A continent went dark.
Alarms went off in the control room. The crew was trained for this, yet a few drops of tea would have been spilled, had tea been allowed in the restricted zone. The dosimeters stayed quiet to everybody's relief. "Those damn Germans are pushing all that wind power into the grid. Sooner or later this had to happen."
"Reactors are scramming. Batteries are good." an operator announced. After a slight delay he continued "All generators are going online. Cooling systems are active." The first voice, now clearly identifiable as the chief engineer announced in a clear and controlled voice "Everybody confirm a grid connection failure. Check the coolant levels. Check the fuel levels on the diesels. Check the phone lines and get the security team out of their bunks. This could be sabotage. You all know the plan. And get me the national center on the phone. We need confirmation that the whole grid is down."
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The doctoral student did spill her tea. Her native language was not known for creative curses. She resorted to English. The counter was still going up.
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"1722" her voice was turning the simple number into something you might hear in a temple. She murmured "Betelgeuse?" as she turned to a laptop to check that the automated notifications had gone to the mailing lists.
She checked the maintainance schedule, just in case. Nothing. That was no surprise. It was in the middle of the night according to the time zone the station adhered to, local time making little sense in Antarctica. This justified the cost of a satellite call. She decided to call the people in South America first.
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Such things always happened a few minutes before a shift ended. One satellite could always fail. But two adjacent ones in the same orbit within one tick of time as far as their monitoring system could tell apart ? That was a deliberate act. He decided not to switch to the spares. They were under attack. A comsat by necessity gives away its position while operating. He didn't intend to make the enemy's job easier.
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The candidate was looking out of the window, as the city was cast into darkness. "Let's hope that this is regional" one of the party officials remarked.