Chapter 44 - Blood in the Harbor
"Sterling was never trapped in the wreckage," Admiral Vance said, his voice dropping into an icy register of pure betrayal. "The collision that sank the *Gallant* wasn't an accident. He scuttled his own ship to fake his death and take the Titan blueprints underground."
"He built Hull 00 with foreign black-budget capital," I said, my fingers clacking frantically across the diagnostic keys. "Admiral, he isn't just targeting the naval yards. He's synchronized the launch computers with an orbital relay. If those kinetic rods launch, they will hit every nuclear submarine pen on the Atlantic seaboard simultaneously. He isn't waging a war—he's executing an execution protocol for the entire United States Navy."
Suddenly, the SCIC console shrieked with an active radar warning.
"Inbound ordnance!" Liam roared. "Hull 00 has launched a salvo of high-speed supercavitating torpedoes! Contact in forty seconds!"
"They know we're inside," I said, adrenaline flooding my veins. "They're trying to sink the *USS Eleanor* before we can bring her kinetic defensive batteries online!"
"Eleanor, can you manually slave the Phalanx close-in weapons systems to your optical net?" Vance demanded, his hands bracing against the edge of the master command table.
"I can," I said, grit in my teeth as I bypassed the carrier’s locked firing protocols with my master designer override. "But I have to direct the radar beam manually. The automated targeting algorithms are still blind from their microwave pulse. I have to paint the torpedo wakes with our raw directional searchlight!"
I didn't wait for permission. I grabbed the remote optic joystick, slaving the carrier's forward multi-barrel automated cannons to my personal retina tracking suite.
On the visual monitor, three frothing white trails tore through the black harbor waters, moving at an insane speed of over two hundred knots—Russian-designed Shkval derivatives, modified with titanium piercing tips.
*Thirty seconds.*
I adjusted for water deflection, calculating the refractive index of the choppy surface water in my head. My mechanical leg was locked into the floor mount, anchoring my body as I breathed slowly, exhaling all fear, all pain, all memory of the gala where they called me 'half a woman.'
I wasn't half a woman. I was the woman who built the iron they were trying to break.
*Twenty seconds.*
"Firing!" I slammed the hydraulic trigger.
On the flight deck above us, four twenty-millimeter Vulcan rotary cannons erupted into deafening thunder. A blinding wall of high-explosive tungsten rounds shredded the surface of the bay, churning the water into a boiling cauldron of cordite and steam.
The first torpedo took a direct hit three hundred yards out, detonating in a colossal water plume that showered the carrier's forward hull. The second torpedo was clipped at its steering fin, veering violently into a concrete harbor pier and blowing the structure into pulverized dust.
The third torpedo slipped through the fire curtain.
"Brace for impact!" Liam screamed, throwing his entire body over mine against the console.
The impact struck the *USS Eleanor's* reinforced bow below the waterline. The colossal five-thousand-ton shockwave threw us violently across the compartment. Steel groaned like a dying beast. Sparks rained from the overhead conduits as primary power flickered. Pain exploded through my shoulder as I hit the deck plates, my prosthetic hinge groaning under the sheer blunt force.
"Ellie! Are you hit?" Liam gasped, pulling himself up, blood streaming from a cut across his hairline.
"I'm whole," I grunted, dragging myself back toward the console using the edge of the steel desk. "Hull integrity holding! The titanium-reinforced crash bulkhead absorbed eighty percent of the blast! But our bow is flooded. We're taking on water forward."
Admiral Vance stood in the corner, his knuckles bleeding where he had caught himself on a structural stanchion. His eyes never left the tactical map.
May you like
"Look at Hull 00," the Admiral said grimly. "The high tide is here. Their launch doors are fully open."
***
