In the center of the room there was a giant hole. I knew from studying the schematics of the Tap that this was where the gravitationally focused beam went. Lining the sides of the shaft were the energy harvesters, arranged in rings.
"Metra, you said that the energy of the beam isn't fully expended. What happens to the rest of it?" I asked as I raced across the room to my first sensor location.
"Not really the time, Jake. If you must know, it goes out the expulsion gate at the bottom of the shaft."
"Wait, there's another gate down there?"
"Of course there is. What, did you expect that the concentrated beam would just keep going into the core of Mercury? I think it would crack this planet like an egg. It certainly wouldn't be good for it. The energy concentrated here is much more than Mercury would see normally."
I reached the first of my eight placement sites and cracked open the case that I'd been dragging along behind me. The sensor that I needed to place was typical Union tech—an anonymous grey box with no features. If an Earth corporation had made this it'd be studded with LIDAR sensors, or cameras. Something other than a featureless metal box. Union tech didn't work like that. No lenses, laser, or dishes needed. That kind of technology was for us plebs on Earth.
The Interface highlighted the exact spot I needed to place it and I slapped it down on the wall. It was the work of a few seconds to make sure it was in exactly the right position and alignment that Metra specified. The ghost image of the sensor and the sensor were perfectly matched when I engaged the gecko pad on the back with a thought. Once it was attached firmly, I released it and the Interface brought up its controls.
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Lens Calibration Sensor, designed by Metra
Control(s) available: Initialize
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I quickly hammered the initialize button. A progress bar appeared, filling in slowly, but visibly. Each sensor would take a little bit over a minute to make itself ready. Once it had started I hurried toward the second placement spot.
"This really seems like something Brick's bots could've done without us, Metra." Marty said.
I saw him on the other side of the shaft from me, placing his second sensor already. He'd started near the door, so it felt like he was cheating a little bit.
"While my bots could place all of the sensors, at their current scale and strength they would be much slower than you two. As time is of the essence, Metra made the correct decision."
"Yeah, Marty. Listen to Brick," Metra said, absently.
She was at the lip of the pit in the center of the room, looking down and pointing some kind of handheld sensor. Her four Metrabots were equally spaced around the pit. Each of them was stretching two of its forelimbs into the space above the pit. Those limbs were thick, studded with additional sensors and manipulators I had to assume Metra had fitted for just this kind of work. Ultimately, the Metrabots were just another eight capable arms for our genius engineer to use.
"I confirm that roughly 30% of the Tap's capacity has been disabled. I see at least three rings down there with chunks out of them," Metra said.
She had tried to explain why the Tap had catastrophically failed to Marty and me in words that we'd understand. The lens-focused beam from the sun needed to pass exactly down the center of the shaft. Each of the rings—ten in total—would harvest some of the energy. If that beam was misaligned or improperly focused, the energy could harvest unevenly and eventually one or more of the harvesting units in the ring would overload. Once one was overloaded, the whole ring was gone. Sure, the components were still there, but you couldn't use it anymore.
In our case it had been both problems. The quake had caused the beam to sway and burn out some of the harvesters, and when it had stopped, the lenses weren't focusing the beam properly anymore.
I was setting my fourth sensor when something occurred to me. The timer in my HUD showed eight minutes remaining before we had to turn the Solar Tap back on.
"Hey, Metra, about those dead rings down there. We don't need them, you said. What are they made out of?"
"They're a pretty simple design, but they're quite expensive. Lots of tier 3 exotics. Why?" she said, and then spoke again. "Hold on, we don't have time for your screwing around, Jake."
I set my fourth sensor in place, hammering the activate button. "Come on, we need the exotics. Do we have the margin or not?"
"What a stupid idea, Jake. Yes, I'd say you have about a two-minute margin. Two minutes to get to the bottom of that shaft and free one of the units. You know they're quite large, right?" she asked.
"No, I can't see into the pit. What are we talking about? Pickup truck or microwave oven?" I asked.
"I don't know what either of those is. Each unit is approximately 1.5 meters x 1 meter x 70 centimeters."
I mentally translated from Metric to SI in my head.
"So the size of a small fridge then. It's not heavy, is it?" I asked.
"They're fairly massive, but Mercury's gravity is low and you are in powered armor that can fly, Jake. Seriously, what a dumb question. Anyway, if you're going to do this hurry up and place the rest of your sensors. If you're still in that shaft when I have to turn on the Solar Tap we might as well just give up and leave the system because the Connahr field will be gone."
I was glad to hear that she wasn't just going to turn it on anyway. That was something people in movies said. Sure, not turning it on would mean the Connahr field was screwed, but it's not like this Solar Tap was an irreplaceable resource. I expected we could rebuild
