Chapter 63 - Phantom on the Waves
The Atlantic gale hit our high-speed interceptor like a physical wall the moment we cleared the stone breakwater of the Azorean harbor. Frigid spray screamed across the windshield, whipping jagged, mountainous swells into a chaotic dance of foam and black water.
We tore through the churning abyss at forty-five knots, guided entirely by digital thermal overlays and GPS waypoint tracking. The distant lights of the island chain vanished behind us, leaving us completely alone in the open ocean.
Forty minutes later, Ethan pointed ahead through the salt-sprayed glass. “Target acquired. Bearing one-two-zero. Three miles out.”
Rising out of the towering black swells like a ghost ship, the USS Prometheus loomed before us. Its massive, gray-painted superstructure was dark and weather-beaten, illuminated only by faint, flickering amber emergency lights pulsing along the main deck gunwales.
“She’s dead in the water,” I noted, checking the digital readout on my tactical pad. “No radar profile, no active communications broadcast. They’re running entirely on silent-running battery backups.”
“Which means they’re trying to scrub the quantum cores before anyone boards,” Ethan said, cutting the twin engines to a quiet idle as we drifted toward the stern boarding ladder of the massive naval vessel.
I checked the pneumatic grappling launcher clamped to my forearm, aiming upward toward the lower helicopter hangar deck overhang of the ship. With a quiet, pneumatic hiss, the titanium grappling hook shot upward, its reinforced tungsten claws biting deep into the steel grating of the upper walkway.
With a sharp tug to test the line, I engaged the ascender motor on my belt rig, hoisting myself smoothly up the vertical hull and slipping through an open maintenance hatch into the darkened lower bilges of the vessel.
The interior of the Prometheus smelled of stale ozone, burning electrical wiring, and damp naval steel. Red emergency low-level lighting cast long, crimson shadows across the bulkheads.
May you like
Drawing my Sig Sauer, I moved forward along the narrow steel corridor, my boots making no sound against the ribbed flooring.
My tactical earpiece hissed softly before Ethan’s voice cut through: “Commander, I’m reading multiple active thermal signatures converging on the main server bay two decks above you. They’re attempting a physical extraction of the quantum storage cores.”
