Allegiance

PROLOGUE

Michael “Tin” Everhart stood behind the red line on the deck of the launch bay as he armored up for his sixty-fourth jump. He had officially passed the threshold that earned him a spot as one of the most successful Hell Divers in history, and he was the youngest ever to reach the milestone.

It had cost him—and more than just an arm. He had watched friends and his own father lose their lives in the deadly task of jumping into the wastes. Not many veteran divers remained, but back at their new home, renamed the Vanguard Islands, a new generation had stepped up to meet the challenge. Between missions to find human survivors in the wastes, Michael was helping train them.

But today was not a training day in the sunny skies of the islands. Today, Team Raptor was diving back into the postapocalyptic hell world beyond the barriers.

Joining Michael in the launch bay were veteran divers Magnolia Katib and Trey Mitchells, along with a half-dozen support specialists. The divers watched the maelstrom of swirling black clouds outside while the technicians finished their diagnostic tests.

Alfred, the new lead tech who had replaced Ty, worked on Michael’s wrist computer. The middle-aged engineer was a former computer technician on the Hive, with a wife and a newborn at home.

Michael thought of Layla, now pregnant with their son, Bray. In a few months, he would join their little family.

“Looks good,” Alfred said. “Dive safely, Commander.”

“Always,” Michael said.

The technicians retreated as they finished their checks. Michael tabbed his wrist monitor, bringing the new drone online. A flurry of chirping came from across the room, where the robot was secured to the bulkhead.

Michael unlocked the safety bars, and the drone hovered over.

“Hey, there, Cricket,” Michael said. “How you feeling, buddy?”

The former ITC utility robot chirped again. Alfred, the only technician left in the launch bay, walked over and confirmed that all systems were operational.

“Be careful with him out there,” he said. “The new software might be a bit buggy.”

Michael smiled at his new creation. The three-foot-tall robot flew across the space, its advanced hover nodes glowing red. Team Raptor had discovered the machine in a junk pile at an ITC facility four dives ago, and Michael and Trey had spent many days putting it back together.

Only three of the four arms attached to the base were functioning, but they would come in handy on the dive—from opening doors to hacking systems, to providing medical support. Michael had even managed to install a blowtorch on one mechanical hand, and a blaster on another. The smooth outer armor sported a freshly painted Raptor logo.

The drone didn’t have the only fresh paint. On the port side of the launch bay, “Discovery” had been stenciled in glossy black.

Formerly the ITC Deliverance, the nuclear-powered airship had been completely gutted and rebuilt after a punishing battle with the Cazadores months earlier. This was her first journey back to the wastes, but it was Michael’s twentieth dive since the fight that had cost the lives of so many.

Since then, the Hive had carried Team Raptor to locations to search for survivors, but so far, the only thing the divers had found, other than some much-needed fuel cells, was Cricket. Michael wasn’t giving up hope on finding humans, though. If the Cazadores had found inhabited bunkers, then so could his divers.

The airship continued to transmit a message of hope over the radio waves: “If you’re listening, don’t be afraid. We are the last humans, and we are in the skies, looking for you. If you’re out there, respond to this message. We will never stop diving for humanity.”

Until a few days ago, they had heard nothing. It wasn’t until they transferred from the Hive to the repaired and refitted Discovery that they had detected a signal, coming from an island called Jamaica. It wasn’t a message or even an SOS—just garbled noises in response to their own transmission.

According to Cazador records, their navy had never raided the location, which meant there could be survivors. But it was also dangerously close to Red Sphere—not even two hundred miles from where they had dropped the nuke on the facility.

The techs closed the launch bay’s hatch to the hallway. As soon as it was sealed, a message came over the public address system from the airship’s new captain, Les Mitchells.

“Green light to dive, Team Raptor,” he said in a voice tinged with worry. “Good luck, and stay sharp.”

Trey Mitchells seemed confident as ever. On the past few dives, he had taken some unnecessary risks to prove himself, which was probably why his dad sounded concerned.

“Keep tight once we land,” Michael said. “There’s nobody to impress down there, and anyway, the most impressive thing you can do is stay alive.”

“I know,” Trey said. “Don’t worry, Commander.”

Michael nodded and hit a button. The launch-bay doors opened to a dark sky. The platform extended away from the ship as the divers walked out into the wind.

He didn’t waste a second studying the drop zone—just gave a nod to Magnolia. This time, she could yell the motto, but he was still the first to step off the extended platform, into the clouds.

