Up Against It - M. J. Locke [34]
“They have their own backup generators. They’ll have to rely on those for now.”
“They are! But the backups weren’t designed for extended use. They’re running low on supplemental power.” He drew a breath. “They’re willing to pay well for it, and we can use that money to buy ice.”
That’s when she got it. Some crony of his, a local Upside-Down exec most likely, wanted him to use his influence to get Jane to make an exception on the power rations. She suppressed a sigh. Thomas, Thomas, she thought. Get your priorities in order. “We have a crisis on our hands. We don’t have energy to spare right now for extra bandwidth.”
“That may be. But if the PM doesn’t come through, they’re warning us they’ll go to Parliament and apply pressure that way.”
That pissed her off. “If they start playing political games with me,” she said, “I swear to God I’ll pull their plug.”
He looked shocked. “You can’t do that. It’s a violation of the contract. We’ll lose rights to the transmitters.”
“You’re wrong. I can do that. In an emergency we can shut down transmissions, and the PM classified this as a cluster-wide disaster yesterday at four p.m.” He opened and closed his mouth. She said, “We just can’t afford to make exceptions to our power rationing policy at a time like this, Thomas—not to any nonessential function. I appreciate that you’re coming under pressure from Upside-Down”—more like, getting some barely legal bonus if you can wrangle extra energy from me—“but I have no flexibility. I’m not even sure we have enough to keep people in air, water, and heat for more than three weeks! I can’t justify risking human life for bandwidth. Until our situation is more stable, the current rations stand.”
“Upside-Down has invested huge amounts of money in our transmission systems,” Thomas said. “In the local economy. We have an obligation to meet our contractual commitments to them. If they go belly-up, so might we. Surely you can squeeze a few extra gigajoules out of the system over the next few days, that wouldn’t be missed…”
“As I said before, I can’t.” She resisted the temptation to add that, as riveting as it would be to watch two hundred thousand people slowly dying of asphyxiation, it would not be nearly as lucrative for Upside-Down as doing their part to ensure that those same two hundred thousand people continued to provide months of ongoing entertainment for its billions of paying customers.
Thomas did not seem to appreciate her self-restraint. “You’re playing a dangerous game, Commissioner.”
“Am I?” She pinched her brow. “Look. I’ve only gotten six hours’ sleep in the last two and a half days, so perhaps I’m not being as diplomatic as I could be, but I’m telling you the truth. We can’t afford to change the power rations. Too many lives are at stake.”
He just looked at her. Then, with a curt “Very well,” he cut her off.
And now he had a good several hours before her meeting with the PM to try to undermine her. Ah, politics.
By this time Phocaea had become a recognizably three-dimensional blob. Other commuters were moving into view along Klosti Alpha–Klosti Omega, and on the other branches. Her systems signaled that congestion loomed ahead as she passed the last of the treeway branch junctures, and her brakes engaged. On 25 Phocaea’s far side, she spotted the big commercial spaceliner, the Sisyphus, which had arrived a couple of days ago. The PM planned to use it, along with the smaller yachts and freighters Val’s security team had confiscated, as an evacuation vessel.
At best, only one in fifteen people could be saved that way. Jane had run the numbers herself.
Perhaps it won’t come to that.
She switched over to the traffic channel. Her suit had already slowed and was now moving her into line with the hundreds of other commuters nearing the big asteroid. A couple commuters commented on the accident. Those