RAILWAY

Orin made his way to the rail car. He boarded and found a seat, unconsciously glaring at the bomb as though it might blow at any moment. Daooth watched him from the control booth and manually closed the car door so he could secure it with the boom arm for loading into the tunnel.

He noticed an odd power fluctuation on his panel. It was something he had seen before, but he couldn’t…wait. They’re monitoring the system!

“Orin! I have to send you on through quickly.” His voice came through on the rail car intercom.

“What’s wrong?”

“They’re monitoring the power emanations back at Nagon-Toth. If they’ve already noticed it, they’ll send a squad to investigate. Strap yourself in, we’ve got to hurry.”

Orin didn’t waste any time with further inquiry. He located his safety harness and secured himself to the chair. The boom arm swiveled over to attach to the car. He could hear the magnetic seal apply through the roof with a snap of metal. Daooth watched carefully as he guided the arm and placed the car inside the tunnel for departure. Once inside, he released the rail car and closed the safety door behind it. It took only a moment for the magnetic field to charge and build inside the head of the tunnel then the rail car was speeding down the tunnel.

Daooth secured the control station and locked out the system. Hopefully Grod’s men would not be able to disable it when they arrived to investigate. He ran out of the chamber and back through the secret tunnel entrance they had come by. It was time to get back to his quarters before he was missed.

☼

Tiet woke as the rail car stopped. He saw that Wynn was already out of his harness and looking through the front window at the tunnel blockage ahead. He removed his harness and joined Wynn at the window. The lighting in the tunnel was adequate to see the large pile of heavy stones that were piled three quarters of the way up to the roof. A large hole could be seen in the tunnel roof where it had collapsed.

The rail car came to a halt approximately fifty yards from the blockage. The side door unlocked and opened itself. Tiet followed Wynn out the door and they jogged up the tunnel toward the rubble.

“Let’s get started,” Tiet said as he began to concentrate on the individual stones.

“I want you to move all of the stones at once.”

“What do you mean? Are we able?”

“If you remember when we were on the roof of the General’s compound….”

“You controlled the automated weapons while simultaneously fighting the Horva! That was amazing.”

“It was easier than you realize. It is not in the amount of power but in the technique for wielding it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, when you use the Way you are reaching out with your mind. You are probably used to reaching out in one direction at a time. But you must learn to reach in all directions at once, as though you were surrounded in a sensory field and everything within the boundary of it were susceptible to your senses and your control. When these things are comprehended at once in your mind, you’re able to manipulate them, and the Way carries out the thought with action.

“When I was on the roof, you were in the dome with that teragore. I could reach out throughout the compound and in my mind I could see you fighting that beast. I admit it takes discipline and a lot of practice to begin thinking in this fashion, but you do have the ability. Of course, it’s all made possible by the energies in play here. We don’t understand how, but the fact remains.”

“Could you teach me?”

“Within you, I believe, is the last hope for the Barudii to carry on as a race. We must do what we can to preserve what is left. You’re young and if you survive this war our people have hope to live again. I want to make as much of a contribution of what I have learned to that future as possible. Now, raise the rocks, Tiet. Reach out in all directions around you, feel the tunnel, the ground, the hole in the roof, even me standing here beside you, and then move the picture in your mind with determined intent.”

Tiet tried to let go of the way he would have normally gone about the task, by trying to lift the boulders individually. He began to feel more and more around him. The picture of his surroundings was in his mind as though he had eyes on all sides. He could feel his surroundings in a way he had not previously realized.

Tiet sensed the temperature of the air in the tunnel, the rhythms of Wynn’s bodily functions—heart rate, blood pumping, neurons firing—and he could feel it in a way that gave him confidence that he could manipulate any of it if he desired. The Way felt like another appendage—an extension of his mind. Tiet searched over the surface of each piece of rock in the pile of rubble and could sense with exacting precision where it fit in the crumbled tunnel roof above.

Tiet exerted his will upon the rock. The pile disassembled in his mind and in reality. The stone separated and seemed frozen in a moment of time with even the dust suspended in the air. Wynn was in awe, not at the possibility of performing the task, but in Tiet’s quickness to apprehend the concept and be able to apply it so skillfully. Indeed, he was the King’s son.

The rock began to ascend and reassemble into the places it had previously occupied in the cavernous hole. Once it was all in place, Tiet held it there, but he was unsure of what to do in order to keep it in place. Wynn fused the joints of the rock with his mind and Tiet could feel them supported by it. He released the structure and it held.

“I could sense your power working within the same space as my own, even my susceptibility to your mind. Was that real?”

“It was real, but not indefensible. If I were to attack you kinetically, you could shield yourself from the intrusion and prevent such an attack, possibly even counter it if you sensed that I was unprotected in some way.”

Wynn’s communication link beeped on his wrist.

“Daooth here. How are you progressing with the repair?”

“It’s already complete, my friend.”

“Good. Orin is already en route with the other rail car and the explosives. He should arrive at your location within half an hour. I had to leave the station because I realized the Horva are monitoring the system from Nagon-Toth.

“I’ve been monitoring transmissions from the compound about Baeth Periege. Grod’s forces have already penetrated the city. They were able to disable part of the city’s perimeter shield. The Vorn are attempting to keep them at bay, but from the communications among the Horva, they’re well on their way to entering the city.”

“The sooner we send that rail car into the cloning facility the better,” Wynn said.

“I agree. You will need to reenter the rail car. Now that the blockage is cleared, the automated system will take control and position your car safely inside a passing cell in the tunnel wall. I programmed everything before I left, so I can’t stop it now.”

Tiet followed Wynn back into their rail car. The door closed automatically and an alarm sounded to notify the passengers of an approaching car in transit. The computer began its procedure for clearing the path of the other rail car in the system. A hoist arm moved away from the tunnel wall to magnetically grasp Wynn and Tiet’s car, pulling it into a recessed portion of the wall known as a passing cell. The car locked in place. Within minutes, the other rail car would come hurtling through the tunnel at hundreds of miles per hour, carrying Orin Vale and a very nasty surprise for General Grod.