For a moment, he felt the sensation of pure weightlessness, like a feather caught in a gale. The forces of wind and gravity seemed caught in a struggle over his body.

A glance over his shoulder confirmed that the other two divers had followed him out of the belly of the airship. Cricket, still hovering in the launch bay, would wait a few moments before joining them in the darkness.

Michael studied the cloud cover and surrendered to the pull of forces on his suit. Anxious to get a view of the ground, he stretched his arms and legs out into a hard arch, then broke into a stable free-fall position.

Could this really be the location of more survivors—a place where people had managed to scratch out a living from the toxic earth over the past two and a half centuries?

A wind shear slammed him, and the sky went topsy-turvy.

At the first dazzling flash of lightning, habit took over, and he straightened his legs and drew his arms in against his body, pulling himself into a nosedive. The electrical storm appeared to be a safe distance away, but he wasn’t taking any chances in this turbulence.

Wind whistled over his armor as he broke through the mattress of cold air pushing up on him. Two beacons blinked on the translucent subscreen of his heads-up display, or HUD.

Magnolia and Trey were still above him but closing fast. After Michael, Mags was the most experienced diver in the world, but Trey was learning fast.

Over the past few months, the two young men had bonded, becoming closer than ever, and after protesting long and loud, the captain had at last agreed to let his son dive on this risky mission.

Watching Les say goodbye to Trey before the dive had reminded Michael of how he used to feel when his father dived over a decade ago.

But this would be different. Trey was coming back to his family. And Michael was glad to have him along for the dive. Cricket was also an excellent addition to the roster, bringing an entirely new element to the team. Still in his nosedive, Michael looked up beyond his feet to the red nodes of the robot plummeting through the clouds.

Magnolia had also maneuvered into a “suicide dive,” as they called it, and was coming up fast. A moment later, she was rocketing down beside Michael, the glow of her battery unit illuminating her slender but muscular form. She glanced over, and though he couldn’t see her face behind the mirrored visor, he knew she was grinning.

“This isn’t a race,” he said over the comms.

“Nope, but I’m going to beat you to the ground anyway.” She moved her helmet downward and continued past him, blasting through a cloud that enveloped her in darkness.

At ten thousand feet, going this speed, they were only a minute from the ground. Soon, he would be able to see the surface and their target—a former prison, according to the database on Discovery.

Michael remembered, as a kid, reading about the search for alien life on other planets. Now he had an inkling of what scientists must have felt back then when looking for evidence of life in the distant stars.

In a way, the divers had found modern aliens in the mutant creatures on the surface, which would have fascinated scientists from the past. But who would have thought that finding humans would be a far greater challenge?

At eight thousand feet, Michael checked over his shoulder again. Trey had angled into a nosedive as well, his lanky form spearing through the darkness. To the west, a flash lit up the belly of a storm cloud.

With the electrical storm moving in, Team Raptor would have to work fast. It was one of two reasons they had dived rather than risk taking Discovery down to the surface. The second reason was simple: Michael didn’t want anyone to know they were coming, and three divers were harder to detect than an airship.

And Hell Divers were also easier to replace.

At six thousand feet, a web of lightning forked across his dive zone. He stared at the shifting clouds, trying to determine the best route through the hidden storm. With almost zero time to react, he cut left and was greeted by another wind shear that sent him spinning.

He fought to bring the heavy robotic limb back to his side, and finally managed to center his mass into a stable nosedive. At five thousand feet, he checked the digital map on his HUD and saw they were off target for the drop zone.

He adjusted his trajectory, cutting through the sky diagonally, working his way back toward the area indicated on his minimap. The altimeter was quickly ticking down to four thousand feet.

The clouds seemed to lighten as he closed in on three thousand feet. He was now slicing through the clouds at over 160 miles per hour. A few beats later, he got his first glimpse of the surface, which looked like a desert of black dunes.

Using his chin, he bumped on his night-vision goggles. After a few blinks, his eyes adjusted to the green hue, and he realized that the surface wasn’t a desert at all, but rather the ocean.

The divers sailed toward the landmass once known as Jamaica. Ja-may-ka, he thought, trying to picture what this place had once looked like.

Blue light came up on his left as Trey joined him. Magnolia moved in on his right flank.

At two thousand feet, the divers maneuvered from their nosedive into stable position with their backs to the sky, knees and elbows bent at ninety degrees. Trey nodded several times at the shoreline as they prepared to sail over.

Michael peered down, trying to see what had caught his attention. He didn’t see anything at first but finally spotted several large craft that looked like beached whales—ships anchored in a bay.

