Chapter 42 - The Fracture of Blood
The howl of the tempest through the shattered observation deck drowned out all human reason. Freezing brine and razor-edged glass rained over the black obsidian dais, slick with sea foam and fresh blood. Sofia kept the iron sights of the heavy service revolver locked between Cassian’s eyes, her knuckle whitening against the curved trigger.
"Drop it, Cassian," she said, her voice stripped of daughterly grief, forged into cold iron. "Drop the weapon, or I’ll paint this bulkhead with you."
Cassian did not flinch. Blood trailed from his split lip down into the gray bristles of his beard, but his amber eyes burned with the manic conviction of an architect beholding his burning cathedral. His ceremonial pistol remained aimed directly at Victor, who hung battered against the buckled steel of the elevator shaft, his fingers slipping on the greased metal.
"You won't shoot," Cassian yelled over the shrieking squall. "Because if you kill me, you drown in this hull. Look out there, Sofia! Look at what your blind defiance has unleashed!"
Through the cavernous gap where the armored glass had been, the world was ending. The colossal excavation ring, severed from the dreadnought’s stabilizing guidance array, tumbled end-over-end into the abyss. Every time its brass circumference scraped the undersea shelf, violent emerald lightning surged through the boiling surface, triggering shockwaves that rattled Sofia’s teeth in her skull. Below them, the seabed was tearing open along ancient fault lines. The dreadnought itself groaned, its central keel twisting as millions of gallons of ocean rushed into the compromised lower decks.
"The alignment matrix is already dead!" Victor spat, coughing seawater and crimson phlegm as he hauled himself onto the listing deck. "You didn't build a future, Ward! You built a grave for the whole continent!"
"Silence, boy!" Cassian snapped, his gaze flickering toward Victor for a fraction of a second.
That fraction was all Sofia needed.
She lunged forward, not pulling the trigger to kill, but closing the distance in a blur of motion. She struck Cassian’s wrist with the barrel of her revolver. The antique pistol discharged into the ceiling grating with a deafening crack, the slug ricocheting harmlessly off reinforced girders. Sofia pivoted on her heel, driving an elbow into her father’s sternum.
Cassian stumbled back, his boots losing purchase on the wet obsidian, but his reflexes had been honed by decades of frontier warfare. He caught her forearm, twisting it viciously, bringing their wrists—and the two humming obsidian bracelets—within inches of each other once more. The air between them instantly ionized, snapping with crimson sparks that scorched Sofia’s jacket.
"You think I fear death?" Cassian snarled, his face inches from hers, veins bulging along his scarred neck. "This world was rotting long before I laid the keel of this fleet! The Cradle must be purged or it will crack the tectonic plate like an eggshell! The descent pod in the ventral bay is the only vessel reinforced to withstand the pressure of the core's collapse! Either you come with me and use the twin keys to execute the manual stabilization, or we all perish on this bridge!"
A catastrophic shudder tore through the dreadnought. Far below, the ship’s primary steam turbine exploded. The entire command tower pitched violently to the starboard side at a thirty-degree angle. Loose consoles, shattered monitors, and the bodies of unconscious Directorate technicians slid down the wet floor, tumbling into the open maelstrom outside.
Cassian slipped, his grip tearing free from Sofia’s arm as he slid toward the precipice. His fingers clawed desperately into the brass conduit track running along the edge of the abyss, his legs dangling over a five-hundred-foot drop into the churning, electrified froth of the sea.
Sofia dropped to her knees, skidding across the slick deck. Her hand shot out and seized Cassian’s gauntlet just as his grip gave way.
"Sofia!" Victor screamed, throwing his weight against a bolted stanchion to keep from sliding after them. "Let him go! He'll drag you down with him!"
Cassian looked up at her, the rain plastering his silver hair to his forehead. For the first time, the grand marshal’s facade peeled away, revealing the terrified, broken father who had fled the fires of his own ambition a decade ago.
"Why?" Cassian rasped, his voice raw against the wind. "Why hold on?"
Sofia strained against the dead weight, her shoulder muscles screaming as the ship lurched again, the brass deck plates groaning beneath her knees.
"Because you're going to fix this," she hissed through gritted teeth. "And if you die, you die facing what you created."
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With a roar of effort, she threw her weight backward, dragging Cassian Ward up over the lip of the deck just as the forward bulkhead collapsed inward, swallowing the remaining bridge terminals in a deluge of ocean spray.
***
