A Short Story
Inspection season again. I always enjoyed visiting the new Windscale; there was something pleasurable in the irony of the UK's fusion programme sitting there in the midst of the decaying remnants of its 20th century fission one, glittering white and steel in a sea of grey boxes. The looming bulk of the reprocessing and waste facilities were a reminder of the problems fusion had solved, too.
But today I was greeted at the gate, not by Gary and his cheery smile, but blue flashes lighting up the dull morning, which resolved themselves into police cars parked broadside across the entrance. I pulled up gently alongside, rolled down the window and asked one of the officers what was going on.
"There's been a terrorist threat." I gave her my curious face, but she just shook her head slightly. "I'm sorry, I can't tell you any more than that."
I said I didn't have anywhere to go, so one of her colleagues escorted me in to the first car park, and they offered me a lift down to Drigg on the staff shuttle. "We'll notify you if it's safe to come back in", the officer said as we waited for the minibus.
A couple of other contractors turned up as well, so we waited together, but none of us really had anything to say, not in the grey gloom of the car park or the sleek smoothness of the minibus.
We were dropped at the Victoria. For once I wasn't staying there - couldn't avoid the place apparently. It wasn't normally open all day, but the owners could see a business opportunity when it presented itself, and it seemed half the plant were in here when I went inside, many of them with bacon butties or breakfast plates in front of them. The TVs were on, showing a news channel, but I couldn't hear anything over the chatter.
I had a quick look around, but I didn't see any of my contacts there. They were all permanent except me, so i guess they'd been sent home. I sidled up to a group who were watching the TV and asked what was going on, but the news channels didn't know yet either.
11am, and finally we got some news. A group claiming affiliation with FAOS were claiming they had control of the plant, and demanding a huge ransom or they'd shut it down. That would be a huge problem: Windscale U supplies 80% of UK and Irish energy; we don't even have the backup capacity any more, these plants are so reliable. Ownership of centralised energy is a great power, which is why it's regulated to states who can be trusted to exercise great responsibility.
By this time, people were clustered into their work groups. I didn't have one, as I checked in with the compliance officers across departments, so I'd been mingling around them all. So when the demand arrived, I was straight over to the tables with the IT staff.
"I thought your systems were completely firewalled. How could they have access?"
It was directed at the table in general, and one of the men I'd been chatting to before turned to me and shook his head. "Impossible", he said. "Control systems are isolated, not just firewalled. You'd have to be on site."
"That's why the control staff have to come to work every day", another pitched in.
One of the monitoring staff from the old repro site behind me piped up. "Of course someone's on site", she said. "Why do you think they won't let us in?" Couldn't argue with that.
"Can't we just send security in to find them and kick them out?" I asked. Heads shook all round the table.
"Taking requests from the police overrides anything internal, and the police are super cagey with terrorism", monitoring lady explained. "Nothing to do but sit tight and let them sort it out."
11.36. Over at the control engineering table, a portable alarm goes off. It's quickly silenced - I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to take them off site. Most people outside con-eng don't know those sounds, but I have to verify the equipment every year. That tells me a few interesting things: First, the police cleared staff out in a hurry; he must have been on shift to have it on him. Second, the vendor had claimed those things were on a closed internal network, so surely it shouldn't be working here; I'll be asking about that when we get back to normal. But most importantly: that was the reduced power alarm.
A modern Advanced Flexible Torus reactor isn't on/off like the early ones, of course. It can operate at a fraction of maximum power, even below the level needed to run the magnets if it's got an external power source. So low power isn't operationally dangerous - but it does mean someone somewhere is getting power cuts it drops too low.
We watched the news for a few minutes but the media hadn't got hold of anything.
A few minutes later, I get a message from Dave, who runs physical security for the control buildings. "You stuck in Drigg with all the other temps? Want to have lunch at mine? I'm sure I can make a better sandwich." He definitely could, and maybe he'd know more about what was happening, so I said yes and he picked me up and made the short drive down to his house in Seascale.
