Three thousand pounds of pressure of crushing pressure was not a force to be handled with casual optimism.
In Giles Croft’s town building career, he had investigated heavy-duty accidents where high-pressure fluids breached holding.
A pinhole leak in a high-pressure line running at three thousand PSI didn’t spray a harmless mist. It projected a needle-thin fluid jet moving with the speed of an armor-piercing round. It could cut through heavy leather work boots and penetrate human flesh without the worker feeling the first prick.
“Gather round,” Giles said, addressing the thirty apprentice pipefitters and machinists assembled in the underground power vault behind the tunnel staging pit.
The apprentices stood in a wide semicircle. It looked at the newly installed high-pressure skid with a mixture of respect and visible worry.
Mounted on an eight-inch load-bearing steel skid were four five-metal tube axial piston pumps, coupled directly to a compact underground steam turbine humming quietly on its concrete foundation pad. Thick, wire-braided black rubber-canvas hoses looped between the pump discharge pipe hubs and a massive forged-steel storage tank bank.
“These flexible black channels,” young apprentice Tam began, his dark eyes wide with awe.
“The older guild smiths say they’re the living veins of the iron beast. That they pump the dark blood of the mountain to give it strength.”
