The transit aqueduct of Vault 5 ended in a giant stone water gate of ancient dark rock that groaned as it parted against the crushing blackness of the Kermadec-Tonga Deep pit.
Beyond the gate lay thirty thousand meters of oceanic depth—an unforgiving domain where air pressure exceeded three mountain-crushing pressure and the heat of the hyper-saline salt water hovered at a bitter one point two degrees. Under such staggering water-pressure weight, thirty tons of force pressed against every square inch of exposed surface. A standard steel diving bell would have imploded into a crumpled ball of foil in less than six hundredths of a second.
Yet Arthur Vance stepped across the threshold. Then, his boots remained planted firmly on the smooth flat stone slabs of Echo’s swelled spatial wake.
Echo led the vanguard. The one-hundred-and-fifty-meter dragon-whale moved through the deep-sea depths with easy, hypnotic grace. His newly forged jade-green and cerulean scales didn’t merely push against the water. They channeled the surrounding fluid through non-Euclidean micro-folds. That created a zero-drag, smooth-flowing slipstream that wrapped around the entire squad in a stable, high-pressure envelope. Along his flanks, the expansive star-finned wings of his Kunpeng lineage undulated in slow, rhythmic pulses. It scattered the water-pressure crush into harmless sideways tearing force waves.
