SSS-Rank Awakening: My Infinite Absorption System

Chapter 72: The Offshore Map

The cold morning light filtered through the reinforced glass windows of the Pine Street noodle shop, illuminating the quiet street above the bunker.

Fin sat at a corner laminate table with an insulated cup of black tea, his stamina gauge fully replenished to one hundred after eight hours of sleep.

Ruby sat opposite him, methodically inspecting the leather lacing and steel rivets of her heavy kite shield with a fine wire brush.

Across the dining room, the captive contractor commander sat handcuffed to a cast-iron radiator pipe, his split lip swollen and his eyes dull with defeat.

"How is the arm?" Ruby asked, gesturing with her brush toward Fin’s left sleeve.

"The burn healed overnight," Fin said, flexing his forearm. "Skin is smooth. Endurance stat takes care of minor tissue damage."

"Good," Ruby said. "Because Maya has been staring at that data deck for an hour with smoke practically coming out of her ears."

"I heard that, Ruby," Maya called out from the counter, plugging an aluminum decryption drive into her terminal.

"Did the cryptographic key clear?" Fin asked, turning in his chair.

"Just finished the brute-force handshake," Maya said, her voice dropping into a serious, chilled tone. "Fin, Ruby... come look at this routing manifest."

Fin and Ruby stood up, walking over to stand behind Maya’s shoulder as rows of green naval coordinates scrolled across the glass.

"Where was that extraction van supposed to deliver Jolly?" Fin asked.

"Here," Maya tapped a pulsing red beacon on a satellite bathymetry map. "Forty-two nautical miles south of District Three. Right on the edge of international waters."

"What is that structure?" Ruby asked, leaning in close. "An island?"

"Not an island," Maya said, zooming in on the satellite photography. "It’s an abandoned deep-sea oil drilling rig designated Platform Tartarus."

"Platform Tartarus," Fin murmured, studying the massive steel caissons anchored in the churning black water. "This isn’t a chemical processing refinery like District Seven."

"No," Maya agreed grimly. "The blueprints show an offshore staging facility with subterranean holding tanks built into the caisson legs."

"Why put a holding facility forty miles out at sea?" Ruby asked.

"Jurisdiction," a hoarse, raspy voice croaked from across the room.

Fin turned to look at the captive commander, who was staring at them with a bitter, hollow smirk.

"Keep talking," Fin said, walking over to the radiator.

"You district mutts think you’re clever because you ambushed my squad in an alley," the commander spat, rattling his handcuffs against the iron pipe. "Platform Tartarus is outside municipal waters. The Hunter League has zero legal authority there. Municipal police can’t touch it. Even the military needs an executive maritime warrant to cross the thirty-mile limit."

"And who gave Genesis permission to build it?" Ruby demanded.

"Deputy Commissioner Malan," the commander laughed weakly. "And three councilmen who get wired fifty thousand credits every month through offshore accounts. You’re fighting the people who write the laws, kid."

"What’s on that platform right now?" Fin asked, his voice dead and cold.

"Look at the manifest yourself," the commander sneered, nodding toward Maya’s screen.

Maya scrolled down the decrypted file, her fingers suddenly freezing on the trackpad.

"Fin..." Maya whispered, her face draining of color.

"What is it, Maya?" Ruby asked, stepping to the desk.

"The active holding bay manifest," Maya said, her voice trembling with quiet horror. "One hundred and forty-two children."

Ruby went completely motionless, her knuckles turning white where they gripped the edge of the counter.

"One hundred and forty-two...?" Ruby breathed.

"Ages six to fourteen," Maya read from the ledger. "All unranked orphans or children from unlicensed refugee families across Districts Three, Four, and Seven."

"When does their transport ship arrive?" Fin demanded, his eyes narrowing.

"Thirty-six hours," Maya reported. "A container freighter flying an offshore corporate flag is scheduled to dock tomorrow at midnight to haul the whole batch overseas."

’Thirty-six hours... if that ship loads those children, they disappear into international laboratories forever.’

Fin walked back to the radiator, standing over the captive commander with an unyielding stare.

"Tell me about the platform defenses," Fin commanded.

"Why should I?" the commander sneered. "My career is over anyway."

"Your career is over," Fin agreed in a flat tone. "Your life doesn’t have to be. Tell me the defense layout, or I leave you in this room when the Iron Dogs arrive to clean up."

The commander swallowed hard, the arrogance evaporating from his eyes as he looked at the cold edge of Fin’s hatchet.

"The upper flight deck..." the commander began reluctantly. "It’s patrolled by sixteen automated combat constructs. Heavy tracked units with twin rotary twenty-millimeter machine guns."

"Automated?" Ruby asked. "Zero human crew on the deck?"

