The heavy armored treads of the lead transport groaned as they sank four inches into the black, iron-tainted peat.
Arthur Vance stood atop the watching small roof-dome of the forward hauler, his Zeiss-Vanguard monocle clicked down over his right eye. Ahead lay the Great Rust-Mire—a three-hundred-half-mile expanse of acidic fenland, drowned heavy-duty drainage canals, and stone-hard pre-Cataclysm iron chimney pipes where the toxic runoff of three mega-cities had festered for over a century.
The surrounding aether gauge mounted to his chest harness ticked steadily upward: 68.4 PPM — ZONE 3 AETHERIC HAZARD.
At this concentration, unshielded lungs would begin suffering micro-cellular inflammation within three days. For the three hundred refugees trailing behind in their improvised convoy, the Iron Ark, the air was already heavy with the metal tang of rusted copper and swamp gas.
A low, ringing chuff shook against Arthur’s shins.
Grimm sat beside him on the steel deck, his soot-black shoulder pressed firmly against Arthur’s knee. The hound’s coat had thickened during their march through the Outer Badlands, the black glass bone ridges along his spine and forelegs gleaming with an oil-slick sheen. At one hundred and twenty pounds, Grimm was no longer the starved stray Arthur had hauled from the academy cull pens. But the habit remained. His heavy skull rested on Arthur’s boot, amber eyes tracking the shifting mist.
