The bridge of the Goliath-03 was laid out like a running theater where the patient had been the ship itself.
In the center of the room, where a traditional helm wheel or steering yoke would sit, was a massive, circular vat of warm stone salt water. Suspended in the vat by hundreds of micro-cannulas was a living, disembodied brain. A chimeric neural amalgamation fused from the brain cortex of a pilot whale and the nervous ganglia of a deep-sea kraken. This was the vessel’s organic autopilot, now floating lifelessly as the scuttling set began to drain its nutrient bath.
Arthur stood before the main tactical light-projected projection, his monocle magnifying glass recording every byte of data streaming from the decrypted sight core.
“The scale of this operation is staggering,” Arthur murmured. His eyes tracked the red fault lines glowing across the Mariana depth-charting. “They didn’t just build these submarines overnight. This public works has been under construction for at least two decades. The Sovereign Chimera Order has been siphoning federal naval research budgets and deep-sea mining subsidies to build an entire underwater war-host right beneath the Coalition’s nose.”
The command bridge of the Goliath-03 was eerily silent when Arthur Vance forced open the blast doors.
