Ivara Quill stepped from the console to the open doorway of the backup service station, pausing with her shoulder braced against the cold dark rock door post as she looked across the narrow iron gangway into the central core of the Star tower.
Below her, eighty feet down through the load-bearing floor grates, the blinding amber glare of the check cage was collapsing into a dull, smoky charcoal red.
The white-hot drafts of solar star-fire had exhausted their speed. With forty thousand heat units successfully routed through the flooded salt-glass plates of the Quarry sink, the radiant head within the chimney pipes had broken. The whistling empty pocket that had screamed through the ceiling angled slats had subsided to a hollow, dying sigh, carrying with it only the faint, bitter smell of burned up brass, scorched magnesium mortar, burnt wool. The hot stone tang of cooling cast iron.
Through the smoked quartz check port set into the stonework arch above the drop-gate, the inside of the cage was dimly visible.
The creature wearing Len Vey’s face was no longer kicking the iron plates. It was no longer tearing its man-made tendons against the three-inch boiler plate or hurling its sixty-two-pound mass against the guide stiles.
