The Faslane Files: Volume Two: The Faslane Files, #2

By Harry Dayle

Underground, power is everything. Light, heat, water, even air – the elements of life all depend on electricity. For the colony buried far beneath a remote patch of Scotland, an endless supply is essential. So when the power runs out, the race is on to find more...fast!

Faslane's fledgling community of survivors has made fantastic progress in its quest to create an autonomous settlement. Now the inhabitants of the former navy base must confront a new challenge as power shortages threaten to derail their bid to keep mankind alive.

Elis Howe has an idea, but it means going outside – further into the toxic exterior than they've ever been before. Two teams set off on a co-ordinated expedition. But do they have what it takes to confront the perilous conditions and a poisonous ash that has not yet given up all its secrets?

The Faslane Files: Volume Two continues the exciting new series set in the world of Noah's Ark.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harry Dayle
• Release date: Jan 12, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224736447

Book preview

One

You, young man, are something of a miracle. That’s quite a remarkable recovery. Especially in view of our circumstances. Mandy scribbled some notes then stared at Frank for a moment, her lips pursed. You really have made astounding progress. Almost too good to be true. Your leg is virtually healed.

It still hurts, on and off, Frank said. Especially in the mornings. But once I get up and walk around on it, it starts to feel a lot better.

That’s perfectly normal. Your body’s healing itself while you sleep. The pain in the morning is because your muscles are tired from the process. It will get better with time and exercise. Don’t worry about it. It’s a good sign.

Oh I’m not worried. I feel better every day. Mind you, these last few mornings I’ve been feeling quite groggy when I wake up. Like I haven’t slept enough.

Mandy plopped her clipboard down on the counter and rubbed her eyes without realising it. Yeah, I know what you mean. I feel the same way. This morning I felt like I was hung over. Chance would be a fine thing.

How are you doing anyway, Mandy? Frank avoided looking at her directly. He focussed on getting his clothes back on now the check-up was over.

Mandy turned away and studied the clipboard again. She knew that the question was well intentioned, but she hated how it was asked with such frequency. One of the downsides of living in a community of only ninety-eight people was that there was nowhere to hide. No chance to escape to somewhere nobody knew who you were or what you had been through. Nowhere to go where people would treat you normally and not talk to you as though afraid you might shatter. She forced a smile. Oh you know, one day at a time. I’m up and walking, so I can’t complain. She knew he wasn’t asking about her physical injuries, but they provided a convenient diversion. Right, are you coming outside with us? Big day today!

Frank looked as relieved as she that the awkward moment had passed. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I just wish I could be of more use. Watching doesn’t feel like helping.

Elis says you’ve been a great help already. He was telling me just yesterday that they would never have got the turbine built without your knowledge.

Elis is just being kind.

No, I’m serious. He really thinks you’ve saved them loads of time. So, if you’re ready? I said we’d meet them as soon as I was done with you.

Mandy held open the door and Frank hobbled out of the medical centre, leaning on his one walking stick. She smiled, a real one this time. He really had made a great recovery in such a short space of time. It had only been a month since he had fallen to the bottom of the lift shaft and badly broken his leg. Given that they were confined to the tunnels of the underground base, and that exercise was largely limited to walking up and down stairs and through the endless corridors, Frank was doing astonishingly well.

They met with Elis and the others from the utilities team in the canteen. The men — and all of the utilities team were men — were sitting at one of four long tables that ran the length of the room. Their extended lunch break was almost over.

Elis beamed at Mandy. Hey there, you! How are you doing? Ready for the final phase?

Looking forward to it.

Let’s not waste any more time then. He banged his fist on the table twice, and looked at the others still talking quietly among themselves. Boys! We have a job to do. Let’s not keep the lady waiting.

The canteen was filled with the sound of chair legs scraping back against the tiled floor as the men got to their feet. A couple of them drained the last dregs of their coffee, well aware that once outside it would be nigh on impossible to take on any more fluids. Elis waited patiently as they trooped towards the door, then brought up the rear.

As they passed by the end of the serving counter he paused at a dry erase board affixed to the wall. He glanced at his wrist, then looked back at the board. That’s funny. He tapped his watch. Bloody thing’s got ahead of itself again. I know this was only cheap, but you’d think it would be able to keep the date properly. I wish I could change it for a better one, but nobody wears bloody watches anymore. It’s all smartphones now.

Mandy smirked. Yeah, but the phones are no use, are they? You old-fashioned watch brigade, you’re the ones who had the last laugh, aren’t you? You’re the only ones who can tell the time now.

Elis grunted and shuffled out through the door, still tapping his watch as if doing so would somehow correct its poor timekeeping.

