The outer airlock opened into a swirling whirlpool of black silt and flashing living-glow fangs.
The water at minus twenty thousand meters slammed against Arthur’s sky suit with the weight of an entire mountain range. One hundred and ninety tons of pressure of deep water pressure pressed against his chest plates, but through Echo’s symbiotic apnea, Arthur’s body remained in flawless, dynamic balance. His heartbeat was a slow, rhythmic forty beats per minute. His nervous system was as cold and sharp as razor-sharp steel.
Wrapped around his left shoulder was Echo, his pink gills trailing ribbons of azure light that created a zero-friction hydro-envelope around Arthur’s body.
And launching from the airlock doorstep was Vesper.
The hydro-dynamics of sub-aquatic close-quarters combat were governed by unforgiving physical laws. In terrestrial combat, driving force was governed by air pushback and gravity. In the hadal zone, the water was so dense that a human arm swinging a sword would lose ninety percent of its striking force within six inches of travel.
Arthur didn’t swing. He thrust.
His heavy dark metal-hardened carbon-iron razor knife-stilettos were engineered with slender, three-sided cross-sections that bypassed water pushback like a needle piercing silk. Every movement was economic, stripped of wasted flourish, derived from thousands of hours spent studying specimens in trauma bays.
