Montero appeared on the screen. He sat in silent thought for several moments, pulling absently at one corner of his moustache, then leaned aside and said something to Nelon. The First Officer in turn spoke to the Weapons Master, and the two of them left the room.
“I’ll be blunt, Speaker,” he finally offered, “and I’ll be thankful for your candid response. Just how much control do they have at this point?”
Adela was surprised to see the hint of a smile appear briefly on Niles’ lips. “I appreciate your straightforward manner, Commander.” He leaned forward on the desk, steepling his hands in front of his face in a gesture Adela had come to recognize as one of his mannerisms. “If Salera controls the Leeper grouping, and there’s no reason at this time to assume he does not, then Westland is in serious danger. Very serious danger.” Niles picked up a handset from the comm terminal on the desk and spoke briefly into it, then set it back in its holder before going on. “Understand that the pressure-tap system is designed to work on a continentwide basis to control fault activity. There are constant tremors, especially in the interior regions nearest Arroyo, but there has not been a major earthquake in more than a decade because of the success of the tap system.”
There was an insistent beeping from the comm terminal, and Niles picked up the handset once more, telling whoever was on the other end, “Stand by,” loudly enough that he could be heard by everyone in the room. “I’m going to have a playback put up showing how the system works from a recording made two years ago.” He spoke into the handset and a different overhead view of Pallatin appeared on the flatscreen. This one was similar to the other, but an overlay clearly showed the entire system of pressure-tap stations in both halves of the continent. “The unmanned taps are highlighted in blue, the individual manned stations in green, and the control groupings are in yellow. That’s Leeper there at the top left of Arroyo. When I start playback, the tectonic pressure forces will appear as a growing red area on the overlay.” Then, into the handset: “Go ahead.”
Nothing seemed to happen at first, but as they looked, a red stain widened and spread out from the upper half of the fault, extending several hundred kilometers in the most actively affected portions of the fault. Parts of the fault itself where the stain spread out the farthest glowed so brightly that it looked like a river of fire bisecting the continent.
“Does this show the extent of the earthquake itself?” Adela asked.
“No, Dr. Montgarde. This is the pressure building up over several months that you’re seeing right now. You’re correct, however, in assuming that the red area shows the pattern of tremors that would occur if the process played itself out. Watch, though, as the tap stations come on-line.”
The red glow spread farther, extending more to the western side of the fault. The groupings visibly activated first, glowing intensely in the worst areas of the pressure buildup. As they watched, spiderweb lines traced out from the groupings to the concentric rings of unmanned stations surrounding them. From a pairing of control stations located not quite a third of the way from the top of the fault, a series of bolder yellow lines snaked out to larger, manned stations centered in a particularly bright red area on the Westland side, and from these more threadlike circles expanded around them. Another set of yellow lines shot out to a second manned station in Westland, slightly above and to the right of the first, and repeated the series of expanding rings around it. A control pairing three down from the other that had activated suddenly glowed. As before, the yellow lines traced a delicate pattern of circles and lines leading to yet another spot on the Westland side, then again to one on the eastern edge of the fault.
Adela almost thought the lacy patterns beautiful, but found it necessary to remind herself of the amount of destructive fury she was looking at. She watched in awestruck fascination as more control pairings activated and lines arced out again and again across the landmass, until finally it became clear that the red glow had begun to diminish in several spots on the overlay.
The glowing area faded, the circles dimming in a backward-leading dance to their originating stations. As if draining water from a basin, the red disappeared along the direction of the stations that had activated until at last only the control groupings themselves still remained lighted. The overlay darkened, the line of control groupings tracing the length of the fault like a brilliant chain of diamonds. Finally even they winked out one by one. Speaker Niles spoke briefly into the handset, and the map and overlay disappeared, showing Montero and the others aboard Levant. Sometime during the playback, or perhaps just before it started, First Officer Nelon and the Weapons Master had returned.
“Impressive.” The Commander was clearly affected by what he had just seen, and sat straighter in his chair as he soberly addressed Niles. “Shall I assume that now that Eastland has taken full control of all stations on the eastern side of the fault, these would be inaccessible to you should further tectonic activity occur?”
Niles nodded silently.
“But you would still have some control over pressure buildups, wouldn’t you?”
Niles sighed heavily and rubbed his face with both hands. “That’s true; but it wouldn’t be enough in the event of a major movement like the one on the recording. That would require the combined efforts of stations on both sides of the fault to equalize pressure.”
“But that’s crazy!” Adela interrupted, barely able to believe what she was hearing. “If another earthquake like that occurred they’d be putting themselves in danger.”
“My thought exactly,” Woorunmarra agreed.
“Not entirely.” Niles shrugged unhappily, turning his attention away from the flatscreen. “They have the entire system east of Arroyo, intact. And they control Leeper. Through Leeper, they can link into the control groupings on our side.”
Woorunmarra nodded slowly in understanding. “I think I see now. If a pressure buildup threatens them, through the Leeper grouping they can override into your system and use it in tandem to bleed off the pressures that affect the area east of Arroyo much the same way as in the recording we just saw.” He paused, lowering his eyes. “On the other hand, if they monitor a pressure buildup that looks like it’ll have the greatest impact on the west…”
“They activate the eastern taps to minimize damage to themselves,” Montero picked up, “and effectively shunt the worst of the movements to the other side of the fault—then they just sit back and watch as Westland crumbles.”
Adela stared at Montero, her mouth open in shocked disbelief.
“It’s worse than that, I’m afraid.” Niles pivoted the small screen of the comm terminal so he could more easily read the information displayed there. “The tap stations equalize pressure buildups; that means additional pressure is applied to parts of the underlying structure at the same time it’s being bled off others. Utilizing the control stations on the eastern edge of Arroyo in concert with Leeper, they can initialize tectonic activity as well as dampen it.”
Everyone in the room sat in stunned silence; aboard Levant, no one spoke. Only the General seemed unsurprised by what Niles had just said.
“We’ll begin severing the Leeper grouping from the control network immediately. There are…” Niles quickly checked the terminal, cursing softly under his breath when the figures came up on the tiny screen. “I’m afraid that when they chose Leeper, they chose well. There are forty-seven manned stations directly controlled by Leeper, but they should present little trouble. However, there are thousands of unmanned taps linked into them, and once the manned stations are taken off-line they’ll have to be shut down, individually, on site.”