Allegiance

EIGHTEEN

When the radio popped, X had dozed off. He nearly fell out of his chair reaching for the comms equipment.

A weak voice vied with the static crackling that filled the capitol tower’s command center. Miles looked up from the deck, then quickly lost interest. Resting his head between his forepaws, he closed his eyes and let out a sigh.

“No, no, no,” X muttered. He hadn’t heard from Les or anyone else on the airship for almost two days and was starting to worry that something had happened.

Of course something happened.

“Captain Mitchells, do you copy? This is Xavier.”

X waited for a response, lowering his head as if in prayer, but that just made him feel more tired. He glanced at the wall-mounted clock. It was well past midnight.

He rubbed his eyes and slapped his cheeks. For the past two days, he had slept only a couple of hours at a time, just as he had during those years back in the wastes. But instead of fighting for survival, he was fighting a more internal battle.

Mallory had hit a nerve the night of the funeral for her husband and son. Her assessment of his leadership had him wondering about his ability to protect his people. He certainly hadn’t saved Rhett or DJ.

Since then, he was second-guessing all his decisions, from letting the Cazadores keep their army and navy to sending his people and the only airship back into the killing wastes. Hell, he was even starting to wonder whether decommissioning the Hive had been the right call. What if someday they needed to escape this place?

He tried the radio again. “Captain Mitchells, this is X, do you copy? Over.”

More static filled the room.

X stood up, stretching his tired muscles. What he needed was a long swim.

No, you need sleep.

Candlelight flickered over the command center, just two floors below the Sky Arena. It wasn’t a big space—just a few tables, two desks and chairs, and the bank of radio equipment—but it served as his war room.

A flat-screen computer sat on one of the tables, and rolled-up maps covered the other. Stacked on a desk were several books that Imulah had found documenting Cazador missions. X picked up the record of General Santiago’s mission to find the skinwalkers—the mission that had turned up Gael. He thumbed to the page with the sketches: a beach, an old lighthouse, and what looked like an ancient fortress—nothing he hadn’t seen before in the wastes.

But the bizarre scarecrow-like human remains that Horn and his crew had assembled were unlike anything X had encountered during his decade in hell. The barbaric nature of the kills was beyond even what Sirens did. Sirens killed without regard for their victims’ suffering. But skinwalkers went out of their way to prolong and intensify the suffering.

And it was eerily similar to the defectors’ ghoulish handiwork. Why?

It didn’t matter, really. All that mattered was being ready to stop them if prisoner Gael was right.

The radio crackled again. “This is Captain Mitchells. Does anyone copy?”

“Giraffe!” X shouted. “This is X! What’s your status?”

“Sir, we’ve got a major problem out here.”

“What happened now?”

“Whales happened, sir. A group of them attacked Star Grazer…” Les paused long enough for X to deduce that the ship was now at the bottom of the sea.

“She’s gone,” Les confirmed.

X stared at the handset. Two Cazador warships gone in the same week.

“Survivors?” X asked after the pause.

“We rescued about a third of the Cazador crew and the Sea Wolf, but the vehicles and all the fuel are gone, sir.”

“How about our people?” X asked.

“All present and accounted for.”

“Good, and General Santiago?”

“Alive,” Les said. “We’ve been trying to get ahold of you for days now. Should we come home, or proceed? Now that we’re no longer caravanning with a slow-moving warship, if we continue at max speed, we can reach the target in only a few hours.”

Just a few hours. His team was tantalizingly close to the target, to finding out whether there were indeed survivors out there. Or defectors…

“Sir, the skinwalkers—they could be sailing Raven’s Claw to the islands,” Les said. “Don’t underestimate them, sir. What we saw was pretty horrific.”

“I know, and I won’t,” X replied. “I’ve got our defenses squared away, I think.”

“I can turn us around and be back in a day, sir.”

An airship would certainly help mitigate the emerging skinwalker threat to the Vanguard Islands, especially now that they had lost Star Grazer. But Discovery was practically within pissing distance of its objective. X didn’t want to scrub the entire mission without first doing some aerial scans to see what they were dealing with. And, of course, the defectors could be there, hunting down the survivors.

He couldn’t abandon them now.

Static crackled from the speakers.

“Check out the signal,” X said. “Find those survivors, and if defectors are there, destroy them. Then get your asses back here.”

