waited, then allowed himself a slight frown. “And . . .” he said expectantly.
“Oh, uh, we aren’t getting any response.”
“Why not?” Sawyer asked.
“They’re out of range.”
“How is it we can hear them but they can’t hear us?” Peter wondered aloud.
“Transmission power.” Mendez said from the doorway behind Peter.
The Marine turned and looked at him. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough.” the Guardsman said, wearing an expression of concentration. “Assuming we’re not dealing with an atmospheric oddity, they can’t hear our transmissions because our signal can’t reach them.”
Peter sighed, thinking of how much work was probably ahead of them to solve this issue. He had no idea, exactly, how they’d boost the power, but he figured it would probably require gathering generators or batteries or something like that. “How much more power do we need?”
“It’s not necessarily a question of throwing in enough juice.” Mendez began, but the third radio operator, the one who’d been quiet so far, spoke up abruptly.
“We haven’t hooked up the right kind of equipment for me to verify it, but I’ll bet anything they’re actually bouncing their messages off a comm sat. We’ll need to do the same if we want to get in touch with them.”
Peter glanced at the man curiously, but Sawyer was talking.
“What would you need to verify it?”
“Doesn’t matter, does it?” the operator answered, blinking at her. “We can hear them. What we’re worried about is getting them to hear us. Right?”
“Right.” Peter nodded approvingly. “How do we do that?”
“I’m not sure we can.” Mendez sighed. “Maybe if we can lay our hands on some sat-comm gear and a code list so we can access the satellite links, but the closest place I’d bet we could find all that for sure would be Benning or Gordon.”
“Clay wouldn’t have it?”
Mendez shrugged. “The base looked kind of torn apart when we went through before, and sat gear isn’t exactly designed to stand up to being thrown like that, but maybe.”
“Nothing says Benning or Gordon aren’t in the same condition.” Whitley said.
“Nothing says they are.” Mendez replied. “But anyway you cut it, we’re looking at a road trip and a search.”
The radio operator chuckled, drawing eyes back to him. “You’re thinking military.”
“If we’ve got to transmit from here to South fucking Dakota, then we’re gonna need a satellite.” Mendez said a little heatedly.
“Perhaps, but it doesn’t have to be a military satellite.”
“Ted, mil-spec gear would be quicker than trying to build a transmission tower tall and big enough to reach them.” another operator said.
“Satellites don’t just accept any old incoming connection.” Mendez pointed out. “Unless someone around here can hack into civilian bird, we’ll need to use a mil-sat and that’ll take codes.”
“You might be up to speed on the slot A into tab B procedures they taught you in comm school, but you’re not a radio enthusiast like I am.” Ted told Mendez, completely ignoring the other operator’s comment. “Trust me, I can have us connected to them by tonight. I just need someone to get my laptop out of secured storage.”
“You checked it in?” Sawyer asked.
Ted nodded. “Well yeah. I wasn’t going to leave it laying around for someone to steal or step on or something. It’s not like there’s a lot of private space around here.”
Peter touched Mendez on the shoulder and shook his head quickly when he saw the soldier starting to bristle just a little. “Ted, what does your laptop have to do with getting us in touch with whoever sent that transmission?”
“We know who sent it.” one of the operators objected.
“We know what they say they are.” Whitley corrected.
“We need to talk to them. Figuring out who they are can wait until we’re in contact and can