The air at the base of the Grand Sovereign Relay Tower tasted of scalding copper and crushed stone.
Lin Tao pressed his shoulder against the damp granite foundation of the lower service plenum, his breath steady and slow. Above him, the giant stone tower rose twelve hundred feet into the curdled crimson sky, a massive needle of black green jade and star-white-gold that pierced the churning cloud ceiling. High at the zenith, the bronze receiving dish shook with a sound hum so violent it made the loose mortar in the foundations trickle down in steady gray streams.
Surrounding the base of the tower was a sixty-foot moat filled with circulating liquid jade coolant. The thick, sticky violet liquid boiled with sluggish, oily bubbles, releasing plumes of rotten-egg steam that stung Lin Tao’s nostrils.
On the far bank of the moat, a defensive grid of emerald light beams swept across the approach bridges in rigid, sharp-angled arcs.
Lin Tao raised his land-mapper metal pen, sighting along the polished star-white-gold shaft. His left sight lens dissected the emerald beams into discrete time frames.
“Twelve beams,” Lin Tao whispered to Tie Shan, who crouched beside him with the star-iron totem resting across his knees. “They sweep thirty degrees outward, pause for forty-one split seconds at the apex of the swing, and invert their flow-charge. During that pause, the energy thickness across the center line drops to zero.”
