The following sunset painted Sunset Peak in orange and violet.
Tie Kuang and Jiang Taixu waited on the black-glass entrance plaza as Pug led forty-one loaded flatbeds up the last switchback. Sixty shadow jackals trotted along the shoulders.
Austin signaled a stop. The flatbeds settled onto their supports.
“Evening. Brought approved salvage and a working agreement. How did the receiving panel hold up?”
“No faults,” Jiang said. “The geothermal feed is still at twenty-five megawatts. Reservoir temperature is steady.”
Tie Kuang hurried to the golem armor. “Grade-5 Star-Iron. Riggers! Get these thirty pallets to Floor 2!”
Former battle miners in hard hats and orange vests came forward with forklifts and lifting cables. Austin inspected the first sling.
“Basket hitch. Pad those corners. Steel cable against a sharp edge loses half its strength.”
The crew added guards and corrected the rigging. Jiang left them to it and met Austin at the server pallets.
“Six blades, as released,” he said, checking the serial numbers against his own list. “The cabinet is clean, the rails are aligned, and the coolant header is flushed. I isolated the old bus so we can test one blade at a time.”
Austin handed him the Overseer’s signed release. “You’re lead on installation.”
Jiang did not draw his sword or kneel. He picked up the cage-nut tool and went to work.
In the filtered Floor 1 cleanroom, his preparation showed. Power leads were labeled at both ends. Fiber cables had separate trays. The six empty rack positions matched the blade heights, and a drip tray waited beneath every cooling joint.
Jiang and Austin lifted the first server onto its rails. Xiaoyao read the serial number; the Overseer confirmed it over the remote link.
SCHWWWWIP—CLICK.
Jiang connected power, data, and coolant. He tightened each fastener to the marked setting, then checked for leaks with a dry white cloth.
“Node one ready for test.”
The blade started. Jiang watched its temperature for a full minute before approving the next.
On the fourth blade, he stopped Austin’s hand above a connector.
“Wrong trunk. Orange is the furnace control network. Blue is drainage.”
Austin looked at the labels. “So it is.”
“Color is useful,” Jiang said. “Reading is better.”
Xiaoyao quietly repeated the words and wrote them down.
They installed the remaining blades without another correction. The decommissioned heat exchanger went to Floor 3, where Jiang had already prepared a bypass and isolation valves. He tested that loop at low pressure before opening it to the main system.
Only then did he connect the main data trunk.
A chime rang through every floor.
On the lodge porch, a silver-steel feeder chimed. Three bowls dropped into place and filled with kibble. Pug barked joyfully and buried all three snouts in dinner.
Tie Kuang hurried in carrying a crate of drone motors. “The automated sorter just separated twelve tons of mixed ore. No slag in the copper bin!”
He wiped his eyes on his apron. “Thirty disciples used to spend sixteen hours a day breaking rocks by hand. They coughed black spit. We never have to do that again.”
Austin smiled. “That’s what proper automation is for. A forty-watt stepper motor sorts faster than a man with a sledge.”
He walked onto the observation catwalk with Jiang and Xiaoyao.
On Floor 2, electric furnaces turned the golem armor into structural beams. On Floor 3, the new exchanger added cooling reserve. On Floor 4, refitted siege golems stood in their staging bay.
Five hundred and twenty kilometers away, Underground Floor 5 ran under its Overseer’s care. The geothermal feed remained steady within the limits Jiang had tested.
The base had five working floors. More important, the new one had not been sacrificed to make the other four run.