Chapter 115 - The Ghost Hull
The pressure squeezed against my eardrums as we descended through twenty, thirty, forty feet of dark, turbulent water. Below us, the glowing rectangular aperture of the corvette’s wet-dock shone like a neon tomb.
The ship’s twin thrusters were humming at low RPM, creating a violent undertow that threatened to spin Arthur from my grip. I kicked with everything I had, dragging his dead weight through the churning wash.
Bubbles streamed from Clara’s nose as she panicked, her arms flailing against Reyes’s grip. Reyes didn't flinch; he kept her locked in a firm swimmer’s cross-chest carry, kicking steadily downward.
Two Syndicate divers guarding the wet-dock's rim saw us coming. They raised their weapons, but in the underwater gloom, their movements were sluggish compared to the velocity of our descent.
I fired three rounds from the captured carbine. The specialized dart projectiles tore through the water with minimal drag, punching neat holes through the first diver’s mask. The water clouded with crimson. The second diver turned to retreat into the airlock, but Reyes intercepted him, driving his heel into the man's regulator before shoving him out into the propeller slipstream.
We cleared the threshold of the wet-dock.
The moment our heads broke the surface inside the flooded hull chamber, the acoustic thunder of the storm vanished, replaced by the mechanical hum of bilge pumps and high-pressure hydraulics.
We dragged ourselves onto a steel grating surrounding the internal pool. Arthur collapsed onto the deck, vomiting seawater and coughing violently, his fingers still locked with rigor-like intensity around the briefcase handle. Clara collapsed beside him, weeping hysterically, shivering so violently her knees clicked against the metal deck.
"Drain the pool! We have a hull breach in Section Four!" a metallic voice barked over the ship's intercom system.
Klaxons began to wail throughout the compartment—deep, rhythmic pulses of amber light that bathed the steel walls in an eerie glow.
"Move, now!" I whispered harshly, stripping the wet gear from the bodies of the divers we’d pulled onto the grating.
I handed a captured weapon to Reyes. He racked the charging handle with a grim smile, the water dripping from his jaw. "Just like old times in the Persian Gulf, Master Chief."
"Not quite," I replied, kneeling over my father.
I grabbed his wrist and pried his frozen fingers off the briefcase.
"No... Marcus, please... that's our future..." Arthur croaked, his voice cracking with salt and shame. "Ten million... they promised me ten million in bearer bonds... for the deed..."
"The deed to my house, Arthur?" I asked, my voice chillingly low. "You sold my home to a foreign black-market cartel so you could feel like a king for five minutes?"
"They were going to kill us if I didn't!" Arthur wheezed, his eyes rolling back in his head. "They approached me the day you deployed! They knew everything... your clearance, your mission dates... they said if I transferred the land registry through Clara’s shell company, they'd pay us twenty times what it was worth!"
I clicked open the briefcase. Inside were not bearer bonds.
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Sitting in custom-molded high-density foam was a military-grade cryptographic key module—the primary master control for an underwater autonomous drone array, labeled with the crest of the United States Navy.
Arthur hadn't just stolen my house. He had used my home address, my naval credentials, and my private network to steal a Pentagon prototype.
