Chapter 57 - Breakout into the Arctic Tempest
The cold hit them like a physical blow.
Outside the subterranean cavern, the polar storm was raging with savage fury. Thirty-foot swells rolled across the Greenland Sea, ice-crusted winds tearing at Rebecca’s jacket as she hauled herself out of the sail hatch onto the slippery exterior casing.
Behind them, the Jan Mayen caldera was dying.
Through the howling snow, Rebecca looked back at the island. The volcanic peak was collapsing in on itself. Plumes of black ash and superheated steam erupted through fissures in the basalt cliffs, glowing orange against the storm clouds. The massive blast gates of Orion’s secret base were crushed under thousands of tons of falling rock, sealing the subterranean cradles forever beneath the Arctic shelf.
"There!" Vance shouted, pointing through the driving sleet.
Half a mile to the west, cutting through the towering swells like a knife of dark steel, was the USS *Vanguard*.
Commander Harris had brought the warship through the subterranean canal just ahead of the collapse. Her railgun turret was traversed forward, her searchlights piercing the darkness, sweeping across the stormy sea until the beam locked onto the *Njord’s* partially submerged sail.
"*Admiral! Master Chief!*" Harris’s voice cracked over the tactical comms. "*We have visual on you! The Njord’s propulsion is dead in the water, but our sensors are picking up multiple fast-attack contacts closing on your position from the north! Orion’s automated perimeter drones have activated!*"
"How many?" Rebecca demanded, clipping her harness onto the safety line running along the sail.
"*Four unmanned high-speed stealth surface craft, armed with anti-ship torpedoes!*" Harris reported. "*They’re closing at fifty knots!*"
"Harris, prepare to bring the *Vanguard* alongside for high-seas transfer," Rebecca ordered, the wind whipping her hair across her face. "We have the master core. But this submarine cannot fall into anyone's hands—not Orion's, and not the compromised factions at the Pentagon."
"Understood," Harris replied. "We're launching the boarding crane line. Stand by!"
The *Vanguard* surged forward, her powerful turbines roaring against the Arctic swells. The warship pulled parallel to the wallowing hull of the *Njord*, just thirty yards apart, the two vessels rising and falling violently in the massive troughs of the sea.
A heavy carbon-fiber tether line shot from the *Vanguard’s* launcher, embedding its magnetic grapple firmly into the *Njord’s* conning tower.
"Master Chief, hook in!" Rebecca commanded.
"After you, Admiral!"
"That’s an order, Vance!"
Vance snapped his carabiner onto the high-speed transfer winch. "See you on the other side, ma'am!"
The winch engaged, rocketing Vance across the yawning chasm of freezing ocean between the two ships. Seconds later, crewmen on the *Vanguard’s* deck hauled him over the railing to safety.
Rebecca stepped to the edge of the sail, securing the black quantum drive to her chest. She clipped her harness to the return line.
Just as the winch began to pull, the dark horizon erupted in fire.
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The first Orion perimeter drone fired a salvo of kinetic rockets. The projectiles tore through the night sky, slamming into the *Njord’s* exposed hull ten feet below her position.
The explosion hurled Rebecca into the freezing black void of the ocean.
