Red warning lights bathed the command center in crimson as nine enemy fleets closed in on the Leviathan like mechanical sharks that had caught the scent of blood and forgotten they were hunting something far more dangerous than prey.
Ethan calmly placed noise-canceling headphones over Lily's ears.
The gentle melody of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" drowning out the harsh reality of impending naval warfare.
With a few taps on his console, he activated the child-safe filter that transformed the tactical display from a map of death into a colorful cartoon underwater world, complete with smiling fish and dancing seahorses.
"Look, princess," he said softly, his voice warm despite the proximity of enough firepower to level a small city, "we're going to watch the fishies play in their underwater kingdom."
Lily clapped her hands with delight, completely unaware that her bedtime story was about to become a masterclass in naval annihilation.
A communication window burst open on the main screen.
Revealing the grotesque clown mask that had haunted Ethan's nightmares for seventy-two hours.
"Lord Polaris!" the clown cackled, his electronically distorted voice dripping with malicious glee that belonged in the deepest circles of hell. "Welcome to your underwater grave! I hope you've taught your daughter how to hold her breath, because you're all about to become fish food!"
The clown's gloved hand gestured dramatically toward his fleet's formation like a conductor preparing to orchestrate a symphony of destruction.
"Fire everything! Turn that tin can into scrap metal!"
**[INCOMING TORPEDO SALVO DETECTED]**
**[COUNT: 6 HEAVY ANTI-SUBMARINE TORPEDOES]**
**[TIME TO IMPACT: 47 SECONDS]**
**[THREAT LEVEL: MODERATE INCONVENIENCE]**
---
The sonar alarm shrieked like a banshee announcing the apocalypse.
Roxanne threw herself toward Lily with desperate instincts.
Her legal mind calculating that they had less than a minute to live.
But Ethan remained perfectly calm, watching the approaching torpedoes on his display with the detached interest of someone observing weather patterns rather than instruments of mass destruction.
"Oh look, princess," he said conversationally, pointing at the incoming death machines that appeared as cute cartoon whales on Lily's filtered screen, "the big fishies are blowing bubbles at us. Aren't they silly?"
Lily giggled with pure joy that could have powered the sun and made angels weep with happiness. "They're making such pretty bubbles, daddy!"
Ethan waved his hand with casual dismissal.
As if shooing away annoying insects rather than directing countermeasures against military-grade explosives.
"Deploy bubble screen," he ordered quietly.
The Leviathan's hull erupted with twelve pneumatic launchers, each firing specialized countermeasures that created a wall of high-pressure gas bubbles in the water—a barrier that turned the ocean itself into a defensive weapon designed by someone who understood that the best protection was making your enemies' weapons useless.
The incoming torpedoes struck the bubble wall and detonated harmlessly.
Their explosions creating a light show that looked like underwater fireworks through Lily's filter.
But the real beauty was in the aftermath.
The gas bubbles didn't just stop the torpedoes—they completely scrambled every sonar system in the enemy fleet, turning their sophisticated targeting computers into expensive paperweights and their tactical advantage into a liability.
"What the hell?" the clown's voice cracked with panic as his screens filled with static and error messages. "Where did they go? It's like they just vanished! We're fighting a ghost!"
Ethan studied the clown's terrified expression with the clinical interest of someone evaluating a particularly unimpressive insect that had just realized it was about to be stepped on by something infinitely larger.
"Your bubbles are ugly," he said matter-of-factly, his voice carrying the disappointed tone of an art critic reviewing amateur finger paintings. "Let me show you how it's done properly."
He turned to his weapons officer with casual authority.
"Light some candles for our guest."
---
Twelve vertical launch tubes opened along the Leviathan's spine like mechanical flowers blooming in fast-forward, and an equal number of missiles screamed toward the surface with the fury of fallen angels seeking redemption through violence and precision engineering.
The clown's mask twisted with terror as he watched the missiles climb toward the sky like mechanical prayers answered by a god who specialized in creative destruction.
