Copper Sparks and Freefall

When a feral stranger with azure wings tells you you look tastier than a bundle of high-grade copper, standard operating procedure suggests taking a step back.

Unfortunately, the crossbeam of Tower 44 was four inches wide, sixty feet above the churning canyon canopy, and coated in half an inch of greasy monsoon rainwater.

"Stay back," I said, letting go of her wrist and reaching down for the canvas safety strap looped around my tool belt. "Look, miss. Or bird. Whatever you are. I am an employee of the Tana-Mega Line Works. Damaging company infrastructure is a class-three civil offense, but tackling an authorized linesman is a federal breach."

Sela tilted her head. Her bright indigo eyes tracked the twitch of my fingers toward my belt. A stray arc of blue spark leaped from the crown of her unruly hair, popping against the dark iron spar between our boots.

"You smell like burned tin and river stones," she said. Her voice had the manic hum of a charging turbine. "And you didn't turn to charcoal. Nobody touches my storm-charge without turning into bacon."

"I have thick skin," I said. "And an urgent desire to drink ginger tea on solid ground. Now step away from the transformer junction."

She didn't step away. She crouched lower on the beam, her bare toes gripping the steel flange with unnatural balance. The jagged blue pinions along her forearms flared outward, rustling like dry reeds in the gale. Wind roared through the gorge below us, tearing at my canvas jacket and spitting rain against my heavy brass goggles.

"I need that charge," she insisted, pointing a soot-stained finger at the primary copper junction box two feet behind my left shoulder. The heavy brass terminals were humming, vibrating so hard the mounting bolts rattled in their brackets. "Your giant ugly box is choking the cloud lines. My aerie has been cold for three full moons."

"The Trust runs the power, not me," I shouted over the wind. "I just keep the line from grounding out! If you crack that ceramic casing, thirty thousand volts will arc straight into the canyon mist. We'll both vaporize before we hit the treetops."

She bared her teeth in a grin that had far too many sharp points for workplace comfort. "Then let's see how much you can soak up, Spark-Plug."

She lunged.

She didn't draw a weapon or throw a punch. She launched herself straight at my chest like a falcon diving on a field mouse.

Rule twelve of the safety manual states that a linesman must maintain three points of contact at all times. I abandoned all three in half a heartbeat.

I twisted sideways on the beam, unhooking my heavy brass crimper with my right hand and snapping my secondary safety lanyard out with my left. Sela slammed into my torso, knocking the breath clean out of my lungs. Her feathers were hot to the touch, crackling with raw, prickly heat that smelled sharply of scorched clover and ozone.

The instant her hands clamped onto my jacket lapels, a massive surge of wild voltage tore through my frame.

Every hair on my arms and neck stood straight up. My teeth rattled like dice in a leather cup. The current flooded into my collarbones, racing down my ribs and coursing into my legs. A normal man would have dropped dead with his heart cooked into leather, but my cells grabbed the lightning, channeling it downward in an involuntary, rhythmic pulse.

"B-b-zzzt!" I blurted, my tongue vibrating uncontrollably against the roof of my mouth. "C-c-crimpers... disengage!"

"Hold still!" Sela gasped. She wasn't trying to hurt me—she was clinging to me like a drowning swimmer clutching a wooden spar. Her eyes glowed with blinding cerulean fury as she sucked in the static charge humming off my damp skin. "Your core... it doesn't leak! You're an iron anchor!"

"I am an... u-u-underpaid technician!" I yelled through rattling teeth.

The gale caught us both, tilting our combined weight toward the sheer drop.

My boots slid across the greasy iron beam. Sela’s weight pulled us toward the left side of the platform, directly into the danger zone of the unshielded transformer lug. The severed Line Three cable, loose and whipping in the wind, snaked toward us like an angry copper viper, spewing showers of white-hot sparks every time it brushed the wet tower frame.

If that live lead touched Sela while she was dumping her excess voltage into me, the feedback loop would overload my cellular threshold and blow us both to cinders.

I didn't think about company policy. I didn't think about my overtime pay.

I hooked my right boot behind the vertical diagonal strut of the tower to anchor our center of gravity. With my free right hand, I raised the heavy insulated brass crimpers, jammed the rubber-coated jaw around the whipping copper wire, and yanked it violently away from our heads.

The tension in the cable fought back with brutal force, yanking my shoulder socket until it popped.

"Catch the shunt!" I yelled at Sela. "The iron clamp on my belt—grab it!"

She didn't hesitate. For all her manic energy, her reflexes were frighteningly sharp. Her clawed fingers snatched the grounded steel clamp from my utility pouch and jammed it hard over the exposed copper splice.

A blinding flash lit up the stormy sky.

The arc-flash screamed like a dying beast, blasting a shockwave of thunder across the gorge. The raw current surged into my crimpers, jumped through the steel clamp, and grounded directly into the heavy iron spine of Tower 44 with a deafening crack that shook the entire mountain ridge.

For one glorious second, the circuit held. The high-voltage line ceased its deadly whipping, pinned tight against the insulated bracket.

I exhaled a long breath of pure relief. "See? Proper... proper grounding procedure. Always read the manual."

Sela stared at the clamped junction, then looked up at me with wild wonder. "You tamed the sky-fire with a piece of bent metal."

"It's called basic electrical engineering," I muttered, wiping rain and soot from my goggles with the back of my glove. "Now, if you would kindly climb off my chest, I can finish writing this incident report and—"

A sharp, metallic groan cut through the storm.

Beneath our boots, the rusted main crossbeam trembled. The explosive thermal shock from the arc-flash had superheated the ancient, neglected iron bolts at the tower's corner joint.

A hairline crack raced across the steel bracket.

I froze. Sela froze.

"Tell me that sound was your tool belt," she murmured.

"That," I said carefully, "was sixty years of deferred maintenance giving up on life."

The corner flange snapped with the sound of a cannon shot.

The entire iron crossbeam dropped out from under our feet. The platform tilted ninety degrees into the empty air, dumping my toolbox, my spare wire coils, and both of us into the screaming darkness of the cloud canyon below.

Gravity seized us in an instant.

Wind roared in my ears, tearing the goggles from my forehead as the iron skeleton of Tower 44 shot upward into the storm clouds. All around us, the white void of the mist canyon opened its maw, rushing up at terminal velocity.

Sela's fingers locked around my wrists in a death grip, her glowing blue wings whipping violently against the plunging rain.

"Hold on, Spark-Plug!" she shrieked over the howling fall.

"Hold on to what?" I screamed back into the abyss. "There is no tether for this!"