Restoring an eight-hundred-year-old Precursor defensive pylon to full load-bearing balance is not merely a matter of cutting bootleg wires. It needs recalculating the main flow pushback of the land-wide ground loop.
Lin Tao stood once more upon the eighty-foot upkeep balcony of Boundary Pylon Three, bathed in the howling alpine wind.
The ascent up the ninety-foot star-iron overhead frame was easy now that the high-voltage static charge had steadied into a steady, smooth-flowing flow. Lin Tao pulled himself onto the circular upkeep balcony. Then, the morning sun broke over the land-wide divide, lighting up hundreds of miles of southern valleys, winding rivers, and jagged snow-capped ranges. The world seemed infinite, terrifyingly vast. But Lin Tao saw the faint, shimmering grid of the sky firmware superimposed across the horizon—a network of unseen energy lines binding the cosmos into an ancient, decaying test model.
The morning sun had cleared the eastern glaciers. It cast long, sharp shadows across the mountain peaks. Down on the shale tiered arena below, thirty guard post soldiers under the command of the newly promoted sergeant were busily shoveling debris. They cleared the glass-fused glass craters, and hauled away the charred wreckage of the Flying Crane assault skiffs. The sentries worked with ferocious, singing energy. Their bellies were full of hot grain and their pockets heavy with silver back-pay.