"Just the constructs," the commander nodded. "They’re linked to a perimeter radar tower that tracks surface targets out to five miles. Anything without a corporate transponder gets shredded by radar-guided artillery before it gets within boarding range."

"What about below deck?" Fin pressed. "Between the helipad and the holding cells?"

The commander’s hands visibly began to tremble against the radiator pipe, genuine terror breaking through his rough facade.

"The Chairman’s Hound," the man whispered in a hoarse croak.

"What is that?" Maya asked from the computer.

"An imported D-plus prototype chimera," the commander said, his voice dropping to a terrified murmur. "Engineered with corrupted beast cores and hydraulic bone grafts. It guards the main elevator shaft leading down into the caisson bays."

"A quadruped prototype," Maya noted, pulling up a classified corporate blueprint from the seized drives. "It has defective grafting that limits its operational stamina, but its initial kinetic burst can tear through four-inch armored steel."

"Defective grafts mean its joints will overheat after sustained exertion," Fin observed, memorizing the schematic.

The basement hatch opened with a clean click, admitting Nila and Sefu into the dining room alongside the fresh smell of salty sea breeze and harbor diesel.

"Harbormaster clearance secured, captain," Nila reported, snapping a crisp academy salute.

"Talla helped you?" Ruby asked.

"Talla stamped our C-rank raid charter with emergency maritime pursuit authority," Nila explained. "It gives us the legal right to seize commercial vessels for search and rescue operations."

"What did you charter, Sefu?" Fin asked, turning to the elder.

"I found the right boats, Fin," Sefu smiled with weathered pride. "At pier seventeen, there’s a licensed private security gunboat named Vanguard Four. Twin diesel turbines, low-profile radar absorption hull, and twin twenty-millimeter autocannons on the bow."

"And for the children?" Maya asked.

"Two decommissioned municipal passenger ferries," Sefu said. "Each ferry has eighty medical bunks and a fully staffed paramedic crew from the dockworkers’ union."

"Total cost?" Fin asked.

"Eighty-five thousand credits for fuel, charters, and hazard pay for the crews," Sefu reported.

"Pay them immediately, Maya," Fin instructed.

"Disbursing eighty-five thousand credits now," Maya confirmed, tapping her screen. "Our liquid balance is now at five hundred and one thousand credits. We still have over half a million in operating reserves."

Fin walked to the bottom of the basement stairs, where Jolly was standing on the bottom step holding an inventory clipboard.

"You’re going out to sea tonight, aren’t you, Fin?" Jolly asked quietly, looking at him with serious, steady eyes.

"We have to, Jolly," Fin said, taking a step closer. "There are one hundred and forty-two children locked in cages on an oil rig."

"I know," Jolly said, looking down at her clipboard. "I heard Maya read the manifest."

"You’re staying here in the reinforced shelter with Sefu," Fin told her gently. "The Iron Dogs will hold this building until we return."

"Promise me something first," Jolly said, looking up with fierce, stubborn determination.

"Anything," Fin said.

"Promise me you’ll bring every single one of those children back to the pier alive," Jolly said, her voice catching slightly before firming up. "Every single one."

Fin reached out, resting his calloused palm against the side of her face.

"I promise you, Jolly," Fin said in a quiet, solemn tone. "Every child on that manifest walks off those transport ferries tomorrow morning."

"Good," Jolly nodded, handing him a sealed wax packet from her apron pocket. "I packed forty dried persimmon cakes into Vanguard Four’s forward galley for the trip. Don’t let Ruby eat them all before the fight."

"I heard that, Jolly!" Ruby called out from the table with a grin.

"I meant for you to hear it!" Jolly called back, a rare, faint smile touching her lips.

Sefu stepped over, placing his heavy hand on Fin’s shoulder.

"The tide turns at midnight, Fin," Sefu said. "A heavy sea fog is rolling in from the south. It will cover your approach right up to their caisson legs."

"We leave the pier at eleven-thirty," Fin announced, looking around at Ruby, Maya, and Nila.

"Maya, can you blind their radar?" Ruby asked.

"I have the commander’s encryption token," Maya smiled coldly. "I can inject a false feedback loop into their radar array that blinds their fire-control guns for three minutes."

"Three minutes is all we need," Fin said, checking the balance of his steel hatchet.

"Nila covers the boarding lines," Fin ordered. "Ruby anchors the central gantry with her shield. I clear the flight deck."

"And the Chairman’s Hound?" Nila asked, touching the hilt of her rapier.

"We find it in the dark," Fin replied. "And we put it down."

Fin looked out through the rain-streaked windows toward the southern ocean where the storm was brewing.

Forty miles away across the black water, Platform Tartarus was waiting.

Tonight, Halden House would show Genesis that no ocean was wide enough to hide their crimes.