The clock on Arthur Vance’s eye display was counting down from sixty seconds.
In the brutal calculus of beast taming, synchronizing all five divine lineages at the same time was an act of extreme body hazard. The neural recoil of five semi-divine consciousnesses flooding through a single human brain was enough to rupture brain tiny blood vessels, boil the glassy humor of the eyes, and induce fatal epileptic shock. But the Void-Infected Lunar Brood-Mother prepared to discharge her third and final crustal severance pulse. Then, Arthur knew that gradual, spinning attrition was no longer an option.
“Full Pentagonal Lock-step,” Arthur commanded, slamming the dual neural shunts of the Vance Transfixer into his collar receptacles. “Echo, lubricate the electrodes!”
From his high-pressure sphere on the crawler’s flank, Echo released a pulse of hyper-current-carrying, cryo-heat-drawing hydro-mucus through the tracking data channels. The cold fluid bathed Arthur’s time electrodes, reducing synaptic signal heat levels by forty-five percent and suppressing the onset of acute brain heavy bleeding.
Arthur clamped his jaw. He felt the heavy, metal hum of the Vance Transfixer shaking against his mastoid bones.
The test HUD projected directly onto his eye began flashing amber warning tracking data. Mean blood pressure one hundred and thirty-five tiny fractions of an inch of liquid silver. Heart rate one hundred and forty-two. Brain pressure surging toward eighteen tiny fractions of an inch of liquid silver. To an ordinary human tamer, this was the red zone of acute brain hypertensive encephalopathy. But Arthur had spent five…
