Location:Seven Peaks — Eastern Supply Road, Deep Chamber, Command Center, Kairos's Quarters
Date/Time:TC1856.08.17 – TC1856.08.21
The eastern supply road ran nine kilometers from the lower staging yard to the forward depot, and Naida had walked all nine of them twice before the sky went gray.
She walked them the second time with her boots off.
Thorne caught up to her at the sixth kilometer, where the road bent around a shoulder of rock and the ruts deepened from the ore wagons. He had come up at a soldier's pace, and he was not breathing hard, which annoyed her slightly, and he stopped when he saw her feet.
"Frost's still in the ground," he said.
"I know. That's the point." She put her heel down slowly, rolled through the arch of her foot, and felt the road answer — the packed grit, the buried spine of the formation conduit running two meters under, the faint warm hum of it like a cat asleep in a wall. "Feel that?"
