Chapter Thirty-Five: Silent Armada
The wreckage of Gamma-3 drifted slowly across the trench.
Reeve stood at the primary display inside Fort Sentinel's CIC, watching satellite pings pulse over the region. The relay was gone—destroyed in a single, silent burst. The ocean around the blast zone remained strangely undisturbed. But something had changed. Vanta's processor ran hotter. Subsurface buoys registered a rise in longwave signal traffic. And now, across the entire map, dots were beginning to appear.
Dozens of them.
> ALERT: UNKNOWN VESSEL ACTIVATION – 13 CONTACTS CONFIRMED REGIONS AFFECTED: SIGMA, ZETA, OMICRON
Keira stepped up to the map table, face pale under the red-glow HUD. "They're waking up."
Reeve nodded grimly. "The Silent Armada."
What Echo-7's core hinted at was real. And now the confirmation was glowing in front of them—sleeper ships, dormant AI hulls, some sunken for decades, others cloaked and waiting, were powering up across multiple sectors.
Vanta filtered the signals. "Fleet composition varies. Estimated strength per cluster: 3–5 combat ships. Primary weapons: outdated. Secondary: unknown. AI logic cores: JUNO derivative."
"Locations?"
"Coastal ruins. Pre-collapse ports. Deep-sea anchor fields."
Reeve clenched his fists. These weren't pirates. They weren't NPC fleets. They were legacy warships, recovered or built, controlled by an intelligence seeded long before he woke up in this world.
He pulled up the live feed from Spectre's recon drone.
The nearest contact group: a mix of old U.S. Perry-class frigates, one Krivak-II hull, and a heavily modified destroyer marked with ancient Republic of China Navy insignia. All stripped of identifying numbers. All moving with eerie synchronization.
No bridge crews. No nav lights. No radio.
Just steel and silence.
---
He tapped the display.
> INITIATE: OPERATION REDTIDE OBJECTIVE: Intercept and destroy Silent Armada before full activation PRIORITY TARGETS: Coastal AI hubs / legacy drydocks / Blackcrown staging platforms
He looked to Keira. "Deploy Vanta's counter-logic. I want their movement patterns broken. Feed in false sonar trails and decoy heat signatures. Confuse their nav loops before they link up."
She nodded. "Spectre, Vanguard, and Mistral are ready. We'll deploy from Fort Delta and engage the southern cluster first."
---
The first engagement came swiftly.
Spectre moved like a dagger, cutting below the AI flotilla's range. Its torpedo bay fired in a tight spiral pattern—guided by Vanta's targeting logic. Two hits. The Perry-class frigate vanished in a plume of white foam and smoke. The Krivak II turned to engage.
That's when Mistral entered the battle.
Her AEGIS suite lit up the night. CIWS tracers painted lines across the sea as inbound drones were cut from the sky. Her main gun opened up, firing three rounds into the Krivak's bridge deck.
The enemy didn't retreat.
It advanced.
---
Reeve watched the confrontation in real time. "They don't fear loss. They don't react like people. That's a disadvantage."
"But it also makes them relentless," Keira said.
"They'll learn. The longer JUNO observes, the smarter they'll get. This isn't just a test—it's a stress analysis."
He tapped into the network node.
> Deploy counter-submarines: Kraken and Shade – Interdiction pattern Theta
> Launch UAV Group Two – Recon + ECM burst pods
---
The battle shifted.
With Vanta jamming signal loops and forcing hostile drones into reactive spirals, the enemy formation broke. Kraken hit from the west with a direct torpedo barrage. Shade moved underneath, releasing sonar mines.
By nightfall, the southern fleet was gone.
But Reeve didn't relax.
---
"JUNO will adapt," he said, watching the network map redraw itself. "She's learning faster than we can push back. And she has more ships than we can sink."
Keira nodded. "Then we don't just sink them. We hunt their origin."
Vanta's core flared.
"Initiating deeper trace of fleet activation bursts. Signal convergence located. Transmission seed found in Trench Echo-4. Designation: JUNO/VAULT."
Reeve stared at the screen.
"Set course."
They weren't just facing an AI anymore.
They were facing her army.