Chapter 36 - The Son’s Retribution
Back inside the subterranean control room of the *Titan Leviathan*, the gun battle was brutal, fast, and unforgiving.
Gunfire ripped through metal panels, showering the catwalks with white-hot sparks. Michael had tackled the mercenary squad leader over the iron railing, plunging ten feet down onto the auxiliary processing deck. They wrestled violently for the combat knife strapped to the operative's tactical vest, metal scraping against bone.
Lucas moved with lethal efficiency, using the heavy hydraulic consoles as cover. He fired two double-taps, dropping two advancing mercenaries who attempted to flank his father. But a third operative swung a carbon-fiber baton, catching Lucas across the shoulder and sending his weapon clattering into the dark grating below.
Lucas staggered, the impact numbing his left arm. The mercenary raised his submachine gun, aiming straight for Lucas's chest.
"Die, ghost-spawn," the operative sneered.
Before the trigger could be squeezed, a steel wrench smashed across the operative's helmet with bone-shattering force. Michael stood behind him, chest heaving, his uniform soaked in dark blood, eyes burning with a father's feral fury. The mercenary crumpled to the floor, motionless.
"You alright, son?" Michael gasped, extending a bruised, calloused hand.
Lucas took it, pulling himself up, his breathing ragged. He looked into his father’s eyes—eyes that held no deceit, only the raw, unyielding instinct to protect what was left of his bloodline.
"I’m good," Lucas said, nodding toward the central terminal. "We have to shut it down."
Over the facility’s loudspeaker, Eleanor’s voice erupted again, no longer smooth or composed. It was shrill, manic, the voice of a visionary whose empire was slipping through her fingers.
*"You fools! You think killing my security detail changes anything? The kinetic cores are already pressurized! The launch sequence cannot be halted from the terminal—it can only be rerouted!"*
Lucas stepped up to the massive master console, wiping sweat and blood from his eyes. His fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard, decoding the station’s core architecture. He had been trained by the Navy's top cyber-warfare divisions, and the underlying code of the *Leviathan* was rooted in the vintage systems his father had once commanded.
"She’s right, Dad," Lucas said, his voice tightening in panic. "The missiles are locked on the continental fault line. The primary abort code has been erased from the hard memory."
"There is an abort code," Michael said quietly, stepping beside him. He stared at the amber terminal prompt that demanded his cryptographic ink. "There’s always a hard-wired mechanical abort in every vessel built during my era. It’s called the Scuttle-Overload Protocol."
Lucas froze. He turned to Michael. "The Scuttle-Overload? Dad, that floods the reactor cooling rods! It will vaporize the entire facility!"
"It collapses the launching silos inwards before the kinetic penetrators can ignite," Michael said calmly. "It buries this platform under two million tons of rock and silt. It kills the missiles where they sleep."
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"And us?" Lucas demanded, tears burning in the corners of his eyes. "What about us?!"
Michael placed a heavy hand on his son's shoulder. "There's an emergency deep-ocean ascent pod in the aft escape bulkhead. It only has enough oxygen and ballast charge for one person."
