Chapter 76: Pulse
Gareth was awake.
Michael found him in the hallway outside his room sitting on the floor with his back against the wall and the notebook on his knee and the pen in his hand and the particular look of someone who had been awake for a while and had been sitting with something.
He looked up when Michael came around the corner and looked at Michael’s face and said "they moved" before Michael said anything.
"The variants consolidated," Michael said. "Northeast, half block spacing, two hours ago."
Gareth looked at the notebook. "I’ve been running the pattern in my head," he said.
"The Aberrant stationary period. Forty six hours of nothing. That’s not patience anymore, that’s a held position." He looked up. "Something is about to change."
"Watchtower from first light," Michael said. "Full monitoring. Any movement in either population you signal immediately."
"I’ll be up at five," Gareth said.
Michael looked at him. "You were already awake."
"I’ve been awake since two," Gareth said. "I kept checking the pulse relay on the notebook and the pattern kept being wrong in a way I couldn’t name and I couldn’t sleep through it."
Michael looked at him.
Gareth looked back. "I know what I am," he said quietly. It wasn’t self-flagellation or performance.
Just a statement from someone who had been sitting alone in a hallway at three in the morning with a notebook and had arrived at a place where accurate self-assessment was available.
"I know what I was doing the first week in this building. The arithmetic. The angles." He paused. "I’m not doing that now."
Michael held his gaze.
"The building works," Gareth said. "I’ve been in enough situations to know when something works. This works." He paused. "That changes the arithmetic."
Michael looked at him for a long moment. "I know," he said.
Gareth looked at the notebook. "The variants consolidating with the Aberrant group stationary," he said. "If I’m reading it right the variants are the fast element of a combined approach."
"They hit first, draw the turret targeting to the northeast, the Aberrant group moves on the southeast simultaneously." He looked at Michael.
"The turret arcs cover the full perimeter but the targeting priority system will concentrate on the higher speed threats."
"The variant approach pulls the concentration north and east, the Aberrant approach hits the south and west faces with reduced turret attention."
Michael pulled up the turret targeting priority specs in the Blueprint Interface.
Gareth was right. The targeting priority system was threat speed based, highest speed threat got highest priority, which was the correct default setting for single direction approaches.
Against a coordinated multi direction approach where one element was significantly faster than the other the priority system would over-concentrate on the fast element.
He looked at the turret control panel specs.
There was a manual priority override in the system, he’d read it in the build specs and filed it away as something he’d look at when the picture became clearer. He pulled it up now and looked at the options.
Manual zone priority allocation. He could set each turret’s priority zone independently rather than letting the universal threat speed algorithm manage the distribution.
Southeast turret prioritized for southeast approach regardless of speed. Northeast turret for northeast. Corner turrets for corner coverage with secondary allocation to adjacent faces.
He pulled it up in the Blueprint Interface and started configuring the override.
"The turret priority system," he said to Gareth. "It’s defaulted to speed based targeting. I’m changing it to zone based manual priority. Each turret gets a fixed primary zone and a secondary zone."
Gareth looked at him. "Can you do that from here."
"The control panel in the lobby," Michael said. "Five minute configuration."
Gareth looked at the time. "Now," he said. It wasn’t a question.
"Now," Michael agreed and they went downstairs together.
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The lobby was dark except for the perimeter panel amber and the faint pulse relay display on the control panel.
Michael sat at the control panel and brought up the turret management interface and started working through the zone priority configuration.
Gareth stood behind him and watched and didn’t say anything which was the right call because the configuration required attention.
Southeast turret. Primary zone southeast arc. Secondary zone south face mid. Confirm.
Northeast turret. Primary zone northeast arc. Secondary zone north face mid. Confirm.
Northwest turret. Primary zone northwest arc. Secondary zone west face and north face corner. Confirm.
Southwest turret. Primary zone southwest arc. Secondary zone south face and west face corner. Confirm.
He ran the coverage analysis.
The distribution was better. It was not perfect as there was still a concentration gap at the north face mid if the northeast turret was at maximum southeast engagement angle simultaneously.
But the blast wall interior layer covered that gap and the Aberrant approach profile from southeast was now the primary engagement priority for two full turrets rather than competing with the variant speed signal for targeting attention.
"Done," he said.
Gareth looked at the coverage analysis display. He couldn’t see the Blueprint Interface overlay but he could see the turret status indicators on the physical panel and he read them the way he read most things, quickly and accurately.
"The northwest and southwest turrets have overlapping primary zones at the west face," he said.
"Intentional," Michael said. "The west face is the secondary access point for the chamber. If the evacuation sequence activates the west face needs to be the cleanest approach under fire. Double coverage on that face reduces the pressure on anyone moving to the west access point."
Gareth was quiet for a moment. He looked at the panel and then at Michael. "You thought about the evacuation sequence when you configured the turret zones," he said.
"Everything works together," Michael said.
Gareth looked at the panel for a moment longer. "Alright," he said quietly.
They went back upstairs.
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