The blast doors at the far end of the reception bay didn’t open with standard clockwork warning sirens. They were blown wildly off their hinges by an explosive charge planted from within. A blinding blast flashed through the cavernous dry dock. It was followed by a blast wave that rattled the iron floor plates beneath Arthur Vance’s boots.
Heavy steel fragments screamed across the concrete hall, ricocheting off the heavy ceiling heavy beams like shrapnel from an artillery shell. Through the drifting acrid smoke surged a platoon of Chimera Shock-Troopers. Twelve heavily mutated soldiers whose bodies had been altered beyond the recognized boundaries of human type-list. Their torsos were wrapped in thick, hard-shelled plates harvested from deep-sea crabs, their right arms replaced by air-powered dart-cannons. Their jaws elongated into barbed jaws dripping with thick, sticky green neuro-toxin.
Behind them marched two Chimera Ogres. Hulking, three-meter amalgams of human muscle, deep-sea shark joint padding, and man-made high-pressure braces. Their gray, rubbery skin was covered in rows of razor-sharp skin denticles that scraped against the doorframe as they squeezed through the breach. Each ogre held a six-foot heavy cleaver forged from scrap heavy-duty armor plate. Their dead black eyes were locked onto Arthur’s position.
