The engine roared like a dying beast.
The Neptune shuddered, rust flaking off the railings as the propeller churned the black harbor water into white foam.
"We're drifting!" Valeria screamed, fighting the wheel. "The rudder is stiff!"
"Force it!" Marcus shouted.
On the radar screen, the green blip was closing fast.
PING... PING... PING.
"It's inside the harbor," Lucilla said, staring at the screen. "Torpedo lock detected."
"Hard to starboard!" Marcus yelled.
Valeria spun the wheel.
WHOOSH.
A trail of bubbles cut through the water. A torpedo. Sleek, black, and lethal.
It missed the hull by inches.
It slammed into the concrete pier where they had been docked ten seconds ago.
BOOM.
The pier disintegrated. Concrete and burning wood rained down on the deck. The Scavenger base—the tanker hull—collapsed as the shockwave hit it.
"Return fire!" Marcus ordered.
He ran out of the bridge onto the foredeck.
He vaulted into the gunner's seat of the mounted Sentinel Turret.
"Galen! Power!"
"Linked!" Galen shouted from the engineering hatch.
The turret spun up. WHIRRRR.
"Where is it?" Marcus scanned the dark water.
"Sonar contact, bearing zero-nine-zero!" Lucilla's voice crackled in his ear piece. "It's surfacing!"
The water boiled.
A shape broke the surface.
It wasn't a normal submarine. It was a Kraken.
A black, segmented hull like a centipede. It had no conning tower, just a sensor cluster that glowed red. Mechanical manipulator arms, tipped with cutting torches and claws, thrashed in the water.
It was fast. It skimmed the surface like a hydrofoil.
Marcus squeezed the trigger.
BRRT-BRRT-BRRT.
Heavy tracers lit up the night.
The bullets sparked off the Kraken's hull.
"It's armored!" Marcus cursed. The rounds were ricocheting.
The Kraken opened its dorsal tubes.
THOOM-THOOM.
Two more torpedoes.
"Brace!"
The Neptune couldn't dodge.
One torpedo hit the water and spiraled off.
The other hit the stern.
CRUMP.
The ship lurched violently. Metal screamed.
"We're taking water!" Valeria shouted over the intercom. "Propeller shaft is damaged!"
The Kraken didn't fire again. It accelerated.
It was going to ram.
"It wants to board!" Marcus realized.
The submarine slammed into the side of the Neptune.
CRUNCH.
The manipulator arms lashed out. They clamped onto the railing, locking the two vessels together.
Hatches on the Kraken's spine blew open.
Not men. Drones.
Small, spider-like boarding bots swarmed out. They had saw-blades for limbs.
They poured onto the deck.
"Repel boarders!" Decimus roared.
The refugees grabbed their spears. It was desperate. Iron against steel.
A drone leaped at a woman. It sawed through her spear and took her arm off at the elbow.
"Narcissus!" Marcus screamed. "Get up here!"
The cargo hatch exploded upward.
Narcissus burst onto the deck.
He was wet, dripping seawater. The blue light in his chest was blinding in the dark.
He didn't have a gun. He had a weapon he'd found in the hold.
A ship's anchor. Five hundred pounds of rusted iron on a heavy chain.
He swung it.
WHOOSH-CLANG.
The anchor smashed into a cluster of drones. It flattened them.
Narcissus roared. He stepped to the railing.
He looked down at the Kraken clamped to the hull.
He saw the red sensor cluster. The eye.
He swung the anchor overhead. Once. Twice. Building momentum.
He threw it.
The anchor flew down. The fluke punched through the Kraken's hull plating. It hooked deep inside the machinery.
"Heave!" Marcus yelled.
Narcissus wrapped the chain around his forearm. The ceramic armor groaned.
He planted his feet on the deck.
He pulled.
The chain went taut.
The Kraken's engine screamed, trying to pull away.
The giant held firm. His muscles bulged. The deck plates beneath his feet buckled.
"I have you, little fish!" Narcissus bellowed.
He pulled harder.
The Kraken tilted. Its hull groaned.
"Galen! The barrel!" Marcus shouted.
Galen and Varro rolled a fuel drum onto the deck. It was rigged with a mining charge—a makeshift depth charge.
"Throw it!"
Narcissus held the chain with one hand. He grabbed the barrel with the other.
He tossed it over the rail.
It landed squarely on the Kraken's exposed spine, right next to the breach where the anchor was hooked.
"Fire in the hole!" Marcus yelled.
He pulled his Vibro-Gladius. He threw it like a spear.
The blade spun through the air.
It hit the mining charge on the barrel.
KA-BOOM.
The explosion was contained by the submarine's hull.
The Kraken broke in half.
Fire erupted from the breach. Water rushed in.
The manipulator arms went limp, releasing the Neptune.
The wreckage of the sub sank instantly, dragging the anchor chain down.
Narcissus let go of the chain just in time. It whipped over the rail and vanished into the depths.
"We're free!" Valeria shouted. "Full power!"
The Neptune limped away from the burning oil slick.
The drones on deck stopped moving. Their control signal severed.
Marcus walked to the railing. He stared at the bubbles rising from the black water.
He retrieved his sword from the deck—it had bounced off the blast, scorched but intact.
"Damage report," he said.
"Hull breach in the stern," Galen said, checking a datapad. "But the pumps are holding. We're floating."
" Casualties?"
"Three dead," Decimus said quietly. "Five wounded."
Marcus nodded. He looked East.
The open sea stretched out before them. Dark. Empty. Terrifying.
"We are off the map now," Marcus said.
Lucilla joined him at the rail. The wind whipped her hair.
"Vane controls the sky," she said. "But the ocean is big. We can hide."
"We don't hide," Marcus said. "We hunt."
His datapad chimed.
"A signal," Lucilla said, surprised. "From the East."
She held up the screen.
It wasn't a text. It was an image file. Low resolution, grainy satellite capture.
It showed the coast of Syria.
A green flare was burning on the horizon. A beacon.
And a single line of text.
[HOLD THE LINE. THE TENTH LEGION WAITS.]
Marcus smiled.
"Marcia," he whispered.
He turned to the refugees huddled on the deck.
"Look!" he pointed. "Look to the East!"
They looked. They saw nothing but darkness.
"There is a fire burning for us," Marcus promised. "We just have to carry the wood."
He looked at the open ocean.
"Full steam," Marcus ordered. "Take us to the war."