Before typing the first command to initiate system-wide repairs, Lin Tao paused.
The weight of fifteen land-wide domains, forty million liberated mortals in the southern basin. The memory of every miner who had died coughing stone dust in Sector Four rested squarely upon the six-sided star-white-gold metal pen docked into the composite stone stand. Around him, the white starlight from the slow buildup disk cast sharp, unmoving shadows across the faces of his twelve mortal companions.
Lin Tao looked down at his right hand.
His fingers were stained with grease, white spirit chalk, and the pale, stringy scars of three dozen high-voltage grounding arcs. His wrist was bound in clean linen, wrapped tightly by Doctor Su’s assistants before they climbed the final gateway. His body was not a ghostly, divine manifestation of golden light. It was a machine of mortal bone, muscle, blood, and sinew.
He reached to his belt, unhooking his dented copper water canteen. He unscrewed the cap and took two slow, measured swallows of cold, boiled mountain water, wetting his dry throat. His core heat sat at thirty-seven point one degrees. His pulse beat at fifty-four strokes per minute.
Lin Tao checked the fit of his linen wrist wraps. He tightened the hemp laces until the pressure steadied the swollen tendons across his wrist tunnel. Beside him, Tie Shan drew a small whetstone from his leather belt pouch. It spat once upon the coarse slate. Then it ran the stone twice along the wedge tip of his…
