Chapter 45 - Heart of the Core
"Hayes," Grant spat, taking an instinctual step in front of me, his hand reaching for the empty holster at his hip. "You were the one who signed Thomas's erasure order. You were running the Syndicate from inside the Pentagon."
Hayes chuckled, his weapon never wavering from the center of my forehead. "The Pentagon is a hollow box of bureaucrats chasing four-year election cycles, Lieutenant. The Sovereign Syndicate has been planning the restructuring of the global maritime economy since the day Eleanor Brooks discovered the seabed fracture lines. When the hammer strikes the shelf, seventy percent of North America's port infrastructure will be reduced to mud. And who do you think owns the reconstruction contracts? Who do you think holds the automated fleets ready to take over global shipping?"
"You're going to slaughter fifty million civilians for corporate supply lines?" I said, my voice dangerously calm, stepping out from behind Grant.
"Collateral damage in the evolution of naval sovereignty," Hayes said coldly. "Now, give me the ledger, Maya. You see, Eleanor was very clever. She locked the core's command console with a dual-stage biometric cipher. It requires the blood of her descendants, but once the sequence is verified, the core can be set to permanent, irreversible overdrive."
*Impact sequence: twelve minutes.*
"She locked it so monsters like you could never touch it," I said, holding the ledger tight against my chest.
"Then I'll just take your blood from the floor," Hayes sneered, his finger tightening on the trigger.
Before the hammer of his gun could drop, the grating beneath Hayes's boots violently shattered.
A titanium harpoon, glowing with blue electrical discharge, shot upward from the coolant reservoir below, piercing Hayes through his right shoulder and pinning him against the steel bulkhead. Hayes screamed, dropping his weapon as electric arcs surged through his body, knocking him unconscious.
From the steam-filled reservoir, a diver in a slick, black atmospheric diving suit vaulted onto the gantry. The helmet unlatched with a sharp hiss of pneumatic pressure, swinging back to reveal Commander Laura Vance from the Covenant.
Her silver hair was cropped short, her face scarred by the burns of a hundred deep-sea engagements.
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"You Brookses always talk too much before you shoot," Vance said, kicking Hayes's dropped sidearm into the boiling coolant below. "We have ten minutes, Maya. The shelf is already beginning to buckle."
***
