Chapter 47

# Day 16 - 13:15

Zhao passed the first hour: checking the weather sensors, double-inspecting the secondary fire door, making a show of inventorying his rod-and-reel collection for the next morning's rotation. The ship's mood had changed. He could taste it in the food line—everyone more polite, voices pitched low, as if gossiping would set off a bomb. Even Mei-Lin, usually reckless with her affections in the kitchen, only pecked his cheek before vanishing behind the steam table, her smile a thin wire stretched too tight.

So he wandered, and as always when he wandered, he wound up at the command center.

Half the command center was dark, the floor lit only by a grid of monitors running live feeds and sonar telemetry. Captain Verne and Linh were in the front row. Verne, sharp in her navy-blue work shirt, watched the feeds with a predator's focus, chin perched on her fist. Linh sat at a slant behind her, one ankle hooked over her opposite knee, glasses perched on the bridge of her nose as she worked a tablet with calculated flicks of her thumb.

Neither looked up as Zhao entered. He stood a meter back, silent, and watched the largest screen, which played a zoomed-in, jittery shot of the ship’s white hull and the blue infinity behind it.

"Three kilometers," Linh said. "Circling for five minutes now."

Verne's eyes narrowed. "Show me the underside."

Linh did, and the view switched: a drone’s camera, stabilized but occasionally bouncing as the rotors fought the wind. Its shell was candy-apple red, with vents and lenses that looked nothing like the cheap Amazon jobs the crew used for deck inspections. A set of three blades, not four. Counter-rotating, beveled. Custom.

Zhao cleared his throat. "Ours?"

Linh’s voice was a monotone. "Not unless someone in maintenance spent twenty thousand on carbon fiber."

Verne said, "And payload?"

Linh zoomed the image until only the camera pod and gimbal filled the screen. "No visible weapons. But that’s a LiDAR rig." She sounded almost admiring. "It’s scanning us."

Verne didn't move. "You think it’s mapping structural weaknesses?"

Linh said, "Or eavesdropping on comms. I’d do the same." He watched the feed. The drone hung in the air, perfectly still, then zipped sideways, tracing a broad, lazy circle around the Blue Oasis.

He found himself rooting for it. Then he remembered the warning from Victoria, and the moment soured.

Zhao leaned forward, studying the drone's movements. The way it hovered, perfectly stable even in the crosswinds. Military-grade stabilization. His fingers twitched at his side, mimicking the controls.

Verne's jaw tightened. "Our best rifle reaches five, six hundred meters in this wind. It's three times that distance." Her fingers drummed once on the console. "Besides, we don't know if it's alone. Could be a decoy."

Linh nodded. "If we spook it, we tip our hand. Right now, it thinks we don't know it's there." A small smile played at the corner of her mouth.

Zhao recognized the drone's distinctive carbon fiber shell and triple-blade configuration. Vector ships. He recognized the distinctive carbon fiber shell and triple-blade configuration from a page in the owner's notebook he'd found stuffed in the lining of that tailored suit last week—complete with annotated diagrams and vulnerability assessments scrawled in tight, meticulous handwriting. Only the billionaire "continuity fleets" carried that hardware. He kept quiet, watching the professionals work, filing away the information for later.

The corner of Verne's mouth lifted a fraction of a millimeter. "And what would you do, Mr. Zhao?"

His mind calculated trajectories and probable response patterns. "Since bullets won't reach, we could send our drones to play with theirs."

Linh’s eyes sparked. “A drone dogfight?”

“Not a fight,” he said. “Just tangle it. If we can foul the props, maybe even snag a sensor, they’ll have to recover it, right? We follow it home.”

Verne’s voice dropped to its command register. “Do we have anything in engineering that could do that?”

Linh said, “We could rig one of the salvage drones. Use fishing line, maybe, or thin steel cable. Get it close and it might work.”

“Worth a try,” said Zhao. “Or just annoy them, keep them busy so they can’t get a good scan.”

Verne stood. “Fine. Linh, get Kim and Note. I want something ready in thirty minutes.” She snapped her fingers, and Linh was already typing the message out.

Then Verne turned to the navigation console, tapped twice, and toggled the ship’s main thrusters to “max.”

Linh stared at the readout. “Captain?”

“We’re running south to Site 34, as fast as she’ll go,” Verne said. “If they’re following, we’ll know. And if not—” she shrugged, “—then I’ll eat a drone on a stick.”

Zhao watched as the big screen cut to an exterior camera, showing the prow of the ship knifing through the glass-calm sea. The wake fanned wide behind them, and the sun burned a pale stripe across the horizon. He saw nothing else—no sails, no superstructures, no sign of pursuit.

