The admiral ripped the insignia from her uniform and exiled her from the carrier in front of the entire crew. Commander Hail walked away without protest, carrying the weight of a betrayal she couldn’t even defend herself against. But just six hours later, alarms erupted across the ship as a nuclear submarine surfaced—unannounced, unregistered, and refusing every order from the battle group.
It sent only five chilling words: “Awaiting orders from Commander Hail.”
Part 1
The wind on the flight deck had teeth. It came in hard from the Pacific, knifing through uniforms and biting at exposed skin, bringing with it the smell of salt and jet fuel and steel that had been at sea too long. The USS Everett rode the swells like a gray city, its island tower bristling with antennas and radar arrays, its vast deck strangely empty at this hour when it should have been roaring with aircraft and shouting deck crews.
Instead, there was only silence and the small knot of officers in dress uniforms standing between the island and the waiting helicopter. Commander Astria Hail stood at the center of that knot. She could feel the eyes on her—the pilots peering from ready-room windows, the deck crew pretending to check tie-down chains, the enlisted sailors crowded in every porthole and hatch coaming that offered a view.
The Everett had nearly six thousand souls aboard, and it felt like half of them were watching. Astria held herself perfectly still. Chin level.
Shoulders back. Dark hair twisted into the regulation bun so tight it might as well have been welded to her skull. Her uniform looked like it had come straight off a recruiting poster—creases sharp, ribbons aligned with mathematical precision.
She looked exactly like what she was supposed to be: a decorated naval officer with nothing to hide. And the man in front of her was about to make her look like a traitor. “Commander Astria Hail,” Admiral Malcolm Witcraft said, voice pitched to carry not just to her, but to the crew clustered in the shadowed doorways along the hangar bay.
“The evidence against you leaves no room for interpretation.”
He wore his power easily. Silver hair cut short, jaw like it had been carved from the same block of steel as the ship. Rows of ribbons glowed faintly on his chest, bits of color in the gray morning.
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