The mathematics of deep-sea salvage were as unbending as the granite of the land-wide shelf.
Lady Millicent Croft sat at the long frame stand table in the Port Haven Planning Bureau. She was surrounded by seven tall stacks of cargo manifests and four separate inkstands.
Her steel glasses were perched on the bridge of her nose. Her tally-book lay open to a page filled with dense, uncompromising columns of black figures.
“Two point four tons per dive,” Millicent said, her voice dry as parchment.
“Assuming optimal weather, two dives per day, and zero cable failures on the catamaran hoist.
That is four point eight tons of salvaged iron-hard metal power bars per day.”
She looked up at Giles, who was standing before a fifty-foot chalkboard covered in chalk diagrams.
“There are three hundred and sixty thousand tons of load-bearing metal, spark channels, and machinery in Sector Alpha alone,” Millicent continued.
