Author's Notes:

Bit of a foreword before this chapter. I'm just a deck officer, not an engineer, and I've never worked with nuclear reactors, so what you're about to read is probably very incorrect.

I did some amount of research on the subject, including what data I could find on that plant in particular. I based my reasoning off of schematics for PWR type plants, but even then it's likely I made some mistakes interpreting that data (most likely when it comes to pressure control systems I assume).

I apologize in advance for any fault you may find.

Angelo was standing by a window of the control room building, satellite phone in hand. Behind him, inside the room proper, Roberto was finishing his setup of the laptop. With a flick of his finger, he unlocked the phone and sent a message to report their progress to the ship.

Not a minute later, he got a message from the Captain on his phone.

Report received.

Proceed with call to HPI and shutdown of plant. Increase frequency of reports to every two hours.

Warning: any further request from the HPI has to go through me before being accepted. Do not let yourself be pressured into an agreement.

Amandine scheduled to leave ZB by 13.30LT once all materials are secure for sea and charts are cleared for passage to Antwerp. ETA to Antwerp: 21.10LT.

Stay safe,

Cpt. Prateek

At least he had the merit of being clear, though he wondered what those HPI guys could possibly ask them beyond just shutting down the plants. Most likely that wouldn’t be a problem, but if the Captain felt it necessary to be told, then he might as well acknowledge it.

The minotaur quickly sent an ACK on his phone as a reply to the Captain before making his way back inside the control room.

Roberto was now done hooking up his gear, and had placed the laptop next to the central console in the middle of the room.

“How is the system coming along?” Angelo asked.

“Almost ready. If I want to make the connection possible I have to get this computer’s signal up in the air and back to Amandine with a program I put together. It’s shoddy work, but eh, good enough for what we ask it to do…”

“Why does the signal need to go back to Amandine? Can’t you contact the HPI directly like we did by phone?” The minotaur asked curiously.

“No can do” Roberto shook his head while typing on the computer. “The reason you’re able to call by phone is because they have a number of their own, but this laptop isn’t meant for satellite connections. If we had the time to come up with something better, then maybe the HPI comms guys and I could decide on a program to use for the video call. But since we’re short on time I will just send the signal back to Amandine, log on to the ship’s server from a distance, and have the video call be treated as if they were calling Amandine via satellite, though that gives us some very bad latency.”

“Wait you mean we can connect to the ship’s server from a distance?”

“You can’t, but this laptop here can. I’m not going to leave the ship open to cyber attacks, so I fitted both the ship’s server and the laptop with a time code generator, in addition to the usual user ID needed to log on. It doesn’t affect the Wi-Fi though, only connection attempts via satellite.” Roberto finished typing, and Amandine’s computer’s UI came on screen. “There we go, now just log on, and it will work just like a user terminal on board, if you don’t mind the lag.”

Angelo’s eyebrows rose up.

“And with skills like that you’re supposed to just be a secretary?”

“The company gave me some IT training before I joined the crew. Granted, I mostly do paperwork, but the servers are my responsibility, and we’ve got plenty of electronic documentation to manage.” Roberto waved towards the laptop. “I took the liberty of giving the HPI your user call number, if you don’t mind. That way they won’t have to re-route the call to us from the bridge.”

“Aye, that will do.” Angelo shrugged before logging in on the computer. “When did you tell them to call?”

Roberto checked his watch.

“Still got a quarter of an hour before they call. Anything else that needs to be done?”

“Yeah” Angelo pointed to the control panels around them. “If you could start working on translating the labels on the controls, that would be great. There should be some post-it notes lying around.”

The Italian complied and set to sticking translation notes around the control room while Angelo was looking at some schematics, still trying to familiarize himself with the system.

Five minutes later, the duo was interrupted by the ringing of the fire alarm going off. Angelo’s head jerked up from the drawings he was checking out, his sight turning to a control panel for the secondary systems that was now blinking red.

“Roberto what’s going on?”

The cat rushed over from where he was working on his translations to the blinking control panel. An alert message had popped up on the main screen in front of him.

“It’s from the diesel generators. System readings are fine, but someone just pulled the fire alarm. Do I need to cancel it?” He asked, one paw hovering over the keyboard.

“Wait.” Angelo stopped him. “First let me check on the others.” He said, taking hold of his walkie-talkie and walking out. The walls of the control room were too thick to let radio waves through, but if he got close to the windows outside, he could actually talk to Nikola.

“Niko, this is Angelo from the control room. The fuck’s going on outside? Over.”

The reply took a minute to come and Angelo almost wondered if his radio wasn’t transmitting.

“Angelo, this is Niko. I just saw Nguyen leave the generator building after the alarm and collapse. Can’t tell from here but he doesn’t look too good. Over.”

“No shit I don’t look good.” Nguyen’s voice came, though it was clear the cat was having some difficulties. “I just got fucking tasered by a swarm of bugs and then I stunned myself with my own grenade. Pardon me if I don’t exactly look ready for a photo shoot. Over.”

“Yeah I’m pretty sure I can see you smoking from here. What happened? Bugs don’t have tasers. Over.” Niko said.

“That swarm of lightning-bolt-firing mites I just trapped inside the generator building begs to differ. Need I say I found them next to a demonic circle? Over.”

“Alright, I’m not gonna contest the bugs out of hell or whatever you choose to call them. Was it you that pulled the fire alarm? Over.” Angelo asked.

“Affirmative. Needed to close the vents to keep the bugs inside. Are they closed? Over.”

A quick check with Roberto inside the control room later, Angelo was reassuring the cat that the vents were indeed shut tight. They even managed to turn off the alarm without opening them, much to the comfort of their sensitive hearing.

