Chapter 78 - The Mother's Last Gambit
"Drop it, Vance," I said, my voice barely above a whisper, yet carrying with absolute finality over the mounting drone of the turbines.
Vance’s hand was trembling, the gold plating on his weapon catching the flashing red emergency beacons. "You won't shoot me. You're the noble soldier, aren't you, David? The golden boy who stayed in the dirt while I ran the family's destiny. If you kill me, the system reads it as a biometric severance. The missile launches automatically."
"You're lying," I said. "Father's architecture never used a severance-launch logic. It uses a fail-safe abort. If the commander dies, the system defaults to safe shutdown to prevent catastrophic accidental war."
Vance’s face twitched. The cocky, condescending smirk that had defined him his entire life began to peel away, revealing the terrified, inadequate boy who had always hidden behind mother's skirts and backroom political favors.
"Mother... mother modified the logic gates," Vance stammered, though his eyes betrayed his bluff. "She installed the Dead Hand subroutine two months ago."
"Mother is floating in a life raft outside the thermal perimeter, waiting for your depth charges to tear her apart," I said cold-bloodedly. "She traded you away the second she thought the cutter was sinking. Just like she traded me at that dinner party."
"Liar!" Vance shrieked.
He pulled the trigger.
The round took me high in the left shoulder, the kinetic impact slamming me back against the doorframe, hot agony flaring through my nerve endings. But my carbine was already singing.
A single round tore through Vance's right wrist. His pistol went skittering across the diamond-plate deck, and he dropped to his knees with a high, agonized wail, clutching his mangled hand against his chest.
I stepped forward, my boots slick with his blood, and pressed the hot barrel of my weapon against the center of his forehead.
"The countdown, Vance. Put your left hand on the primary pad."
**00:45... 00:44... 00:43...**
"I don't have the abort code!" he wept, tears cutting clean lines through the soot and sweat on his cheeks. "She never gave it to me! She only gave me the launch key! She said she was the only one who needed the abort authority!"
My heart hammered against my ribs. Eleanor. The cold aristocrat had maintained absolute control over her pawns until the very end.
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I dropped my carbine, grabbed Vance by the collar of his flight suit, and dragged him over to the main terminal. The screen flashed: **DUAL BIOMETRIC CONFIRMATION REQUIRED FOR MANUAL ABORT SEQUENCE. PRIMARY LINEAGE: REGISTERED. SECONDARY LINEAGE: ABSENT.**
"David, please!" Vance sobbed. "The missile... the back-blast will incinerate this entire room!"
