Through the observation deck viewport, Korinthal tracked three heat blooms advancing into the skeletal hollow of the leviathan. Calcified vertebrae arched into a vaulted roof overhead, laced with dormant veins of phosphorescent mineral.
“They’re heading for the central vault,” Valen said through the helm transmitter. His hand hovered over a panel of controls. “The one marked ‘The Maw’s Heart’ on our schematics.”
“Croy pointed them toward the marrow core,” Korinthal murmured. “He knows she needs the untainted brine.”
“Their suits are Croy’s custom make,” Valen noted, zooming the external camera. “Thicker plating, integrated Void-damping. And those weapons…”
On the monitor, the lead stalker drew a serrated edge gleaming with amethyst poison—the same synthetic toxin burning Savia's veins. Korinthal gripped his trench blade until his gauntlet seam pinched.
“We hit them before they find her,” Korinthal said, his voice flat. “Valen, draw their attention. Create a diversion. I’ll flank.”
“Understood,” Valen replied, shifting the auxiliary ballast. The craft banked hard into a fissure along the calcified ridge, sliding into a lateral run behind the main nave.
Korinthal breached the outer airlock. The crushing cold clamped onto his dive harness as magnetic soles bit into the spinal ramp. Thruster turbines roared off the vaulted bone, pulling the hunters' attention toward open water.
Discharge cracked across the floor as azure glass-slugs shattered against the ribs. Korinthal moved fast, a shadow among shadows, his suit lamps dimmed to barely a glow. He reached the lip of the main chamber, peering down. Two gunmen fired upward at the maneuvering hull, while their heavier point-man marched toward a curled shape slumped beneath a petrified organ.
Savia. Her cloak was a dark smudge against the pale bones, her body barely visible. The silt beneath her glowed with an oily lilac taint. She was dying.
Korinthal dropped from the ledge. He drove his steel pick through the first rifleman's collar joint before the man could pivot. As the second brought a stock up, Korinthal smashed a steel boot into the kneecap and drove the blade beneath the chest seal.
“Korinthal!” Valen shouted over the link. “Look out—the blade!”
Korinthal turned, his gaze locking onto the brute. The surviving guard stood over Savia, a poison-tipped gouge lifted above her collar. Catching Korinthal's approach in his faceplate reflection, the guard pivoted and drove the tip straight at Korinthal's chest.
Korinthal raised his trench blade to parry, but Valen threw himself out from the service gully. The enemy blade sank straight through Valen’s belly gasket.
Valen groaned into the radio, his frame buckling as purple brine leaked from the puncture into his torso seals.
The enforcer wrenched at the trapped hilt. But Valen, even in agony, held him fast. “Go, Korinthal!” Valen choked, his voice barely a static-filled gasp. “Save… her…”
Korinthal lunged forward and slammed his blade into the guard's faceplate until the visor caved into jagged glass. He drove the point through the neck ring, then the shoulder joints, battering the armored corpse against the floor until the servos tore apart.
When he finally stepped back, breath rattling in his regulator, the bone gallery was silent except for the hiss of his scrubbers. Valen lay motionless, the glowing spike driven deep into his midsection.
But there was no time for grief. Not yet. Savia.
He dropped beside Savia. Beneath her visor, a web of glowing purple capillaries climbed the tendon lines of her neck, branching over her jaw toward her temples.
“Savia,” he said, stripping off a utility pouch to dig out the lead-sleeved vial of Leviathan's Tear. Inside, the clear resin caught the dull light.
“Savia, stay still,” he muttered, his fingers slipping against the seal. “I planted the shipment. I destroyed you, and I am going to purge it. You have to take the antidote.”
Her eyelids pulled back, the irises cloudy with synthetic venom, locking onto his silhouette.
Her armored glove snapped up from the muck, clutching a jagged splinter of unrefined deep-glass.
She drove the crystalline needle against his center breastplate, right over the main lung valve. Her knuckles locked rigid.
“Give me one reason, Korinthal Voss,” she rasped, her voice a brittle whisper, venomous and cold, “one reason not to carve out your heart.”