The first landing boot to strike the wet basalt steps did not carry the clean, rhythmic stride of a parade-ground soldier. It fell with a heavy, mechanical crunch—the sound of iron-shod soles grinding against salt-crust and wet river silt.
Through the dense, drifting curtain of white steam rising from the cracked boilers below, the boarding party from the black-hulled armada did not look like a standard military unit. They wore the high-collared, oil-skin greatcoats of the old provincial border guard, their faces shadowed by wide-brimmed felt hats that had been out of circulation since the great bank collapses. They carried heavy, short-barreled steam carbines slung across their chests, the copper pressure lines on the weapons' receivers pulsing with a faint, rhythmic hiss.