“Niko, would you mind getting down to take a look at the cook? Over.”

“Already on my way. You focus on that reactor. Out.”

Angelo turned back from the window and made his way back in the control room. They had five minutes before the call, so they’d better make the best out of it.

Now to hope the situation didn’t get out of hand with those electric bugs…

The Greek minotaur stood in front of the computer screen as it came to life, revealing a table of three people dressed in black coveralls. They were sitting facing the camera in a conference room, surrounded by folders and stacks of paper. Behind them, some plans and drawings were hanging on the wall.

The apparent leader of the trio was a black man sitting in the middle. Like his colleagues, he was wearing black coveralls with the letters HPI embroidered on the collar and a South African flag on his shoulder. The man was about fifty years old, and time had not been kind to him: despite having a tall figure, the man was gaunt, bald, and wearing glasses. Despite that, the African still held himself with the proud stance of a man who was very confident in his skills. A tag on the man’s chest read ‘Lockwood’.

Angelo nodded at the three HPI operatives.

“Greetings. I am Second Engineer Molnàr from M/V Amandine.” He then waved an arm in Roberto’s direction. “And this is Roberto Costa, the ship’s secretary, who will be translating the Human-Machine interface for us. I do not believe we have been acquainted yet?”

“We haven’t.” Lockwood answered curtly. “I am Agent Lockwood, Chief of Nuclear Operations for the American branch and these are my assistants for today.”

The man pointed at a short white man on his left. The young red haired man was short, but obviously made up for it by being very fit. He looked tired, and the stubble around his goatee indicated the guy hadn’t had much time to himself in the last days. He had an American flag on his shoulder.

“This is Agent Burke, who specializes in high pressure systems and manipulation of liquefied solids in extreme conditions.”

Then he turned to a pale American (as indicated by the flag on her shoulder) woman on his right. Much like Burke, she was looking frazzled. Strands of her blonde hair were sticking out of the bun they were tied in. Unlike Burke however, she wasn’t fit. Quite the opposite in fact: her thick neck strained the collar of her coveralls.

“And this is Agent Kipling. She is one of our nuclear engineers and has been familiarizing herself with the system we will be working with today.”

Off to the side, Angelo spotted Roberto pressing the record button on the computer. The Italian gave him a wink before slipping away to translate more of the controls.

“Are you familiar with nuclear installations mister Molnàr?” Lockwood asked.

“Negative.” The minotaur said, shaking his head. “I do have certifications for the use of steam turbines and I am familiar with marine electric generation systems, but that’s about it. The extent of my knowledge on nuclear reactors only goes as far as the triple circuit principle… You know, core circuit takes heat from the fuel rods, passes it on the secondary circuit which runs the turbine, and the third circuit is there to cool down the secondary. Each separated to avoid nuclear contamination.”

“Insufficient clearly.” Lockwood stated with a derisive shake of his head. “Nevertheless, we will find a way to make it work. I insist you do not touch the controls until we have thoroughly reviewed the procedure we will be going through today.”

No shit Sherlock. As if he was going to mash the control buttons of a nuclear reactor. What kind of fool did that guy take him for?

“Our data on the Tihange power plant tells us the system contains a total of three different reactors, each hooked to a different turbine, each with its own emergency diesel generator.” Lockwood began. “These turbines later join up at a substation from where they then power up the regional electric network. Our goal today will be to bring the chain reaction in the reactor to its minimum, and then to reduce core temperature to a safe point before we fill it with a neutron absorbing solution that will ensure radiation emissions are limited and prevent increases in temperature in the long run. Do you understand?”

“Why can’t we inject the neutron absorber immediately?”

“If I may…” Burke stepped in. “The Tihange plant is a particularly old model. As such, recent inspections before the cataclysm had revealed micro fissures around the housing of reactor 2 and 3. These fissures were accompanied by microscopic bubbles of Hydrogen inside the pool. These are a particular concern because they force us to avoid cavitation in the core circuit at all cost. The vibrations due to a cavitation phenomenon could cause the bubbles to implode, which, if combined with the fissures, could cause a catastrophic breach of the housing. The reason the neutron absorbing solution may not be inserted in the core at high temperature, is that it is not soluble within the sodium chloride/heavy water mixture used inside the reactor in such conditions.”

“And what does this have to do with cavitating the pump? Wait, how come something would NOT be soluble in such conditions? Doesn’t it get better at high temperature?”

“A default in conception I’m afraid. Several mentions are made about it in notes about that plant in particular to prevent it from occurring, but the neutron absorber will react with the chloride in the coolant solution if the reactor is at a sufficiently high temperature. In theory, this will form a solid deposit… at the entrance of the pump impeller. An unfortunate byproduct of using sodium chloride in a pressurized water reactor. That type of coolant is completely phased out in more modern reactors.”

“Ah shit…”

“Shit would be an understatement to that.” Lockwood said. “The resulting clog would act exactly like a partially closed valve and increase back pressure on the pump. Cavitation… would be unavoidable. But this part of the shutdown will only come into play at the very end. In the meantime, Agent Kipling…”

The woman stood up and grabbed the camera on their end of the communication, pointing it at a number of schematics on the wall.

“We will start off one reactor at a time.” Kipling said. Funnily enough, she had a British accent despite wearing an American flag on her shoulder. “Reactor 1 is in the best shape, so we will start with that one. For you I think the controls are on your left?”

Angelo nodded once.

“Excellent. Regardless of user input, the control rod position should be indicated on the central screen. I don’t have much data on the user UI, but you need to access the sensor monitoring panelyou’re your computer. It should be in the first half of the main menu.”

