The armed steam launch cut through the black, churning water of the flooded cavern, her coal-fired boiler whistling softly in the echoing dark.
Towering walls of ancient blue glacier ice rose two hundred feet overhead, lined with heavy iron girders, thick copper busbars, and glass-insulated cable trunks. The air inside the mountain was stifling, thick with hot steam, ozone, and the metallic tang of un-refined Thorium.
Prince Bastian stood in the bow of the launch, his boots braced against the timber gunwale, his lever-action rifle held at a ready port.
His dark oilskin coat was dripping with condensation, his jaw set like iron as his dark eyes scanned the high copper gantries crisscrossing the subterranean vault. Beside him, Foreman Haddon and ten union riflemen kept their weapons trained on the dark catwalks above.
"There's no deck watch on the water line, Prince," Haddon whispered, racking the lever of his weapon. "They're all pulled back around the central core."
