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 47 / 100

Chapter 47 - The Chamber of the Archon

We broke into the central nexus of Station Tartarus just as the first cascades of pressurized, freezing water began to rupture the overhead drainage conduits.

The Chamber of the Archon was a colossal, spherical vault suspended within a natural subterranean cavern. Below the suspended bridge of reinforced mesh, a lake of molten geothermal magma churned, casting a hellish, pulsating red glare across the polished black granite walls. At the center of the chamber stood the primary uplink console—a massive, cylindrical pillar of carbon-nanotubes extending upward into the solid rock ceiling, surrounded by dozens of quantum processing banks.

And standing on the central platform, surrounded by six heavily armored Directorate Praetorians, stood Julian Sterling.

He did not look like an old man on the verge of death. Encased in an advanced, motorized physiological support exoskeleton that hummed with pneumatic power, his face was gaunt, his skin paper-white, and his pale blue eyes burned with an icy, sociopathic brilliance.

"Welcome to the end of history, General Gardner," Julian said, his amplified voice cutting through the roar of the magma below.

Behind him, a massive holographic projection of the globe showed the thirty-six kinetic rods descending through the thermosphere. The time to impact was no longer measured in hours.

*TERMINAL IMPACT: 00:42:15.*

"Forty-two minutes," Abigail breathed, her fingers clutching her decryption drive. "Julian accelerated the countdown!"

"Of course I did," Julian sneered, raising an aged hand clad in carbon-composite armor. "Did you truly think I would sit here and debate the ethics of human evolution with a retired infantry officer and an insolent girl? The world belongs to those who have the will to cleanse it. The capitals fall today. The old governments vanish in a flash of kinetic fury. And from the ashes, the Archon Directorate will restore order to a shattered species."

"You're insane," Vance spat, raising his carbine. "You’re killing hundreds of millions of innocent people!"

"Innocence is an illusion of peace, Vance," Julian said coldly. "And peace is a luxury that decadent civilizations can no longer afford." He dropped his hand. "Kill them. Save the girl for the descent module. She will watch the sky fall before she dies."

The six Praetorians opened fire simultaneously.

"Down!" I bellowed, diving forward and tackling Abigail behind a reinforced data terminal as heavy-caliber rounds chewed through the floor plating, sending showers of sparks into the roaring magma pit below.

Vance rolled to the left, his shotgun barking in rapid succession. One Praetorian staggered back, his armor absorbing the blast, but the sheer kinetic impact knocked him off the narrow walkway, sending him screaming into the molten rock three hundred feet below.

"Abigail! The console!" I shouted over the din of automatic fire and screaming metal. Water was pouring from the ceiling now—not in drips, but in torrential sheets as the structural integrity of Tartarus began to fail under the weight of the Pacific Ocean.

"I need three minutes at the terminal!" she shouted back, wiping water and blood from her forehead. "I have to manually bypass the physical interlocks on the uplink pillar!"

"You’ve got two!" I roared.