Chapter 87 - The Sunken Citadel
I fought the controls, venting ballast gas and firing the maneuvering thrusters until my artificial horizon stabilized.
*DEPTH: 1,600 METERS.*
*PRESSURE: 2,400 PSI.*
My external floodlights flickered back on.
When the beam pierced the murky dark, I froze. Rising from the floor of the underwater canyon was not natural rock, but an immense, rust-covered industrial structure anchored into the tectonic wall.
It was a Cold War acoustic surveillance complex—a deep-submergence listening outpost built into the continental shelf during the late 1970s and officially decommissioned decades ago. Thick, heavy titanium domes were linked by pressurized transit tubes, held against the granite face by massive steel pilings.
The *Titan-IV* had already docked at an auxiliary lock on the lower quadrant of the central dome.
"She didn't just come here to drop the bomb," I realized aloud. "This is the source."
The syndicate hadn't just bought off my father and set up dummy shell companies in Nevada; they had appropriated a forgotten deep-sea military outpost, turning it into an untraceable relay station for stolen naval intelligence and tectonic sabotage systems.
I throttled back, cutting my running lights to avoid detection. Using the maneuvering thrusters, I glided toward the maintenance airlock of the primary dome.
The exterior hatch had an emergency mechanical override. I aligned my rig's heavy magnetic clamps with the outer ring of the hatch. The magnets engaged with a heavy, muffled clunk.
I reached for the manual bypass lever with the hydraulic claw of my suit. The wheel resisted, stiff from decades of salt corrosion and abyssal pressure, but as I applied full hydraulic torque, the gears groaned and broke free.
The outer hatch spun open.
May you like
I slipped inside the narrow lock chamber, sealed the outer door behind me, and hit the drainage cycle. The roar of pressurized water being evacuated echoed through the small space, replaced by the hissing rush of compressed atmosphere.
When the green light flashed, indicating atmospheric equalization, I popped the seals of my diving rig, stepped out onto the metal grating, and raised my weapon into the dripping, subterranean gloom of the forgotten station.
