The watching small roof-dome of The Iron Archimedes was twenty feet of riveted hard dark metal-steel and four-inch-thick layered quartz. He held three sea-weights of heated, high-pressure air against the six-thousand-fathom ocean.
Inside, the cabin smelled of burning animal fat, pipe tobacco, and twenty-year-old Spire plum brandy. Six heavy brass dials were bolted to the inner wall, their clockwork needle indicators twitching as the main air-powered winch on the surface dreadnought three leagues above pulled seventy tons of archive debris upward through the rift.
Chief Salvage Master Garrick leaned back in his padded leather swivel chair, a crystal tumbler of amber liquor balanced on his rotund belly. His braided officer’s coat was unbuttoned at the neck. He exposed a thick throat stained with red wine and sea-salt rash.
“A clean bite,” Garrick chuckled. He nodded toward the lit up quartz viewport that looked out into the lightless deep pit. “Sixty tons of dark rock in the first hopper. The golems haven’t reported a single live hostile. By midnight, we’ll have the dredge teeth into the sub-vault floor. Once we haul up the foundation plates, Lord Malakor’s salvage bonus will buy every man in this sphere a country estate in High-Khorat.”