There was a large screen in the center of the semicircle housing the control panels for reactor 1, showing the status of the nuclear pile. Roberto had already gone through that part, thankfully. Numerous LED lights were showing him the position of the rods as well as which segment of the pile contained fuel rods.

“Okay, for reactor 1 it says the controls are in automated power production, the rods are 40% down and we’ve got about half of the fuel rod slots filled in.”

“Automated production? These greedy fuckers must have overridden the SCRAM protocols otherwise the plant would have gone into cooling mode.” Kipling swore.

“Agent Kipling, language.” Lockwood admonished her.

“Fine.” She snorted. “But no reactor should have kept going for that long. Gives me bad hopes for the rest of the continent if the first European reactor we shut down is like that. For one they refuse to decommission a thirty years old plant, and then they override emergency safeties so the plant keeps producing? I’m not the most pious gal around the block but these jackasses were begging for an Apocalypse.”

Angelo coughed politely. He had brought up the sensor monitoring panel on his screen, but the recorder was showing him an empty graph.

“Sorry mister Molnàr.” Kipling apologized. “There should be an index folder in the room, in which you will find all the values for the graph recorder. Don’t know how it’s called in French however…”

Roberto was already on the case, because the second she said that, a red folder found its way in his hands, courtesy of the Italian cat. In it, Angelo found numerous tables with minimum and maximum values, as well as numbered tags.

“So, Kipling… would you please clarify what I’m looking at?” He said, showing the folder in front of the camera.

“The tags you will find in this folder refer to the factory number of each sensor around the installation. For each of these, you have a digital tag to input within the computer in order to have them shown on screen, this will monitor changes in the value, and give you the operating window in that part of the system. Average pressure, liquid flow, the works…”

“Copy that. What do I need to input?”

“We will need three screens for that, but let’s start with the core circuit…”

In another part of the power plant, Nikola dragged Nguyen back to the mogs. The slightly scorched cat was moaning in pain, and frankly the gargoyle didn’t envy him. Funnily enough, the electric shock had made the cat’s fur stand up straight.

“Bugs with tasers uh?”

“Oh fuck off.” Nguyen groaned, leaning against one of the trucks’ wheels. “The hell was I supposed to do? Shoot them? ‘cause I tried and that was wildly successful.”

“Don’t ask me, I was an army mechanic, not a goddamn tactician. Are you hurt?” Nikola asked, passing the cat a canteen of fresh water.

“I’m fine. Well, not fine at all but I’m pretty sure it’s just pain from the stun grenade and the electric shock and not an actual injury.” He answered before taking a sip out of the canteen.

“If you say so… Still, a flashbang against insects? Never heard of that one before.”

“Eh, in my defense it worked.” Nguyen winced. “Though my ears are still ringing, and I had the ear defenders on.”

“The perks of PPE. If you hadn’t put them on you would be deaf by now.” The gargoyle waved at the scorch mark on Nguyen’s flak jacket. “Same goes for the jacket, for that matter.”

Nikola picked up a box of rations from the back of his truck and opened a box of biscuits. He wasn’t really hungry, and the food was kinda bland to him lately… which was surprising since before the event he used to like his food unseasoned.

On the plus side, he still had a thermos of green tea he had brought along for the ride, which he shared with the injured cook. In passing, he pulled out a tab of painkillers from a pouch on his flak jacket, which he gave to Nguyen.

“Here you go. Injured or not, that might help with the pain. Just don’t take the whole tablet, ain’t good for your kidneys.”

“Thanks” Nguyen swallowed a pill with his tea. “What now?”

Nikola stood up, already downing his cup of tea and attaching the thermos to his belt.

“You stay here and get some rest. I’m getting back to my nest on the roof to keep an eye on the area. The ‘taser bugs’ may be stuck in the generator building, but that doesn’t guarantee they were alone. Stay on the lookout, you never know… By the way, do you have a name idea for those things?”

“A name idea?” The cat cocked his head.

“It’s like 19^th century explorers.” Nikola shrugged. “You found a new species, so you get to name it.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Nikola then walked off back to the control building, rifle slung around his shoulder. By then Angelo should be starting the shutdown procedure, but lowering the temperature of all three reactors would still take quite a while.

“Are all monitoring parameters set up for reactor 1?” Kipling asked.

“Affirmative. I got all three screens ready with each circuit. Roberto, you good with the control panels?”

The Italian who was standing at the centre of reactor 1’s controls looked around briefly before giving the minotaur a firm nod.

“We’re set then. What’s your plan?”

The female HPI agent pointed the camera on her side of the teleconference to some more schematics on the wall, as well as a whiteboard.

“We don’t have much time for shutdown per reactor, so we will make full use of the filtering station the power plant is fitted with…”

The agent went on to explain that, even though the system wasn’t supposed to be used in normal circumstances, there were some emergency dump tanks hidden beneath bunkers next to the filtering station. They had been put there to allow replacement of the liquid in the core and secondary circuit in case of emergency, mostly to vent liquid at excessive temperature. Which was exactly what they were going to do.

Those emergency tanks were directly linked to the normally closed discharge line in the pressure relief tank. Using that discharge line presented the risk of venting radioactive liquid, so it was not supposed to be opened, but they were ready to make use of the emergency tanks.

Like the core circuit, those dump tanks would have to receive a dose of neutron absorber to ensure leakage of radiation was kept to a strict minimum. While any liquid they vented to the dump tanks was unlikely to exceed the radiation threshold of the concrete shielding, prudence pointed to taking the extra safe approach. That liquid would be there for a while after all…

The pressure relief system would be used with the injection device. That part of the system was placed just after the pressure relief valve so that they could inject new content in the core circuit without having it immediately removed.

