Page 111 of Her Unflinching Warrior (Omega Sky)
“It’s an impulse turbine.” She uncapped a dry erase marker and began drawing a diagram on the board so everyone could see. “The water head is converted to high-speed flow by two nozzles to the turbine, right here, see?” She turned back to see everyone nodding. Then she turned back to the board and drew some more. “The turbine consists of these blades or buckets that are attached to the runner. They spin around as fast as the water is released to create energy.”
“How is the water regulated to the turbine? Does it always flow to it at the same rate of speed?” Nolan asked.
“No, here’s the intake from the reservoir. It goes into what we call a penstock, that narrows down into a nozzle. This spear, here,” she pointed to what was basically a plunger on her diagram. “This spear regulates the flow of water. It can be pressed in to stop the flow or totally opened, which is very rare, and is done for limited amounts of time.”
“When a lot of water flows from the nozzle to the buckets, the buckets just spin faster, right?” Kostya asked.
Darla nodded.
“Do they ever spin out of control?” Simon asked.
“No, that hasn’t happened, thank goodness. That’s why we control that spear as heavily as we do. We don’t want the turbine overwhelmed. Plus, it would be bad if an unregulated amount of water would just be let loose out of the reservoir.”
Kostya turned to Gideon and raised an eyebrow. Gideon nodded. This sounded like how Kendall could be sabotaging the dam if he wasn’t using explosives.
“Is there any way to make sure that the spear stays in a certain spot?” Gideon asked.
“What do you mean?” Darla asked.
“Can you arrange it so that you manually override the spear, so that it can’t stay open?”
“Actually, we just totally automated it two years ago. We’re very proud of what we’ve done. There are three system redundancies to ensure that we will always be able to turn off the flow of water if we need to.”
Fuck!
Gideon looked around at the rest of the men. He could see each of them thinking the same thing. They were screwed if they didn’t find the code and stop this. At least Ryker wasn’t making any smartass remarks this time.
* * *
Gideon rushedinto the computer room and immediately felt the buzz coming from Jada and Kane. They were on to something.
“Is it good?” he asked in a low voice.
Please say it’s good.
Please say it’s good.
“Yep, Jada found the script. We’re both writing something to shut this down. Wanna join us?”
“Yes,” Gideon said emphatically.
“Thought you might.” Jada grinned. “Already sent it to your e-mail.”
Gideon plopped his ass down in his chair and pulled up his e-mail.
This has to work.
They were now down to one hour and thirty-three minutes.
