The cleared heavy-duty drilling cathedral of Mining Rig Omega had been stripped of twisted scrap metal, chemical debris, and shattered drills, transforming the vast eighty-meter chamber into an expansive tactical testing arena.
In the center of the dark rock floor, Arthur Vance sat cross-legged upon a simple wool blanket, his vanguard field coat laid aside, wearing only a sleeveless tactical squeezing shirt. Adhered to the skin along his temples, behind his ears, and down the neck bones of his spine were eight silver-plated biometric tracking data electrodes.
The cables snaked back to a portable oscilloscope cart operated by Toby Mallow and Dr. Morrigan Calder, where glowing screens tracked Arthur’s real-time electroencephalogram, brain blood perfusion, and inner body heat.
Surrounding Arthur in a precise fifty-meter radius stood his five tightened beasts, arrayed in the ancient sharp-angled formation of the Divine Pentagon:
At the forward-left point, Grimm stood with his powerful black legs braced, his notched ear swiveling, his midnight pelt rippling with moving excitement.
At the forward-right point, Vesper crouched in the shadow of an overhead frame, her clean white-and-silver coat faintly shimmering as she phase-shifted between spatial map points.
At the apex, sixty meters above the arena floor, Pip circled on broad golden wings. It cast down sweeping sharp-angled beams of warm solar light that lit up the chalk markings on the stone.