He said, “What’s at Site 34?”

Verne shot him a look. “Classified.”

She didn't blink. "If we can't lose them, we need to get there first. Site 34 won't solve everything, but it buys us time." Her eyes flicked to the security camera in the corner, then back to his face. "Need-to-know only, Mr. Zhao. And right now—" she paused, looking him over with clinical detachment, "—your only need is to keep your treatment team focused. No distractions. Understood?"

He almost laughed, but she was stone serious. He nodded.

Linh stood, brushing imaginary lint from her uniform. “I recommend we send two drones. One to harass, one to follow at a higher ceiling. Keep the spotter out of sight, but ready to shadow if the red drone flees.”

Verne: “Agreed. Do it.”

Zhao caught up with Linh at the exit. “Need a hand?”

She looked him up and down. “Know how to pilot a drone?”

“No, but I’m good with a net.”

She gave a small, real smile. “Come on.”

They took the stairs two at a time. He kept glancing at the windows, half-expecting to see the candy-red drone against the blue, but it stayed out of sight.

# Day 16 - 14:25

The workshop always reeked of solder and ozone, a layer of fumes clinging to the racks of old PCBs and the bins full of cannibalized motors. Zhao stepped inside to find Kim hunched over the chassis of a battered FPV drone, one hand balancing the body while the other held a rotary tool steady as a surgeon’s scalpel. Shavings drifted onto her jumpsuit, settling into the creases around her knees. Across the bench, Note Thammavong (they’d all dropped the surname, but on this ship no one was ever just “Note”) used a pair of precision pliers to twist a screw through a chunk of tungsten, then zip-tied it to a spool of high-test fishing line.

No banter. They worked like clockwork, hands moving in a kind of reverse ballet.

“What do you need?” Zhao asked, voice low.

Kim jerked her chin at the far corner, where a box of drone batteries was half-unpacked. “Charge these. Set to max.”

Note, not looking up, said, “No off switch on this job.”

He plugged in four chargers, listened to the faint, uneven hum as the batteries sucked up power.

Kim looked at the drone, then at him, and said, “You think we get it on the first try?”

He shrugged. “You’re the mechanic. I just show up.”

She gave him a half-smirk. “I’d put odds at thirty percent. They might be running countermeasures. Line gets tangled, pilot cuts throttle and bails.”

Note, spooling out the line, said, “But if we clip the rotor, we win. Even if it’s just for a second.”

Zhao let the silence fill the workshop. Kim worked the hot glue gun with deft flicks, mounting the tungsten weight just behind the camera gimbal. The fishing line trailed out, neatly coiled and taped, a tiny black flag at the end. The entire assembly looked improvised—until you saw how smooth the lines ran, how the solder beads glinted perfect and even along the traces. If Kim built a bomb, you’d never see it coming.

Note finished wiring up the spotter drone, triple-stacking batteries in a lozenge configuration under the belly. “This one’s for the tail,” she said. “No line, just eyes.”

Kim tested the props with a few taps of the remote, each one giving a mosquito’s whine. “You want to run the net, or the spotter?” she asked, looking at Zhao.

“Let Linh take the first. She’s got the hands.”

Note nodded, approval hidden under a layer of skepticism. “And Captain for the second.”

By the time they carried the drones up to the launch deck, the sky was low and iron, a rain squall threatening from the west. The wind was up, but not enough to ground the mission. Linh stood at the edge of the deck, a black FPV headset slung around her neck, a small, tight smile curling at her lips. She barely glanced at the team, but took the drone from Kim with careful hands.

“Payload?” she asked.

Kim: “Line and screw. Don’t miss.”

Linh turned to Zhao. “If I don’t come back, name it after me.”

He said, “I thought you weren’t sentimental.”

She slipped the headset on, then smiled wider. “I’m not. But I like to win.”

Kim had built a launch cradle out of a cut-up rain gutter and two car door springs. She held it steady as Linh powered on the drone, then at Linh’s nod, pulled the release. The drone shot off the rail like a bullet, angling up and away in a perfect arc.

The control room watched on the big screens, each feed split between Linh’s FPV view and a tactical map overlay.

Zhao followed the crew inside, where Verne and the nav team hovered over the consoles. The command deck had shed its cruise ship vibe; now it was all monitors and tac boards, coffee mugs jammed wherever there was a flat surface.

Linh’s feed showed the ship below, shrinking fast, then the empty blue as she zipped toward the three-kilometer mark.

“Contact in ten seconds,” Note called out, fingers dancing over the drone telemetry readout.

