The earthquake struck Station Deep-Anchor not as a rolling wave, but as a violent, upright hammer blow.
Twelve miles of ocean magnified the ground-shaking shock. Millions of tons of water pressed down on the fiery seamount. The massive dark rock pillars supporting Sector 7 shrieked as earth-shaking shear forces ripped through the rock. Overhead, heavy silver-steel work pipes buckled, spraying plumes of high-pressure coolant steam across the narrow high walkways, while emergency inner walls slammed shut with ear-splitting high-pressure booms.
Arthur Vance didn’t stagger.
Through his soul-sync connection with Titus, who was resting in the drydock three levels below, a pulse of total, unbending crushing weight anchored Arthur’s boots to the metal floor. Titus’s Tectonic Grounding radiated upward through the station’s load-bearing steel. He took in the upright blast wave and drained away fifty thousand foot-tons of ground-shaking energy directly into his own dark rock skeleton.
Beside Arthur, Lauren Drake stumbled. But Arthur caught her by the shoulder of her razor-sharp gown. He held her upright with easy strength until the violent tremor subsided.
The alarms continued to scream, shifting from a ground-shaking warning to a tactical combat alert:
Sound SENSOR NETWORK: MULTIPLE HIGH-ENERGY HYDRO-CONTACTS CLASSIFICATION: SPLICER ASSAULT FLOTILLA COMPOSITION: 3x CHIMERA DREADNOUGHTS, 80+ Deep-sea PROWLERS TARGET: HOSPITAL BARGE SOLACE-04 & DEEP-ANCHOR SLIPWAYS INTERCEPT WINDOW: 00:08:30
