The tracked pontoon wheels of the Iron Ark mobile lab ground across the underwater dark rock shelf, throwing up swirling clouds of crushed black silt and eerie-glowing sea-glass speck dust into the cold, sunless water.
Eight thousand two hundred meters beneath the surface of post-Cataclysm Earth, within the uncharted deep-rock depths of Underground Trench 05, the surrounding pressure registered at eight hundred and twenty sea-weights. Outside the heavy four-inch quartz viewports of the command bridge, the Sunken Bioluminescent Aquifer stretched out into the unending gloom like a drowned world-size sea. Vast forests of deep-sea glass kelp swayed in the heat currents, their semi-clear, tubular stalks glowing with a pale, cold azure radiance that lit up schools of blind, silver-scaled deep-sea minnows darting between the stone arches.
Inside the high-pressure mobile lab, the air was clean, cool. Then it soaked with the faint, cold and exact aromas of razor-sharp alcohol, spark-charged ozone, and distilled heavy water. High-intensity blazing bright floodlights cast sharp, warm beams through the heavy glass, cutting through the deep-sea murk to reveal the ancient, water-carved granite canyon walls flanking their advance.
Arthur Vance stood before the backup helm console, his gloved fingers resting lightly on the brass frame of the sound sonar display. He wore his heavy vanguard field coat, the collar turned up against the chill, with his Zeiss-Vanguard type-list monocle locked over his right eye. Behind the triple-ground quartz lenses, glowing amber eye overlays tracked the fluctuating water chemistry and ground-shaking shakes sent by the outside…