“Yes sir,” Les said. “And, Xavier?”

“Yeah?”

“Look after my family. They’re all I have left.”

“I’ll make sure nothing happens to them,” X promised. “You have my word, Captain.”

The door opened just as the line severed, and X got up to greet Lieutenant Sloan.

“Was that Discovery?” she asked.

X gave her the gist of the call.

“Damn,” Sloan said.

X was sick of questioning his decisions, and he was even sicker of doing nothing. He scooped a handheld radio off a charger and handed it to Sloan.

“Deploy a team of soldiers to the Hive,” he said. “I want two machine-gun emplacements on the roof, and one of our turret-mounted thirty-millimeter cannons.”

“Protecting it from what kind of attack, sir?”

“From Raven’s Claw,” X said. “I want this by sunset.” He looked at the clock. “You’ve got eighteen hours, Lieutenant. Can you make that work?”

“I’m not the one that’s always late,” she said, cracking a rare smile.

“Yeah, yeah,” X said.

Miles got up and followed him out of the command center. He went left down the hall. Around the next corner a militia guard stood outside a door.

X went inside the former brig that his people had retrofitted into an armory. Their weapons were neatly stacked on shelves on the other side of the barred barrier splitting the quarters in half.

Behind the bars, a man named Dusty sat at a desk. He stood, shook his long gray hair back, and gave X a mostly black smile.

“You must be here for your new gun,” he said.

Dusty walked back into the armory, past a shelf of militia armor and helmets. Stopping at the rifles, he bent down and picked up a modified AK-47-shotgun combo.

“Just sign here, sir,” Dusty said, handing a clipboard through the window.

They had implemented the same rules governing weapons as on the airships: every firearm accounted for at the end of each day.

Dusty grinned as he walked over to the barred door. Unlocking it he proudly handed X the gun.

“Would love to see how it fires in person.”

X took the rifle. It was lighter than he had expected. He raised it toward the ceiling, looking through the scope. Then he lowered it and put the strap over his shoulder.

“And the ammo?” X said.

Dusty threw his arms up. “Well, shit, can’t forget that.”

He returned a moment later with a bag of 7.62 mm magazines and double-aught shotgun shells. Miles sniffed the bag, then sat back on his haunches when he realized there was no food.

“All freshly made at the Shark’s Cage,” Dusty said. “Won’t have any jams with those bullets or shells. Those Cazadores know what they’re doing.”

“Thank you, sir,” X said. He left the room with his new weapon slung over his shoulder. Miles followed him to their next stop, three floors down.

The hatch opened to a crisp night, the moon hanging high in the sky. X walked onto the platform where he had once surrendered to el Pulpo and his forces after a brutal fight.

He moved through the gardens, past the pool, toward the balcony overlooking the marina below. The burly figure of a soldier stood near the railing. X had a feeling this was where he would find the general.

Rhino was scanning the water for threats. He spun about when X stepped on a dry leaf. The blade of the spear flashed through the air and stopped just shy of his neck.

“Easy, there,” X said, stepping back.

Rhino lowered the blade.

“I’m sorry. I did not know—”

“Forget it,” X said.

He walked over to the balcony and took a moment to breathe in the salt air and admire the splendid view of white clouds scudding over gleaming water. Then he got down to business.

“General, I’ve ordered Lieutenant Sloan to prepare the Hive for battle,” X said. “I’ve already got this tower fortified the best I can, but there is still something we need more of.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Soldiers.”

“Working on it, sir,” Rhino said.

X unslung his new rifle. “We’ve got another problem,” he said. “Star Grazer is at the bottom of the ocean.”

Rhino leaned forward, his jaw hanging open. “What?”

“Sunk by whales, apparently,” X said. “General Santiago is still alive, but the Cazador armada is hurting.”

“Buckets of shit!” Rhino muttered.

“That also leaves us with the same problem of dwindling oil reserves,” X said.

“I know.”

“I’m authorizing Mercury to escort a tanker to the Iron Reef for fuel as soon as Renegade and Shadow are back in service. That place just became crucial. We must protect it at all costs.” X sighed, dreading the answer to his next question. “How much fuel do we have left?” X asked.

“Not much, sir. Basically one full tank trailer.”