"Nuclear launch! He's gone completely insane! He's going to nuke his own position!"
But these weren't nuclear weapons.
They were something far more elegant.
Far more personal.
At the apex of their flight, each missile split open like a deadly piñata, releasing thousands of tungsten rods—each one a perfectly engineered instrument of kinetic destruction that fell toward the enemy fleet with the inevitability of gravity and the precision of divine judgment.
"Princess," Ethan said gently, covering Lily's eyes with his hand while his voice carried all the warmth of a father protecting his child from nightmares, "let's count the pretty stars falling from the sky."
The tungsten rods struck at five times the speed of sound.
Pure kinetic energy.
No explosives needed.
Just physics applied with surgical precision and unlimited malice toward people who'd forgotten that some fathers were more dangerous than natural disasters.
The first destroyer simply ceased to exist, its armor plating offering no more resistance than tissue paper against the hypersonic projectiles. The second frigate's ammunition magazine detonated in a fireball that could be seen from orbit and felt in hell itself. The third ship folded in half like a broken toy as tungsten rods punched through its hull from bow to stern with the efficiency of someone who'd perfected the art of making things disappear.
In three seconds, nine ships and three thousand mercenaries were transformed from a threatening fleet into burning debris scattered across the ocean's surface like the remnants of a particularly violent fireworks display designed by someone with unlimited resources and a very personal grudge.
Through her filter, Lily saw a gentle shower of pink sparkles falling like fairy dust from a story where magic was real and daddy could make anything happen.
"One, two, three, four, five!" she counted happily, clapping her hands as each "star" twinkled on her screen. "So many pretty stars, daddy! They're dancing!"
Roxanne, who could see the unfiltered carnage, collapsed against the bulkhead as her mind struggled to process the contrast between a child's innocent joy and the hellscape of destruction that had just unfolded before her eyes like a vision from the apocalypse.
---
Ethan ruffled his daughter's hair with infinite tenderness, as if he'd just helped her count actual stars rather than orchestrating the complete annihilation of an enemy fleet through the application of advanced physics and paternal fury.
"That's daddy's present for mommy," he said softly, his voice carrying promises that could reshape reality itself. "A beautiful light show to welcome her home."
The Leviathan surfaced through the burning wreckage like a mechanical whale emerging from the depths of hell, her hull cutting through debris that had once been ships filled with people who'd made the fatal mistake of threatening a father's family.
In the water, a single figure floated among the wreckage.
The clown.
His mask cracked and his body broken.
But still breathing with the stubborn persistence of someone too evil to die easily.
Ethan stood at the observation deck, cradling Lily in one arm while casually spinning a surgical scalpel between the fingers of his free hand, the blade catching the light from the burning oil slicks like a promise of pain yet to come and lessons yet to be taught.
"Fish him out," he ordered, his voice carrying the cold authority of someone who'd just redefined the meaning of naval superiority and was about to redefine the meaning of interrogation. "I want to carve a reply letter into his bones. Something the Abyss will remember every time they think about threatening my family."
**[MISSION UPDATE]**
**[OBJECTIVE: INTERROGATE SURVIVING ENEMY COMMANDER]**
**[TIME LIMIT: 48 HOURS]**
**[GOAL: EXTRACT SARAH BLACKWELL'S TRUE LOCATION]**
**[METHODS: UNLIMITED - CREATIVITY ENCOURAGED]**
**[MERCY: NOT RECOMMENDED]**
**[SURGICAL TOOLS: AVAILABLE]**
The clown was about to learn that some fathers were artists when it came to extracting information from people who'd made the mistake of hurting their families.
Some lessons were best taught with surgical precision.
Unlimited time to perfect the technique.
And a very personal interest in the subject matter.
The reunion was getting closer.
But first, there was a message to carve.
In bone.
With love.
And the kind of attention to detail that came from five years of wondering what had happened to the woman who'd given him everything beautiful in his world.
The clown's education was about to begin.
And graduation would only come when every secret had been carved out of him with the precision of someone who understood that some information was worth any price in pain.