The silence of deep space was a clockwork lie. Inside the high-pressure hull of the Argo-Vanguard, the ship’s micro-sensors translated the surrounding gravity waves into low-hum sound feeds. It filled the cargo bay with a ceaseless, rhythmic groan. It sounded like the creaking of wet timber in the hold of an ancient galleon, layered beneath a dry, clicking rattle that set Grimm’s hackles on edge.
Arthur Vance knelt on the rubberized mat beside Grimm’s flank. His sleeves were pushed past his elbows, his fingers coated in a thick layer of warmed arnica and distilled salamander marrow.
“Hold still, boy,” Arthur murmured.
Grimm let out a low huff, resting his heavy muzzle on his front paws. The hound’s lower-back bones had absorbed huge moving stresses during their three-week sprint past the outer world-size orbits. Titus warped local space to slingshot the transport. Then, the gravity slope packed along the spinal axis of the beasts. Even with Grimm’s dense jet-black bone honeycomb bone structure, micro-fissures in the lower-back joint padding needed manual pressure drop.
Arthur’s thumbs found the junction between the fourth and fifth lower-back bones. He pressed down with ninety pounds of cold and exact force, leaning his body weight into the maneuver.
