The inside of the Iron Ark’s mobile razor-sharp trailer smelled of carbolic soap, autoclaved steel, and distilled water.
Outside, the underground cave was cold and dark, the steady thrum of forty idling diesel engines shaking through the heavy steel chassis. Down on the lower ledges, the torches of Silas Kane’s mercenary outposts flickered like distant, hungry eyes in the black-water mist. The muffled rhythm of heavy-duty slurry pumps thudded through the bedrock. Inside the trailer, however, Arthur Vance had created an oasis of sterile calm. Three battery-powered razor-sharp halogens cast crisp, shadowless white light across a stainless steel check tray. Beside the tray, Dr. Morrigan Calder—the convoy’s veteran field physician, whose hands were scarred by fifteen years of frontline trauma surgery—was busy laying out micro-instruments onto a green sterile drape.
“I’ve helped you through limb amputations, shrapnel debridements, and Grimm’s thigh realignment,” Morrigan said, adjusting her wire-rimmed glasses as she looked down at the pickle jar resting on the rubber-lined countertop. “I have pulled out high-explosive sabot rounds from human chest cavities under live mortar fire during the Siege of Sector 4. But Arthur... This patient doesn’t even weigh three ounces.”
“Eighty-five point two grams, to be precise,” Arthur corrected calmly. His voice steady and was cold and exact.
