Water-flow penetration made mockery of living stone armor.
Captain Kenneth Drake squeezed the brass trigger lever of the shoulder-fired launcher.
The internal air-powered striker released with a sharp metal snap.
Inside the rear chamber of the blued steel tube, the percussion cap punctured.
The tightly packed wyrmfire solid-propellant grain ignited with an ear-splitting hiss. It turned two pounds of potion-made propellant into high-pressure gas in twenty-five split seconds.
A blinding sheet of white-hot exhaust gas blew out the rear venturi nozzle, venting harmlessly across the thirty paces of cleared track ballast behind Kenneth.
The recoil-less venturi shape perfectly balanced forward driving force against rear exhaust thrust. The fourteen-pound launcher tube remained as rock-steady on Kenneth’s shoulder as a bench-mounted vise.
Down the center of the tunnel bore, the eighty-five tiny fraction of an inch rocket leaped from the muzzle at nine hundred feet per second.
