Chapter 44 - The Torpedo Bay Mutiny
The countdown timer on the bulkhead monitor flashed in rhythmic crimson pulses.
*00:58... 00:57... 00:56...*
"Evelyn, don't," Clara murmured, but her eyes flicked toward the ceiling vents, then down to the sidearm holster of the guard standing nearest to the door.
"If I don't, the collateral damage is unimaginable," I said, stepping toward the table where the scanning cradle sat. My hands were shaking, not from fear, but from the furious calculation racing through my mind.
Julian watched me, his body relaxed, convinced that intellect and moral responsibility would always force the ethical player into submission. It was the fundamental flaw of the Duncan family: they understood greed, they understood fear, but they completely underestimated the ferocity of someone who had already lost everything and had nothing left to bargain for.
I reached out my hand toward the biometric scanner.
"Good," Julian said softly.
My palm touched the glass. The laser scanner flared green, reading the ridge patterns of my skin.
*BIOMETRIC CONFIRMED: EVELYN VANE.*
*ACCESS LEVEL: TRUSTEE CO-SIGNATORY.*
*OVERRIDE PROMPT: ENTER MASTER BYPASS CIPHER.*
"Enter the cipher," Julian commanded, leaning closer.
"Clara—now!" I screamed.
Instead of typing the alphanumeric code into the console, I seized the heavy titanium scanning cradle by its heavy braided cable and swung it with all the force in my body directly into Julian’s face.
The steel frame smashed across his cheekbone with a sickening crack. Julian recoiled, blood spraying from his split lip, tumbling backward off the chair.
In the exact same second, Clara moved. She didn't draw her hidden transponder; she dropped low, swept the legs out from under the guard to her right, and drove her elbow upward into his throat before he could disengage the safety of his carbine. The weapon clattered to the deck. Clara caught it mid-fall, spun on her knee, and fired two silenced rounds directly into the chest plate of the second operative. The kinetic impact slammed him against the bulkhead, his weapon discharging harmlessly into the rubberized decking.
Julian scrambled across the floor, his face smeared with crimson, his hand diving beneath his coat for a weapon.
Clara leveled the carbine at his forehead. "Don't move, Julian. Not a single breath."
The alarms inside the submarine began to wail—a shrill, high-frequency siren that painted the steel corridors in flashing amber light. The internal acoustic sensors had registered the gunfire.
*SECURITY BREACH: SECTION FOUR. FORWARD ELECTRONICS COMPARTMENT.*
"You've killed us all," Julian hissed through shattered teeth, his slate-gray eyes wide with sudden, uncontrolled rage. "The automated liquidation protocol cannot be aborted once the physical interface is severed!"
"It can't be aborted from this room," I said, grabbing the sovereign registry cylinder from the center console and ripping the primary data bridge from the terminal. "Where is the manual network disconnect for the submarine's external satellite array?"
Julian laughed, a bloody, rattling sound. "The communications trunk is in the lower torpedo room. But the compartment is sealed from the bridge. You'll never reach it alive."
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Clara slammed the butt of her rifle against the emergency bulkhead override, locking the briefing room door from the inside to delay the security team converging in the corridor outside.
"We don't need to reach the bridge," Clara said, pointing down toward the auxiliary maintenance hatch set into the floorplates. "The bilge crawlways lead directly to the forward ballast tanks and torpedo bays. Move, Evelyn! We have three minutes before they cut through that door!"
