Chapter 18 - The Shattered Hull
Sterling did not reach his position of global dominance by yielding to moral leverage.
"Helena," he said softly, without breaking eye contact with Clara. "Clean the room."
Before the words had completely left his lips, Clara moved.
She did not wait for the guards to raise their weapons. With blinding speed, she grabbed the heavy crystal decanter from the table and smashed it violently across the face of the nearest operative, spraying blood, scotch, and shattered leaded glass across the salon.
I grabbed the heavy mahogany chair, driving its legs into the knees of the second guard as he attempted to draw his rifle. Helena raised her suppressed sidearm, firing two rounds in rapid succession. One round shattered the armored glass window behind me, blowing an icy torrent of Mediterranean sea wind into the cabin; the second grazed Clara’s shoulder, tearing the black velvet of her gown.
Clara lunged forward, tackling Helena across the conference table, both women crashing into the steel server terminal mounted against the bulkhead. The digital transceiver on the table slid across the wet floorboards, its countdown timer flashing into amber: *00:01:45*.
"Evelyn! The transceiver!" Clara screamed, struggling against Helena’s vicious, trained grip. Helena was fighting like an animal, her thumbs driving into Clara’s throat, attempting to crush her windpipe.
I threw myself across the floor, my fingers clutching the slick casing of the transceiver. A guard tackled me from behind, his massive weight crushing the breath from my lungs, his arm locking around my neck in a lethal chokehold.
Black spots danced across my vision. The roar of the wind through the shattered window was deafening. Downstairs, the panic had finally erupted; alarms began wailing through the *Leviathan* as gunfire echoed through the lower decks. The French maritime authorities had seen the window shatter and had initiated their boarding breach.
"Authenticate it!" Clara choked out, her face turning crimson beneath Helena's assault.
I couldn't breathe. My ribs were cracking beneath the guard's crushing weight. But my right thumb was free.
With the last shred of consciousness left in my body, I reached out and slammed my thumb against the biometric sensor pad of the transceiver, pressing down with every ounce of will I possessed.
A sharp, clear chime rang out from the device: *BIOMETRIC CONFIRMED. CIPHER OVERRIDE ABORTED. FULL BROADCAST COMMENCED.*
The guard’s grip suddenly loosened as a high-powered concussion grenade detonated against the salon's exterior balcony. French tactical commandos, clad in black wet-suits and night-vision goggles, swarmed through the shattered glass, stun grenades filling the room with blinding white flashes and deafening thunderclaps.
Helena was thrown backward off Clara by the blast wave. Sterling sat frozen in his leather chair, his hands raised in pathetic surrender as tactical lasers pinned his chest with dozens of trembling red dots.
Clara lay on the floor, gasping for air, her fingers curled around the severed power cable of the terminal.
I crawled to her side, pulling her head into my lap. She looked up at me through swollen, tear-filled eyes, blood running from her lip, but her chest rose and fell with clean, unobstructed air.
Across the room, the main plasma monitor on the salon wall lit up with flashing alerts from global news networks: *BREAKING NEWS: INTERNATIONAL LEAK EXPOSES 'MERIDIAN CIRCLE' FINANCIAL SYNDICATE. ARREST WARRANTS ISSUED IN PARIS, LONDON, NEW YORK.*
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The machine was dead. Jonathan’s ghost had finally been evicted from the earth.
***