Linh’s voice came in, flat and sharp. “Enemy drone at ten o’clock, holding hover.”

She pushed up, overshooting the target, then dropped back in a lateral zigzag, feinting to test the pilot. On the monitor, the red drone reacted—sliding sideways, gimbal camera twitching as it tracked Linh’s moves.

“Pilot’s nervous,” Kim said, almost gleeful.

Linh edged in, then at the last moment, cut throttle and let the drone tumble forward, spinning on the axis. The weighted line snapped out, whipping in the airflow. It barely missed, trailing under the enemy by less than a meter.

The red drone shot straight up in a panic, trying to outclimb.

Linh looped around and went again, this time feinting high but actually drifting low, then yanking up at the last moment. The weighted screw whipped up, catching the edge of the opposing gimbal. On the big screen, you could see the shudder—the enemy drone lost altitude, bobbing for a second as its rotors fought for stability.

Zhao punched the air. “Yes.”

Kim said, “That’s a hit.”

The red drone stabilized, then jerked away, fleeing toward the southern sky. Linh let it go, then circled once, making sure nothing else was in the area.

“Bring it home,” Verne ordered.

Linh’s drone returned low and fast, threading between the masts with a kind of lazy confidence.

Kim and Note readied the spotter drone. This time, Verne herself took the headset, her jaw set at a stubborn angle.

“We don’t chase,” she said, “not unless it’s worth it.”

Note nodded, then launched the spotter from a deck hatch on the shadow side of the ship, keeping it low enough that even radar wouldn’t catch it against the surface clutter.

“Stay below fifteen meters,” Verne ordered, voice as even as water on glass.

She skimmed the ocean, her FPV feed a blur of salt spray and shifting whitecaps. “Target at extreme range. Speed forty knots and climbing.”

The spotter held steady, never closing the gap, just matching the pace a few kilometers back.

Zhao watched as the red drone wobbled over the waves, then angled down, heading for a rendezvous with something below the horizon.

Note dialed in the zoom, her fingers trembling slightly. At first, nothing but endless blue. Then—a shadow. A thin black line on the sea, barely distinguishable from a wave. Everyone leaned forward, breath held. The line grew as the drone approached, gaining definition with each passing second. After twenty kilometers, a ship materialized through the digital haze: low-profile, maybe thirty meters, with a dark hull and crimson trim that seemed to bleed into the water.

Kim's face drained of color. "That's Red Solstice," she whispered, as if saying the name too loudly might summon it closer.

Verne's shoulders tensed. "Vector ship," she muttered, just loud enough for Zhao to hear. "One of the first launched by the banking syndicate. Never seen up close since Outbreak." She glanced at him, then added in a lower voice, "Owner killed her family for the inheritance. At least that's what my sources claimed."

The spotter drone hovered at maximum range, its telephoto lens straining against digital noise as it scanned the Red Solstice. The deck crawled with figures—all women, but nothing like the carefully selected beauties aboard the Blue Oasis. These were hard-edged operators with tactical vests over rain gear, hair cropped short or pulled back in tight braids. One carried what looked like a Barrett rifle, another checked a rack of deck-mounted weapons. Their movements were precise, economical—no wasted motion, no hesitation.

Verne's voice tightened: "They're combat specialists. Every single one."

The feed suddenly wavered, pixelated, then died with a sharp electronic whine.

Note checked her monitor. "Signal's gone. They must have some kind of jammer."

Kim's fingers drummed nervously on the console. "Doesn't matter. We've seen enough."

Linh pulled off her headset, eyes narrowed. "They're maintaining distance for now, but that's Red Solstice. Three hours to overtake us if they decide to pursue." She traced a finger along the tactical display. "She's built for speed—one of the fastest super yachts on the ocean. State-of-the-art electric drive system. If they want us, they'll catch us."

A silence fell over the command deck. Then Kim asked, "What's the protocol?"

Verne's jaw tightened. "Secure all access points. Prep the countermeasures. We can't stop a boarding, but we can control where it happens."

She turned to Linh, her eyes bright and hard. "Command room, fifteen minutes. Get security and department heads there. Tell them—" she paused, voice dropping, "tell them it's war footing."

Linh's voice crackled through the ship's intercom, cool and measured despite the tension. "All hands, defense protocol alpha. Department heads and security team to command in fifteen minutes. This is not a drill."

In the command center, the map now showed two ships running parallel, the Red Solstice a shadow on their tail. It was all out in the open. No more secrets, no more pretense.

Zhao checked the clock. An invasion could happen as early as the next few hours.

He wondered if the world would ever taste like home again.