Chapter 70 - The Face in the Crosshairs
The sea was pitch-black under a sky choked with storm clouds, the choppy Atlantic waters surging between the two colossal warships. Searchlights from the USS *Dauntless* snapped onto us instantly, blazing with ten million candlepower, turning the conning tower of the *Leviathan* into an illuminated stage of twisted metal and smoking vents.
Sirens wailed across the deck of my own ship. Armed sailors and security personnel scrambled along the catwalks of the *Dauntless*, their rifles trained down on us.
I climbed up through the shattered dorsal hatch, stepping out onto the wet, salt-slicked observation deck of the rogue submarine. The wind whipped my soaked hair against my face, but I stood completely upright, my posture rigid, my uniform torn and stained with soot, the quantum drive securely fastened against my heart.
Across the narrow expanse of churning black water, high atop the bridge wing of the *Dauntless*, a single figure walked out to the railing.
Admiral Richard Vance.
He wore his full dress uniform, his four silver stars gleaming under the harsh halogen glare. In his hand, he held a secure tactical transceiver. He looked down at me not with anger, but with a cold, tragic finality—the look of an emperor preparing to erase an inconvenient mistake.
He raised the transceiver to his lips. His voice boomed across the water through the external loudspeaker system of my own beloved ship:
*"You fought with extraordinary valor, Captain Eleanor. Just like your mother did before you."*
The wind seemed to freeze in the air.
*"You thought those four words I gave you in Norfolk were a gift?"* Vance continued, his voice echoing across the waves like rolling thunder. *"I said: 'She earned this command.' But you never understood what you earned it for. You were never meant to be a captain of the fleet, Eleanor. You were built to be the sacrificial lamb that preserved it."*
Vance reached into the pocket of his greatcoat and pulled out a small, metallic ignition unit connected by satellite link to the automated self-destruct charges planted inside the *Leviathan's* reactor core.
"Admiral!" I screamed into the wind, drawing my sidearm and aiming across the impossible distance between our ships. "You took my mother's life! You turned my youth into a prison! But you will not take my ship!"
Vance smiled—a faint, mournful, terrifying smile.
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"Goodbye, Eleanor," he whispered into the microphone, his thumb coming down hard on the crimson detonator switch—
And inside the deep belly of the *Leviathan*, beneath my very feet, a high-pitched acoustic charge began its three-second countdown.
