Chapter 42 - Blood at Eight Fathoms
"Neutronium torpedoes incoming! Bearing zero-four-zero, relative down!" the sonar operator screamed.
The ocean outside turned into a blinding white inferno.
Even through seven feet of hyper-compressed steel, the shockwave slammed into us like a freight train hitting a brick wall. The *Audacity* violently rolled thirty degrees to port. Emergency overhead pipes ruptured, spraying scalding steam across the lower deck. The lights flickered, died, and were replaced by the dying amber glow of auxiliary battle lanterns.
"Damage report!" I yelled, pulling myself up using the brass handrail of the periscope well.
"Flooding in the auxiliary engine compartment!" Grant shouted over the deafening hiss of high-pressure leaks. "Reactor output dropped to forty percent! We’ve lost primary propulsion! Maya, we’re drifting straight into the thermal exhaust plume!"
Outside the quartz port, the ocean was alive with fire. The tectonic engine was no longer just an inert piece of machinery; its automated defense drones—shaped like mechanical moray eels forged from black titanium—were swarming out from the iron hammer’s intake vents.
Two of Commander Vance’s Covenant submarines charged forward, their hulls glowing with strange magnetic fields, firing hyper-velocity rail-cavitation rounds that tore the automated drones in half. But for every drone they destroyed, three more surged from the abyss.
One of the Covenant boats took a direct hit to its bridge cone. The implosion was instantaneous—a silent, horrifying crush of blue light and air bubbles that vanished into the crushing pressure of eight thousand feet.
"They're sacrificing themselves to clear our corridor," Thomas said, grabbing an emergency rebreather from the bulkhead. His uniform was torn, blood soaking through his shoulder where a jagged piece of shrapnel had sliced through his rank insignia. "Maya, the *Audacity* cannot survive another depth charge. We have to launch the deep-submergence exploration module."
"The *Nautilus-II*?" Grant asked, wiping blood from his forehead. "Dad, that mini-sub only has two operational thrusters left. It's meant for two people at most!"
"Three," I said firmly. "We go together."
"No," Thomas said, his voice dropping into the quiet authority of an Admiral making a final, irrevocable deployment. "Someone has to manually hold the *Audacity's* ballast blow valves to maintain our acoustic decoy signature. If the engine's drones realize the command crew has evacuated to the mini-sub, they will swarm the *Nautilus* before you get within a mile of the intake shaft."
I looked at him, horror tightening around my throat. "No, Thomas. No. We just got you back. You don't get to erase yourself from my life twice."
He reached out, his bloody thumb softly brushing across the naval aviator wings pinned to my lapel.
May you like
"I didn't erase you, Maya," he whispered with a heartbreak so deep it eclipsed the roar of the dying ship. "I was just a coward who didn't know how to fight a war without treating my own children like ammunition. Grant. Get your sister to the deployment tube. That is an order."
***
