The international waters twenty miles off the coast of Montauk Point were a chaotic, freezing abyss of black waves and driving sleet. Under a starless, leaden winter sky, the open ocean carried no human illumination, completely scrubbed from commercial maritime tracking networks by the quantum filters of the Orion Directorate. But tonight, the rhythmic, deafening crashing of the Atlantic currents was sliced open by the deep, heavy thrum of three high-tech, military-grade private security cutters.
These were the vanguard vessels of the Aegis Vanguard, the elite private mercenary fleet mobilized by the central bankers of The Iron Syndicate. Clad in non-reflective, matte-black radar-absorbent hull plating and equipped with independent closed-circuit navigation mainframes, the ships moved in
