Heaven’s Measure classified what had just occurred on the western slope according to the only law its ancient stonework understood. The attacker had aborted his run to defend a stationary shelter containing immobile casualties. In the first watch of the night, when Seyun had pivoted to shield Vaska’s throat and Nara had stepped in to brace Soran’s bent spear, every rescue had frozen the defenders around their original stations. Seeing Seyun dive back to the mouth of the granite cleft and Ilyra pull her short spearhead back to the door post, the entity finished that the eight survivors had once again locked themselves around a fixed point they couldn’t abandon.
Fifty feet above the frost-scarred ridge, the entire rotating blade ring pivoted its great axis twenty degrees toward the south. The sound was like a winter glacier shearing loose from a mountain peak. A deep, grinding roar of condensed pressure that shook loose shale down the southern switchback. Then it made the bronze collars of the test sockets sing in their trenches. Instead of keeping one blade on the upper chute, one on the eastern groove, and one near the escape junction, the Measure gathered all three main pale blades and the lower hub’s returning current into a single, overwhelming hammer stroke aimed squarely at the roof and center of the dark rock recess.