The standard injector was a chemical processing plant that would normally mix regular water with a certain rate of heavy water, the ‘normal’ solution found in the tank. To that, they would add some sodium chloride as coolant. Of course, they would put as much of it in the solution as possible to speed up the cooling, but not so much that they would damage the pump because it started to form particles.

Talk about threading the needle.

The secondary circuit was just as important to the cooling of the reactor as the core circuit because of the heat exchanger that connected the two. Performance on the turbine be damned, they would have to cycle cold water through the exchanger as quickly as possible to amplify cooling effect on the core circuit, which would force them to increase pressure to the very limit of what the secondary circuit could take so that water could still be vaporized by passing through the exchanger.

Thankfully for Angelo, the third circuit (the one that passed through the giant cooling towers) was less affected by the shutdown procedure… provided it kept cooling the secondary circuit. That third part of the system wasn’t pressurized, so that left them less options when it came to overclocking the system.

“How long do you think the procedure will take?” Angelo asked.

“Three hours per reactor, give or take.” Kipling said, waggling her hand.

“But then we have to take into account that you will have to program the system to keep cycling coolant on its own until decay heat has been removed. That’s on the whole system, but I’d add an hour or so to our estimations.” Burked added.

Angelo glanced at his watch. Yeah that would carry him well into the night. Might have to ask one of the guys to make them coffee at some point…

“Molnàr, are you ready to proceed?” Lockwood asked.

“Yes, let’s do this.” The minotaur said, steeling his nerves for what might be the hardest task he ever had to accomplish in his career. “I’d say ‘no pressure’ but the core circuit is at 160 bars so…”

Lockwood gave him a disapproving glare for his attempt at a joke, though in the back he spotted Burke giving him a sympathetic smile. Angelo shook his head and steeled his nerves for what was easily going to be the hardest task he ever had to accomplish in his career.

“Core status: inlet temperature at 302 degrees Celsius, outlet temperature at 329 degrees, overall pressure in the system at 160 bars.” Angelo stated. “Reactor control rods position: 40 percent lowered, ready to go down. Pressurizer status: ready for injection of light/heavy water mixture, no sodium chloride or neutron absorber solution ready.” He checked the status on some valves. “Emergency dump valve: locked in closed position. Turbine RPM in the green and holding steady.”

“Start off by lowering the rods, lower them by increments of 10% and keep an eye on any change in the system.”

Angelo then ordered Roberto to lower the rods to 50%, and then allowed the reactor five minutes for the values to adjust. He threw a glance at the core’s temperature graph.

The inner temperature had been slowly climbing for the past week, but extrapolation of the changes in temperature showed lowering the rod slightly had put a dent in the speed at which the core was heating up.

The process continued until they completely lowered all control rods. Despite the fission being mostly blocked by then, the temperature had only lowered by about five degrees. Angelo voiced his concern about that turn of events.

“No reason to worry so far.” Lockwood explained. “Lowering the rods prevents each fuel cell from continuing the chain reaction with others, but there are still some free neutrons inside the core. It might take some time for the fission to wind down completely, so give it some time. Burke, what’s the temperature at which we can inject the neutron absorber again?”

Before the red haired man had the time to answer his superior, the display on the control screens flickered and the lights shut off for a few seconds before coming on again.

“Roberto what was that?”

“No idea, the controls went in safety mode all of a sudden.”

“Molnàr, what’s going on?” Lockwood asked.

“No clue. Something just went up the sensor wiring and overloaded the control board.” He tapped a few keys on the central computer. “We’re locked in observation mode, no remote control possible. I need a few seconds to check out the alarm log to figure out what went wrong.”

Quick as lightning, Lockwood turned around on his heels to face Kipling. The woman visibly shrank under the African’s stern gaze.

“Kipling, check the schematics of the control system, figure out how we can put the control room back in place as the master station.” His gaze swiveled to face Burke on the other side of the table. “Burke, grab some plans and start looking for the manual controls just in case.”

Angelo was already typing away on the computer, trying to find the location of the alarm log. Roberto came up behind him to translate and guide him through the menus.

“There, open that program: Journal d’enregistrement des alertes. That should be the one.”

The program opened to reveal a timed log of every recorded alert that had occurred in the plant. Some dated back to months ago, but the last one was still blinking, awaiting acknowledgment. It was listed as having occurred five minutes ago.

“What does it say?” Angelo asked the Italian.

“Surtension du réseau de détection et contrôle... That’s a power surge on the control network. Can you open the detailed report?”

Angelo opened the report to reveal half a page worth of text. From the amount of red and yellow on the text, it didn’t look too good. Still, he allowed the Italian a minute to translate the highly technical piece of text.

“Alright.” Roberto finally said. “The surge came from one of the auxiliary power units... the diesel generators that is. Apparently the circuitry around the generator was hit by an overload and that damaged it.”

“Shouldn’t there be equipment to prevent damage from surges by the generator?”

“For the generator only. The surge occurred on the gear around the generator, it hit a sensor and went straight back to the mainframe. That put it in safety mode. There are some damage reports but thankfully it’s just the controls in the generator and a fuse box halfway to the mainframe that have been burnt out. We definitely lost remote control on the generator, but still got the sensors.”

Suddenly, Angelo snapped his fingers and brought up the CCTV control menu.

“Roberto, what’s the number on the overloaded generator?”

“Number two. Why?”

“Taser bugs, that’s why.”

The minotaur brought up a live feed from the cameras on screen, showing the inside of the stricken generator building. There indeed was a swarm of the trapped bugs, and they were firing bolts of lightning left and right at every opportunity. Angelo also took note of the demonic circle burned into the floor of the building.

“Well I’ll be damned. That’s one thing to hear Nguyen talk about it, but that’s another to see it for myself.” Roberto commented over his shoulder.

