Six paces down the eastern channel trench from Daro Kesh’s braced shoulder, Commander Keth Or reached the sunken stone basin of Approval Socket #2. Just then, the second half of the first breath began. With Approval Socket #1 partially fused in the upper western trough and the main southern guide-rod ripped fully out of the bedrock by Keth’s own boot heel moments earlier, the second socket was currently carrying more than half of the lower returning hub’s load-bearing feedback. Inside its eight-sided granite housing, the heavy bronze collar glowed a fierce, sputtering yellow-white, its six internal silver contact pins hammering against the central spindle like forge trip-hammers.
Keth Or didn’t approach the socket with an elegant sect technique or a philosophical riddle. For twelve years as a field commander of the Aperture Court’s recovery divisions, Keth had carried a standard-issue heavy recovery blade. A thirty-two-inch slab of dark, unornamented high-carbon steel with a quarter-inch square spine designed for prying barred sect doors, cutting arrest chains, and breaking fortified array locks. Six nights ago at the lower shrine, he had used that same blade under Reth Mal’s orders before losing two fingers of his left hand to the Measure’s indiscriminate needle sweep.
