The blast wave didn’t travel through water like sound in air. At six thousand deep-water lengths depth, where water molecules were squeezed together by sixteen thousand pounds of pressure of unrelenting water-pressure load, sound was a solid, battering fist.
The blue-white flash of sonoluminescence flared from the Arch-Notary’s horn-shaped drain tube.
Within that tightly packed jet, the water didn’t merely surge. It cavitated. Tiny vapor cavities swelled and collapsed in a billionth of a second, generating nearby heat levels hotter than the surface of the sun before snapping shut with cataclysmic violence. A white spear of tightly packed bubbling blast tore through the pitch-black water, cutting an empty pocket trench sixty yards long across the floor of the rift.
“Left pylon!” Deep-Diver Ren roared through his brass helmet chest muscle.
The smuggler grabbed Ren by the harness collar with one gauntleted fist and Mira by the waist with the other. Kicking his lead-weighted boots against the deep-sea current, he hurled the three of them into the lee of a titanic dark rock stone support prop jutting from the canyon wall.
The bubbling blast spear struck the stone where they had hovered a heartbeat before.
THWUM-CRACK.
The dark rock pylon, six feet of solid fiery rock bound with gold-silver metal rivets, blew up. The stone didn’t crumble. The water-pressure blast wave crushed the dark rock directly into grey silt. It sent shock ripples through the trench that slammed Ren against the cliff face.