“Molnàr, what’s going on in there?” Lockwood asked in a severe tone.

“We found the source of the surge that’s what. Some kind of insect that fires bolts of electricity. Injured a member of our team too.”

“Now is not the time or place to crack jokes.”

“I’m serious.” Angelo said, pointing the laptop’s camera at the screen showing the CCTV feed. “There, swarm of bugs, shoots lightning. Not the first case we’ve had of some weird err... monsters appearing. See the demonic circle on the floor? That’s been present every time we met a monster like that.”

“We were not aware of such an occurrence. You are aware this will go up our chain of command?”

“Duly noted. I would have expected our Captain to mention that to Agent Eko but sounds like I was mistaken. Regardless...” He waggled a finger towards the screen. “Got an idea on how to address that issue? They injured one member of our group but he managed to pull the fire alarm and trap them in there.”

“Can’t let them keep frying the circuitry like that, they could wind up causing actual damage to the mainframe. They really look angry, what did your guy do?”

“Shot in their general direction and threw a flashbang at them. Might explain why they’re flying around like angry bees.”

Angelo observed the African scratch his chin pensively before he turned to Kipling who was still going over some schematics.

“Can’t say I’m an expert in bug removal but I might have an idea. Kipling, what’s the firefighting equipment in the generator building and how can we isolate it from the rest of the network?”

“Each generator is fitted with a fixed carbon dioxide installation. There should be a set of industrial high capacity circuit breakers to disconnect the building from the network. Burke, can you locate breaker GD15-A on the plans?”

The redheaded man started to quickly flip through several large sheets of paper before stopping at the plan for the generator building. He traced the circuit with a finger before stopping, eyebrows raised.

“Found it, but we might have a problem.”

“Come on; don’t go telling me the breaker we want is inside the building. For one that’s cheesy as hell, for second that’s such a glaring design flaw it makes the Death Star look well designed.” Angelo complained.

“Actually no. It’s outside. But there are two breakers we need to activate on the roof of that building if we want to reroute power from generators one and three towards reactor two, which will be needed once the reactor cools down to such a point that it doesn’t generate enough power to activate its own turbine and drive the pumps. Shoddy design I reckon, but they didn’t modify it over the thirty years that the plant has been operational. A pity, considering a simple ladder outside the building would have done the trick.”

Burke went on to list off the name of each breaker they would have to activate to reroute the power the way they wanted, which was a lot. Angelo dutifully wrote down each name and location for the breakers, as well as the order Burke insisted to activate them in.

“Can’t we use external power for the shutdown? From the regional grid I mean. We saw plenty of wind turbines coming here.”

“True as that may be, and we will make use of that power, it fluctuates too much to reliably cool down the reactor starting from the point we wish to leave them at. When you leave the power plant you will turn on the generators to continuously keep driving the cooling system until they empty their tanks, and only then will the core be cool enough that we can trust the regional grid to power the system. That makes it one week on diesel power at low rpm before the tank is empty and the regional grid takes over. Trust me, I checked my calculations, past that point the core will be cool enough that green power will be enough despite the fluctuations.” Burke explained.

“In any case…” Lockwood added after his subordinate stopped talking. “I have an idea that should rid us of that electric pest problem. You should be familiar with fixed carbon dioxide systems, so just activate it in generator two to freeze the bugs.” The African man shrugged. “Worst case scenario, they’re resistant to extreme cold and we have to wait ‘til the CO2 suffocates them.”

That he could get behind. While Kipling was still trying to figure out how to restore control over to the control room, Angelo walked outside radio in hand to get in contact with Nikola. The gargoyle had made his way back to the roof after helping Nguyen, and from the tone in his voice was rather bored. Good, now he would have something to help out with said boredom.

“Niko, you remember how to activate a fixed CO2 installation? Over.”

“Affirmative, why the question? Over.” The gargoyle answered through his walkie-talkie.

“I need you to activate the installation in the generator building where Nguyen trapped the bugs. That, and I got a couple breakers for you to activate. Over.”

“Hold on, lemme get a hold of my notebook first. How many breakers are we talking? Over.”

“Well first off you have the isolating breaker for generator two. That one is priority ‘cause we want to cut off the electric bugs from the network ASAP. Name’s breaker GD15-A; and it’s outside the building under a shed on the North side. Can’t miss it with the cables going around it. Over.”

“So first I do that one, and then I activate the CO2? Over.” Niko asked.

“Correct. Then you’ve got a number of breakers to activate in a specific order. Last ones are on the roof of generator two and there is no external access so it will have to be vented before you get to it, but I should be able to do that from here after making sure the bugs are dead. Plenty of time for that however. You ready to write that down? Over.”

“Fire away chief. Over.”

Back in the control room, Kipling had found out how to regain control of the plant and was explaining it to Roberto, with the cat listening intently to the woman’s description of how to go about it.

“It’s in the control building. You need to get to the basement, that’s where they put the mainframe. Most of the servers there are of no interest to us since it’s just data storage and management files. What matters is the central computer, which is connected to the sensor processor. If the signal lines were overloaded then that forced a reset on the processor, but the connection with the central computer is fitted with an automatic disconnect to prevent a local surge from frying the whole system. Locate the connection locker next to the central computer, and turn on the automatic switch that failed to reconnect. Worst case scenario it’s fried completely and you will have to replace it, but there should be parts lying in a supply storage somewhere. No issue replacing a burnt out fuse. Copy?”

“Bit of a mouthful, but I got the gist of it. Get down to the mainframe, find the fuse box and fix it. Easy enough. That’s all?”

The pudgy woman just gave him a tired nod. Behind her, Lockwood gave him a stare that clearly said something along the lines of: ‘You best be going, or else…’.

