The Sheriff Ordered My Vehicle Stopped Six Times Before His Officer Pulled Me Over / Chapter 62 / 63

Chapter 62 - THE HEART OF THE NETWORK

The wind on the open deck hit me like a solid wall.

Rain lashed sideways across the steel containers, and the sea below was a swirling cauldron of black waves tipped with white froth. High above the bridge, the primary transmission array pulsed with an eerie violet flare, beaming millions of encrypted packets directly toward the European orbital satellites.

I climbed the wet iron rungs of the lattice mast, my fingers numb with cold, fighting the violent pitch and roll of the vessel. Fifty feet below, the deck tilted at nauseating angles as forty-foot swells slammed against the hull.

Halfway up the mast, a mechanical whine cut through the howling gale.

A secondary defense turret—mounted directly to the mast crossbar—swiveled toward me, its optical lens glowing yellow as it acquired a biological target.

I didn't have time to aim. I swung one arm around the steel lattice, unholstered my pistol, and fired three rounds point-blank into the turret’s optical housing. The glass shattered, the servo sparked violently, and the heavy barrels jerked wildly into the empty sky, firing harmlessly into the dark clouds.

I scrambled up the remaining rungs to the main transmitter junction box.

The housing was armored with heavy steel plate, locked behind a four-digit biometric pad. I didn't waste time trying to crack the code. I jammed the jaws of the heavy industrial wire-cutters directly behind the junction box’s main copper conduit and threw my weight against the handles.

The heavy copper cables sheared in half with a blinding blue electrical flash that threw me back against the safety harness.

Below me, the entire ship shuddered.

The violet glow at the top of the mast died instantly. Across the deck, the thousands of amber lights inside the shipping containers blinked off, one by one, like a city suffering an apocalyptic blackout.

The high-frequency whine of the server fans died down into a low, dying moan.

Through my earpiece, Sarah’s voice broke through the static, breathless and triumphant: "Grant! The daisy chain is broken! The fail-safe didn't trigger—the entire network is dropping into unprotected recovery mode! All twelve ships are broadcasting their raw, unencrypted server files across every federal frequency on the continent!"

I hung from the mast in the pouring rain, looking out over the dark, turbulent Atlantic. For the first time in what felt like years, the digital fog had lifted.