Regeneration Read Online Free Page B

enough for some of the blades to be damaged before the shutdown could be completed. There’s no natural current that powerful, certainly not one that shoots across the estuary at ninety degrees to the direction of the tide, so something created it. It moved down the line of turbines whacking them out of position and then stopped.”
    “Could you see anything else? Besides the water itself?”
    “Not much. The cams are all focused on the turbines. We zoomed in and there are streaks of silt and algae on the blades. Pilan’s getting Agwé to take some close-ups, record the scene ahead of repairs—”
    “He should’ve waited if they suspect foul play. Let police forensics get in there.”
    “He’d already mobilized everyone before I arrived. And anyway, you know what he’s like. They’re so close to joining the grid, they’ve fought off so many attempts to delay and obstruct. I think he’s decided he’ll be damned if he lets anything get in the way now.”
    “I understand how he feels, but they still should’ve waited. Charging ahead might just give the other side ammunition.” She winced as Misha pounced on Eve and opened her mouth to shout a rebuke, then closed it as Eve reached up, grabbed the boy’s ear and twisted.Misha fell off with a good-natured yell. Little Sural, who liked to pretend to be above the fray but never really was, piled in too.
    The mothers looked at each other. “Oh well,” Sharon concluded, “what’s done is done. So your guess is—what? Some kind of submersible?”
    “I’d say so. It happened at high tide last night, just on the turn. Maximum depth in the water column, black as pitch, no one around.”
    “A good time for sabotage.”
    “Exactly. They would’ve been able to slip away without a trace—or so they thought—and without evidence of an external cause, the presumption would have been that it had to be a system error, which Thames Tidal Power would then have been unable to find.”
    “Was that the point? To cast doubt on TTP’s system integrity?” Sharon waved at the children leapfrogging each other halfway up the quay, beckoning them back: Misha was getting five feet further away with every jump. “Because it doesn’t sound like the damage is that bad, and the turbines are not intrinsically dangerous, not like the battery banks.”
    “No, but the battery banks have many more layers of security. And it would be insane to try anything that might breach quantum-energy storage. You’d never get away in time.” She shivered.
    Sharon felt the chill too, and was not entirely certain it was down to the breeze off the water, sharp though that was.
    “If they thought that no one would ever find out it was sabotage, an inexplicable fault that shut down a tidemill array would lend weight to fears that the entire project is risky and that implementation should be delayed.” Sharon was thinking aloud now, and vaguely aware that she sounded like she was reading a case file aloud. “I’ve heard an emergency petition claiming exactly that is about to be filed with the city, which is an interesting coincidence. It suggests that we should take a very hard look at the group behind the petition. But here’s what’s bothering me, Gaela”—she could feel herself frowning as she worked through the implications—“connection to the grid hasn’t happened yet. Even if it had, this stunt last night wouldn’t have affected supply. The turbines are meant to constantly recharge the battery banks, but the whole TTP venture is predicated on thecapacity of quantum storage. Even if every turbine in the estuary was shut down for days, there’d still be enough stored energy for the company to meet its targets.” She signaled to the children again, more vigorously this time. “To put it bluntly, if Pilan and company had decided to just stay quiet about this, would anyone even have known?”
    “It would never happen. Whatever else you might say about him, Pilan isn’t