The bubbling blast jet struck not with sound, but with the shifted weight of ten thousand tons of water.
In the split second before the sound pulse wiped out the drainage channel, Deep-Diver Ren drove his flippered lead boots into the dark rock curb. He didn’t try to block the projectile. To block a sound blast wave at six thousand deep-water lengths was like trying to catch an anvil fired from a siege mortar.
Instead, the smuggler threw both hands forward, fingers splayed. Then he twisted his wrists in an abrupt, circular wrench.
Hadal Pressure Invariance: Hydro-Shear.
The dense, hyperbaric water right away before his palms warped into a tight, counter-rotating vortex. The vortex didn’t scatter the bubbling blast jet. It seized the boundary layer of the blast wave. It bent its flight path thirty degrees upward.
The focused jet tore past Ren’s shoulder, missing his temple by less than four inches. Then he slammed into the roofed porch stairs of the High Scroll hall.
The dark rock exploded into a blinding cloud of crushed black silt. The bone-shaking back-blast slammed Ren backward against the stone railing. It tore the copper drain tube line from his lips.
Crack.
