Ever since this deep-sea base on Pandora was built, it had never been in such a state of chaos and activity. Countless staff hurried through the corridors with worried looks on their faces. The easygoing, relaxed atmosphere of the past was nowhere to be seen.
There was no helping it. Many of them had always thought that since they couldn't beat the Na'vi on Pandora's land—the planet's primitive indigenous people and the creatures they controlled—all they needed to do was stay far away from them. They could hide in the ocean, beneath the deep-sea floor, and quietly keep mining. The ocean would shield them from the Na'vi threat, and the two sides would never have to quarrel or cross paths again. That would be that.
But who could have guessed...
They had already hidden a full thousand meters beneath the deep-sea surface. Pandora was a low-gravity planet, and the abundant deposits of "superconductive ore" meant the water pressure near their base wasn't as terrifying as humans had expected. Even so, the Na'vi had found them again—a possibility that had far exceeded their expectations. After all, the pressure down there was still at least several dozen atmospheres!
And yet, even in those depths, in that high-pressure environment, the Na'vi had found their way to the base. Worse still, the battle they had dreaded had broken out, killing five Avatars, including those controlled by Base Commander Parker Selfridge.
They had ultimately won, but everyone knew it was a bad sign. It meant their undersea mining base—the foundation they had worked together to build over years of sweat and effort—was no longer safe.
If two Na'vi riding deep-sea bioluminescent sharks had found them, then it was entirely possible that even more would come looking for them in the near future. From this moment