The shift from the comms hub to Sector 6 plunged the squad into an inferno of clockwork heat and ear-splitting foundry noise. As the heavy pressure hatch hissed open, a blast of dry, white-hot air washed over Arthur Vance’s faceplate. He smelled of molten pig iron, carbon flux, and rotten-egg heat salt water.
Sector 6 was the heavy-duty belly of the Sovereign Chimera Order. An underground cave carved three hundred meters deep into the dark rock base of the atoll. Towering earth-heat smelting crucibles lined the outer edge walls. It drained magma directly from sub-crustal fiery vents to forge the heavy silver-steel-hard shell bone frames needed for Osric’s man-made sea monsters. Massive air-powered forging hammers struck white-hot heavy beams with rhythmic, ground-shivering concussions that rang in Arthur’s teeth.
The stonework was a nightmare of pre-Cataclysm deep-mining technology fused with barbaric living alchemy. Self-running moving belt belts carried crushed deep-sea stone ores into huge bubbling cooking pots. There, the raw rock was melted down and mixed with packed bone-glue harvested from deep-sea drakes. The resulting composite alloy—bio-silver-steel—possessed twice the pulling strength of standard military armor plate. But kept the ability to bond directly with living nerve fibers.
“Fifty-eight minutes,” Valerie called out over the tactical audio channel, wiping a streak of sweat and carbon soot from her cheek. “The surrounding heat is sitting at fifty-two degrees. My suit’s heat-sinks are already venting at eighty percent capacity. If we stay in this heat for twenty minutes, the electronics in our rifles will…
