Chapter 59 - Face to Face with the Phantom
"You’re not going to hurt that crew," I said, taking two slow, deliberate steps up the metal grating toward the command platform. Jackson and his team fanned out below, their rifles trained on the perimeter guards standing motionless in the shadows.
"Do you really want to test me?" Martha smiled, raising her pistol slightly. "You know what I am capable of. I orchestrated thirty years of naval intelligence black projects right under Vance’s nose. I built this ship with funds siphoned from the very budgets Arthur audited. Do you think I care about two hundred sailors on a tin-can destroyer?"
"No," I said, my voice dropping into a register of icy, absolute authority. "I know you don't care about them. But you care about this."
I reached into my tactical vest with my left hand, moving slowly so her guards wouldn't fire. I pulled out the encrypted data drive Admiral Vance had sent to my bridge five minutes before the attack.
Martha’s eyes narrowed, the mocking confidence flickering for a fraction of a second.
"You think that's the cipher?" she sneered. "Vance gave you a dummy file."
"It's not the cipher, Mother," I said, emphasizing the word with razor-sharp irony. "It's the scuttle protocol. Vance didn't just put my biometric profile into this ship's defensive keys thirty years ago. He tied it into the reactor's self-purge cycle. The moment my heart rate exceeds critical combat parameters or stops entirely, this vessel’s core undergoes an irreversible magnetic collapse. You don't get to command this leviathan unless I allow it."
Kevin’s hands froze over the keyboard. His smug smirk vanished instantly, his face draining of color. "Mom... she’s not bluffing. The core telemetry just updated. The secondary containment fields are locked to her biometrics!"
Martha took a sharp breath, her hand tightening on the grip of her pistol. For the first time in my life, I saw fear flash across her calculating, aristocratic face. The omnipotent, untouchable mother from Oakwood, Ohio, was looking at the daughter she had tried to break—and realizing she had created her own executioner.
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"You wouldn't," Martha whispered. "You’d drown yourself. You’d drown your own brother."
"My brother died the day he helped you betray this country," I said, closing the distance between us until the barrel of my carbine was six inches from her forehead. "Step away from that console, Martha. Stand down, or we all go to the bottom of the Atlantic together."