No way those have been there since the war.

The shoreline vanished as the divers sailed over charred and blasted terrain. There wasn’t much to look at in the final seconds of the dive—just another dead, colorless landscape that dampened any hope of finding people here.

At twelve hundred feet, Michael reached down to his thigh and pulled his pilot chute, holding it out for a second before releasing it to haul out the main canopy. The other divers did the same, their suspension lines coming taut, giving them the sensation of being yanked back up into the sky.

He grabbed his toggles, careful not to squeeze too hard with the robotic hand. He steered toward fields of black that really did seem like a desert now that the divers were farther inland.

The black landscape undulated with mounds and humps as far as he could see. For the first few seconds under canopy, he didn’t see anything in the desolate landscape. Flitting his gaze from the ground to his HUD, he finally identified their target.

The concrete prison complex was tucked away in the bleak terrain of seemingly endless bare dirt, and he picked it out only by matching up his view with the target on his HUD. Then he saw the radiation levels that Cricket was already reporting from the ground.

Michael swallowed hard at the readings. The sensors on Discovery had placed the area somewhere between green and yellow, but as he sailed toward the drop zone, he saw that the rad levels were closer to yellow, which lowered the prospects of finding anyone alive.

And it was likely his fault. The nuke they dropped on Red Sphere had caused the increase in radiation levels, perhaps dooming any humans who had managed to survive under the ground all these years.

Michael focused back on the digital map. There was no sign of the road marked on the translucent subscreen of his HUD, and the only buildings aside from their target were eroded down to the foundations.

Another bad sign was the rusted girders of larger buildings on the horizon—more evidence that a nuclear blast had torn through this area, killing everything in its path.

Michael wondered whether this signal, dubious from the outset, would prove to be a waste of time. But it was too late to turn around now, with the ground rising up to meet his boots. Magnolia and Trey were right alongside him, nose to the slight sea breeze. When they were about to hit the square of dirt, they pulled on the toggles to slow their descent.

Michael performed a two-stage flare. Dust puffed up under his feet on impact with the solid ground. He ran out the momentum and came to a stop. They were about a mile from their target.

Cricket flew over, red hover nodes whirling. At some point, Michael had to get the thrusters on the back working so it could fly faster.

The divers quickly stowed their gear and their chutes, which they would reuse on the next dive. Once they were packed away safely, Michael pulled out his laser rifle and scanned the landscape for any sign of hostile life. Nothing came back on infrared besides insects and what was perhaps a rat. The small animal ducked into a hole.

“Place looks pretty barren,” Magnolia said, checking the battery of her laser weapon. Trey palmed a magazine into his assault rifle. With their weapons ready, they covered their battery units with leather flaps—a design of Rodger Mintel’s that helped lessen the glow and avoid detection by Sirens.

Michael thought of his friend back at the Vanguard Islands. Rodger’s diving days were on hold due to injuries he had received from the Cazadores, but X had put him to work on other vital projects.

“Let’s go,” Michael said.

Cricket took point, and the three divers moved out, fast and low. There was nothing out here, not even the barbed plants or glowing trees that had spread across much of the terrain in other locations.

Michael flashed hand signals directing the team toward a hill. Then he used his wrist computer to give Cricket orders. The robot hovered up the rocky slope to do a scan.

It came back clear, and Michael motioned for the divers to follow him to the top. They crouched, and he raised binoculars to his visor.

The prison’s exterior walls were still in fairly good shape. Above them rose multiple guard towers, their glass windows broken out and the paint long since stripped off. Only one section of barbed-wire fencing remained on the perimeter; the rest lay in tangled heaps on the ground.

Michael considered radioing Discovery to see if its AI, Timothy Pepper, had detected any exhaust plumes from the defectors. But he quickly decided it was too great a risk, and the airship was likely too high to pick up anything on the surface.

“Radio silence, everyone,” he said.

If there were hostiles down here, Michael didn’t want to give them a heads-up that Team Raptor had landed. The three divers and their drone were on their own now, without aerial support from Discovery.

He gave the signal to advance, and the team moved down the other side of the hill, weapons shouldered and pointed at the prison. Cricket kept behind them, moving apace and scanning for signs of life.

The three divers fanned out into combat intervals as they closed the gap between the hill and the former prison’s outer concrete walls.

Michael felt the terrain change underfoot and stopped to brush dirt off the cracked asphalt of a road. It led to the front of the compound and a closed steel door covered in rust and pocked with bullet holes.

