Leviathan(67)
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Connor kicked the cover off the ventilation shaft and descended quickly from the crawl space into the power plant. Then Frank came out of the shaft, followed by Barley and four soldiers. Chesterton and the remainder of the platoon had stayed in the Command Cavern, awaiting Leviathan's renewed attack against the vault.
Upon gaining his feet Connor raced to the generator. He saw quickly that the Class-A Power Grid Switch for facility lighting had been thrown off, like a normal breaker would throw itself off under a power surge.
That's what Connor had figured. He knew that, because of the Lockdown Mode, GEO wasn't going to let any electrical power flow through the breaker. The computer would automatically reroute power to throw the breaker off again if Connor just threw it back on, so Connor knew that he had to go around the control system, somehow. He had to defeat the supercomputer's ability to control this electrical junction.
Connor took out a Leatherman pocket tool and began unscrewing the cover. Behind him, the rest of the soldiers emerged fully from the shaft, moving in the red half-light.
“Give me some light over here!” He yelled.
Instantly Barley was beside him, shining a weak regulation-issue Army flashlight as Connor removed the fiberglass box cover, laying it to the side. He knew that inside the box, leading into the switch, the incoming wire would be hot, because it fed power directly from the Norwegian Power cable. And GEO had no ability to interfere with the incoming current. It just had the ability to keep power from flowing through the breaker at this junction.
Connor studied the situation.
He had always found it easy to work with electricity, thinking of it in the simplest terms, like water flowing through pipes. Because, like water, electricity would simply flow where it was allowed to flow, incoming or outgoing. It was not a difficult thing to understand.
Volts of electricity were comparable to the speed of current flowing through a line, the highest volt rating meaning the fastest currents. In this cavern they had used mostly lines of 110, 220, and 440 volts, all of them deadly. But there were much, much more powerful lines used in the facility, including everything from 10,000 to 300,000 volts. Simply looking at a line was never a safe way of determining what amount of voltage it contained. A line of 220 volts was no thicker or more insulated than a line of 10,000 volts. They were both the width of a finger.
Amps were comparable to the amount of current flowing through a line. Connor often thought of an amperage measurement in terms of larger and larger water pipes, each pipe containing a tremendous amount of water but with the water capable of moving at any speed, from slow to fast. Amperage had nothing to do with the speed of the electrical current, it was simply a measurement of the amount of it. Usually, though, any line rated above 11 amps was considered exceedingly dangerous because it probably carried high velocity, or high voltage, currents. A 1,000-amp line was almost as thick as a man's wrist.
Wiping sweat from his eyes with a forearm, Connor concentrated on the box. The incoming current was cut dead at the breaker, where it should be flowing into the rest of the cavern. He studied the feed line; it was a 1,000-amp cable, probably carrying enough power to light up a small town.
Figures.
If this didn't work, he'd be fried.
Connor grabbed a wooden sawhorse, a relic from when the cavern had been built, and placed it beside the power box, where he could sit when the moment came. Then he placed one hand over his chest and stuck the screwdriver in the box, removing the brackets holding the hot, heavy-amp line. He intended to bypass the breaker, main-lining the light current into the facility.
“How come you're putting one hand on your chest?” Barley asked.
“Always work with one hand,” Connor responded, blinking. “That's what they taught us in electrical school.”
Barley seemed nervous. He always seemed nervous when he got around electricity. It was the only sign of fear Connor had ever seen in the muscular man. “Why?” the burly lieutenant asked finally. “Why are you supposed to work with one hand?”
Gently, Connor pried at the insulated section of the 1,000-amp line, lifting the thick bronze strand from its bracket. He knew that a ton of power was poised at the end of the bare copper.
“Because there's less chance of getting electrocuted,” Connor whispered. “If you're touching the box with both hands, one hand might take the current and the other hand will ground you out. That's where the current leaves your body and goes into the ground. Electricity is always trying to find a way to reach the ground.”
Barley didn't get it. “Well, you'll still be electrocuted, Connor, if you touch that line because your foot is touching the ground! The current's gonna come in your hand and go out your foot! It don't matter none if you've got one hand on the box or two hands on it.”