Everyone watched Victoria raise her hand against a helpless elderly woman, but only one waitress dared to stop her—and seconds later, Chicago’s most powerful billionaire walked straight toward them.

Julian Sterling’s face twisted in uncontrollable rage. "Fire! Sink the crib! Sink it now!"

The lead corvette’s deck guns swung toward the stone tower, but before the firing pins could strike, the nearest unmanned interceptor opened fire. A stream of high-explosive incendiary rounds shredded the corvette’s forward gun mount, detonating the ammunition feeder in a violent blast of crimson flame and flying shrapnel.

The ship lurched, violently rocking in the icy swell.

"Return fire! Return fire!" Julian screamed over the comms, but the two companion corvettes were already breaking formation. Facing automated drones with inhuman reaction times and zero fear of casualties, the mercenaries operating Julian's secondary ships realized their contract was suicide.

The second corvette swung its helm hard to port, attempting to flee back toward the international waters of the northern shipping lanes. But a pair of precision missiles launched from the second interceptor cleaved into its rudder and propulsion housing, dead-sticking the vessel in the water where it drifted helplessly among the ice floes.

On the crib, Emma, Vincent, and Marco watched as the night erupted into an inferno of precision strikes. The overwhelming force Julian had brought to crush Chicago was being methodically dismantled by the silent, pre-planned machinery of an empire that had guarded these waters for generations.

Julian’s flagship was the last one standing, smoking heavily from its superstructure, its radar mast bent and useless. Trapped between the rising iron sea-wall at the harbor mouth and the automated hunter-killer drones, the ship had nowhere left to run.

"Marco," Vincent said, lowering his radio. "Prepare the extraction skiff from the lower boat bay of the crib. We are boarding that vessel."

"Vincent, you're wounded," Emma insisted, catching his sleeve. "The drones have them disabled. The federal authorities will be here in twenty minutes."

"Julian has the Sterling master drive," Vincent replied, looking down into her eyes with an intensity that brooked no argument. "The drive contains the names of every public official, judge, and foreign broker Victoria and Julian bought across twenty years. If that ship burns or Julian scuttles it, those names burn with it. The rot will remain in this city forever."