Mandy looked at the board on her way past. Written in tall letters across the top, in green dry-wipe marker pen, were the words Faslane To Freedom. The rest of the space was occupied by a number indicating the days remaining before the Spirit of Arcadia and HMS Ambush were due to return. According to the sign they would see the fleet in fifty-seven days. Mandy knew, as did everybody, that the three months they had been allocated before the fleet reappeared was a very elastic timeframe. Nobody really had any idea if the ships would be back in fifty-seven days, or five hundred and seventy days, or whether they would ever return at all. It was a risk they had all accepted when they agreed to start the experimental community on the bank of the Scottish loch. But there was no denying that it helped to think that they would see the other survivors again soon. It gave everyone a definite goal to work towards.

It was an important objective, too. The fleet were relying on Faslane to provide food for almost three thousand people. The base’s own supplies would only last so long. Their mission was to find a sustainable way to provide for everybody.

Mandy caught up with the others at the agriculture and food production team’s store room near the above-ground exit. They were all in various states of dress as they got suited up to go outside. From a rack that ran the length of one wall, she selected a biosuit and helmet with her name stencilled across the top.

The biosuits — or ‘hazmat’ suits, as Brett insisted on calling them, had been discovered in a locker in one of the secret level-four labs at the bottom of the facility. They were full-body outfits, like boiler suits but with integrated gloves and flared boot coverings. A helmet with built-in gas mask zipped to the neck of the suit, providing total isolation from the environment. The outfits offered considerably greater protection from the toxic flesh-dissolving ash that covered the world outside. Up until a week earlier, before the suits had been found, the community had been using diver’s wetsuits for outside work. Neoprene had already proven to be immune to the ash. Nobody knew exactly what the new biosuits were made of, but they had shown themselves to be equally durable and unaffected. Mandy thought they made everyone look uncannily like spacemen, but nobody was concerned about making a fashion statement. This equipment was all about self-preservation.

By the time Mandy had wriggled into her biosuit, most of the team had already gone outside. Only Elis waited behind for her.

Ready? he asked. His voice was picked up by a microphone inside his helmet and relayed via a small speaker on the outside of the suit.

Ready, Mandy said, nodding. She double checked the zip around her neck. It didn’t matter how many times she put the thing on, she could not get used to the feeling of claustrophobia. Her face felt hot, and her field of vision was reduced, although the helmet did offer slightly better visibility than the gas masks they had been using previously. Let’s go, she said, her voice tinny and weak.

They set off through a trench carved out by hundreds of return trips to the area where the team had been working. Like compacted snow, the ash had been compressed underfoot. Compressed, but never dispersed. Unlike snow, the powder didn’t melt or dissolve into the ground. Removal required physical relocation.

Mandy felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see Elis pointing towards the sky.

It’s definitely getting brighter, he said.

The sky looked as grey as ever to her, but she nodded and held up a thumb. Mandy smiled to herself. More than once she had made a comment about Elis’ naturally pessimistic outlook. It seemed he had taken her words to heart, as he had been making an effort to always see the silver lining, even when there was none.

Ever since the asteroid had wiped all life from the surface of the planet, the sky had remained stubbornly and miserably grey. Nobody knew quite why, but there were plenty of theories. Some thought that more ash was held suspended in the atmosphere. Others believed that weather patterns had been altered, perhaps by a change to the jet stream, or perhaps by the lump of space rock interfering with the Earth’s magnetic field. Every day, Elis made reference to how things were brightening up, and every day Mandy was too polite to contradict him.

She trudged onwards, sticking to the well-trodden path to avoid hidden dangers.

The rest of the team were gathered in a loose circle around a huge structure that lay sprawled on the ground. The wind turbine was an impressive achievement. If Elis wanted to be positive and upbeat about something, the turbine should be it, Mandy thought. This was the utilities team’s masterpiece. The first step in becoming truly self-sufficient. A way to wean themselves from their dependency on limited supplies of diesel that were being converted into electricity by the generator below them.

The turbine had been cobbled together with whatever the team had been able to find around the base. Its central structure was made from flagpoles that had been found stashed in one of the hundreds of offices scattered throughout levels one and two. Captain Wickham Grey, leader of the community and former XO of HMS Ambush and thus a senior Royal Navy man, had said something about them being kept for use in an eventual Third World War. Mandy was sketchy on the details. She had stopped listening quite early on in his explanation. Whatever their original purpose, the poles had now been bound together to form a rigid and tall pylon, atop which sat the turbine itself.

