Chapter 6 - The Fire Ax Override-6
"This is an illegal data-wipe cascade!" Martin Pierce shrieked, his finger tightening around the short-barreled compact automatic carbine he had quietly extracted from beneath the administrative desk console, leveling the barrel straight at Dominic’s chest before the plaster dust could even clear from the doorway frame. "The Nicosia wire hits one hundred percent in exactly ninety seconds, Sterling! If you shoot me tonight, the central server core will execute an immediate thermal runaway script, vaporizing every digital footprint of your family trust before the courts can even assign a defense attorney to my file!"
I didn't try to tackle him, and I didn't order the tactical operators to fire. I reached into my leather briefcase, pulled out a heavy steel demolition crowbar, and hurled the iron bar straight into the center of the massive, high-voltage electrical transformer box mounted on the concrete pylon directly adjacent to the server racks.
CRASH-BOOM.
The heavy iron bar smashed through the protective fiberglass shielding, short-circuiting the main three-phase industrial power line running into the warehouse grid. A blinding, blue-white explosion of electrical arc fire erupted from the column, hissing violently as the pouring rain leaking through the corrugated roof vents flooded the exposed circuits, showering the concrete floorboards in a rain of white plaster dust and sparks.
The automatic carbine fired a wild, uncontrolled three-round burst into the concrete ceiling panels as Martin Pierce was thrown backward by the sheer concussive force of the electrical blast, his weapon flying from his hands and spinning off into the dark waters of the shipping canal drainage trench below.
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The entire warehouse was plunged into a sudden, pitch-black twilight, the high-density server mainframes grinding to a dead halt as the main circuit breakers tripped, leaving nothing but the vibrant neon-green countdown timer on my personal mobile device flashing down toward zero in the dark.
"The server core is locked down, Agent Harris!" the lead cyber specialist bellowed through the darkness, his tactical flashlight painting a bright white beam through the smoke as his portable diagnostic terminal bypassed the remaining blocks. "The deletion cascade was permanently interrupted before it could touch the primary recovery files! We have the original digital signature tokens completely intact. The eight-five million dollars in corporate reserves has been safely secured in a federal holding account registered to the Noah Romano-Sterling Trust."
