The old rib came out of its socket in black flakes.
Sen drew it with the cold-side rig: a second winch, rigged by her crew chief on the passage’s ceiling above the socket, with a cable and a clamp. The clamp closed on the old rib’s exposed end, deep in the socket’s mouth, and Sen turned the winch, and the old rib came out of the lattice’s cage a hand’s width at a time.
It came out flaking, though its outer surface was whole. Under the lamp, as it emerged, Mara could see the rib’s skin: dark, almost black, smooth, the same curved profile as the new composite on its cradle beside it. It looked intact. It looked like a rib that had done its job for four hundred years and would do it for four hundred more.
But as it slid out, flakes fell from it. Black, thin, like the scale off the old bolt. They fell away from its surface where it had sat against the socket’s seat and drifted down onto the passage’s grit, and settled, and lay there.
Sen drew it clear. The whole length. Longer than Mara’s arm, curved, dark. The crew chief and Breda took its weight on a padded rest and carried it back along the passage to the mouth, and out, and laid it on the socket fitting bench.
