The underground river surged through a huge, arched gateway of water-smoothed black dark rock, spilling into the vast expanse of the Central Aquifer Vault at eight thousand five hundred meters below the Earth’s surface.
Here, within the deepest deep-rock deep gap yet charted on the western continent, the Sunken Bioluminescent Aquifer pooled into a huge underground lake spanning over twelve square miles. The ceiling arched three hundred meters overhead, studded with huge, stalactite-like columns of semi-clear selenite crystal that cast a pale, ghostly soft glow across the dark waters. Under natural conditions, this clean pool would have been one of the greatest freshwater safe halls on the planet. An untouched Eden of prebiotic stone springs, home to ancient blind glass-eels and giant freshwater sponges that had filtered the continent’s underground runoff since the dawn of the Rift Era.
Instead, the ancient water was choking to death under a heavy-duty siege.
Across the center of the lake, anchored between three massive, natural stone pillars, sat Mining Rig Omega.
The extraction platform was a heavy-duty monstrosity. A five-tier castle of welded blackened steel, heavy silver-steel pontoons, and shaking high-pressure gantries spanning four hundred meters in length. Huge diesel-aether turbine generators throbbed with an ear-splitting, clockwork heartbeat, spewing oily gray plumes of rotten-egg smoke into the cave’s vaulted ceiling. From the center of the platform, two massive, heavy dark metal-hardened carbon-iron ground-shaking drills—each four meters in width—plunged into the lake bed. He pounded into the mantle crust with rhythmic, earth-shaking concussions:
