Chapter 45: The Silence After

Sunday, 23:59 UTC. One minute left.

The room smells ripe. We are all exhausted, running on fumes. Pizza boxes are stacked in the corner. Empty energy drink cans litter the desk. We look like survivors of a shipwreck.

Samuel is at the mic (or rather, the key). He is squeezing the last few drops out of the 40-meter band.

"One more," he mutters. "I need one more."

He finds a station in Argentina. LU1F. He fires his callsign.

W1Z.

W1Z 599 13.

TU 599 05.

The clock ticks over to 00:00.

"Time!" Gregory shouts. "Pencils down! Transmitters off!"

Samuel slumps back in the chair, letting the headset slide down to his neck. He looks like he has just run a marathon. "It is over."

We all sit there for a moment, stunned by the sudden lack of purpose. For 48 hours, our entire existence has been defined by the next contact, the next multiplier, the rate meter. Now, there is nothing. Just the hum of the cooling fans.

I reach out and switch off the main radio. The static cuts out. The silence that rushes into the room is heavy, physical. It rings in my ears.

"What is the final count?" Doretha asks, her voice raspy.

Samuel clicks a button on the logging software. The computer crunches the numbers.

"Four thousand, two hundred and twelve QSOs," he reads. "Score... 3.8 million points."

We look at each other. It is a massive number. It is our personal best by a mile.

"Is it enough to win?" I ask.

"Probably not the world," Samuel admits, the competitive fire dimming into realism. "The giant stations in the Caribbean, they have better propagation. They will beat us. But for the US? For our category? We are in the running for Top 10. Maybe even Top 5."

Gregory walks over and puts a hand on Samuel's shoulder, then mine. "You did good. You operated clean. You kept the rate up. I am proud of you."

I look at my hands. They are trembling slightly. Not from fear, but from the sheer residual vibration of the effort.

"It is different," I say quietly. "Contesting."

"How so?" Azhar asks.

"Normal radio... it is about the person," I say, trying to formulate the thought through my exhaustion. "It is about the chat. This... this was about the machine. We were parts of the machine. It was intense. It was... violent, almost. But it was amazing."

"It sharpens the edge," Gregory nods. "You have to know how to sprint before you can run a rescue mission. Tonight, you proved you can sprint."

We begin the slow process of shutting down. We disconnect the antennas. We turn off the amplifiers. We back up the log files to three different hard drives and the cloud.

As we walk out of the garage into the cool Sunday night air, I look up at the stars. They are silent. The radio waves are still bouncing around up there, carrying the final exchanges of the contest, fading away into the universe.

I am tired. My body aches. My ears are ringing. But I feel a deep, solid satisfaction. We entered the arena. We fought the noise. We held our ground.

"Same time next year?" Samuel asks, a tired grin on his face.

"Absolutely," I say. "But next year, we build a better 80-meter antenna."

The team laughs. The war is over. But the builders are already planning the next campaign.