The grease on the cutting-open table smelled of rancid animal fat and cold iron.
Arthur Vance dipped a lint-free linen cloth into a vial of isopropyl solvent. He wiped the front objective of his Zeiss-Vanguard Monocle Loupe Mk. IV until the triple quartz prisms gleamed with a faint violet sheen. Outside the corrugated sheet-metal walls of Forward Triage Outpost 9, the lower heavy-duty ward of Sector 7 was waking to its customary rhythm. The distant thud of steam-stamps, the hiss of sulfur vents, and the sour chemical vapor that rolled off the melted rock waste canals like morning fog.
At his feet, a heavy, rhythmic warmth pressed against his leather combat boots.
Grimm lay stretched across the pitted wooden walkway planks, his massive black-furred head resting squarely over Arthur’s toes. His left ear, notched by an old fighting-pit wire trap, twitched every time a steam pipe groaned overhead. The hound had filled out across the long campaigns of the Rust-Belt and the Industrial Sump. His rib cage was an armored barrel of dense muscle, and beneath his charcoal coat, sub-skin carbon plates had fused into a black glass lattice capable of withstanding small-arms fire. A low, contented rumble rattled in Grimm’s throat. It shook through the soles of Arthur’s boots like an idling diesel engine.
