Across the frozen expanse of the Central Glacial Caldera, the air ceased to circulate.
At minus twelve thousand two hundred and forty meters below the Antarctic ice sheet, the air pressure didn’t drop gradually. The Glacial Titan Ymir-Chimaera drew breath. Then, it inhaled over one hundred thousand cubic meters of freezing polar air in a single, convulsing gasp. The massive chest bellows inside its ribs tightened with the grinding shriek of high-pressure shipyard presses. It packed the ice-cold vapor until the space between its six horned jaws shone with a horrifying, sapphire-white light.
Arthur Vance stood two miles away on the glassy expanse of black iron-hard metal ice, his sight magnifying glass humming as the internal lenses magnified forty times.
“Main lung chamber at ninety-eight percent squeezing,” Arthur reported over the squad’s encrypted neural network, his voice level and analytical despite the rumbling tremors shaking through his boots. “The internal heat in its throat has plummeted to minus two hundred and ten degrees. It isn’t generating heat. It’s creating a total heat empty pocket that pulls the latent energy out of atom-deep bonds.”
Arthur took a deep breath through his filtered breathing mask, tasting the dry, metal tang of crushed star-iron and artificial ozone. The heating elements in his Mk. IV Arctic Triage Exosuit were humming at twelve hundred watts. He drew heavily from the twin lithium-aether power packs mounted to his lower spine. Outside his padded suit, the surrounding cold was an active hunting beast, searching for any hairline…