He checked the digital map on his HUD and this time managed to match it with another road coming from the east—the same direction as the ocean.

Michael gave more hand signals.

The team continued to the outer wall of the prison while he went to check this second road. His gut told him the best evidence of life would be any tracks he might find.

So far, he didn’t see any footprints, hoofprints, or vehicle tracks. Nothing to indicate that anything bigger than a bug lived in this toxic wasteland. Cricket wasn’t coming back with anything conclusive, either.

Magnolia and Trey took up position against the wall. He gave a nod to their mirrored visors before running out into the open with Cricket hovering after him.

Keeping low, he didn’t stop until he got to the intersection. A crooked pole jutted up beside the road, two and a half centuries after the nuclear blast that should have blown it down. The directional sign, however, was long since reduced to flakes of rust.

Michael checked the ground and quickly found something that could be recent. Bending down, he studied the dirt and dust that had covered what looked like tire tracks.

He looked east, back toward the bay where they had flown in over the ships. The vessels could have belonged to Cazador pirates under el Pulpo’s command, but there was no record of their coming here—which was part of the reason he had decided to check it out. More likely, the tracks and the ships had been left by someone else.

But they could not possibly have been here when the bombs fell.

A chill ran through him when a whistle of the wind sounded eerily like a Siren’s wail. The noise passed, and again the landscape fell into silence.

He scanned the road for heat signatures and found nothing but small creatures that lived in the toxic dirt. Lightning forked over the western horizon. He faced south, where explosions of light inside a towering mass of cumulus looked like bombs going off. The storm was moving toward their position.

He hurried back to the wall, where Trey waited.

“Where’s Mags?” Michael whispered.

Trey started moving along the side of the wall to the next corner. Around the edge, Magnolia stood behind a hunk of broken wall, looking inside the former prison yard. She was frozen like a statue.

“I’ve got a reading,” she said without turning.

Michael considered sending Cricket in but decided to keep the robot back for now. He brought up his rifle and took a position on the left side of the wall. Then he glanced inside the rectangular prison compound.

A guard tower rose in the middle of the facility, its empty window frames overlooking concrete courts covered with the dirt and dust of centuries. Several basketball hoops remained, but where there had once been nets, Michael spotted something that looked almost like flags.

Movement at the base of the poles flickered across his night vision, but he couldn’t make it out. He switched to infrared to see dozens… no, hundreds of small creatures on the courts.

“What are we looking at?” Trey asked, moving next to Michael.

“Rats,” Magnolia replied.

“But what are they doing?”

Michael brought his scope back up to his visor but still couldn’t see much.

“Hold here,” he said. “I’ll check this out.”

Michael moved through the opening in the wall, careful not to snag his suit on a curl of rebar sticking out of the broken concrete.

Keeping low, he ran toward the guard tower, not stopping until he got there. He inched around the corner for a better view of the courts. The sound of thousands of clicking teeth grew louder as he closed in.

For a moment, he felt the sensation of something watching him, and he froze, scanning the buildings in the rectangular compound. The few windows and doors were broken and leading into darkness, where eyes could watch his team from the shadows.

Michael spotted a promising entrance that might lead to the guts of the prison, and the source of the signal. He looked back to the hole in the wall, where Trey and Magnolia were still waiting.

His hands told the story without a word spoken. Then he took off running, past the concrete fields, not slowing his pace even when he saw what the rats were feasting on.

Heart pounding, Michael took cover inside an open door, trying to keep from panting. But that was nearly impossible, and he found himself sucking in air.

When he looked back out the door, he saw skeletal remains of several humans in the courtyard. The rats meant they had to be recent kills.

He tried to slow his heartbeat. You’ve got this, Tin. He had told himself the same thing when he got scared as a kid.

He turned down the hallway to peer into the inky darkness. Switching from infrared to night vision, he made out the old passage. Ceiling panels hung loose, and sections of tile floor had sheared off.

But what the hell was the cylinder on the floor?

He brought the scope up to his visor and zoomed in on what looked an awful lot like a cryo chamber. Several were scattered in the hallway, with skirts of glass surrounding the vats.

There was no use going inside or sending Cricket in. Someone, or something, had beat Team Raptor here.

But that still didn’t make any sense. If these chambers were holding survivors for 250 years, it was one hell of a coincidence their being raided within days of the team’s arrival. More puzzling still, what on earth were cryo chambers doing in a prison?

