Chapter 26 - The Alpine Siege
The deafening boom of the shaped charge resonated through our teeth. The heavy outer steel door warped inward, molten orange slag dripping from its frame like liquid fire. Heavy smoke instantly filled the corridor, suffocating and acrid.
"Move!" Marcus roared, pulling me into the narrow emergency escape tunnel carved directly into the granite bedrock.
Victoria was crawling behind us on hands and knees, weeping uncontrollably, choking on the sulfurous fumes. "Emily! Don't leave me! Please, I'm your mother—I raised you!"
"You starved me, Victoria," I snapped without looking back, holding the hardened tactical tablet that held Northstar's master flight authority. "Keep moving or get shot by your own business partners."
Behind us, automatic gunfire echoed down the tunnel. The heavy thud of armor-piercing rounds chipping away granite shards whistled past our ears. Marcus spun around, dropping to one knee, firing three controlled bursts down the corridor. A muffled grunt and the crash of heavy body armor confirmed a hit, temporarily halting their advance.
"They're using thermal imaging!" Marcus shouted over the din. "We can't outrun them on foot in this tunnel. It leads to the private funicular rail that connects to Hangar Four, but it's three hundred meters of open grade!"
"They don't own the mountain, Marcus," I said, tapping into the terminal panel mounted beside the blast corridor. "My father built Geneva’s Terminal Five. He didn't just install backup servers here; he installed Northstar's high-pressure fire-suppression Halon systems."
"Emily, that will displace all the oxygen in the shaft behind us!"
"They're wearing tactical rebreathers," I said grimly. "It won't kill them. But it will detonate the electrical arcs and blind their optical sensors with cryogenic fog."
I pulled the manual red lever down with both hands.
A terrifying pneumatic roar shook the tunnel. Tons of pressurized Halon gas and liquid nitrogen flooded the upper corridor with supersonic force. A howling wall of freezing mist blasted backward toward the pursuing strike team. Over our comms, their coordinated tactical radio channels collapsed into panicked static and digital screeching as the sub-zero cloud fried their optical lenses and shorted out their exoskeleton servos.
"Go! Now!" Marcus urged.
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We sprinted through the blinding white fog into the underground funicular station. Before us sat a sleek, steel maintenance car mounted on magnetic rails. Above us, the muffled rumble of jet engines told me Sterling’s private gunships were already circling Hangar Four, waiting to slaughter anyone who dared emerge into the daylight.
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