My Daughter Was Beaten, Locked Away, and Threatened by Her Millionaire Husband’s Family—When They Laughed at Me and Said My Military Rank Didn’t Frighten Them, I Slowly Turned Around and Made One Move They Never Expected. / Chapter 45 / 100

Chapter 45 - The Iron Monolith

The blast gates slammed shut behind us with a subterranean thud that resonated through the very marrow of my bones.

Inside the cavernous wet bay of Station Tartarus, millions of gallons of ocean water were violently expelled by colossal pneumatic purge pumps. The roaring torrent receded with terrifying speed, leaving the *Nautilus-II* resting upon a reinforced titanium cradle suspended over a floor of slick, volcanic grating. Red industrial strobes spun lazily overhead, casting elongated, demonic shadows across the damp walls.

The air outside our craft was pressurized to three atmospheres—thick, humid, and heavy with the acrid scent of ozone, machine oil, and centuries of undisturbed sulfur.

"Seal checks complete," Vance reported, his voice filtered through his helmet’s comms system. He held his modified tactical shotgun across his chest, the weapon fitted with low-recoil, high-density tungsten-fletchette rounds designed to pierce body armor without ricocheting through pressurized composite bulkheads. "No external hull breaches detected on our transport. But the station's internal security is already converging on the bay."

"Abigail, you stay between Vance and me," I commanded, racking the slide of my heavy .45-caliber sidearm—a weapon I had carried from the deserts of Iraq to the blood-stained hallways of Washington. "Your only job is that terminal. Vance and I will clear the path."

"Understood, Dad," she replied. She wasn't the broken girl who had wept in my arms at the Quail Hollow clinic. She stood tall inside a streamlined tactical rig, her eyes sharp, her posture perfectly balanced, the hard drive slung across her chest like a bandolier.

The ventral hatch of the *Nautilus-II* hissed open, releasing a pressurized gust of condensation.

I was the first down the ladder, my boots hitting the wet metal grate with an uncompromising clang. Before my boots had even settled, the heavy blast doors on the opposite side of the staging platform hissed open.

A fireteam of eight Archon private operators poured into the hangar. They wore pressurized black combat gear devoid of insignia, equipped with high-cycle bullpup carbines and integrated night-vision arrays. They weren't corporate security guards; they moved with the lethal, fluid cohesion of tier-one special operations veterans.

"Drop your weapons! On your—!" their point man began, his rifle rising.

I didn't let him finish the sentence.

Thirty years of combat instincts took over before thought could even form. I stepped forward, leveling my weapon, and fired two rapid rounds through the center of his visor. The heavy slugs shattered the composite faceplate, dropping him instantly onto the grated floor.

"Engage!" Vance roared, swinging his shotgun into action. The weapon thundered with a deafening, bass-heavy report that seemed to vibrate the pressurized air like a physical blow. A spray of tungsten fletchettes tore through the second and third operators, shredding their tactical vests and hurling them backward into the corridor.

The remaining operators scattered, diving behind hydraulic conduits and maintenance bulkheads, opening up with a relentless barrage of suppressed automatic fire. Rounds sparked off the titanium cradle of our sub, whizzing past my helmet with the angry hum of hornets.

"Covering fire!" Vance shouted, dumping his spent drum magazine and slapping a fresh one into the receiver with practiced ease.

I advanced through the hail of fire, moving from pillar to pillar with the relentless, crushing momentum of a combat commander who knew that hesitation was the only true death. An operator broke from cover to flank us; I pivoted, caught his barrel with my left forearm, deflected his aim into the ceiling, and drove the heavy butt of my sidearm directly into his throat, following up with a point-blank round through his sternum.

Abigail didn't cower. As an operator raised his carbine from behind an electrical junction box to target my back, she drew the secondary pistol at her hip and fired three perfectly placed shots into his exposed shoulder and neck. He collapsed with a choked gasp, his rifle clattering across the iron deck.

I looked back at her, a brief, fierce smile cutting through the tension of my scarred face. "Good shooting, Gardner."

"I had a good teacher," she said, her voice steady despite the carnage around us.

"Station Tartarus’s command nexus is three levels down," Vance said, kicking aside the dead point man’s weapon and examining the digital schematic retrieved from the operator’s wrist-mounted terminal. "The geothermal core houses the quantum transmission array. That's where the Hephaestus uplink is rooted."

"Countdown check," I demanded.

Abigail checked her wrist monitor. Her expression hardened into cold marble.