The middle weeks of April were a time for the people at Station Four. They were building mountain sledges. This period would later be remembered as the time of the alignment.The workshops along the railway platforms had changed. They were now working together like a oiled machine.Brendan had cleared the bay of the locomotive pits. He made room for the assembly of two transport hulls. Karls design had been modified by the wisdom of the mountain smiths. They knew how the frozen granite of the passes could damage the sledges.The hulls were built like bottomed river boats. They were twelve feet long and four feet wide. They were made of layered sheets of boiler-iron. The space between the iron skins was packed with sea-moss and boiled sheeps tallow. This created a thermal barrier. It prevented the mountain wind from cooling the internal oil lines of the turbine engines.Karl stood by the axle of the first sledge. He was adjusting the tension of the track plates. His shoulder muscles st

The people taking apart the track-layer in the western gorge showed what humans can really do when they work together. For six days the frozen pass was filled with the sound of iron hammers hitting and the high-pitched sound of air-chisels. The machine, which was sent by the array to connect Sector Fourteen and the coastal basin was now just a big still quarry of high-grade steel and concrete waiting for the people it was supposed to get rid of to take it apart.Karl stood on the back deck of the track-layer the wind blowing down the canyon and pulling at his heavy wool coat. He held a brass-handled measuring tool in his right hand looking at the complicated hydraulic linkages that controlled the automated rail-deployment arms. The way the machine was built was beautiful in its unfeeling logic. Every part, every valve and every structural rib was made to be strong and last. It was a machine designed to work for a century without humans. Its complexity made it weak to simple human tric

The vibration inside the cab of the Sovereign II was not a vibration it was a strong and constant pounding that went through the soles of Karls boots and deep into his chest. The world outside the windows was a dark and blurry mess, like a big smear of grey and blue. The mountains were behind them now. They were on a big flat area of land. The wind was not just blowing it was hitting the front of the train with a lot of force making a noise around the cab and tearing the smoke into long thin streams that disappeared into the dark.Karl had his hand tightly on the handle of the main steam control feeling every little change in the resistance. The engine was moving in a way that was scary and smooth not like the movements of the automated trains he used to work on. The Sovereign II was like a living thing, with its big boiler making noises and its wheels pounding the tracks like a heart beating fast.Karl called out to Clara "What is the pressure status?" He did not turn his head keepin

The walls of the gorge rose up like huge black jaws swallowing the armored track-clearer whole. Inside the command cab the noise of the big engine was everywhere a physical pressure that vibrated through the steel deck and made Karls legs and eyes ache. The machine was running on a mix of chemical waste and every part of the engine was protesting loudly.Karl held onto the iron throttle with his left hand his knuckles white, his palm slippery with grease and sweat. The machine had no steering wheel, iron rails to guide it but the throttle controlled the power going to the big electric motors. Every time the engine had an explosion the generator would shudder and the whole machine would lurch forward violently.The temperature is getting too high Clara called out her voice strained. She was checking the engine with her test leads and her hair was down, wet and dark across her face. The third and fifth cylinders are too hot. If it gets any worse the metal will. The pistons will seize.W

The train went down into the northern capital basin slowly. It was like gliding through a city made of glass. The Turbine-One was not making its loud noise. It was just a soft hiss now. The train was moving down a slope with a lot of weight behind it. The big steel shaft inside the train was spinning around freely. Its many spring-steel blades were turning slowly in the air. The wheels under the train were moving because of gravity and the trains own momentum.Karl was standing with his hands on the iron edge of the control panel. He was used to feeling a lot of vibration. Now it was gone. Instead he heard a humming noise coming from the steel rails below. It was an predictable sound that felt kind of peaceful. The cold morning wind was blowing into the train bringing a smell with it. The air tasted a bit like ozone and nitrogen.The city below did not look like a place where people lived. As the train went through the mountain foothills Karl saw a city with many silver towers. Each t