Chapter 64 - Defiance at Two Thousand Feet
"They're going to kill us all," Kevin cried out, clawing at the deck plates. "Eleanor, please! You're my sister! You grew up in our house! Don't let them kill me!"
"You weren't my brother, Kevin," I snarled, wrenching the quantum drive from its cryogenic dock and slamming it into the waterproof tactical pouch on my chest harness. "You were just a spoiled parasite living off the blood money paid to keep me caged."
I turned to the primary helm. The automated controls of the *Leviathan* were partially disabled, but the vessel’s auxiliary thrusters and emergency buoyancy tanks were still operational.
"Jackson! Drag Kevin to the escape hatch. Martha, move!"
"Where are we going?" Martha coughed, clutching her broken ribs. "The hatch opens directly into the pressure hull. We'll be crushed by two thousand feet of seawater!"
"We're not using the escape pods," I yelled over the blaring klaxons. "We're taking manual control of the *Leviathan's* secondary reactor. We're going to ram the thermal layer!"
I vaulted over the central console, my boots smashing through shattered holographic glass, and slammed my palms onto the emergency manual override levers. The control interface flashed amber, warning of thermal runaway.
"Captain Eleanor to *Dauntless*!" I shouted into my open radio channel. "Miller, initiate Protocol Hydra! Do you hear me? Drop your towed sonar array and fire acoustic decoys at bearing one-eight-zero! Give Vance’s wolfpack something else to shoot at!"
"Copy that, Captain!" Miller’s response was fractured by static, but the unmistakable thunder of the *Dauntless’s* torpedo countermeasure launchers echoed through the water column above us. "Decoys away! We're lighting up the entire sector with phantom signals. But Captain, Vance’s lead submarine—the *Blackfish*—is coming straight down your throat!"
Through the forward observation viewport, the dark abyss of the ocean was suddenly illuminated by the blinding halogen searchlights of an oncoming submarine. The massive silhouette of the *Blackfish* loomed out of the darkness like a predatory sea monster, its torpedo tubes open, its bow aimed squarely at our bridge.
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"Brace for evasive burn!" I roared, pulling the twin propulsion throttles to maximum emergency overload.
The *Leviathan's* twin nuclear turbines shrieked to life, throwing a wall of superheated water behind us. The submarine surged forward, violently throwing Martha and Kevin across the deck as the immense G-forces took hold.