A repurposed electric motor from one of the level-four doors was connected to a gearbox that Elis had pinched from the plant room. He assured the others that it was from a backup system and would not be missed. All of this was housed in a casing that Clive and Malc — two of the utilities team’s more skilled members — had fabricated from metal scavenged from around Faslane. Filing cabinets, tea trolleys, anything they could get their hands on.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, were the blades of the wind turbine. Without the tools necessary to work metal to a high degree of precision, the team had turned to wood for these most vital components. They had found cutting and sanding equipment in a maintenance store room. It wasn’t much to work with, and it was a time-consuming and painstaking process, but with the few tools available, they had fashioned beautiful aerodynamic blades from hefty wooden desks.

Elis, a senior engineer from the Ambush, had more than a passing experience of aerofoil design and aerodynamics. The submarine herself used an extremely high-tech and stealthy propulsor, and Elis had been one of those responsible for its maintenance. He had personally made all of the calculations for the design of the blade sections which were, as Mandy watched, being bolted to the gearbox.

This was the final assembly stage. The wind turbine was to be hoisted into position as soon as the last checks had been made. As base nurse, Mandy had been present during much of the construction. The exterior was a dangerous place at the best of times. Between the utilities team who were building the turbine, and the agriculture and food production team who had been preparing a field into which a maize crop had recently been sown, more than half of the population of Faslane were outside during the day. The potential for injury was high. And yet remarkably, there had been very few problems at all. Now that everyone was using the biohazard suits with built-in ventilation, overheating was no longer an issue. The biggest risk was a puncture. Everybody knew what happened if the ash came into contact with skin. Everybody had heard about what had happened to Stacey Martel when the Spirit of Arcadia had visited Svalbard, even though nobody in Faslane had witnessed it personally.

The ash dissolved skin. Painfully, and irreversibly.

The last adjustments and checks took some time, and Mandy found herself being roped in to helping. It wasn’t just the blades that needed to be fixed. The rest of the structure had to be tested and retested. Connections to the power line, run the previous week, were made. The anchor points into which the supporting cables would be fixed also had to be checked and double checked. Then at last, they were ready to begin hoisting.

The team had searched the base thoroughly for any kind of winch system, but to no avail. With no other choice, the tall structure had to be lifted by hand. It was a dangerous procedure. Their new machine was exceptionally heavy. If it fell, they were under no illusions as to the damage that could occur to the turbine, and to anyone unlucky enough to be in its way. Thus it was with no small amount of tension in the air that Elis gave the order to begin pulling on the lines that would lift their creation into its vertical position.

Mandy stood at a safe distance, along with those who were not directly involved in the operation. She watched in awe as the apparatus rose inch by inch from the ground.

The team had secured steel cables to the top, and then routed them around boulders of concrete that had once been part of the supporting pillars of Faslane’s ship lift — the largest of its kind in Europe. These boulders dotted the landscape, and now at last they were proving to be useful as the cables wound back and forth around them, providing both leverage and temporary anchorage.

It was a slow and laborious process. A team of ten men tugged and hauled on the steel lines, and little by little the distance between the structure and the ground increased. The excess cable was tied around the boulders, the knot tightened every couple of minutes.

After half an hour of pulling, the men were exhausted. Elis called a halt, and those who had been watching switched places with the men who had been doing all of the work.

On three! Elis shouted, struggling to make himself heard. He held up his fingers as he counted. One, two, three!

The relief team took up the strain, and once again, the turbine started to rise.

When it had passed forty-five degrees, the work became easier, and the machine moved faster. As it approached the vertical position, the men who had been resting were ordered to take up a third line. It was important to stop the turbine toppling over and falling backwards once upright. Now the entire team were engaged in wrestling it into its final position.

Mandy thought it looked much smaller once in the air, and wondered just how much electricity it was going to generate for them. Faslane was a vast base. There were rumoured to be fifteen kilometres of corridors split across the three main levels, with more space in the previously hidden deepest level. Although the community lived almost exclusively on level one, they still consumed huge amounts of power. Being underground, all ventilation was mechanical, and lights were necessary for at least twelve hours a day. Unfortunately, it appeared that nobody in the Ministry of Defence had heard of energy-saving bulbs, or LED technology. Faslane was an energy guzzler, and their supplies of electricity were finite. The diesel in the level-four tanks was already running low.

That’s it! Hold it steady, Elis shouted.

The turbine was fully upright, but wobbling precariously. Ironically, the wind was making it hard to control. Wind was good, Mandy thought. Wind was what was going to generate their power and assure their future. Right now though, they could have done with calmer conditions.

The men tightened their lifting ropes against the boulders. Four of them broke away and collected up the