Deathwatch (The Faded Earth Book 1)(13)
What she saw was a shallow bowl reaching all the way to the edges of the hill’s crest, but not one filled with the expected dust and stone, or even plants. Instead a coarse mesh of metal unmarred by the environment spanned the distance. What lay below was impossible to see through the mesh. Small drones crawled across the surface, each about the size of a dog. One passed not twenty feet from Beck and she zoomed the HUD in to get a closer look at it. The thing had a low-slung head covered in brushes, and through the magnification she spotted a previously invisible smear of dust. As the drone moved forward, its bristled head ran over the dust and where it passed left only gleaming metal behind.
“Okay, gotta admit this is impressive,” Beck said. “I have no idea what it is, but it’s almost as big as the Rez.”
“Not that big,” 2447 said, “but still nearly a kilometer across. Want me to tell you what it is, or would you rather take a closer look and see if you can figure it out?”
Beck considered. “I guess that depends.”
2447 cocked her helmet sideways a fraction in curiosity. “On?”
Beck smiled, though it was only to herself. “On what kinds of sensors this thing has.”
*
It took them about a minute to run her through the options. The menu system was simple enough, and Beck was more than versed in the kinds of sensor apparatus available. In the mine, machines had to be able to look at everything from the whole of the light spectrum to gas chromatography. Eshton began suggesting something to her. She shushed him with a raised gauntlet and focused on the options.
A magnified visual scan with light correction showed a mass of heavy electrical cabling running through the narrow gap between the metal of the enormous net and the edge of the natural bowl beneath it. Sampling the air showed no unusual chemical signatures. Momentarily stumped, Beck thought back to her training in the mine. Her foreman, an old man named Carl, had given what she considered some of the best advice of her life.
“Technology is well and good,” he had said when going through the advanced troubleshooting routines for the drones, “but always trust your own senses first. Eyes, ears, nose, even skin.”
So Beck dialed up the sensitivity of the external microphones and listened, and that was the clue she needed. The entire hilltop emitted a faint but noticeable hum. On a hunch she activated the electromagnetic field detector and gasped when the system overlaid a visual representation of the data onto her HUD.
“Oh, holy shit,” Beck said. “This thing is getting hit with a ton of microwaves. From space. There’s no fluctuation, so it’s not communications, I don’t think. Maybe...is it power? This is a big wireless power receiver, right?”
There was silence from the Watchmen standing around her. Beck went back over the information at hand and tried to see where her logic failed since she had clearly said something remarkably stupid.
“That’s impressive,” 2447 said.
Beck shrugged, also a gesture lost on the rest of the team. “Um, thanks, but not really. We use wireless induction to charge almost everything. It’s the same tech, just way bigger. What I don’t know is how it’s being sent here from space. That’s totally beyond me.”
Eshton pointed up, as if Beck was unsure which direction space was. “Before the Collapse, one of the big projects was a system to send things up there without using big rockets. Once the launch loops were built, sending things into orbit became much cheaper. That’s where a lot of our technology came from. These suits and their power sources were part of the big push to colonize the solar system. Suddenly it was cost effective to build solar power stations that could beam energy down to the surface. There was even a colony ship plan, which was how—”
“That’ll do, Guard,” 2447 said, cutting in sharply. “Miss Park doesn’t need a history lesson. Suffice it to say that the race to exploit and move past the boundaries of our handful of plants came from that surge of interest. The power system came at a time when people were interested in creating robust technology and the means to allow it to repair itself. The satellite hovering over this stretch of dirt has been there since before the Collapse and still sends down status updates. Assuming it doesn’t get hit by a wild rock, it can keep running for another hundred years.”
“That’s why the Rez was built here,” Beck guessed. “I always wondered where the rest of our power came from.”
2447 turned fully toward her. “Excuse me? You realized the Rez didn’t provide all of its own power?”
“Sure,” Beck said. “Not through solar film, anyway. It’s not hard math. Extrapolate from what I knew my own house used across the number of buildings in the Rez. Add what the mine uses, which is a lot, and then work out how much total coverage the film covering the buildings uses. The efficiency of solar film isn’t hard to find out. The tricky part is working out how the angle of the sun and diffusion of light in various conditions affects overall collection numbers. That and how much efficiency is lost by dust on the film itself. I decided not to bother with the last one. Our own scrub drones stay on top of that pretty well. Crunch the numbers and at best we get eighty percent.”
“Impressive,” 2447 repeated. “You’re right. Part of why Brighton was constructed here was because of the free energy.”
Beck wondered what the rest of the reasons were but said nothing. 2447 was clearly in command, and just as clearly didn’t want to touch deeply on several subjects. Her curiosity burned white-hot, and her caution rose in proportion to it.