The blare of the base-wide alarm ripped through the silence, raw and guttural, drowning Fennen’s sneering voice on the intercom. A klaxon pulsed crimson, then strobed blue, casting Vannor’s quarters in a sickening, urgent glow. The heavy, reinforced door to his private chamber slammed shut with a hydraulic hiss, a final, metallic thud that resonated deep in my chest. Lockdown. The cartel turncoat was cutting off every exit. His betrayal tore straight through the fragile truce we had pieced together. “The black box,” Vannor grated, his voice tight, eyes narrowed at the door. “He broadcast from the nerve center, which means he’s seized the station. He knew you’d say something. He’s already moved against us.” I hadn’t even processed that. Fennen wasn’t just a smooth-talker; he was a viper. And now, he had the leverage to turn a city against us. A deep, groaning tremor shook the room. A spiderweb fracture ran along the viewport, followed by a wet, hollow gurgle. The bioluminescent corals beyond the hull flared erratic violet. Metal shrieked behind the paneling where the main feed line entered the suite. My salvager’s instincts flared up. Sabotage, not seismic shifting. “Not just the facility,” I said, my voice sharp, cutting through the alarm. “He breached *this room*. That’s a stress rupture. The main feed line behind the wall just blew.” Vannor’s head snapped towards the wall. Before he could process the information, a geyser of superheated water erupted from a seam in the polished plasteel, spraying across the room. The air instantly filled with steam, scalding and blinding. The temperature gauge on the bulkhead spiked, then shattered. This wasn’t just a breach; it was an assassination attempt, targeted precisely at the junction of his room and the primary external ballast pipe. “Fennen,” Vannor snarled, his hand already ripping off the service hatch beside the scalding jet. Steam whistled around his brow, exposing severed cables and sparking wire bundles. “He bypassed the emergency seal. He wants us boiled.” The water level on the floor was already ankle-deep, spreading rapidly. Atmospheric weight spiked in the compartment, hot fog coating my tongue. We had moments before the bulkhead buckled inward. My peace, my sleep, my carefully built cover—drowned in boiling brine. “The escape pod,” I yelled over the rushing flood, pointing toward a recessed hatch on the far bulkhead. Its maintenance beacon blinked inert red. “Offline.” Vannor didn’t hesitate. He lunged towards it, ripping off the manual access panel. But the wiring inside was a tangled mess of defunct relays and corroded conduits, deliberately sabotaged. “Decommissioned,” he growled, ripping away a fried fuse. “He rigged every fallback.” I didn’t wait for his permission. I shoved him aside, my fingers already flying over the exposed circuitry. The water was up to my shins, the heat radiating through my thin intern’s uniform. The hull shuddered under the sheer ocean weight pressing against the perimeter. My thoughts, normally slow and stubbornly dormant, snapped into sharp diagnostic schematics. “Clear out,” I snapped. My palms, roughened by years in junk hulks, worked the wires before he could challenge me. I tore out a scorched resistor, bridged a bypass loop with the elastic band from my hair, and rerouted feed from the aux strip. The dull red light on the hatch flickered, then flared green. “Siora,” Vannor began, a stunned disbelief in his tone, but I was already wrenching the hatch open. The smell of stale air and ozone wafted out. “Get in!” I scrambled inside the cramped, spherical pod, its single seat barely big enough for one. Vannor followed, squeezing in beside me, his broad shoulders brushing mine, the heat of his arm a jolt. The hatch hissed shut, the sound almost swallowed by the roaring water outside. I slammed my palm onto the ignition sequence, ignoring the sparking console. The tiny pod shuddered, a deep thrum vibrating through the floor. Through the small thick glass, the outer partition of the suite collapsed inward, churning tons of debris into the open sea. Then, with a violent shudder and a guttural roar from the thrusters, we blasted out of the Abyssal Vanguard Base. The pod shot through the churning water, a lone bubble escaping the maelstrom. Pelagosa’s sprawl glowed across the shelf, a stark cluster of neon coral towers, phosphorescent algae tanks, and the shimmering pipelines of the urban energy grid. Free of the perimeter, yet exposed to the abyss. “Where are we going?” Vannor’s voice was strained, his eyes scanning the endless blue beyond the viewport. His mechanical arm, usually so formidable, twitched as if in phantom pain. He was wounded, I realized, not just by the betrayal, but by the shock of the blast. Before I could answer, a shadow detached itself from the gloom behind us. Not one shadow, but three. Sleek, predatory forms, their scaled bodies rippling with muscle, eyes glowing with malevolent intelligence. Rift-hounds. Submersible attack beasts bred for crushing depths and pitch-black hunting runs. They surged forward, jaws bristling with needle fangs. “He unleashed the pack,” I muttered. They outpaced our sub, bred to run down fleeing targets in open water. The pod vibrated violently as the first hound slammed into our stern, its impact rattling my teeth. A low-frequency hum emanated from Vannor’s personal comm-unit, a secure frequency I recognized. Fennen. The viper. Vannor stared at the pulsing icon, his lips pressing thin. It was an obvious snare, yet the alternative was sinking. He activated the comm. “Fennen.” His voice was ice. “Commander,” Fennen drawled through the static. “Heard your quarters sprang a leak. Fortunate for you, I keep a stash on the rim of Sector Rho. Blacked out from the sensors. Bring the girl and dock.” “Sector Rho,” Vannor repeated, his gaze meeting mine. There was a desperate gamble in his eyes. It was a trap, we both knew it, but it was also the only lifeline. “Fennen, if this is a trick…” “Commander,” Fennen laughed, a dry, grating rattle. “Have I ever kept a secret from you?” We tracked the coordinates to a dilapidated, barnacle-encrusted structure, barely distinguishable from the rocky seabed. It was an old cargo processing station, long abandoned, its reinforced walls scarred by the passage of time and countless deep-sea currents. The beasts had veered off, driven back by the pulsing hum of the sector boundary grid, though the dark behind us felt far from empty. The docking ring sealed with the stench of engine soot and stale hydronium. Fennen leaned against an iron pillar, smirking, flanked by a dozen wreck-divers armed with pneumatic harpoon rifles. “Welcome, Commander,” Fennen said, his voice dripping with false concern. “And to you, little intern. The Admiral wants you both very badly. He’s offering quite the bounty.” Vannor lunged for his sidearm, but a heavy mesh dropped over his shoulders, pinning his arms. A second weighted net pinned me flat against the grating. Armed guards closed in, hauling us apart toward the rear pens. Before they could, a guttural shriek echoed through the cavern, vibrating through the very bedrock. A gargantuan silhouette ripped through the exterior plates. Cold brine blasted across the deck, spraying sheared rivets and shattered plasteel as the bulkhead gave way with a violent crash. The alpha beast, black-scaled and massive, lunged straight into the hold. Phosphorescent bile smeared from its maw as its jaws clamped down on Vannor’s prosthetic arm, bending alloy plates. With a savage twist, it dragged him toward the ruptured breach, bound for the freezing dark.

Sabotage and Submersibles