An empire was not established by proclamation or conquered by swords. An empire was forged from standardized dimensions, balanced logistics, and stable foundations.
Six months after the sealing of the earth-shaking fault, the Grand Sunless Deep pit had ceased to be a terrifying underground void.
It was now the beating heavy-duty heart of the known world.
From the raised terrace of Bastion Number Ten, fifty feet above the cave floor, Giles Croft sat comfortably inside the warm, high-pressure cabin of Steam-Crawler Number One. The heavy tractor was parked on an engineered overlook of dressed granite blocks, its two-inch iron-hard metal dozer blade resting flat against the stone floor.
Outside, the underground cave climate hovered at a constant, controlled sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit.
Beneath the flat stone slabs of the vast metropolis, padded cast-iron mains carrying two-hundred-and-fifty-degree underground steam snaked through dedicated work tunnels. The district heating network warmed thirty residential wards housing three hundred thousand citizens, banishing the damp chill of the deep forever.
Above the streets, a massive grid of carbon-arc floodlights lit up the twenty-mile cave.
Powered by one million two hundred and fifty thousand kilowatts of captured magma-coupled turbine energy, the lamps cast clean, brilliant white light across every avenue, plaza, and rail siding.
