Excerpt: Phoenix and the Vulture (working title)

Prologue
“Damn you! Gage that rigging! You! Adjust the axis there! What do you think we’re doing here, trolling for dinner?”
Currents of blue light buzzed and snapped as a rotund figure in green coverall stomped around the octagonal mouth of the Dimensional Well. Every surface of the room gleamed with metal and green-clad and goggled figures scurried like ants, finely tuning the hardware. The well itself, inside its low wall, was filled with darkness and stars. A platform hung in the middle of it, the focal point of cables stretching in from each point of the octagon.
“Well there’ll bloody be no dinner for any of us if we don’t make this quota! Six days to the Fair. No wonder the Chief’s in such a knot.” A masked guard stood in front of a pen, its force fields crackling. Behind it stood three pale men, strongly built though barely clad. They watched the activity through doleful eyes, saying nothing.
“You can keep it to yourself. I’m trying to set for the other dimension here. Get a bonus for racial variety, you know.”
The guard nodded as the engineer continued his frenetic number-checking. “I’m nearly ready.”
“Countdown to casting!” Numbers flickered in screens around the room The round and rather hairy chief peered over shoulders, his voice dwarfing the buzz and snap of building energy. “The Boss is unhappy with the quality of merchandise lately. There’s enough energy in this room to run the whole planet down there! Disappoint him for the Fair this year and there’ll be no end of grief. And no other line of work to fall back on! Ready now? Cast!”