X looked out over the water again, thinking of his next order. It would hopefully take one of his problems off the table.

“I’ll have the militia secure that tanker,” X said. “And I want Carmela to lead the expedition to the Iron Reef, to secure the fuel outpost.”

“And Colonel Vargas?” Rhino asked.

“You dispatch him as soon as you can, General, and leave the security of the Vanguard Islands to me.” He raised his new rifle. “If Horn does show his mug, I’ll blow it off with double-aught buck.”

“We’re twenty miles from target,” Timothy said. “Cricket has reached the shore.”

“Good, hold us here,” Les said.

Michael stood on the bridge of Discovery with Magnolia, both of them armored and ready for the mission. They had finally made it to Rio de Janeiro, but a storm sat right over the target.

“Performing scans,” said the AI.

Les, Layla, Rodger, and Eevi sifted through the scan data streaming in. Using the new thrusters Michael installed on the journey over, the drone had flown to the shore, where it was now transmitting data back to the airship.

The door to the bridge whisked open, and Edgar Cervantes walked in with Sofia, both in armor. Edgar had a knife sheathed on his chest, and bandoliers of shotgun shells crisscrossing his body. He looked ready for a fight. So did Sofia, with her slung rifle and holstered blaster and pistols.

Behind the two divers were General Santiago and Lieutenant Alejo, also armored, though neither carried weapons. They wouldn’t be given any unless the mission was approved.

“Commander Everhart, the divers are almost ready,” Edgar said.

“Our team is ready to hunt,” Alejo said.

Hunt… Michael didn’t have any reason to distrust either Cazador officer, but he still didn’t like having them all on the boat with Magnolia and Rodger.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Les said. “Head belowdecks and stand by for orders.”

The men left, but Edgar and Sofia remained behind.

“General Santiago and Lieutenant Alejo aren’t stupid,” Sofia said. “But if they suddenly get that way, I’ll be the first to cut their hearts out.”

Magnolia grinned. “I bet you will.”

“How are the skies looking, Ensign Corey?” Les asked.

“There’s a big storm over the entire coastline,” Eevi replied. “It extends inland, which pretty much makes flying or diving too risky.”

“Lowering the ship could get us blown out of the sky if defectors are here,” Michael said. “We need a subtler approach.”

“I’ve identified a potential pocket in the storm that we could fly through,” Timothy said. “It will be bumpy getting there, but if we make it, the divers could jump. Take a look.”

Eevi bent down. “That looks promising,” she said. “But what about the Sea Wolf?”

“I’ve located a spot to drop them off a few miles from the coast,” Timothy said. “Choppy seas, but they should be fine.”

“What do you think, Mags?” Les asked. “You sure you’re up for it?”

“Of course we are,” Rodger said.

Magnolia laughed. “Who said you’re going, bright eyes?”

He frowned, and she nudged him. “Just kiddin’, Rodger Dodger. But you better not get seasick.”

“Okay, then,” Les said, “if the scans come back clean, we drop off the Sea Wolf, then move into position to drop Team Raptor in.”

“I’m sorry, Captain, but there is one problem,” Timothy said.

“What’s that?” Les said.

“I’m afraid we need to get closer to shore to complete these scans. Too much interference from the storm to scan for exhaust plumes, and Cricket doesn’t have the range.”

“All right, plot us a course and do your scans,” Les said.

The six thrusters fired, accelerating the airship toward the coast.

“Magnolia, Rodger, prepare to depart on the Sea Wolf,” Les said. He looked to Michael. “You better get to the launch bay, Commander. Stand by for scans and orders.”

Michael walked over to Layla, who stood at her chair, wincing slightly.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine. Bray’s just been really active today.”

Michael looked down at her belly and felt a twinge of anxiety.

“We’ll be fine, and you will be, too,” she said. “I love you, Tin.”

“And I love you,” Michael said.

He kissed her goodbye as the ship rumbled into the storm clouds. Lightning glanced off the bow, rattling bulkheads. By the time he got to the launch bay, the other divers were suited up.

“Listen up, everyone,” Michael announced. “The moment we get the green light, we’re diving. If you’ve changed your mind, I won’t hold it against you, but you need to decide now.”

When no one moved, he clapped his hands together.

“Okay, then, let’s move it, people.”

