Chapter 55 - Ascent to Tartarus
"Get in the pod! Now!" Michael bellowed, shoving Lucas through the narrow pressure hatch of the lead deployment craft.
Sirens wailed across the ocean. On the *Lincoln's* flight deck, sailors were scrambling in sheer terror as the automated defense systems failed to engage the incoming Harpoon missiles fired by their own fleet. The world had gone mad; the conspiracy that had remained hidden in the black ink of black-budget programs was now burning out in the open sea.
Michael turned to grab Vance by the collar, dragging him toward the pod.
"Why are you taking me?" Vance wheezed, agony dulling his eyes. "Kill me and be done with it!"
"Because you're going to give me the abort codes for the Pacific fracture," Michael said between clenched teeth, tossing the heavy Admiral into the cargo bay like a sack of ballast. "And because I want you to watch us tear your syndicate down to the iron."
Maya strapped herself into the pilot’s harness, her fingers flying over an interface that Michael barely recognized—hybrid touchscreen matrices integrated with Cold War analog switches. "Sealing pressure hull in three, two, one!"
The hydraulic doors slammed shut with a concussive thud. Outside, through the reinforced quartz viewport, Michael saw the flight deck of the *Lincoln* illuminate in blinding white fire as the first cruise missile slammed into the forward elevator.
"Hold on!" Maya yelled.
The booster ignited. Michael was slammed back into the steel bucket seat as four gravities of acceleration crushed his chest. The G-forces tore at his gunshot wound, threatening to pull him into unconsciousness, but he refused to black out. He kept his eyes locked on Lucas, whose hand reached across the aisle, locking onto his father's forearm—right over the faded, brine-soaked tattoo of the *USS Acheron*.
"Still with you, Dad," Lucas grunted through the crushing force of the ascent.
"Always, son," Michael gasped.
The pod tore through the storm clouds, breaking into the stillness of the upper atmosphere in less than ninety seconds. The black velvet of the stratosphere stretched out before them, speckled with cold, indifferent stars.
And hanging in that vacuum was the *Archon*.
Up close, the airborne dreadnought was terrifyingly magnificent. It looked like an iron city suspended in space, its surface crisscrossed with heavy railgun turrets, communication arrays, and massive intake vents that sucked in thin atmospheric gases to fuel its ion drives.
"We have a problem," Maya said, her voice dropping into icy tension.
"What is it?" Michael asked, unbuckling his harness and leaning toward the forward console.
Maya pointed to the primary radar sweep. "The command bridge isn't responding to our IFF transponder. The Chairman's private security detachment—the Iron Guard—has breached the secondary bulkhead. Mother has barricaded herself in the reactor control center."
On the tactical monitor, a red countdown timer was flashing:
*PACIFIC MANTLE OVERLOAD: 31 MINUTES, 42 SECONDS.*
*ARCHON ATMOSPHERIC DECAY: 12 MINUTES, 10 SECONDS.*
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"She's initiating the purge sequence," Maya whispered, tears finally breaking through her stoic eyes. "She thinks we failed at the vault. She’s going to scuttle the platform to keep the Chairman from using the orbital lance."
***
