The six-sided hall leading from the sump chamber into Valve Station Delta was an echo chamber of tortured metal.
Every step Lin Tao and Tie Shan took was with the ear-splitting, echoing hammer of high-pressure liquid crashing against iron. The walls here were not rough stone. But segmented plates of Precursor star-bronze, bolted to the living mountain with two-inch six-sided pins. Along both sides of the hall ran the main signal channels. Tube-shaped iron arteries four feet in width, wrapped in braided copper dampening bands.
With every bone-shaking THUMP of the seized valve ahead, the four-foot pipes jumped in their mounting brackets. It sent plumes of rusty scale showering from the ceiling.
“Brackets are failing,” Tie Shan noted. He pointed with the tip of his pry-bar at an iron mounting collar that had pulled two inches out of the rock face. The anchor bolts were bent downward at a forty-five-degree angle, weeping powdered mortar with every violent pulse.
“Fatigue stress,” Lin Tao diagnosed, his hand resting against the shaking wall. “The system has been cycling in an unhandled error loop for weeks. If those anchor bolts shear fully, the main channel will whip across this hall like a cut steel cable. It would cut a man in half before he could blink.”
