Chapter 74 - Torpedo Run on Blackwood Sound
"Radar contact!" Caleb screamed, diving back into the shattered wheelhouse. "The other two boats aren't approaching! They've stopped two miles out! Clara... they just launched sub-surface ordnance! High-speed signatures! Torpedoes in the channel!"
"They're going to scuttle the entire shelf," I said, cold realization washing over me. "If they destroy the dredge and collapse the continental shelf, the *Sovereign* gets buried under two million tons of rock, and the telemetry capsule dies with me."
"Can we outmaneuver a torpedo with a half-ruined steering cable?" Caleb yelled, his voice cracking with panic.
"No," I replied, staring at the black parchment in my hand. "We don't outrun a torpedo. We activate the primary array."
I turned to the dredge’s heavy industrial winch—the deep-sea cable drum wound with four thousand feet of reinforced steel cable used for recovering shipwrecks.
"Arthur," I commanded, "the cipher on the back of this page. Which sequence overrides the acoustic beacon?"
"It’s a manual frequency!" he screamed as the whistling whine of the incoming torpedoes began to travel through the dredge's water-cooled pipes. "You have to match the resonant tone of your own bone implant! If you hit the wrong valve, it detonates the core prematurely!"
I didn't hesitate. I ripped the horn from the auxiliary sonar console, stripped the copper wiring with my teeth, and pressed the live leads directly against the silver scar over my rib.
The shock tore through my nervous system like liquid lightning. My vision flared white. Pain, pure and electric, radiated through my ribs into my spine, but the low hum in my chest surged, amplified through the dredge's active transducer.
*PING.*
A shockwave of sound blasted into the water from the hull.
One mile out, the two incoming torpedoes suddenly lost tracking. Blinded by the overwhelming acoustic feedback, their passive guidance fins spun wildly. One slammed into the granite base of Gull Island, obliterating the lighthouse cliff in a fountain of fire and crushed rock. The second broached the surface like a leaping whale, detonating harmlessly in mid-air and illuminating the fog bank in a terrifying flash of orange and soot.
On the radar, the two remaining gunboats backed down, their engines churning white water as they recognized the signal.
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"They're retreating," Caleb gasped, slumping over the wheel.
"No," I said, gasping for breath as blood dripped from my fresh burn onto the deck. "They aren't retreating. They're making room."
