Page 44 of Only Cold Depths
Asterin and I left the guest wing and went to the courtyard in front of the main castle. Instead of the open-air carriage-slash-sleigh we’d used yesterday, a mechanized transport was waiting. The door hissed open, and Asterin ducked inside.
A tingling awareness swept over me, and I glanced up and spotted Kyrion on one of the guest-wing balconies. I considered trying to talk to him through the bond, but I had no idea what to say, especially given how tense and awkward things had been between us last night. So I just waved instead.
Kyrion’s expression was blank and unreadable, and I didn’t sense any emotions rippling off him. After a few seconds, he lifted his hand and waved back.
“Vesper? You ready?” Asterin called out.
I looked at Kyrion a moment longer, then stepped into the transport. As much as I wanted to figure out what was going on between Kyrion and me, maybe spending the day apart would give us both some perspective.
The transport lifted off the ground, crossed the courtyard, and sailed over the drawbridge, heading down the mountain toward the city streets.
I peered through the window. People riding in transports and carriages, other folks strolling along the sidewalks, carts selling food and drinks. Everything was normal. I didn’t doubt Kyrion’s instincts when it came to sensing danger, but maybe we would be safe here, at least for a little while.
Several minutes later, the transport stopped in front of the emerald permaglass dome that housed the antiques emporium. I followed Asterin down a long street, which ran by an enormous area filled with cranes, forklifts, and other heavy machinery.
In the distance, a crane operator lowered a massive magnet onto a stack of metal rods that was almost as large as theDream World. The magnet clamped onto the rods, then the crane operator hoisted them onto a hoverpallet with a wide, flat bed. The pallet lifted off the ground and zoomed away.
“This is the House Collier shipping yard,” Asterin called out, raising her voice to be heard above the cranking, clanking machines. “Metals, ores, and other materials are brought up from the House Collier mines, then refined, processed, loaded into containers, and sent to their buyers.”
Asterin steered clear of the machinery and headed to the right, where a short, blocky building of silver chrome and green permaglass faced both the street and the shipping yard. “This is the main mineral exchange where House Collier goods are displayed for people to bid on.”
We stepped through an archway and entered the first floor of the mineral exchange, which featured row after row of clear glass counters. The workers standing behind the counters were wearing House Collier uniforms, along with green velvet gloves, and they carefully pulled out one bit of metal and chunk of ore after another, showing off the items to customers as though they were baubles in a high-end jewelry store.
Asterin exited out the far side of the mineral exchange. She skirted around the edge of the shipping yard and ended up in front of a small building made of dull gray stone at the end of a street that circled back around to the antiques emporium.
Given its cracked bricks and grimy windows, this building had seen better days, and it had a quiet, still, abandoned air, as if few people bothered to come here anymore. Two interlockingAs were carved into the battered door, and the wordsHouse Armasstretched across the weathered wood in chipped, faded silver paint.
Asterin punched in a code on a keypad. A lock clicked, the door opened, and we stepped through to the other side.
“And this is my workshop,” Asterin said, flipping on the lights. “I spend most of my time here whenever I’m on Sygnustern.”
Dark wooden shelves filled with polished stones, jagged chunks of ore, and a variety of tools ran across the back of the workshop, while blasters, shock batons, and other weapons hung on metal racks on the side walls. Each item had its own little space and was clearly, neatly labeled.
Tables featuring terminals and holoscreens clustered in the center of the room. Larger pieces of machinery squatted in the corners, although thin patches of dust coated some of them, as though they hadn’t been used in ages. The small workshop was a far cry from the acres of sterile white tile at Quill Corp, but a pang of longing shot through my heart all the same.
The harsh stench of melted plastic and scorched metal filled the air, but the scent comforted me, and I breathed it in like a sweet perfume. It smelled likehome, given how much time I had spent in R&D labs over the years.
Asterin went over to the tables. I followed her and set the Techwave cannon down on an open space, along with the extra solar magazines. Thick gray tarps covered some of the tables, hiding the objects underneath, but a splash of white caught my eye.
I drew a tarp aside, revealing something that looked like an air purifier. “What’s this?”
Asterin’s fingers twitched like she wanted to shove the device back underneath the tarp. “Something for a different project.”
Her fingers twitched again. I didn’t like it when people studied my unfinished projects in the Quill Corp lab, so I slid the tarp back into place.
Asterin turned toward a table and waved her hand over the embedded holoscreen, and the schematics for Jorge Rojillo’s temperature-shielding device popped into the air. Asterin enlarged the hologram, then we both studied the schematics.
“They don’t even look that impressive, but these schematics almost cost me my life,” she said in a wry voice. “If I’d known the Techwave was targeting Lord Jorge, I would have steered clear of his R&D lab during the summer solstice ball.”
“Sometimes the smallest things can be the most dangerous.”
Asterin arched an eyebrow. “Like a navigation sensor that overheats and crashes a ship?”
I grimaced at the reminder of the design flaw I’d found in Rowena Kent’s spaceships. Only it hadn’t been a design flaw but, rather, a calculated effort on Rowena’s part to destroy Imperium ships on command for the Techwave.
“Exactly like that. Sometimes I can’t believe my figuring out the sensor was faulty caused all of these events to happen.”
Asterin’s gaze strayed back to the air purifier, which was still peeking out from beneath the tarp. “Sometimes all it takes is one small spark to ignite a raging fire.”
