"Great. Let's do it. How do we do this?" I asked.
"And here we come to our major problem. In order to realign the lenses we must shut down the Solar Tap. We must shut it down, realign, and reactivate it within 10 minutes."
"I hate timed quests, Brick," Marty said.
I nodded in agreement. "Why are we on a timer?"
"That is an estimate. The Solar Tap, as depleted as it is, is providing the majority of power for the Connahr field. When we take it offline, the Fusion plant will be unable to support it. The energy storage will drain in seconds and the Connahr field will shrink to approximately one-third its current size. It will be covering just outside the orbit of Venus."
Just outside the orbit of Venus would mean it would essentially be completely useless. "Okay, that sucks. But we can live with it not covering the entire solar system for the few minutes more it might take us, can't we?" I asked.
"That is only one aspect of the timer, as you call it. The other is the Solar Tap satellite. As it is stationed in the coronasphere of your sun it requires power to maintain its structural integrity. It gets that power through its connection to the Solar Tap."
It dawned on me. As soon as we closed the gate, the little gate satellite in orbit would lose its power connection and soon after, the awesome power of our little sun would turn it into a cloud of Union-flavored molecules.
"Well, timed quest it is."
"Brick, can we even do this in ten minutes? I don't want to speak for Jake, but I don't know how to align a gravity lens," Marty said.
"Thankfully, neither of you will have to figure it out. Just do what I tell you and we'll get this Tap back online," Metra said, as she entered the control room through the suddenly open door.
She was wearing her basic armor, eschewing her more minimalistic set to come out to the base.
Marty broke into a big beaming smile, which she returned immediately. He walked over and gave her an awkward hug. Their armor clanked against each other.
"How did you get here?"
"The gate, dummy. Now, are we going to fix this thing or what?"
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Repairing the Solar Tap
ONCE WE STARTED DOING it I realized there had been absolutely no chance that Marty and I would've been able to do this without her. She had brought along two floating cases full of instruments as well as four oversized versions of Brick's spider bot. Each one of them was the size of an armchair, long folding limbs tucked in close. They were quite creepy at that scale, if I had to be honest.
"Now, we’re going to have to be as quick as we can. Everyone knows the plan, so follow it. Each of you has your own share of the alignment instruments. Put them where they need to be, connect them to the network, and initialize them. While you are doing that, I will be setting mine and directing the bots to where they need to be. They will do the heavy lifting."
"Metra, while your Metrabots are powerful, I am not 100% confident that they are fully capable of the work involved," Brick said.
"Metrabots? Seriously, that's what you called them?" I asked.
"I had to call them something. They're not just scaled-up versions of Brick's bots you know. They're much more capable, in every way."
"Still, a bit much don't you think?"
"What would you have called them, Jake?" she asked, irritation in her voice.
"I don't know, Spiderbot V2? Mega-spiderbot?"
Marty shook his head. "We're not letting you name anything else, Jake."
"Whatever. I don't want to argue about the name," Metra said. "Brick, the bots are fine. Their capabilities should be in excess of our requirements. Now, as I was saying, get in there, do your jobs right, and let's get this done. The faster, the better."
Marty and I nodded seriously, each of us picking up one of the floating cases. Metra had her own, more of a satchel, slung over her shoulder. She didn't have as many instruments to set as we did, but the ones she had were the most important. With that and directing the bots she'd have plenty to do.
The three of us were standing in front of a towering, heavily armored door. It was similar to the high-security bulkhead that sealed off the Habitation complex on Pax, but this one was all about keeping a potentially disastrous failure of the Solar Tap from the rest of the base. We had actually come through a series of them to get here, and now we were in front of the last one.
"All right. Brick, shut it down and when the chamber is cleared, open this door," Metra ordered.
"Acknowledged," Brick came back a moment later.
Five seconds passed and then ten. I was beginning to get a bit antsy and was almost going to ask a question when like a sheet of water falling, the door disappeared into the wall, revealing the Solar Tap behind it. Metra ran in, and we followed.
The Solar Tap was larger than I'd expected it to be, which was surprising. On the map Brick had shown us, it had clearly been huge. My brain hadn't digested that and it boggled at the scale. We entered a circular area the size of a minimart parking lot. A domed ceiling came to a peak thirty meters above us. Mounted at that peak of the dome, pointed downward, was a gate not much bigger than the one I'd found in my grandfather's basement. The difference was, this one was perfectly round. The round frame was empty, showing only the grey metal of the dome behind it.
"Get your sensors into place,” Metra ordered. “I don't know how many of the gravitational lenses are out of alignment. We
