Surface ground was too valuable for dynamos, and far too unsafe to artillery.
With five hundred megawatts of overload underground steam roaring through the pipeline from Wellhead Alpha, Giles had no intention of housing his spark generators in a timber-and-brick shed on the canyon floor. A single incendiary shell from a royal siege crawler or a total freeze could fracture a turbine casing and plunge twenty-five thousand citizens back into the dark.
The heart of Grey Crag’s new heavy-duty grid belonged in the bones of the earth.
Giles stood in the deep drainage vault beneath the Citadel Keep, his sighting scope mounted on a heavy brass tripod. Behind him, three hundred miners in oilskin jackets held air-powered rock drills connected to high-pressure air pipe hubs by thick rubber hoses.
Giles laid his linen blueprint across a portable drafting board.
“Three hundred feet long,” Giles said, pointing with his wooden ruler as Master Duncan Stone-Splitter and Corbin Cross leaned in.
“Eighty feet wide. Sixty feet from the invert floor to the crown of the arch.
One hundred and fifty feet directly beneath the Citadel Keep.”
