"The manifold is tearing itself apart, Kael! Get out of there!"Hux’s voice was a jagged rasp through the short range headset, nearly drowned out by the metallic shriek of over-pressurized steam."I can’t!" Kael yelled back, his teeth rattling as he dragged himself further into the narrow, iron ribbed sleeve of the expansion chamber. "If I back out now, the pressure spikes. If the pressure spikes, the main valve shears. Do you want to explain to Aigerim why the entire base froze to death before midnight?""The bypass is already buckling!" Hux screamed. "You’ve got three minutes before the whole block turns into a pressure bomb! Your vitals are spiking, Kael!""Then stop talking and hand me the torch!"Kael’s boots slid against the wet, sweating iron floor of the conduit. The space was barely three feet high, a claustrophobic coffin of rusted plates and vibrating copper lines. The air was thick, suffocatingly hot, and smelled of scorched grease and stale water. Every breath felt like i

"She isn't coming, Aigerim. Thalia plays games because she thinks she holds the only cards left in this frozen vault.""She’s coming, Kael," Aigerim replied without looking up from the greasy schematic spread across the steel crate. Her fingers, wrapped in stiff, blood stiffened bandages, traced the faded blue lines of the pre freeze subterranean map. "People with a god complex and zero supplies always show up. They can't help themselves. They love an audience too much to miss a chance to lecture.""Lecture us while our people burn through the last of the dry kindling?" Kael spat, leaning his weight against a freezing concrete pillar. The metal studs of his boots scraped the frost heaved floor. "We’re burning wooden packing crates by the hour. If we don’t get a heat source hooked up to the generator sets by morning, the entire inner ring turns into a morgue.""Which is precisely why Thalia sent the message through her little runner," Aigerim said, finally raising her head. Her dark ey

"Watch your footing, the plates are rusted through by the condensation," Aigerim warned, her voice muffled by the thick frost wrapping around her insulated collar.She jammed the heavy iron nose of her crowbar into the vertical seam of the bunker’s rusted blast door, her bandaged knuckles screaming in protest against the frozen steel. With a sharp grunt, she threw her entire body weight downward, the metal groaning in resistance before the ancient padlock finally shattered with a dry, metallic crack.Kael stepped up beside her, his breath frosting instantly against the beam of his handheld halogen light. He swept the yellowed cone of illumination across the pitch black interior, the beam cutting through a dense, glittering haze of airborne dust and microscopic ice crystals."The seal held," Kael muttered, his voice flat with exhaustion as the thick, syrupy smell of low temperature diesel oil rolled out of the dark opening like a physical wave. "Well, partially held. Enough to keep the

"Keep the drums clear of the threshold or we'll freeze them to the deck before the winch even catches," Aigerim shouted over the whining shriek of the secondary hoist, her gloved hand slamming hard against the exterior control housing to signal the winch operator above. "Pull it up! Now!"Kael hauled on the greasy wire cable with every ounce of strength he had left, his boots sliding across the slick, frost coated metal plating of the spire’s primary intake deck. His lungs felt raw, coated in a film of black, heavy grade diesel soot and frozen moisture that made every inhalation taste like metallic ash. Beside him, two of the surviving scouts strained against a heavy iron cart filled with sealed cans of scavenged fuel, their muscles trembling under layers of damp, stiff wool."The line’s holding!" Kael yelled back, wiping a smear of black grease across his forehead with the back of his forearm. "If the winch motor doesn't burn out from the voltage drop, we'll have the last barrels ins

"The line’s frozen solid at the lower junction, Commander! The prisoners won’t swing the picks, and if we don't feed the auxiliary boilers in twenty minutes, the entire inner ring drops below zero!"Aigerim didn’t blink as the scout burst into the makeshift command post, panting heavily, frost clinging to his eyelashes like powdered glass. She tightened the greasy leather strap around her bandaged right hand, feeling the dull throb of her healing skin beneath the cloth. "Where are Thalia’s agitators?""Down in the coal yards. They’ve locked themselves inside the primary dumper shed with the main iron levers," the scout spat, wiping a spray of frozen spittle from his chin. "They're telling everyone the diesel we hauled back was poisoned by the upper command. The workers believe them. They’ve dropped their shovels."Aigerim grabbed her heavy sheepskin coat from the back of a rusted metal chair, shrugging her arms into the stiff, salt stained sleeves. "Are there guards with them?""Two,