Chapter 37 - Iron and Salt
"No," Lucas stepped back, his voice shaking with absolute refusal. "No! I didn't spend my entire life searching for the truth about you just to leave you behind on this scrap heap!"
"Lucas, listen to me!" Michael grabbed the young man’s tactical vest, pulling him close, his voice harsh with urgency. "You are an officer. You took the same oath I did! The lives of forty million people on that coast depend on what happens in this room in the next three minutes!"
"Then we find another way!"
"There is no other way!" Michael roared, pointing toward the structural indicators on the bulkhead.
The structural integrity of the *Titan Leviathan* was failing. The pressure from the external trench was buckling the reinforced outer plates. Alarms screamed in descending octaves:
**CRITICAL WARNING: HULL COMPRESSION BREACH DETECTED IN SILOS 1 THROUGH 4. REACTOR PRESSURE AT 140%.**
Suddenly, a high-caliber round slammed into the console between them, scattering sparks and shattered glass.
Staggering through the blast doors at the end of the corridor was Eleanor's personal enforcer—a hulking cyborg operative named Vance, blood dripping from his shattered tactical visor, a heavy machine gun cradled in his massive arms.
"Nobody leaves," the enforcer gurgled through his speaker.
He opened fire.
Michael didn't hesitate. With a father's instinct that defied age, exhaustion, and pain, he threw his entire body over Lucas, driving them both behind the reinforced titanium pillar of the primary reactor conduit.
Bullets pulverized the deck plates, ricocheting with deafening whines. A jagged piece of shrapnel ripped through Michael's side. The old commander groaned, his teeth grinding together as warm blood soaked through his torn uniform, staining the cold iron deck.
"Dad!" Lucas screamed, catching his father as he slipped toward the ground.
"I’m... I’m fine," Michael wheezed, his face turning paper-white. He looked at Lucas, his hand trembling as he reached into his vest and pulled out a heavy steel magnetic key-card. "The auxiliary manual override... beneath the primary reactor housing. He’s cutting off our path to the terminal."
Lucas looked at the blood spreading across his father's side. The fear in the young man's eyes evaporated, replaced by a cold, deadly stillness that Michael recognized instantly. It was the same fury that had once made Michael the most feared tactical officer in the Atlantic fleet.
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"Stay down, Dad," Lucas whispered.
Lucas grabbed a fallen concussion grenade from the belt of a dead mercenary. He pulled the pin with his teeth, counted two silent heartbeats, and banked the canister off the metal ceiling catwalk.