Michael pushed aside the questions and moved back out into the yard. He ran past the rats, not looking at the remains they were feeding on. This time, a new sound replaced the din of nails and teeth—a screech reminiscent of baby Sirens.

Before he could react, a wave of black swooped away from the broken windows of the guard tower and slammed into him. A pair of wings wrapped around his visor, and he peered out at the deformed eyes of a bat the size of his head.

He flailed his arms, screaming as the creatures covered his body like an adhesive that he couldn’t get off.

“Hold on, and don’t move!” Magnolia yelled.

Michael froze, knowing just what she was about to do. He felt the pressure lighten on his natural arm as she used one of her two crescent blades to cut through the flesh of several bats.

The hissing made him flinch.

“Don’t move!” she shouted again.

Cricket hovered over their heads, using a blowtorch to burn the bats off Michael’s armor.

The screeching rose into a strident cacophony around him as she went to work with her blades, hacking the beasts from the air and off his body.

“Run!” she yelled.

Michael didn’t miss a beat. As soon as he had his bearings, he took off for the wall, where Trey opened fire. Rounds cut the air.

“Hold your fire!” Michael shouted.

But Trey kept shooting burst after burst.

Michael glanced over his shoulder at the same entrance he had hidden inside earlier. Orange eyes glowed from the open doorway, and a figure covered in bones and hide stepped outside.

“Get down!” Magnolia shouted.

Michael hit the dirt as a flurry of bolts singed the air.

Cricket chirped and moved for cover as bullets and laser bolts lanced through the air all around it.

Over the crack of gunfire came the shrieks of the bats and rats. Even the rodents were abandoning their meal to escape the killer machines. Not one but three defectors emerged from the interior of the prison, the skins of their recent kills still dripping blood.

“Run!” Michael shouted.

A flurry of laser bolts shot outward. Magnolia helped Michael up, firing her rifle at the same time. He turned and got off several bolts. Return fire hit Cricket, blowing off a mechanical arm at the joint.

Michael tapped his wrist monitor, ordering the drone to retreat as he ran for the exit. Trey had already escaped behind the wall, providing an opening that Magnolia leaped through.

Bolts pounded the concrete as Michael followed. Some broke through, streaking into the ground. He hit the dirt and Cricket sailed overhead, another arm hanging loosely from its socket.

Getting to his knees, Michael turned over to see Trey lying prone.

“Get up!” he shouted. “We’ve got to get into the sky!”

Michael grabbed the young diver and pulled. Trey rolled over, revealing a simmering hole in the center of his visor and his crushed booster pack, hissing out pressurized helium.

“No…” Michael choked. He pulled on Trey again. “Get up!”

The limp body didn’t respond to his screams.

Michael stared for a moment, barely able to move. Trey wasn’t getting up now or ever. Nothing they could do would change that.

A hand grabbed Michael and yanked him down as more bolts sizzled through the concrete wall, streaking away into the desert.

“He’s gone!” Magnolia shouted. “We have to move!”

She pulled an EMP grenade from her vest and lobbed it over the wall. Grabbing Michael, she leaned her face shield against his until they clacked together.

“We have to get in the air as soon as those machines are down,” she yelled. “You got that, Commander?”

He fought free of her grip, bending back down to Trey. They couldn’t leave him for the machines to parade around wearing his bones and skin.

“No, we take him with us!”

Cricket hovered over Trey and tried to lift the body with his remaining arm, but the weight just snapped it out of socket. Then the robot crashed to the ground, red hover nodes suddenly winking off. It took Michael a moment for the realization to set in.

The EMP grenade had fried the damn systems.

Before Michael could react, Magnolia punched the booster in his pack, and the balloon exploded out of the canister, filling with helium and hauling him skyward.

“no-o-o!” Michael wailed, reaching down.

He kicked his feet to no avail, looking down at Trey’s limp body and the machines that had killed him. They jerked in the prison yard and then lay still, their systems fried just like Cricket’s.

Magnolia bent down beside the drone and punched the booster they had mounted to it. The balloon pulled the limp machine into the sky, and she followed right behind.

Clenching his jaw, Michael held back tears as he was pulled higher. Their maiden dive from Discovery had dropped Team Raptor into a trap, right into the hands of the defectors.

But the machines didn’t have a ship to escape on, and as soon as Michael got back to Discovery, he would urge Les to drop a bomb directly on the prison. It would mean obliterating his son’s body, but it had to be done. They couldn’t risk leaving the machines behind to repair one another and return to their mission of exterminating humanity.