'Are you sure Orin?' asked Wynn.
'I'll make sure nothing interferes with the car reaching the facility,' said Orin.
'Daooth can load the cars into the propulsion tunnel and send us through from the control chamber here, so you will not need to operate the rail car yourself, but you will have to escape after it comes above ground inside the city. The rail system becomes a series of magnetic rings that are spaced along the track until it enters the cloning facility. However you will be inside the city at that point so you will have to be careful. Grod's forces have undoubtedly already begun their assault.'
'What about our rail car that will be setting in the tunnel?' asked Tiet.
'Daooth can move our car into a passing cell located at different positions along the tunnel. They allow for cars to be displaced while others pass,' said Wynn. 'We will go on ahead in this car and then I'll communicate with you when its time to come through with the explosives.'
Wynn and Tiet climbed inside the rail car, which was quite long. It must have measured nearly thirty yards in length. Tiet and Orin exchanged glances as the door closed on the car. Orin tried to look reassuring.
He knew if anything happened to him, that Wynn would be able to continue Tiet's training even beyond what he had been able to accomplish with the boy. But he had no intention of riding that rail car to his doom. He did wonder what would be waiting for him in a city full of Vorn military and potentially a Horva army led by Grod. Hopefully they would be so busy with each other that they wouldn't even notice him.
The door of the car secured itself in a locking position as they sat down and fastened their seat harnesses for the trip. Daooth worked the controls causing the hoist arm to move the rail car into the propulsion tunnel. Once inside the mouth of the tunnel, a safety door constricted into place behind the car so that the magnetic field would not harm anyone in the loading area. The field was powerful enough to pull a person with any metallic garment into the tunnel and potentially to their death.
The safety door sealed and the rail car was bathed in a magnetic field. The hoist arm released the car, which was then suspended within the magnetic field.
He hit the send command and the car began to propel forward down the tunnel, rapidly increasing speed to six hundred miles per hour. Within the car, Wynn and Tiet noticed little effect from inertia because of the damper systems in place.
'The trip will take a little over an hour to complete. I would suggest we both try to get some rest before we arrive. You'll need it.'
'If you say so.'
The journey from his home on Castai seemed like an eternity ago and Tiet had gone nearly the whole time now without much sleep. He was glad they had at least had the opportunity to eat some food and clean up back at Wynn's base in the caves.
He didn't like being separated from Orin, but he had to stand on his own at some point, and he sensed it may have even been done on purpose when Orin sent him with Wynn. He rested his head back, noticing that Wynn already looked like he was asleep. Within moments he had also drifted into much needed sleep and not even his old nightmares could break through his exhaustion.
Orin made his way to the car holding the device. He boarded and found a seat, unconsciously glaring at the weapon 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.
Daooth 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 be sending 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 and 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 it and closed the safety door behind it. It took only a moment for the magnetic field to charge and build inside the tunnel and 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 was shaken by the slowing and stopping of the rail car. 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 him 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 of the tunnel. A large hole that looked like the source of the rock could be seen going upward into the tunnel roof.
The rail car came to a halt approximately fifty yards from the blockage. The side door unlocked and opened automatically, no doubt under the watchful eye of Daooth hundreds of miles away in the control chamber. Tiet followed Wynn out the door and they bounded up the tunnel toward the rubble.
'Well, let's get started,' said Tiet as he began to concentrate on the individual stones.
'I want you to move all 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…'
'Yes,' interrupted Tiet, 'you were controlling 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 exactly?'
'I mean that when you use the kinesis you are reaching out with your mind. You are probably used to reaching out in one direction at once. 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 kinesis carries out the thought with action.'
Suddenly he was enthralled by this new understanding of the Barudii power insomuch that he nearly forgot why they were even here.
'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. It was the overlap through the Rift that gave us Barudii what power we had, but on this side we are much more powerful.'
'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, and even more, he could feel his surroundings in a way he had not previously realized.
He could sense 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. His kinetic power felt like another appendage of his body. In his mind he 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.
