My mother grabbed my wrist in front of two-star generals and told me I had no place in the ballroom, while my brother mocked my uniform—but when the commanding general opened his sealed folder, he announced a name that made my entire family freeze… / Chapter 127 / 131

Chapter 127 - The Obsidian Citadel Ascendant

David stood alone on the endless expanse of frozen salt.

The wind was picking up, howling across the ice plains with the ferocity of a hurricane, carrying shards of crystalline ice that scored the fabric of his uniform. The temperature was plunging further—minus forty, and falling. Without thermal protection, his operational window was less than thirty minutes before hypothermia settled into his vital organs.

He turned toward the dead aircraft carrier: the USS *Gettysburg*.

The massive warship lay trapped in the ice like a prehistoric behemoth, its nuclear reactors dead, its island dark except for that single, rhythmic pulse of amber light from the bridge level.

David began to run.

Every stride sent a jolt of white-hot agony through his injured side, but he forced his boots forward, his combat training taking over the broken machinery of his body. In the desert of Al-Qaim, he had carried two men seven miles through an ambush after taking shrapnel to the knee. Pain was merely data; it was information to be processed, not an obstacle to be obeyed.

He reached the base of the carrier’s hull. The ice had buckled upward against the steel plates, creating an inclined ramp of frozen brine that led directly to a shattered aircraft elevator on the starboard side. David scrambled up the slippery slope, digging the serrated tip of his combat knife into the ice for traction until he rolled onto the hangar deck.

The hangar bay was a tomb.

Scores of F/A-18 Super Hornets and F-35C strike fighters sat tied down to the deck, their wings frosted over, their cockpits dark. In the corners of the cavernous bay, the bodies of sailors and deck crew lay where they had fallen when the cryogenic pulse had swept across the Atlantic, flash-frozen in mid-stride.

"State your name and authorization code!" a voice barked from the shadows near the forward bulkhead.

David snapped his sidearm up, aiming toward the maintenance control room.

Standing in the doorway was an officer in a frost-covered flight suit, clutching an M4 carbine with trembling, gloved hands. Behind him, three other sailors huddled around an emergency diesel heater that sputtered with a feeble, smoky yellow flame.

The officer had three stars on his flight helmet—an Admiral.

"Captain David Vance," David called out, his voice hoarse. "United States Army. Special Operations Command."

The Admiral lowered the carbine slightly, his bloodshot eyes widening as he recognized the ragged uniform and the Silver Star pinned to the shredded fabric. "Vance? God almighty... the ballroom... the reports from Washington said your whole family was behind this treason."

"Not me, Admiral," David said, stepping into the dim light of the heater. "My family is the enemy. And they just executed General Harrison Vance on the ice three miles out."

The Admiral—Vice Admiral Marcus Vance-unrelated, David realized it was Admiral Lawson, the commander of Carrier Strike Group Twelve—stared at him in disbelief. "We watched the trench open on satellite before the sky died, Captain. The whole damn ocean froze in under three minutes. Our reactors scrammed automatically when the cooling intakes sucked in solid ice. We have no propulsion, no communications, and NORAD has stopped broadcasting."

"NORAD didn't stop," David said, walking over to the flight operations console. "They were decapitated. The signal isn't coming from space. The primary control node is in Virginia. Beneath Blackwood."

Lawson shook his head in despair. "It doesn't matter where it's coming from, son. Look outside. Look at the radar screens. The airspace from here to the Blue Ridge is locked down by those orbital bastards. Nothing flies."

"Something has to fly," David said, his gaze sweeping the hangar deck until it landed on a tarp-covered silhouette in the far corner—a sleek, delta-wing airframe that didn't look like any standard Navy fighter.

It was an RQ-180 stealth reconnaissance drone, converted for high-altitude strike capability, fitted with experimental scramjet boosters.

"Is that bird fueled?" David asked.

Lawson looked at the stealth craft, then back at David. "Captain... that's an unmanned prototype. It doesn't even have a pressurized cockpit. It was being ferried to Groom Lake before this madness started."

David stepped toward the aircraft, pulling his combat blade from his sheath.