High-speed hydrodynamics obeyed matching exact laws whether in a university fluid dynamics lab or five thousand feet beneath a frozen mountain range.
Giles Croft stood on the damp crushed-stone ballast fifty paces behind the cutter shield of the Iron Mole.
The air smelled of crushed dark rock, chilled mountain moisture. The faint stone tang of copper-lined propellant cartridges. Overhead, the heavy segmental steel tunnel rings held back millions of tons of granite, their rubber seal ring joints fully dry.
Fifty paces ahead, lit up by four glaring hardened carbon-iron floodlights, sat the six-hundred-ton iron-hard metal-granite boulder.
It filled the entire lower half of the circular tunnel heading like a stone-hard tooth. Its dark, crystal-clear surface reflected the lantern light with an oily sheen that had defied diamond core drills and heavy dark metal pickaxes for three solid days.
Captain Kenneth Drake held the blued steel launcher tube braced against his right shoulder.
His boots were planted wide on the timber rail ties, his leather-wrapped fingers steady around the dual grips. Beside him, Toby Karr knelt behind the portable sheet-steel blast shield. He held an ammunition canister containing three spare eighty-five tiny fraction of an inch rocket-javelins.
“Range to target face is exactly forty-two paces,” Toby reported, sighting through his hand tally. “Backblast zone is entirely clear across thirty paces.”