The cat didn’t wish to garner the ire of the haughty South African, so he quickly left the room, dodging Angelo on the way out.

Outside the building, Nikola had already slid down the fire ladder on the roof of the control building and was making his way to the generator building. He stopped by Nguyen to tell him to watch the gate while he was busy with the breakers. The cook complied happily, just having to turn in the opposite direction from where he was making a thermos of coffee to get a look at the gate.

The shed with the isolating breaker wasn’t too hard to locate: it was painted bright red to attract firemen’s attention, leaning against the Northern wall of the generator building.

The less convenient part was that Nikola had to go back to the trucks to fetch a pair of bolt cutters to get through the padlock keeping the door shut. Still, that barely took him a minute at jogging pace.

As a testimony to the power plant having avoided any incident during the course of its existence, most of the inside of the shed was covered in cobwebs, with only the breaker remaining uncovered by spider silk due to being regularly changed. The gargoyle quickly pulled the lever next to the massive multi-thousand amperes breaker, the springs inside the system pulling it shut with a loud ‘clang!’

Nikola signaled Angelo that the breaker was down via radio before moving on to a larger building adjoining the generator housing. The manifold going out of its roof and into the side of the generator building made it very clear it was the room in which they stored the CO2 bottles, if the numerous signs on its walls weren’t enough of a hint.

One application of bolt cutters later, Nikola was inside and going over the layout of the room. On either side of the door were rows of tall cylinders filled with compressed CO2, all hooked up to pipes that met in the center of the room. Thanks to signs laid out around the room, the gargoyle was able to deduce that each row of bottles made up a dose of CO2 to fill the room, and there was a control valve in the center of the piping to select which row he wanted to use before the pipes left for the generator building.

Easy enough, he thought, as he went through one row of bottles pulling off their safety pins. The control valve in the center was even fitted with a manometer that told him when the system was ready to deliver its shot. The Bulgarian quickly checked which row he had selected before setting up the control valve.

The pipes started to whistle as they filled up with carbon dioxide. Nikola spotted small specks of frost already forming at the joints in the piping. When the manometer on the control valve reached its operational range, the gargoyle left the building, being very careful to close the door behind him.

Next to the door was a large red lever in a box, held in place by a safety pin. The release control, because you the CO2 shouldn’t be fired from within the bottle storage room (or the targeted room, obviously). Nikola ripped off the safety pin and called up Angelo on his radio to check if the minotaur was ready. He had to wait a minute or two for his superior to bring up the diesel generator on his CCTV screen before finally getting the green light.

Upon pulling the lever, a loud siren rang out as the gas raced through the piping. Nikola spied more frost forming inside of the bottle storage room as each bottle quickly discharged its icy content. The main reason behind using CO2 in a fire suppression system wasn’t because of the cold it generated, but because it smothered fires. The freezing effect was supposed to just be a neat side-effect, though in this case it was the main reason they used it.

The gargoyle waited for Angelo to tell him he was good to go on with re-routing the current with the breakers, his tail idly swinging back and forth as he waited. Agile as it may have been, Nikola didn’t have half as much control over the appendage as he wanted to, and it being clad in a restrictive sleeve of fabric didn’t really help. Sure, he may have been able to instinctively keep it from getting stuck in random doors, but he still had issues with overbalancing and knocking things over whenever he tried to turn around too quickly.

Rahul had been quite cross about it the last time he broke a jar of mayonnaise in the cafeteria. Eh, not like he could help it, he thought, as his tail tauntingly swung in front of him before he swatted it aside with a snort.

“Angelo to Nikola, you’re good to go. The bugs are completely frozen to a wall, so now you just need to give me time to vent the place after Roberto restores the control system. Give it half an hour or so. Out.”

All the time he could ever ask for to just go turn some breakers at his own pace. Good, that would give Nguyen the time needed to finish the coffee.

Once Angelo was given the time to vent all the carbon dioxide they had pumped inside the generator room, he sent in Nikola to activate the last breakers.

If the bottle storage room had fallen victim to a light frost coating upon activating the fire suppression system, the generator was even more marked by the injection of CO2. Lumps of dry ice and snow littered the floor and every sharp edge in the now freezing room, and Nikola’s breath formed a cloud as he exhaled. An icicle crashed down on the floor the moment he opened the door.

The taser bugs had been resting on a wall at the moment of activation. They were now stuck to said wall, the swarm frozen together in one solid lump of ice. The gargoyle stopped by to examine them, taking note of their still shiny eyes and the ever present blue glow that surrounded them. Taking out a pair of pliers, he ripped off a cluster of bugs which he shoved into a pouch of his flak jacket.

Might as well take a trophy if they could, not like there was any risk of them coming back to life since surviving being flash-frozen like that only ever came true in science-fiction.

The reason the last breakers were such trouble was due to a design oversight in the generator building. Most of the electric lines around the power plant ran above ground alongside the structures that supported all of the non-radioactive piping in order to save space and simplify the layout.

While it did have the upside of making it clear to follow and inspect lines, some engineer had at some point thought it was a good idea to put the re-routing breakers on the roof. That idea wouldn’t have been that big of a problem if said engineer had had the presence of mind to put an external access to the roof. But of course not, the only way to reach the roof, and that particularly critical equipment, was through a ladder inside the generator building.

The fact that the generators being inaccessible and power needing to be redirected were intrinsically tied seemed to have gone over said engineer’s head.

And thus, the gargoyle found himself climbing the thin ladder to the roof. He had been forced to put on some gloves thanks to the metal of the ladder being so bloody cold after exposure to the carbon dioxide, but the climb wasn’t that difficult compared to some of the tighter spaces inside of Amandine’s engine room. He did have to stop when part of his mane stuck to the metal halfway up the ladder though. He would have to spare the time to style it when he got back to the ship.

