The fall eighteen miles down the air-flow shaft took forty-two seconds.
Lin Ke hit the suspended brass narrow high walkway of the central underground hub with a bone-shattering THUD.
The impact tore the freshly mended tissues of his left side. His fractured collar bone shifted, the broken bone grinding like broken slate against his ribs as a fresh wave of frothy blood bubbled from his punctured lung into his mouth.
He rolled onto his right shoulder, coughing wildly, dark crimson spattering across the polished brass floor grating.
Three hundred paces ahead, on the master control platform, Array Master Qi Heng stood in wild, disheveled panic.
The silver-robed engineer’s hair was wild. His hands shook wildly as he monitored forty rotating dials on the bronze console. Through the heavy watching glass, tracking data mirrors showed the burning wreckage of the High sky Judge and the routed collaborator armies on the surface.
“Unfit fools! Primitive cattle!” Qi Heng shrieked at the empty cave. “They lost the dreadnought to country mechanics! The Ministry will have my head in a brass jar!”
Qi Heng pulled an emergency red-lacquered command scroll from an iron wall safe.
