Chapter 45 - The Boarding Directive
The tactical screen was flashing scarlet. The four kinetic launch silos of Hull 00 were hissing with superheated steam as their magnetic acceleration coils charged to maximum capacity. The countdown clock on our intercept board read: *03:45 to launch.*
"We can't disable those silos from the outside," I said, coughing through the thin haze of electrical smoke filling the SCIC. "The Titan-Class was built with six-inch armored blast doors over the launch cells. Even if we hit them with our deck guns, the armor will deflect the shells. The only way to stop that launch is from inside their primary engineering bay."
"Inside?" Liam stared at me. "Ellie, that sub is fully pressurized and sealed. It’s an impenetrable steel vault underwater!"
"Not impenetrable," I said, pulling up my father's original blueprints from my encrypted drive and projecting them onto the glass war table. "Look here. Beneath the sail, there is an emergency atmospheric intake hatch designed for sub-surface rescue bells. My father built a mechanical flaw into that hatch—a manual pressure-relief bypass that can be triggered from the exterior using a standard naval pneumatic wrench. He told me before he died: *'If a monster ever takes this ship, Ellie, you cut its throat through the air valve.'*"
Admiral Vance looked from the blueprint to me, his jaw tightening into an expression of fierce, unyielding pride. "You're saying we board her."
"I am," I said, standing tall on my prosthetic leg, feeling the cold steel click into full lock. "Liam and I will deploy via the carrier's low-observable tactical submersibles. Admiral, you must stay aboard the *USS Eleanor*. Keep her phased array radar active and paint Hull 00 with our high-power targeting sensors. If they think this carrier is preparing to ram them, they’ll keep their directional defensive batteries trained on you—leaving their upper sail completely blind to our approach."
"I don't like putting you in the crosshairs, Eleanor," Vance said, his voice dropping into a gruff, fatherly rasp. "You've given enough blood to this navy."
"Admiral," I said, meeting his eyes without flinching. "I didn't rebuild myself to sit on the shore while my father's ghost murders my country. Let me finish this."
Liam checked the chamber of his sidearm and racked the slide with a crisp, metallic snap. "I'm with her, Grandfather. We stop the launch, or we sink with the hull."
Vance rested his hand on my shoulder, his grip like iron. "Godspeed, both of you. If you aren't out of that hull in three minutes, I am firing our main battery at point-blank range, regardless of who is inside."
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Two minutes later, Liam and I were sealed inside the wet cabin of an advanced swimmer delivery vehicle (SDV), dropping from the *USS Eleanor's* flooded well deck into the freezing, storm-lashed depths of the Chesapeake.
***