With an annoyed grumble, Nikola practically punched open the hatch at the top of the ladder. A minute later, Angelo was receiving a radio call telling him all breakers had been activated in the correct order.

As for the gargoyle, he sat down on the roof to enjoy the sight while he was up there. Pulling out a cigarette, he let his gaze wander in the direction of the burning town off in the distance.

“We have now regained control of the plant, and all lines have been re-routed in preparation for the shutdown.” Angelo said to the HPI agent on the other end of the teleconference.

“About damn time.” Lockwood snorted. “We are way behind schedule thanks to this incident.”

“Be certain that I would have done my best to avoid this, had it been possible to predict it.” Angelo answered through gritted teeth. The African’s behavior was seriously starting to get on his nerves. “As it stands, our models in risk analysis do not account for the appearance of electricity related monstrous creatures.” He added sarcastically.

That seemed to hit its mark as Lockwood’s composure wavered for a second before he pulled himself together. Behind the man, Burke mouthed for Angelo to stop antagonizing the man, repeatedly pointing to a sheet of paper where he had quickly scribbled ‘bad idea’. The minotaur ignored him, if the man didn’t have the balls to stand up to his annoying superior, that wasn’t his problem.

“I believe we were ready to begin injections of liquid coolant. The core temperature remains at an average of 310 degrees.”

“That means it’s down five degrees over… about an hour?” Kipling asked from the back of the room where she was taking notes on a tablet.

“That is correct.” Angelo nodded. “The loss in pressure due to the cooling resulted in the injection of regular water some ten minutes ago to maintain it at 160 bars. Shall we begin?”

“Let’s do it.” Burke said. “My estimations are that we will need between three and five changes of coolant per reactor to bring them down to the right temperature. No time to waste then.”

Following instructions from the HPI specialists and Roberto’s help in translating the controls, Angelo began to prep a ‘shot’ of sodium enriched coolant in the system’s chemical processing plant. Burke was very stringent on the content of the shot, insisting on mixing the water with a very precise amount of sodium and heavy water.

When they were certain the shot was mixed to the optimal concentration, Burke finally allowed Angelo to inject it in the core circuit. For a few minutes, they heard the whirring noise of the pressure relief system making its work on the core circuit trying to keep the pressure stable. After a few tense moments, the noise stopped and the pressure graph on Angelo’s screen stabilized.

For about half an hour, the temperature went down until it eventually reached a plateau. Burke explained it was normal and went on to tell Angelo a new mix of concentrations for the following shot they would inject in the reactor. The HPI engineer was very keen on designing the most optimal mix of coolant for each plateau of temperature they reached, and Angelo didn’t deem his own expertise sufficient to contradict the short redheaded man.

They continued the process of injecting a new mix of coolant in the reactor for a few times before they had to stop because the temperature had gotten so low that the turbine stopped producing enough power to drive its own pumps. A fact they couldn’t ignore since the secondary circuit provided some crucial cooling effect via the heat exchanger that connected it with the core circuit.

The task of redirecting power to the pumps was one he was more familiar with, and that was done rather quickly considering Nikola had already done most of the required preparations by turning the breakers. Within minutes, the pumps were starting up again, much to Angelo’s relief: the lapse in cooling caused by the loss of power had made the core circuit’s temperature rise back by a couple degrees.

Things could have gone bad real quick had they not expected that turn of event…

Thanks in no small part to the advice of the HPI engineers, Angelo managed to bring down the temperature of the reactor to the desired level in a few hours and as many injections of coolant. The pressure relief system opened a few times to release liquid into the emergency tanks, which had the minotaur worried until he got the chance the check out the level inside of them.

For all the faults he wanted to blame on the designers, he didn’t have anything bad to say about that system in particular. Every time the pressure relief valve opened to vent some liquid, it had to first transit through a ‘prep’ circuit where it was cooled down and mixed with a healthy dose of neutron absorber before being pumped out to the emergency tanks. While that liquid was still very much radioactive, none of what they vented that day exceeded the capabilities of the shielding around the tanks.

Furthermore, even after all the venting of liquid in the core circuit they had done, they barely reached a third of the maximum volume in the tank. That might have caused some issues… if each reactor didn’t have its own separate dump tank.

So there he sat at the controls of a power plant with a freakishly well designed core control system, but a backup power grid that was unable to plan ahead of its own systems being damaged. Puzzling, but nothing he couldn’t work with.

“Have we reached the right temperature now?” Lockwood asked impatiently, pacing around the room he was stuck in with his two colleagues.

“We plateaued about six degrees below the maximum temperature for the neutron absorber.” Angelo answered after a quick glance at his screen. The line depicting the average core temperature was lazily oscillating well below the thick red line indicating their goal temperature and showed no sign of climbing back up at the moment. More reassuring even, was that the inlet and outlet temperature on his instruments were steadily getting closer to each other, meaning the core wasn’t emitting as much heat as before.

“Well, now that it’s stable we’re good to inject the neutron absorber then. I just need a couple minutes to adjust the mixture to the right temperature and make sure we don’t accidentally vent more coolant than we inject, then we can begin the last phase for this reactor.” Burke said. The man was typing frenetically on a laptop in the back of the room. “Wouldn’t want to ruin that effort of bringing the temperature down now, would we?”

Once they got the numbers right for the last injection, the last phase of their work on the reactor happened rather quickly. The temperature started to show a very slow but steady decrease, indicating the fuel rods had finally stopped chain-reacting with each other.

