Chương 213: The Siege of Tamoanchan (01/18/2016)

DATE: Monday, January 18, 2016 LOCATION: Tamoanchan Construction Site | The Cuban Anomaly, Caribbean Sea LOCAL TIME: 11: 45 AM EST Two thousand feet below the surface of the Caribbean, the construction of Tamoanchan looked like a star system being born in the abyss. Through the reinforced viewport of The Draven, the massive energy dome pulsed with a faint blue luminescence, holding back millions of tons of crushing seawater.

Inside that dry, pressurized bubble, a swarm of automated industrial drones were weaving the physical skeleton of the city into a massive, interlocking fractal.

"Roman concrete extrusion is at forty percent," Woz announced over the comms from the San Diego Arcology.

"The volcanic ash is reacting perfectly with the seawater we're piping into the mix. The tobermorite crystals are locking the matrix together." I looked out the viewport at the main access corridor. The entire outer hull of Tamoanchan was comprised of interlocking spiral geometries, cast in highly conductive Roman concrete. Inside the hollow channels of that concrete, heavy brass and copper cabling had been laid in continuous, logarithmic spirals.

I watched as a heavy-lifter drone locked a massive, hexagonal node into the intersection of five of the concrete spirals. Deep inside the node glowed the dull, metallic sheen of a scaled-up Manastash Emitter, its bismuth-laced quartz core waiting in the dark.

"Node three-four-zero is secure," Elon said.

"That completes the primary hemisphere. The Tartarus Grid is ready." Chad leaned against the seamless bulkhead of The Draven, his arms crossed in his dark naval peacoat.

"Boot it up, Elon. I don't want to be sitting in the dark when the Aesir realize we've locked the front door."

"Initiating," Elon replied. A deep, resonant thrum vibrated through the hull. Outside, the spiraling Roman concrete tunnels of Tamoanchan began to hum, creating a dizzying, recursive optical illusion as the brass and copper matrices powered up.

"JAY," I said.

"Overlay the Silver Chord feed on the main viewport." The dark ocean dissolved into an augmented overlay. The fractal spirals of Tamoanchan were now outlined in a brilliant, interlocking web of white and silver light. The diamagnetic mirror was active. A sharp, synthesized alarm suddenly cut through the cabin.

"Warning," JAY's voice echoed.

"Massive kinetic and telluric displacement detected. Multiple origin points: Wilkes Land Crater, Antarctica, and the Mesoamerican subduction zones. Trajectory: Direct vector." Chad stood up straight.

"Gladsheim. And the Teotl."

"A joint strike," Woz said, his voice tightening.

"They aren't coming in as plasma. They learned from the data-bleed trap. They're dropping in heavy physical synthetics." This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Time to impact?" I asked, my pulse spiking as the sonar contacts multiplied on the screen. Dozens of massive, heavy kinetic signatures were plummeting through the pitch-black water.

"Forty seconds," JAY replied.

"They're bypassing the Kozyrev mirrors," Marcus Sterling warned from the rear sensor station.

"The emitters only trap torsion fields and plasma. If they hit the concrete in those heavy abyssal synthetics, they'll physically smash the quartz cores before the Archons ever have to expose their souls."

"Elon, reroute dome power to the cavitation field," Chad ordered, his voice ice-cold.

"JAY. Deploy the Blob fish."

"Executing sub-aquatic defense protocol," JAY confirmed. Outside the viewport, the seabed around Tamoanchan shifted. From concealed silos bored directly into the piezoelectric granite of the seafloor, dozens of massive, highly specialized defense drones launched into the water column. They didn't look like sleek military torpedoes. They looked exactly like their namesake—the deep-sea Psychrolutidae, or blob fish. They were large, bulbous constructs lacking rigid outer armor.

Instead, their chassis were composed of a dense, synthetic gelatinous matrix, specifically engineered to have a density slightly less than the crushing seawater.

"Impact in three... two... one." The joint Aesir and Teotl strike force hit the cavitation boundary. They were towering, gangly nightmares of dense biopolymer and heavy metallic plating, armed with hydraulic kinetic drivers meant to shatter the Roman concrete and crack the Djinni Bottles before they could activate. But they never reached the concrete. The Blob fish drones swarmed them in the water column. The synthetics swung their pneumatic spikes, but the kinetic strikes were utterly useless.

The weapons sank harmlessly into the gelatinous armor of the drones, the hydrostatic shock completely absorbed and dispersed by the blob fish's fluid-dynamic chassis. Before the synthetics could retract their arms, the Blob fish drones initiated their primary offensive measure. High-tensile carbon-weave mandibles snapped shut, locking onto the biopolymer joints of the Archon vessels. Then, the drones rapidly altered their internal buoyancy, initiating localized pressure implosions.

The deep ocean was filled with the sickening, metallic CRACK of abyssal synthetics being torn apart by the crushing depth.

"Physical vessels compromised," Woz reported, staring at the telemetry.

"The drones are ripping their armor to shreds. The biological hosts are failing."

"Which means they can't stay in the meat," Chad said, a cold smile touching his lips. Out in the black water, as the heavily armored synthetics ruptured and died, the Archons inside were forcibly evicted. With their physical vessels destroyed, they had no choice but to revert to their pure, non-corporeal state. The ocean outside the dome erupted in a blinding flash of digital violet and crimson plasma. Dozens of Class-Three Archon souls were suddenly exposed in the open water, stripped of their physical shielding.

And they were floating directly inside the active radius of the Tartarus Grid.

"They're in the open," Chad said.

"Let 'em have it." The brass and copper Kozyrev spirals embedded in the Roman concrete flared. The highly organized plasma of the Aesir and Teotl strike force was instantly caught in the piezoelectric squeeze of the nodes. The red and violet entities thrashed, their fractal geometries screaming in silent, radio-frequency agony as the temporal centrifuge of the Djinni Bottles grabbed them.

Across the exterior hull of Tamoanchan, dozens of the massive, hexagonal intersection nodes flashed with blinding bursts of violet light as the Archon souls were sucked directly into the synthetic quartz cores. Then, the wave function collapsed. The Draven sat in total silence. The Silver Chord overlay returned to a calm, steady silver web. But the exterior of the abyssal city had fundamentally changed.

Embedded in the dark Roman concrete, dozens of the quartz cores now glowed with a dull, frozen, and absolute red light. The joint strike force hadn't been killed. They had been physically crushed by the drones, forced into their plasma state, and perfectly bottled in zero-time stasis.

"Status?" Chad asked softly.

"Zero breaches," Woz whispered.

"The concrete is pristine. The Tartarus Grid caught every single one of them." Chad tapped the comms panel, looking out at the glowing red prisons acting as structural warning lights at the bottom of his ocean.

"Good work, gentlemen," Chad said.

"Let Valiant Thor chew on that. Tamoanchan is secure."