Beyond the hot-water vent field, the trench floor flattened into a lonely plateau of black glass.
The water here was devoid of macroscopic life. Even the blind isopods and semi-clear ribbon-fish had abandoned this sector of the Kermadec Deep pit. The only sound was the distant, underground thrumming of the world-size mantle. It shook through the bedrock like the heartbeat of an ancient sleeping god.
In the center of the plateau, half-buried under a hundred thousand years of oceanic silt, lay a huge wreckage.
It was the shattered hull of a pre-cataclysm exploration bathyscaphe. A vessel easily eighty meters long, built from linked ribs of an unknown bronze-colored alloy that showed zero rusting despite ten thousand years in hyper-saline salt water. Its forward watching sphere was crushed like an eggshell. But protruding from the wreckage was a giant stone pylon.
The pylon stood twenty meters tall, carved from a single six-sided monolith of white Gengjin metal. It didn’t reflect the capsule’s halogen beams. It seemed to emit its own cold, lunar soft glow, streaming a high-hum sound hum that made the teeth in Arthur’s jaw ache.
“Hold formation,” Arthur commanded, raising a fist.
The squad halted instantly. Grimm took up a point position five paces ahead, his hackles bristling as he stared at the white pylon. Titus anchored his belly shell behind Arthur, his gravity pull steadying the water column.
