The deployment well of the Vanguard assault cruiser Aegis-One trembled beneath the deep, high-pressure thrum of the deep-sea descent overhead frame. Outside the armored quartz watching port, the slate-gray Atlantic surface had long since vanished, replaced by the choking indigo gloom of the epipelagic boundary at negative fifteen hundred meters. Heavy droplets of water drops trickled down the inside inner walls. He smelled of salt water, hardened rubber, and hot turbine oil.
Arthur Vance tightened the air-powered seals around his wrists with deliberate, measured motions. The heavy squeezing suit he wore was not the standard baked-clay back shell issued to line tamers of the Federal Vanguard. It was a heavy trauma-corpse-judge rig built from woven high-speed dark rock fibers, oil-treated seal-leather, and flexible silver-steel joint-rings. Across his broad chest harness rested the Vance Cryo-Pneumatic Transfixer (Mk. IV), its break-action quad-metal tube charged with high-thickness coagulant sabots, rich fat stabilizers, and aether-cooling enzymes. Strapped along his left forearm ran a high-pressure air-powered hollow tube feed, connecting his needle glove to three sterile reservoirs filled with packed cellular restoratives. At his right hip hung two ten-inch heavy dark metal stilettos, their hollow internal grooves sharpened to a razor-thin edge.
Beside him, Instructor Valerie Koslov tapped the glass face of her depth gauge with a leather-gloved knuckle. Her scarred face was lit up by the dull crimson glow of the emergency battle lamps.
