The mid-air narrow high walkway swung four feet to the left as seven hundred pounds of crushed iron plunged into the white river of pig iron below.
Silas Vance was already thirty feet in the air, his fingers clawing at the manual winch of his emergency air-powered hoist line. His red cassock flapped in the scalding rising heat current rising from the smelting canal. “Re-route patrol cadres three and seven!” Vance screamed into the brass horn clipped to his collar. “Level Three alert! Deploy the hound packs to the lower chimney pipe! The keeper has broken the seal!”
Unit Ren didn’t look up at the retreating Prior.
His internal brass control valve ticked with heavy, high-pressure regularity: ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk. The copper radiator fins along his spine vented a measured hiss of white vapor, cooling the internal storage tank chambers from three thousand pounds of pressure down to running limit. His amber sight rangefinder lens whirred, clicking through three stepped zoom rings as it scanned the narrow high walkway approach.
Three more Clockwork Guards were crossing the overhead frame from the north, their brass-plated shin guards thudding against the shaking iron grating. Unlike the line guards, these three carried heavy steam-charged cudgels. Six-foot iron poles wrapped in copper coils that hummed with stored moving discharge.
