GALE KOSS's Arc

Chapter 7 of 2

The crate held every day of Gale's record now. But it drank power by the hour. Axel had said it plain: steady draw, no ships, no fuel. Gale sat still in the stone hall. She could not speak. She could not move her hands. She could only wait and let the others fight for her log. Axel knelt by the crate and watched its lights fade. "Battery's half gone," he said. His Australian drawl stayed flat. "Two days, maybe three. Then the whole thing sleeps and your record rots." He looked at the robotic dog beside him. The dog's amber eye still swept Gale's face and wrote each number. "Clever box. Dead box, soon." Zyleth crossed the hall. She did not stop to think out loud. "There is power here," she said. "My people did not live in the dark with no current." Her lizard rode her shoulder, its star-marks bright. It turned its head toward the far wall and went still. Zyleth followed its stare. "There. It feels something behind the stone." They pried loose a panel of old metal. Behind it sat a box, teal and scarred, a yellow warning sign stamped on its face. A heavy lever hung on one side. Axel wiped grime from the casing. "High voltage. Live main." He grinned without warmth. "These purple folk wired the whole hall and walked off." Zyleth set her glowing hand on the box. A hum woke under the metal. "It takes my blood," she said. "Like the doors above. It knows my line." She looked at Axel. "You splice the crate to this. I hold it open." Axel worked fast. He ran a cable from the crate's port to a terminal inside the box. His hands were sure. "One wrong touch and this fries me, the crate, and every day she logged," he said. "So don't talk to me." He stripped the lead, pressed it to the contact, and threw the lever. Sparks jumped. The dog's eye flickered. Gale's chest went tight in the dark behind her stone. Then the crate's lights ran green, blue, orange, steady and even. The hum settled into a low, constant note. Axel sat back on his heels. "She's drawing clean," he said. "Straight off the main. No battery. No ship. Never runs dry." Zyleth lifted her hand from the box. The hum held without her. "Done," she said. "The hall feeds her now." Gale could not see the lights. But she felt the cable settle and the dog resume its work beside her. The record would not go dark. It lived on the station's own current, written each morning while she sat sealed in stone. Axel stood and brushed his knees. He frowned at the terminal's dial. "Draw's higher than it should be," he said. "Something else on this line is pulling too. Deep in the hall." He looked at Zyleth. "We're not the only thing drinking down here."