number one: Get out of target range.
That achieved quickly, Rainbird stopped to contemplate the forking of the duct, closing her eyes to bring back the schematic Sanders had shown her. She had a good spatial memory, honed by her years of doing Petrus’ job.
Turn right here…crawl along until I get to the third turn…look for the next fork…Glew, hasn’t it been twice that long yet? Ah, there’s the—oh no.
Rainbird stopped. The map had shown the duct forking cleanly into left and right here. However, she was confronted by a three-dimensional intersection, a jumble of ducting spliced together.
Either the schematic was outdated, or it had never been accurate in the first place.
Rainbird swallowed, as if to push down the sinking feeling in her stomach. Petrus is waiting on me. This way. I think.
She went on for many more twists and turns, trying to keep heading in the direction of the heart chamber, backtracking now and again. After several sweaty and stifling eternities coiling around in the dark, Rainbird had to admit it.
She was lost.
And very hot. Too hot.
Rainbird laid her palm against a metal side. It was warm. Something rumbled, machinery coming on, vibrations trembling through the duct. A draft blew, a hot breath that sent dust spiraling into Rainbird’s face.
They’d turned up the heating. What else could they send into these pipes? Steam? Poison gas? Rainbird drew in a sharp breath, full of choking grit, and forced herself to exhale.
Breathe, breathe. You can’t have a panic attack in this canister. Metal was dead, inert, deaf. She couldn’t talk to it, couldn’t communicate with it, like she’d done with the tissues and spinal cord.
But.
Dare she?
The thought of drowning in the vast ocean of the dragon’s alien dreams ( Thoughts? Emotion? Biochemical convulsions? ) turned Rainbird’s spine to jelly, but she had to.
For Petrus’ sake.
Rainbird backtracked through the duct slowly, fingers probing at the seams, searching for weaknesses. These ducts were so old, there had to be gaps somewhere.
Ah. Blessed air. Cool air, and a gap wide enough to fit her hand through. Rainbird pushed her hand through the seam as far as she was able, then squinted through the gap. She was in the inner workings of the Hub, in the nether space between various machine rooms, where pipes and tubes and wires coiled like intestines. She wouldn’t have to worry about falling right down on someone’s head.
Rainbird pulled hammer and wrench out of the loops in her workpants. She hammered, banged, and pried at the gap in the duct, until the abused metal turned and twisted aside. It made such a racket, Rainbird was afraid someone would overhear and find her, still trapped in the heating system like a cornered rodent.
The thought only made her pound faster and harder.
Once the gap was big enough, Rainbird gingerly lowered herself through it, hung for a moment to check her landing spot, and dropped.
She landed on a small metal deck, the endpoint of a pointless metal causeway, a leftover from a prior design. Peering through the darkness, she traced the path of various systems: the heating ducts she’d just spent an eon in, metal piping for water and waste, an old message capsule delivery system, and the black rubber-insulated cables for electricity.
And nerve tissue.
Rainbird kicked off her boots, sent them spinning into the darkness below the deck. Then she clambered onto the railing and walked it, wings and arms spread out for balance. Just like a tightrope, only easier.
Rainbird tracked the loops of electric cable till one dipped down in a curve below her. Right under it was a solid-looking intersection of ducts. Rainbird climbed down the railing, hung from a bar below the walkway, kicked off towards a wall, missed her target and clamped onto a message capsule tube instead. It started to give under her weight and, heart pounding, she scrabbled until she found a foothold on a box of some sort attached to the
That achieved quickly, Rainbird stopped to contemplate the forking of the duct, closing her eyes to bring back the schematic Sanders had shown her. She had a good spatial memory, honed by her years of doing Petrus’ job.
Turn right here…crawl along until I get to the third turn…look for the next fork…Glew, hasn’t it been twice that long yet? Ah, there’s the—oh no.
Rainbird stopped. The map had shown the duct forking cleanly into left and right here. However, she was confronted by a three-dimensional intersection, a jumble of ducting spliced together.
Either the schematic was outdated, or it had never been accurate in the first place.
Rainbird swallowed, as if to push down the sinking feeling in her stomach. Petrus is waiting on me. This way. I think.
She went on for many more twists and turns, trying to keep heading in the direction of the heart chamber, backtracking now and again. After several sweaty and stifling eternities coiling around in the dark, Rainbird had to admit it.
She was lost.
And very hot. Too hot.
Rainbird laid her palm against a metal side. It was warm. Something rumbled, machinery coming on, vibrations trembling through the duct. A draft blew, a hot breath that sent dust spiraling into Rainbird’s face.
They’d turned up the heating. What else could they send into these pipes? Steam? Poison gas? Rainbird drew in a sharp breath, full of choking grit, and forced herself to exhale.
Breathe, breathe. You can’t have a panic attack in this canister. Metal was dead, inert, deaf. She couldn’t talk to it, couldn’t communicate with it, like she’d done with the tissues and spinal cord.
But.
Dare she?
The thought of drowning in the vast ocean of the dragon’s alien dreams ( Thoughts? Emotion? Biochemical convulsions? ) turned Rainbird’s spine to jelly, but she had to.
For Petrus’ sake.
Rainbird backtracked through the duct slowly, fingers probing at the seams, searching for weaknesses. These ducts were so old, there had to be gaps somewhere.
Ah. Blessed air. Cool air, and a gap wide enough to fit her hand through. Rainbird pushed her hand through the seam as far as she was able, then squinted through the gap. She was in the inner workings of the Hub, in the nether space between various machine rooms, where pipes and tubes and wires coiled like intestines. She wouldn’t have to worry about falling right down on someone’s head.
Rainbird pulled hammer and wrench out of the loops in her workpants. She hammered, banged, and pried at the gap in the duct, until the abused metal turned and twisted aside. It made such a racket, Rainbird was afraid someone would overhear and find her, still trapped in the heating system like a cornered rodent.
The thought only made her pound faster and harder.
Once the gap was big enough, Rainbird gingerly lowered herself through it, hung for a moment to check her landing spot, and dropped.
She landed on a small metal deck, the endpoint of a pointless metal causeway, a leftover from a prior design. Peering through the darkness, she traced the path of various systems: the heating ducts she’d just spent an eon in, metal piping for water and waste, an old message capsule delivery system, and the black rubber-insulated cables for electricity.
And nerve tissue.
Rainbird kicked off her boots, sent them spinning into the darkness below the deck. Then she clambered onto the railing and walked it, wings and arms spread out for balance. Just like a tightrope, only easier.
Rainbird tracked the loops of electric cable till one dipped down in a curve below her. Right under it was a solid-looking intersection of ducts. Rainbird climbed down the railing, hung from a bar below the walkway, kicked off towards a wall, missed her target and clamped onto a message capsule tube instead. It started to give under her weight and, heart pounding, she scrabbled until she found a foothold on a box of some sort attached to the
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