Fallout Read Free

be caught dead wearing outside a business meeting with the NASA directors, and even then he usually lost the tie and opened the top button when they got down to serious business. “Here, take this.” Derek passed the bag with his clothes to the other man. “I’m soaked through, and some of this equipment is moisture sensitive.”
    The man, Indian or Pakistani to judge by his coloring, scowled but took the bag. “The dog can’t come inside.”
    “Then I’ll take my bag and head home. I already told my boss I wasn’t abandoning him after his previous owners left him alone in the storm.”
    “Fine,” the man said with a huff, “but keep him out of my way.”
    “Look, bud—”
    “Sambit,” the man interrupted. “My name is Sambit Patel.”
    “Look, Sam,” Derek said, not even trying to pronounce the foreign name, “I’m here with my robot out of the goodness of my own heart, so get rid of whatever bug crawled up your ass and died and tell me what needs to be done. Fido and I would like to go home.”
    “First, my name is Sambit, not Sam. Second, Mr. Marshall, I suggest you leave your attitude at the door. I’m here out of the same goodness of heart, as you call it, as you are. The employees of the plant who were on duty are either dead or in the hospital with injuries from the tornado that struck along with the hurricane and flooding. The off-shift workers were evacuated along with the rest of Bay City, and no one knows where they are at the moment.” Sambit must have gotten a more thorough briefing than Derek had if he knew Derek’s name. Derek wondered what else he knew that Derek didn’t.
    “So if I’m the robot guy, then who are you?”
    “The nuclear engineer,” Sambit replied. “I teach in the nuclear engineering department at Texas A&M.”
    “So you don’t know any more about this plant than I do.”
    “I know quite a lot about nuclear power plants.” Sambit crossed his arms over his chest, the posture so defensive Derek nearly laughed in desperation. They were so screwed.
    “So what’s the status of the core?”
    “It is compromised,” Sambit said. “Beyond that, I don’t know. The power went out ten minutes ago.”
    “There has to be a backup. A system this critical would have a UPS backup system—uninterruptible power source,” he added for Sambit’s benefit. “Plus separate backup generators in case the UPS fails.”
    “I know what a UPS backup system is,” Sambit snapped. “I may deal with theory more than practice these days, but my students have to be prepared to work in plants just like this one.”
    Derek resisted the urge to roll his eyes, and set down his gear. “Come here, Fido.” He ignored Sambit while he petted the dog’s head a few times, settling it in yet another new location in a matter of hours. “Stay here, okay? Sam and I are going to find the light switch, and then we’ll come back for you.”
    The dog circled twice and curled up in the corner of what was clearly the break room. “Do you at least have the passwords for the computers once we find the backup power?”
    “What passwords?”
    “You don’t seriously think a system like this one is going to operate without password protection to keep terrorists from hacking into the system and causing a meltdown, do you?” Derek rolled his eyes at the other man’s ignorance. “Once we get the power back on, we’ll call the plant managers and see if we can get the log-on information. You’re the nuclear engineer. How long do we have before it gets critical?”
    “It depends on how badly the core has overheated,” Sambit replied. “Without the computers, I can’t tell for sure.”
    “Well, fuck,” Derek muttered. “Is there anything you do know?”
    “I know you have a bad attitude and a foul mouth.”
    “Like that’s news. Is there anything you do know about the status of the plant?”
    “Not much, but hopefully we will get the computer system online soon.”
    Derek cursed again and