*rattle-clink-drag.*
Beside him stumbled Vanessa Reed, her ice-blue silk gown torn and soaked in industrial oil:
*SCREEECH.*
Julian Vance did not run.
He stood beside the drilled core hole in Arthur Mercer Senior’s foundation, his hands trembling as he closed his satellite terminal, his face draining of every drop of blood until his skin matched the gray slurry beneath his shoes:
“David…?” Julian whispered, his cultured, appellate baritone cracking into an ugly, dry rattle:
“David Mercer…?! You deployed an active special warfare assault stack onto my family’s acquisition site?!”
Vice Admiral David Mercer stepped to my side, his Service Dress Blue uniform unbothered by the rain:
“You are trespassing on a sovereign Title Fifty national defense redoubt, Julian,” Admiral Mercer announced, every syllable dropping like an eighty-pound iron anvil into thirty fathoms of sub-zero ocean water:
“And the officer who holds the warrant for your arrest… is standing right in front of you.”
