My Marine Brother Threw My Visitor Badge Into the Gravel and Mocked Me in Front of His Entire Unit / Chapter 30 / 53

Chapter 30 - Fire in the Engine Bay

The deafening noise inside the engine room turned into an ear-splitting crescendo of automatic gunfire and ricochets. More mercenaries poured in from the forward companionway, their muzzle flashes illuminating the churning machinery in violent strobes.

Dylan knelt behind a high-pressure hydraulic tank, leaning around the rim to fire three short bursts. Two contractors tumbled down the metal stairs, their weapons clattering against the deck plates. But a third tossed a fragmentation grenade straight toward Mia’s position.

"Frag out!" Dylan shouted, his instincts overriding all self-preservation.

He lunged forward, throwing his entire body across the open gangway, tackling Mia behind the thick steel housing of the primary turbine just as the grenade detonated. The blast wave hit them like a physical wall, showering them with razor-sharp metal fragments and superheated steam from a ruptured radiator line.

Mia coughed, her ears ringing, but looked down at Dylan. He had taken shrapnel across his tactical vest, the ceramic plate cracked and smoking, but he was breathing.

"You idiot," she whispered, her voice cracking with fierce gratitude. "You could have died."

"We die together or we walk out of here together," Dylan gritted out, reloading with mechanical speed. "Now blow those damn servers!"

Mia leaned around the turbine, slapped the magnetic charges onto the mainframe, and punched the detonator override. "Charges set! Move forward to the bridge access! Five seconds!"

They sprinted toward the watertight bulkhead leading toward the superstructure stairs. Behind them, the C4 detonated with a concussive roar that blew the computer rack into a mangled cloud of scorched silicon, shattered motherboards, and black smoke. The ship’s interior lighting instantly flickered and died, plunging the lower deck into the eerie red glow of auxiliary emergency bulbs.

The countdown was halted, but the primary ship systems remained under bridge control.

Up above, a voice boomed through the ship’s public address speakers—deep, commanding, and laced with absolute contempt.

"You always were remarkably stubborn, Dylan," General Marcus Vance’s voice echoed down the steel corridors. "Just like your father. Too sentimental to understand how real power works in this century. Come up to the bridge. Let's finish what we started in the gravel."

Dylan locked eyes with Mia in the crimson gloom. "He wants an audience," Dylan said.