Arthur Vance stepped through the inner airlock hatch into Titus’s command module. Just then, a fifty-ton block of crushed dark rock slammed into the overhead frame outside.
“Inner dogs locked! Air straining at maximum!” Toby shouted over the screech of load-bearing metal, his hands flying across the ballast and high-pressure steadying panels.
Inside the living bathysphere, the artificial gravity compensators shrieked as millions of tons of water rushed into the collapsing cathedral basin. The shifted weight created a violent, dropping vortex that tore Titus from his mooring clamps, dragging the sixteen-ton module into an eight-degree list before his massive flippers bit into the dense salt water.
Arthur pulled off his sky helmet, shaking the sweat from his eyes. His combat harness was coated in an oily mixture of salt spray, soot, and stopped mutagen.
Beside him, Grimm collapsed onto the rubber deck matting with a heavy, heavy, shaking thud. The Stygian Dread-Wolf let out a long, shuddering canine sigh, his tongue lolling over his black glass fangs as he caught his breath. Vesper leaped lightly from Grimm’s flank to her velvet-cushioned station beneath the watching small roof-dome, right away setting to work grooming a speck of sulfur ash from her left foreleg with fastidious, high-born annoyance.