Even better than a good sandwich - he put a big pot of soup on to heat up. Then, with the practicalities sorted, he wanted to chat. "Weirdest thing, how they got in. They must have had help from the sities" - site security - "cos first thing i know about it, five chunky blokes in hoodies show up on the cameras. I hit the timeout switch, and, course, it's inspection day so everyone's ready for a drill." He paused to stir the soup. "Everything went straight onto automatic and into eight hour lockdown. Some of the guys were mad when they realised it wasn't a drill and they'd left stuff on their desks inside!"
I smiled along with him. "I'm sure!" He looked at me and waited. "So, in the Vic, one of the con-eng guys, his low power alarm went off. If they couldn't get into the control room, how did they do that?"
Dave looked disappointed. "That was going to be my big reveal!" But then he smiled again. "But yeah, how? Not even I can get to the panels, all I can do is a remote emergency shutdown." A thoughtful look, and then he declared the soup ready and asked me to help him serve it out.
We were nearly done when there's a stealthy beep from his phone. He takes it out, looks, grimaces and puts it back, then studiously ignores me when I look at him. After we finish the soup and he's taking the bowls away, though, he speaks again: "You know, I kind of want to get in there. Get a look at what's going on myself." I raise my eyebrows, and he smiles in a devious way. "I fancy a bit of golf while we're waiting for news."
13.00. There's a TV news bulletin that we half watch on Dave's mobile. They haven't got a lot new, just some interviews with a family in Cornwall or Cork who've lost power. Dave's got all of his control security team together, so there's seven of us, with a couple of golf bags full of clubs and other bits and pieces, walking up towards the end of the course where it backs onto the site. We stroll along the 8th fairway looking across at the fence to see if site security is protecting it, but they don't seem to be; there's only so many of them and a lot of perimeter. There is a big fence of course, but it has emergency exit gates, and the control security guys have the code for them too, so after a quick look around, Malcolm opens one of them, we pile through, and we're all on site.
Dave leads us into one of the admin buildings close by. "Now look", he says, "this is a dangerous game now. We want to hide from our own sities, they'll try to kick us off, so keep your eye out for them. But we want to see how the bad guys are reducing power output, and who knows what they might have with them. So we stick together, we watch out for each other, and we don't try any heroics. Now, pick your weapon", and he puts down the golf bag, picking out an iron.
"I can get the control room cameras on here", he went on, demonstrating on his screen as we crowded over to pick something. "But there aren't many and they're staying off them, so we don't really know where they are. Let's go up and check the control room perimeter and then start from there." A couple of the security guys turned to leave, and he finishes up: "Quiet and stick together when we're outside."
13.24. They're not around the control buildings, which is good. We had to dodge across the main access road from the Seascale gate out of the eyeline of the security post to the outside. Of course we can't get in either; Dave checks that the doors won't let him in just to be sure that the terrorists couldn't either.
He takes us across the access road into the low security storage building. "Good news, they're not in Control. Bad news is, we don't know where they are. They've caused three low power warnings now so they're on site somewhere, and I want to stop them cutting it any more, so I want to find them. We've seen most of this side and they've not been on the cameras that I've seen, so let's go across to distro." They'd put the control room and public reception on the site of the old Calder Hall, as a nod to the history, but the actual reactor and distribution centre are over the river.
We pick a service bridge that is hidden behind the buildings, and start working our way through the north site, towards the sea.
13.28.
"Oh shit!" A soft crunching noise. I look round behind us: at the back of the group are two balaclava-clad strangers, and one of them just punched Adam by the looks of it. There's a door open behind the scene; looks like they'd got into the distribution housing building there, which has a low security inspection space surrounding the high security equipment. Adam's loosened his grip on a 4 iron after the hit, and the terrorist wrests it from his grasp and swings. Adam ducks and tries to fend it off, but it catches him on the side of the head and he goes over. Two of the other guys charge the bad guy and he backs off.
Adam's starting to scramble to his feet and I hear a door open on the other side of us. I swing round again and there's two more of them coming out of the reactor building low sec lobby. They must have hacked or stolen a low sec access pass, I suppose. We can work that out later, because of more immediate concern is the knife one of them's holding.
