Severing the Ground Lines

How many volts does it take to vaporize an uncertified regional maintenance worker?

The Tana-Mega Line Operations Handbook did not list a specific number under Section Twelve, Hazard Evasion. It merely advised field technicians to remain stationary, adopt a low center of gravity, and file a formal protest with the district safety warden.

The twin copper barrels of the patrol train disagreed with the handbook.

A blinding magnesium flare hissed upward, bathing our basalt ridge in harsh, sputtering white glare. Air crackled around my ears. The train's pneumatic cylinders exhaled a heavy blast of wet sulfur steam, and the capacitor banks mounted behind the turret began to whine. It was a climbing, shrill hum. Three thousand cycles per second. The unmistakable sound of an industrial capacitor preparing to dump fifty thousand amperes straight through our skulls.

"Down!" I yelled, grabbing the hem of Sela's canvas vest.

She did not stay down.

Instead, her electric-blue feathers snapped outward in a blinding blur of down and sparks. Her pupils dilated until her irises were razor-thin rings of cyan fire.

"Look at that coil," she breathed. Her voice had the crackling resonance of lightning snapping across dry timber. "The brass housing is packed with raw current. It smells delicious."

"That is an automated shock-cannon, you suicidal pigeon! It does not want to feed you. It wants to turn us into conductive charcoal!"

She laughed, a sharp, joyous sound that cut clean through the howling wind. Before I could catch her ankle, her boots left the rock.

Sela launched straight into the glare of the tracking searchlight.

She folded her wings into a tight dive, hurtling toward the locomotive's armored cab. Her trailing feathers threw off sheets of bright azure static, tracing arcs across the falling mist.

The turret track whined as its copper barrels swiveled upward to track her trajectory.

"Sela, break off!"

She did not break off. She flared her primary flight feathers ten feet above the forward turret, banking hard to rake her talons across the brass commutator rings. A brilliant blast of blue and yellow sparks detonated between her claws. The shockwave threw her upward, spinning her out of control against the damp basalt wall of the trench.

The cannon capacitors cycled into their discharge phase. The whine peaked.

I had four seconds.

Four seconds before the twin barrels unleashed an atmospheric discharge that would catch her pinned against the stone.

Linesman instinct kicked in. You do not outrun a lightning bolt, but you can always break the circuit.

Every high-output shock-cannon on the Tana-Mega rail line relies on a continuous earth return. Without a solid ground path, the energy cannot complete its loop. It will choke inside the primary collector coils.

Ten yards down the track from the train's iron wheels, bolted to the center rail, lay the primary grounding line. It was an armored copper braid, thick as my wrist, wrapped in vulcanized tar tape.

I scrambled over the basalt lip, sliding on the wet shale. Sharp stones tore through the knees of my twill trousers. My heavy lineman boots slammed onto the wooden ties of the track bed.

The turret hissed. Pneumatics locked into firing position.

Blue corona discharge crawled across the cannon muzzles, painting the mist with violet sparks. Sela was still struggling to right herself on the ledge above, her wings shuddering under the static backwash.

I unclipped the heavy ratchet-shears from my tool belt.

They were forged steel, three feet long, with vulcanized rubber grips rated for sixty thousand volts. Boss Gali had signed them out to me four years ago with a grim warning: Lose these, Spark-Plug, and I will deduct their weight in dried salt fish from your wages until you are ninety.

I dropped to one knee across the rail.

The grounding braid sat secured inside an iron junction saddle. The copper weave was cold, slick with oily grit, and hummed with suppressed voltage.

I threw the jaws of the shears around the braid.

The patrol train's proximity sensor clicked. A secondary warning horn blared, deafening in the narrow ravine.

The cannon capacitors fired.

A blinding wall of violet plasma ripped from the twin barrels, surging straight toward the rock shelf where Sela hovered.

I threw my entire body weight onto the handles of the shears.

The ratchet teeth caught with a heavy iron clunk.

Steel blades bit deep into the copper weave. The first layer sheared with a screech like screaming tin. I threw my chest against the upper lever, driving the cutting edge through the core.

The thick cable parted.

The circuit snapped open.

Fifty thousand volts of pent-up kinetic charge, denied its earth return through the rail, had nowhere left to go. The entire discharge reversed direction in a microsecond, surging backward through the chassis into the severed cable.

And straight up through my shears.

The rubber grips held against the thermal blast, but the biostatic surge bypassed the insulation entirely, drawn to the anomalous conductivity of my living tissue.

A mountain of raw current hit my hands.

Sound vanished.

My vision flared into pure, blinding white. Every nerve ending from my wrists to my collarbone caught fire with freezing, crystalline heat. The current flooded down through my arms, rushing into my chest, spinning in a wild vortex through my lungs before diving down through my spine.

My cells expanded, drinking the tidal wave of lightning.

The patrol train's capacitor banks exploded in a chain of dull concussive thuds. Shattered glass, shredded copper wire, and plumes of black oily smoke erupted from the turret housing. The glowing barrels choked on their own unspent plasma, melting into glowing lumps of slag that dripped onto the gravel.

Silence slammed back down over the crater.

Only the steady hiss of venting steam and the patter of mist remained.

I stayed on both knees in the dirt, the smoking shears still locked in my blistered palms. My work coat was smoking along the seams. Every single hair on my head, my arms, and my neck stood rigidly on end, humming at high frequency like the strings of an untuned zither.

Light footsteps landed softly on the gravel beside me.

Sela folded her wings against her back. The cobalt glow in her eyes softened, replaced by a wide, startled gaze. Her feathers were ruffled, flecked with soot, but completely unbroken.

She dropped to her knees in front of me, reaching out with hesitant fingers.

"Nusa?" she whispered.

I tried to open my mouth to tell her that she was reckless, that she had nearly gotten us killed, and that Boss Gali would definitely garnish my pay for the destroyed track infrastructure.

What came out was not words.

My vocal cords locked into a rapid, involuntary burst of rhythmic static clicks.

Tk-tk-chzzzt-krrr-tk.

Sela pulled her hands back an inch, her eyes widening in wonder.

I tried again. "I... am..."

Chzz-bzzzzt-tk-tk-clck.

It sounded like a telegraph relay having a violent seizure in the rain.

Sela leaned closer, tilting her head until her cheek almost brushed my smoking shoulder. Her fingers gently touched the vulcanized collar of my coat, grounding a tiny blue spark that leaped from my skin to hers.

She did not laugh.

A slow, breathless smile spread across her soot-stained lips. She looked down at my glowing hands, then up at my rigid, crackling hair, understanding exactly what had just passed through my body.

I let the ruined shears drop onto the ties.

My fingers twitched with lingering current, sparking softly against the wet iron rail in the dark.