“David Mercer...?! You deployed an active special warfare assault stack onto my 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, Arthur,” 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.”
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Arthur’s gaze shifted to me.
He looked at the four-inch solid-titanium surveyor's transit key in my hand.
He looked at thirteen-year-old Evan, standing tall and unbroken beside his father.
He looked at his hired champion Blake Haron, bruised, weeping, and chained in the mud.
Arthur Vance’s skeleton seemed to liquefy.
The satellite terminal slipped from his paralyzed fingers, shattering across the stones:
CRASH.
“The pipe fitter from the combat gym...?” Arthur wheezed, his breath whistling past his dry lips in spastic micro-tremors:
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