It's still six against four, even discounting Adam who gets unsteadily up and pulls back to the middle of us, but they probably have more experience fighting and they have a nastier weapon. So it's a stand-off, our group gripping their clubs in a defensive line, their two pairs wondering whether to attack.
A fifth man comes out of the reactor building. He stops behind the other two, and speaks, in a mockingly put-on posh accent. "I'm sure I made it quite clear in my messages that everyone was to" - his affected cool starts to wear off - "stay the fuck out of here. I can shut the whole place down."
Dave responded for us. "I don't think so, mate. But I'd like you off site to be sure."
The leader snorted. "Hah. One more place just lost power thanks to that smartarsery." He walks around the side of the building, picks up a piece of metal chain, and threw it at one of the power cable groups crossing above him. He misses, which spoils his attempt to be cool, but he picks it up and throws again. There's a bright blue flash and a ding from Dave's pocket. At least we know how they're triggering the power cutouts now.
Dave seems to have thought the same thing. He spreads his hands and starts: "Well, I suppose that's some-" He stops talking, charges the nearest goon and swings the club while he's distracted. He gets a good hit in and then a shoulder charge, sending the goon to the floor, but the two others turn in to mob him. Malcolm and I feel obliged to protect him; Malcolm swings and hits the knife hand of the nearer one, sending the knife flying, and I come in quarterstaff style to block and parry as he turns to us.
With everyone so close it turns into a brawl, the weapons useless at such short range. Dave manages a good jab with his club at the terrorist leader, but he grabs at the club and now they're wrestling with it and each other. The one he knocked over is back and swinging; Dave takes the hit on his shoulder, it unbalances them both and they end up on the floor. The one that lost the knife swings a punch towards me; I put my club up to parry and deflect him upwards, but he puts his weight through the arm so the shaft bends and then snaps in shards of carbon fibre. I grab his arm, drag him through and trip him, and get a knee in his back - I knew that self defence training was worth it.
I look up and try to take stock. Our 3v3 is looking like an even 2v2, with Dave and the leader on the floor and Malcolm and the other goon trying to get involved but fending each other off. I have one restrained but I can't help without releasing him. Behind us, the two by the distribution building are trying to flank around us but our three are keeping them away without engaging closely.
"Shut down more!" It's their leader, shouting from inside the scuffle. "Go!" The two by the distro building hear him and leave the fight, allowing reinforcements to help Dave and Malcolm - but they have more chains ready and they are setting their sights on the many power lines leaving that building. "Until they let me up!" the leader shouts, under Dave now and losing the fight, but we can't cover both fronts.
I see one of the distro goons throw and miss. They're really bad at this, if they've been planning it. But there's power lines all over this side of the site, we can't really stop them without more people. On the second attempt he gets one, and there's another blue flash. A few seconds later, the other one has a go, and another line is tripped out. We'll have to consider this in our next security review.
Dave isn't going to kill the guy, so he has no option but to back off and release the leader. He shouts across to stop his goons, and tells Dave to let the rest of them go, so I have to release the one who attacked me, too. They retreat, haughty glares in their eyes, to their original positions. Stalemate - but we're down a couple of clubs and he retrieves his knife.
Sirens. They sound like they're on both sides - at the gates maybe? We're still at a stand-off in our groups, the goons feinting to attack but enough of us still have clubs in hand to keep them away from me and Adam.
Suddenly, the sound of engines, getting much closer. The terrorists break and run, and two police land rovers screech up to us, disgorging officers. Half of them are angry at us, for being on site; the others seem apologetic; but either way, we're rounded up by one of them, and most of the officers charge off after the terrorists. Although we're likely in trouble, I'm happy to have them arrive, because I don't think that fight was in our favour.
16.30. The police have bought Dave's line that the power outages indicated that the terrorists were doing unknown damage on the site and it was essential to see how they were doing it. So we receive a warning about ignoring protocol, but that's it. It doesn't take long with a ladder to remove the chains fouling cables, and since the reactor isn't affected, control engineering can reset those trips from the local control room. We're back to full power before the head office crew can make it up from London to verify the clearance and cancel the control room lockdown.