Chapter 84 - The Walk Down the Gangway
The heavy metal brow lowered with a resounding crash onto the concrete of Pier 4. Below, standing flanked by four heavily armed mercenaries, Julian Sterling waited at the foot of the ramp. He held an encrypted datapad in one hand and an expensive cigar in the other, puffing gray smoke into the salt air as if he were waiting for a private yacht in Monaco.
"Hold your fire, all hands," I commanded through the squad channel. "Miller, take the service tunnel under the pier. Get to the harbor master's analog junction. I will keep Sterling's eyes on me."
"Captain, you’re walking right into the viper’s nest with one functional arm," Miller protested, crouching behind the safety rail.
"He wants the quantum drive, Chief. He doesn't think a woman he watched play the piano at twelve years old has the stomach to play chicken with him. That's his mistake."
With my right hand, I lifted the heavy diplomatic pouch containing the glowing titanium drive. With my left arm bound tight to my chest, my posture was rigid, my service uniform stained with salt spray and engine soot, but my stride was measured, rhythmic, and uncompromising.
Step by step, my boots rang out against the steel treads of the gangway.
Below, Sterling took a long drag from his cigar and smiled. It was the same thin, condescending smile my father had worn whenever I spoke out of turn at the dining table.
"Look at you, Eleanor," Sterling called out as I reached the bottom landing, stepping onto the cracked asphalt of the pier. "Playing soldier while your father rots in an interrogation cell and your mother cries into her gin in Oakwood. Did you really think four words from an old admiral could change your bloodline? You are a Holloway. Your entire existence was paid for by our contracts."
"My bloodline didn't earn these stripes, Julian," I said, stopping five paces from him. The red laser sights of his contractors' rifles danced across my chest, but I didn't blink. "And my father didn't build the Navy. He just stole from it."
"Semantics," Sterling dismissed, flicking his ash onto the ground. "Set the pouch down, walk away, and a private jet will take you to Zurich. You can spend the rest of your life living like royalty on the funds we stashed away for you. Defy me, and I press this button. The submarine behind me will launch a saturation cruise missile volley directly into downtown Norfolk, and the military logs will record that your ship triggered the launch."
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"You're threatening to slaughter your own countrymen?"
Sterling chuckled, cold and sharp. "Countrymen? Eleanor, child... nationality is an invention for people who pay retail. To men like me, the world is merely a balance sheet."
