Chapter 172 - Darkness and Gunfire
The darkness on the bridge of the *Tartarus* lasted only for a heartbeat before muzzle flashes carved violent, stroboscopic arcs through the smoke.
Vincent did not hesitate. The instant the lights failed, his instincts took over. He lunged across the deck, wrapping his body around Emma and driving her hard behind the reinforced titanium pedestal of the main navigation console. A split second later, a hail of armor-piercing rounds slammed into the metal where they had stood, throwing up showers of white-hot sparks and ricocheting off the bulkheads with deafening clatter.
"Stay down!" Vincent roared over the cacophony of gunfire. His hand pressed against her back, keeping her pinned beneath the console’s heavy steel lip.
Emma’s heart slammed against her ribs like a trapped bird. Her ears rang from the deafening concussions, but her mind was racing, torn between the visceral terror of the ambush and the venomous words Helena had spat just moments before. *Vincent’s father murdered her grandfather?* The thought choked her, but looking at Vincent—seeing the feral, protective fury burning in his eyes as he shielded her with his own flesh—she knew survival had to come before the truth.
Across the ruined bridge, Helena’s shrill laughter was cut short. A brutal three-round burst thudded into the forward bulkhead near where the Sterling matriarch sat. Helena let out a wet, strangled gasp as Governor Caldwell’s voice sliced through the din, cold and devoid of remorse.
"Wrap it up, Commander," Caldwell ordered calmly from the doorway. "Sweep the room. Take the girl alive if possible; her biometric data is still required to sign off on the third protocol. Kill Moretti on sight."
Red laser reticles swept through the swirling haze. Two tactical operators advanced in tandem, boots crunching on broken glass, suppressors coughing rhythmically as they fired suppression bursts into every blind corner.
Vincent reached down to his tactical rig, pulling the customized SIG Sauer from its holster and unhooking a high-intensity phosphorus flare from his vest. "Emma," he whispered, his lips inches from her ear, his breath hot against the frigid air flooding through the ruptured hatch. "When I drop the flare, you don't look back. You crawl through the maintenance conduit beneath this console. It leads to the secondary ballast control."
"Vincent, no—I'm not leaving you," Emma breathed, grabbing his sleeve, her knuckles turning white.
"You have to," he replied, his gaze locking onto hers with an intensity that defied the chaos around them. "Whatever my father did... whatever sins belong to my bloodline... I swear on my life, you will have your justice. But you have to live to see it."
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Before she could answer, Vincent struck the flare against the deck plate and hurled it directly into the chest of the lead commando.
A blinding, chemical-white sun erupted in the narrow confines of the bridge, instantly scorching the night-vision optics of Caldwell’s soldiers. Cries of agony echoed through the haze as Vincent surged upright, firing three double-taps with surgical, ruthless precision.
