Through the dark rock floorboards beneath Len Vey’s stretcher, the mountain throbbed with a sickening, rhythmic percussion that shook straight through his ash-wood splints and into the marrow of his spine.
The heat was rising through the stone. In the backup station, the air at floor level had climbed past ninety degrees. It smelled of dry granite, baked linen, burnt machine grease. The bitter-salt dust shaken loose from the vaulted ceiling. Len lay with his head propped on the rolled canvas pack. His good left hand was pressed flat against his lower belly, his right wrist resting limp upon the horse blanket like a dead weight. The linen webbing wound four times around his thorax held his broken sixth and seventh ribs rigid. But every shallow breath in felt like an iron band compressing his lungs. That forced him to count his pulse against the main neck blood vessel in his neck.
Beside him, Ivara Quill adjusted the brass sighting glass on the U-tube pressure gauge, her single hand moving with steady, deliberate smooth speed. Across the vault, Edda stood by the arched doorway, her four-pound lead mallet resting in the crook of her elbow, her scarred face glistening with sweat in the amber lamplight. Further down the north hall, visible through the iron service hatch, Geth Marr and the guard post captain waited in total silence beside the paired seals cabinet, their broad hands resting on the bronze T-handles, their eyes fixed on the indicator dials. The entire work-yard…