“Getting rid of all the decay heat will take time.” Lockwood began. “We can’t expect to do it all in a day, but what we can do is stop the chain reaction and begin the process of cooling down the core. At first we will set the diesel generators to power the system until they run out of fuel. That alone ought to bring the core to a relatively safe level. For anything that occurs past that point, we will set up the system so that it leaches off of the renewable energy that’s generated by the regional grid. Not much power, but enough to drive the pumps and keep the system cool.”

“So we start the generators now?” Angelo asked.

“Not yet. We will do it once all reactors are in their cooling phase and the turbines stop producing anything. In the meantime, we will still use all the nuclear power we can, understood?”

“Crystal clear.” The minotaur nodded.

At the rate the regional grid would cool them; it would take weeks for the reactors to reach a safe temperature. Thankfully, there was little risk of things going awry past that point.

Shutting down the other two reactors took them another couple hours. By the time they were finished and concluded the whole affair by turning on a single diesel generator to power the pumps, the sun had long set and Angelo had gone through several thermos of coffee, courtesy of Nguyen who brought him a new one frequently.

Following Lockwood’s directions, Angelo set the generator to the lowest possible rpm before setting up the grid so that it took power from around the plant once the generator ran out of fuel. They double checked all connections manually before eventually agreeing the plant was ready to enter its long term cooling phase. Lockwood made Angelo promise to check out the systems the following morning before he left and to call them if their efforts turned out to be insufficient before the African finally left the conference room at a brisk pace.

That only left Burke and Kipling in the conference room. The redhead gave Angelo a tired smile as he served himself a cup of coffee.

“Hope you don’t take his behavior personally. Since Lockwood is the chief of nuclear operations he’s had to manage the shutdown procedures for the entire American continent, which still isn’t finished I must add, and now he’s got the European plants to look forward to. Usually he’s not so…” Burke tried.

“That big of an asshole?” Angelo said, getting a hesitant shrug from Burke as an answer. “It’s fine, I understand. Lotsa work, and I don’t think your organization is doing too good on morale right now, uh?”

“We really only avoided a full blown nuclear catastrophe by pure luck because we found your ship.” Kipling said. “Understandably, the higher ups are not too happy about it and Lockwood is having to deflect all kinds of flak from them when they got the idea his division was responsible for the segregation of nuclear remote access across all facilities. We’re all in a tight spot at the moment, and we still have to prepare the plans to assist your shipmates with Doel’s reactors later…”

“Best of luck with those reactors. Just tell your superior to lay off the stimulants; I could see his eyelid ticking from across the teleconference.”

Not giving the HPI engineers the time to respond, Angelo bid his farewell and closed the teleconference with a soft tap on the laptop’s keyboard. He let out a tired groan and leaned back in his chair.

On the laptop’s screen, the timer had stopped the teleconference just short of eleven hours. Eleven hours of continuous surveillance and careful manipulations to avoid nuclear annihilation… but he had done it. He, a mere marine engineer, had managed to shut down a nuclear power plant. Granted that was done with satellite assistance from other engineers that were actually competent, but still… Biggest achievement of his career by a long stretch.

Angelo swiveled in his chair to face Roberto. The Italian cat was napping in a chair in a corner of the room, having long ago finished his translation business. With the right lightning, the black furred bipedal cat with white spots here and there on his coat might have looked cute.

To a person that liked cats.

Angelo didn’t, so he just woke up his colleague with a sharp clap of his hands (since he had yet to figure out how to whistle with a muzzle). Roberto jerked awake as if the minotaur had slapped him, looking blearily left and right.

“Shutdown is done Rob’.” Angelo said, giving the cat a few seconds to wake up fully. “I’m fucking tired, and I seriously need to grab something to eat. Care to finish this all? Report to the Captain and maybe pack up the laptop and antenna if you’ve got the heart to do it.” He added, moving towards the exit.

The cat held up a paw to stop Angelo from leaving just yet and let out a wide yawn. He pulled out a small black box the size of a cigarette pack with a LCD screen from his pocket and held it towards Angelo.

“Meant to give you that earlier. I found this pager in the server room. Turns out, some of the plant’s personnel were using them before the cataclysm so they could leave the control room and still be alerted whenever an alert sprang up. Might be useful if anything happens overnight.”

With a small word of thanks, Angelo pocketed the device and left the control room. It was now night outside, and the city off in the distance was still burning, casting a red light against the glass structure of the control building.

Lacking anyone to activate them, the pole lights around the compound remained turned off, unlike the many automatically activated street lights that Angelo could see lining the streets outside. The orange-toned lamps coursed through the streets and countryside surrounding the power plant like dull streamers. On top of these so-called streamers were the blinking white lights of the many wind turbines that topped hills in the region.

Angelo allowed himself to drink in the peaceful sight and wind down after the busy day he’d just had. He closed his eyes and let out a long, drawn out breath; thinking about the past events.

His reaction to Lockwood’s behavior surprised him. Usually when confronted with people of such… character, he would just ignore it, stay professional and keep going. No point in seeking confrontation, which was what he had tried to do in the beginning. The odd part was that towards the end, the African engineer had started to grate on his nerves so much that something inside him snapped and he started to retort to Lockwood’s jab.

Of course that didn’t mean he just started yelling at the guy, Angelo was still very much in control of his emotions. But the sole fact that he had bitten back was unlike him, and the thought worried him. There was a chance that the transformation had brought on small mental changes…

Or he could be wrong and that was a natural change in his character.

The minotaur snorted and turned away from the windows. No sense dwelling on that at the moment, he wanted to catch as much shuteye as he could before they went for the HPI facility the next day. Hypothetical mental changes were something he might entertain discussing with someone when they got back to the ship.