Chapter 99 - The Serpent's Intervention
"Hold your fire!" the lead operative of the new team barked, his voice amplified through a tactical helmet speaker. He didn't point his weapon at me—he pointed it directly at Vance.
Vance froze, his eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated terror. "You... you weren't supposed to be here! The Grand Assembly gave me authority over the Harrington sector!"
"The Grand Assembly revoked your mandate thirty minutes ago, Vance," the operative replied coldly, stepping forward with absolute authority. "When you failed to suppress Brian Harrington and allowed an unregistered assault team to breach the League’s sovereign facility, you became an unacceptable operational liability."
With chilling efficiency, the operative raised his weapon and fired two rapid shots. Vance collapsed onto the mahogany floor without a sound, the magnum tumbling from his lifeless fingers.
The remaining councilmen scrambled against the walls, whimpering like trapped animals.
I kept my submachine gun locked on the new intruder's chest plate, every muscle tensed, my finger ready to pull the trigger at the slightest twitch.
"Who are you?" I demanded, my voice cutting through the blaring klaxons.
The operative lowered his rifle slightly, raising his left hand to show an open palm, before reaching up and unsealing his tactical helmet. The seals hissed, venting compressed air, and he pulled off the headgear.
He was a man in his early forties, with sharp, weathered features and a jagged scar running from his ear down into his tactical collar. But what stopped me dead in my tracks was the emblem pinned to his chest: the same double-anchor crest that adorned my mother’s ring.
"My name is Commander Sean Rowe," the man said evenly, stepping out of the smoke. "And I don't answer to the corporate council, Brian. I answered to your mother. And now, by bloodline decree and sovereign code, my unit answers to you."
The heavy blast doors on the opposite side of the deck suddenly burst open as Harris and our tactical squad pushed through, weapons raised, sweeping the room.
"Clear! Hold fire!" Harris yelled, seeing the standoff. "Brian, you good?!"
"Stand down, Harris," I said slowly, lowering my barrel without breaking eye contact with Rowe. "We have company."
Rowe looked across at the giant tactical screen, where the container vessels were still locked in defensive holding patterns. "You proved yourself, Brian. Just as your mother said you would. You walked into the viper's nest with nothing but your grandfather's seal and broke their command network in under ten minutes."
"I came here to destroy this fleet," I said, gesturing toward the displays showing the strike vessels. "I won't let them threaten my family or my country."
May you like
"The fleet is no longer theirs to launch," Rowe replied, pulling an encrypted data drive from his vest and tossing it onto the black granite table. "It belongs to the Sovereign Vanguard now. But you need to see what Vance was actually preparing for. He wasn't aiming at the coast just to blackmail you. He was terrified."
***
