Penal Siege-Commander Gorgon kicked open the pressurized escape hatch of his crippled flagship.
He plunged into the icy black brine, his eight-hundred-pound siege mace gripped in his right fist. Behind him, fifty penal shock-troopers poured from the surviving rams in disciplined formation.
Each trooper was clad in spiked meteoric diving plate and armed with heavy hydraulic harpoons.
Gorgon did not look back at his three drowning warships.
His scarred face twisted into a snarl as he pointed his mace toward the deep chasm below.
“Forget the ships,” Gorgon roared through his acoustic helmet array. “The boy thinks his little kelp mines make him safe. We swim down, tear the gates from the rock, and slaughter every rebel in their beds.”
The fifty-one penal warriors dove into the abyss like heavy iron stones.
They descended along the vertical basalt cliff face, bypassing the central water column where the mines had drifted.
