The sound hydrophones along the northern spur didn’t merely detect sound. They sent the violent, heavy-duty pulse of approaching war.
Eight miles downstream, Silas Kane had discovered the wreckage of his forward operations. The mining probe at White Smoker Spire Delta was a melted lump of scorched light metal. Fifty pounds of high-purity river-jade metal bars had vanished from the rail spur warehouse. The entire sound sonobuoy picket line had been blinded by a nearby heat blast. The four spliced bore-hounds of Patrol Beta were dead with crushed neck bones.
To a corporate trade ring warlord who ruled the underground depths of Trench 05 through unbending terror and clockwork violence, this was an unbearable humiliation. For six years, Kane had operated as the unchallenged king of the underground rift, exploiting thousands of indentured commoner laborers. That forced them to breathe crushed dark rock dust. Meanwhile, his dredge processors stripped river-jade for ApexBio’s high-tier research divisions. Those who resisted were fitted with crude electric-shock collars or fed to his pack of spliced bore-hounds.
Now, a band of slum refugees led by an exiled cadet from House Vance had walked into his territory, shattered his patrols. Then he established an armed stronghold right on his main transport line.
