael listened to the full sequence.
It was good. Better than what he would have designed alone because it had two different threat reading perspectives built into it and the places where Cole and Gareth’s approaches had met and been reconciled were exactly the places where either one alone would have left a gap.
"Brief everyone tonight," Michael said. "Full building. Everyone needs to know the sequence before they need to use it."
"Seven o’clock," Cole said. "Hallway briefing."
"I’ll be there," Michael said.
Cole nodded and went back to his floor.
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The underground expansion was fully complete at four fifteen.
Michael went down the ladder one more time and stood in the finished chamber and looked at it. Storage units stocked with the three week emergency allocation Anya had calculated that morning, water reserve full, air circulation running with the quiet efficiency of something that had been designed to not be noticed, communication panel active and showing him the pulse feed from the ground floor sensor relay.
He pulled up the pulse from down here.
It was slightly degraded compared to the ground floor read, the six meters of substrate between him and the sensor attenuating the signal at the edges of the range, but the core picture was clear.
He could track the building interior, the courtyard, and the immediate surrounding blocks from down here. If it came to that it would be enough.
He stood in the finished chamber and looked at the ceiling and thought about everything above it. The blast walls. The turrets. The wall. The gate. The building with nineteen people in it all of whom had found something worth protecting in the time they’d been here.
He thought about what Yuna had said about integrated systems thinking.
The chamber was the last element of a system that had been building for thirty nine days. Wall, gate, turrets, blast walls, barriers, training, operations planning, evacuation sequence, and now this.
All of it in relationship to all of it. Load paths and circulation and the particular geometry of making something hold when pressure came from directions you’d anticipated and the directions you hadn’t.
He stood in the finished chamber for a long moment.
Then he climbed back up the ladder and went to find Anya.
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Anya was at the workbench with the clipboard and the updated supply projections that now incorporated the chamber storage allocation and the greenhouse output timeline and the revised consumption rates from the past week’s operation.
She looked up when he came in and held out the clipboard without being asked.
He took it and read it.
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