Sera knelt at the station’s old relay with a cutting tool in one hand and a length of Tern cable over her shoulder.
The relay was a cabinet set into the hub’s wall between two consoles, its door hanging open on one hinge. Inside, a bundle of thick old lines came down from the ceiling and went into a block of connectors, and from the block a single heavy cable ran out through the wall toward the station’s outer shell. Toward the transmitter array, Eshel said, the dish on Sable’s far side that had once spoken to the rest of the system.
That cable had been cut.
It had been cut clean. Sera had found it a quarter hour ago, following it with her torch from the block to the wall, and held up the end for the others to see: a clean square face, the copper bright under the dust, the insulation sliced through in one stroke.
Doss had taken the end from her and turned it in his gloved fingers under the torch. He had kept looking at it. Then he had said: “Guild shears. Heavy pattern. One cut, from the far side. Whoever did it knew where the line ran.”
