Chapter 125 - Steel and Salted Blood
We hauled ourselves out onto the battered exterior deck of the corvette.
The scene was pure madness. The gale-force storm whipped rain horizontally across the Pacific, while the black mass of the *Leviathan* towered over us like an iron mountain. Massive steel gangways had automatically deployed from the dreadnought’s hull, locking onto the corvette's superstructure to allow syndicate assault squads to secure the kill.
Instead of an empty prize, they met us.
Two syndicate operators in black tactical gear were advancing across the gangway, their rifles raised. Reyes fired from the hip, the captured coilgun unleashing a hyper-velocity tungsten slug that obliterated the lead mercenary's chest plate, throwing him over the guardrail into the churning abyss below.
The second operator dove for cover behind a heavy hydraulic winch, spraying automatic fire across our position. The 7.62mm rounds chewed through the corvette's fiberglass bulkheads, showering us with splinters.
I broke into a low sprint, keeping below the gunwale. As the mercenary paused to reload, I cleared the corner of the winch, drove my rifle butt into his jaw, and slammed his head down onto the steel deck plating. He went limp. I stripped two fresh magazines from his chest rig and tossed one to Reyes.
"Gangway is clear!" Reyes called out, squinting through the driving rain. "Marcus, look at the dreadnought’s forward superstructure! That’s an airlock into the central reactor citadel!"
Through the storm, I saw Clara. She had discarded her broken dive suit and had donned a light tactical rig. She was sprinting across the upper catwalk of the *Leviathan*, clutching the drive, flanked by four heavily armed syndicate commandos. She reached the heavy pressure hatch of the Dreadnought’s primary control tower, entered a code into the keypad, and vanished inside.
The heavy circular blast door began to grind shut.
"We have thirty seconds before that door seals hermetically!" I shouted. "Move!"
We sprinted across the bouncing, groaning gangway that spanned the twenty-foot gap between the dying corvette and the rising dreadnought. Below us, the black Pacific churned with white foam as the two immense hulls collided again and again, throwing up plumes of spray fifty feet into the air.
Just as my boots hit the non-skid deck of the *Leviathan*, the corvette’s keel finally snapped.
A sound like an artillery battery detonating echoed across the water. The three-thousand-ton corvette broke in two. The stern section pitched upward, its screws spinning uselessly in the empty air, before plunging backward into the six-thousand-foot abyss of the Mendocino Trench. The gangway tore loose with a screech of shearing rivets, falling away into the darkness behind us.
There was no retreat. No rescue boat. No extraction helicopter in this storm.
We were aboard the beast.
The blast door of the primary control tower was six inches from closing completely. I drew my combat knife and jammed the thick steel blade of the tactical tanto into the latch track. The blade groaned under the hydraulic pressure, sparks showering from the motor, but it bought us three seconds.
Reyes threw his shoulder into the door, and together we forced a two-foot opening, slipping through the gap into the pressurized corridor of the *Leviathan* just as the hydraulics overloaded and the door slammed shut with the finality of a tomb.
Inside, the dreadnought was dead silent, save for the deep, low-frequency hum of nuclear reactors vibrating through the bulkheads. The air was clean, chilled, smelling of ozone and hospital-grade filtration.
And plastered across the bulkhead in brushed titanium lettering was the corporate emblem of Tartarus Oceanic—flanked by the signature crest of the Vance Family Trust.
My father’s personal family seal.
The deed to Whispering Pines, my mother’s legacy, my sweat and blood—it had all been fed into the belly of this mechanical leviathan.
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"They really built their kingdom down here," Reyes whispered, tracing the emblem with a gloved finger.
"Then we burn it to the ground," I said, reloading my carbine with a sharp metallic snap.
