The water in the Central Aquifer Vault turned into a screaming tunnel of white bubbling blast froth and high-pressure sound violence.
From the twin wired dorsal launcher pods surgically grafted to the Chimera Abyssal Megalodon’s armored flanks, eight super-cavitating heavy torpedoes blew up from their tubes with timed together air-powered roars. Each missile was a three-meter metal tube of heavy silver-steel alloy, packed with liquid octogen high explosive and tipped with an active sound seeker warhead. Wrapped around in their own micro-bubbles of boiled away steam generated by specialized nose-cone cavitators, the torpedoes sped up to two hundred knots in less than half a second, hurtling across the eighty-meter expanse of dark water directly toward the Iron Ark’s forward prow.
Inside the mobile lab, the sonar warning speakers screeched with ear-splitting, panic-inducing urgency. The brass needles on the sound pressure dials pinned against their maximum stops, shaking wildly.
“Eight high-yield torpedoes incoming!” Toby shouted, his voice cracking with terror as he gripped the edge of the tracking data station with white-knuckled desperation. “Closing speed: two hundred knots! Impact in one point two seconds! Arthur, their combined explosive yield exceeds four tons of high-explosive equivalent! If those warheads detonate against Titus’s shield at point-blank range, the moving concussions will rupture the cave ceiling! We’ll be buried under two million tons of falling granite!”