With the technicians’ help, the team did their final gear preps. The blue slashes outside the porthole windows felt like a harbinger of things to come.

“Captain Mitchells, this is Raptor One,” Michael said. “How we looking up there?”

“Almost in position, Raptor One. Stand by for orders.”

Michael got the divers into a horizontal line in the middle of the launch bay. On his HUD, five beacons came online.

“Systems check,” he said.

“Raptor Two lookin’ good,” Edgar said.

“Raptor Three, good to go,” Alexander said.

Arlo and Sofia verified their suit and systems functions, and Michael uploaded their target and source of the SOS.

The airship groaned like a waking giant as it lowered into position.

“Stand by for biological scans, Team Raptor,” Les said over the open channel.

Michael scanned his team. Though he couldn’t see Sofia’s or Arlo’s faces behind the mirrored visors, he hadn’t missed the tension in their voices. This was their first real dive. They would soon discover how ready they were for whatever awaited on the surface.

“Not picking up any exhaust plumes from the machines,” Les confirmed. “We are picking up life-forms, however. Timothy believes it’s mostly vegetation.”

In a few seconds, he came back online. “All right, everyone, I’m giving the all clear for the mission. Taking the Sea Wolf down first.”

The white glow of Timothy’s hologram emerged in front of the launch-bay doors.

“What’s Ghost Man doing here?” Arlo sneered.

“Cut the shit and get your head in the game,” Michael said. “You don’t want to end up a statistic on your first dive, do you?”

Arlo shook his head.

“I would listen to Commander Everhart,” Timothy said. “Sensors are picking up a massive concentration of organic life in the zone marked on your HUDs.”

A map emerged on the divers’ subscreens. Most of the area showed red.

“What is it?” Edgar asked.

“I’d hypothesize that it is some sort of flora, perhaps a forest,” replied the AI. “But it is unlike the readings from other zones we’ve explored.”

“Great,” Alexander said. “Let’s hope this isn’t the type of flora that eats humans.”

Sofia twisted slightly toward him. “Eats humans? You left that out of training, Commander Everhart.”

“I didn’t tell you about the trees that eat people?” Michael replied. “Or the vines that eat people?”

“Uh, no.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be avoiding that area.”

“Still not detecting any exhaust plumes that the DEF-Nine units produce,” Timothy reported, “but I have located a hive of what could very well be Sirens.”

Another rectangular map replaced the digital telemetry on his HUD.

Michael cursed when he saw how close the hive was to their drop zone, but it didn’t surprise him—Sirens normally lived near where they were birthed.

“Please find me a new DZ, Timothy,” Michael said. “I’m not risking those things spotting our battery units on the dive in.”

“Already done, Commander. My suggestion is uploading to your HUDs… now.”

Michael checked his subscreen. It was nearer the coast, which meant they would dive partly over water. He was okay with that, since it was how they had trained Sofia and Arlo back at the Vanguard Islands.

“All right, Team Raptor,” Michael said, “we’re back in business. Prepare to dive.”

He pushed the button to the launch-bay doors. They parted, letting in a rush of wind as the airship lowered the Sea Wolf.

With light cloud cover and little electrical interference with their systems, the divers could see part of the shoreline in the distance. Roads of pulsating purple and red glowed like a network of luminous veins throughout the city.

“Guess we know what your scans are picking up,” Edgar said.

The ship jolted as the cables released the Sea Wolf onto the choppy water below. Michael caught a glimpse of it as it sailed away.

“Good luck, Mags,” he whispered.

“Stand by to retrieve Cricket,” Timothy said.

“Everyone, back,” Michael said, retreating to the red line with the other divers. The robot emerged a few moments later, flying across the city’s fractured skyline and then switching to hover modules to maneuver into the open launch bay.

“Good job, buddy,” Michael said, patting the robot on its smooth armored side. It chirped and flew over to the wall-charging unit for some extra juice. Michael closed the launch-bay doors as Discovery ascended back into the clouds. The view outside darkened.

“Team Raptor, prepare for launch,” Les said over the channel.

The airship slowed, and Michael reopened the launch doors. At twenty thousand feet, he couldn’t see much of the city except for the glowing vein of flora that pulsed as if it had a beating heart.

Somewhere beneath that poisoned surface were the first humans Michael had personally ever come across in the wastes who weren’t Cazadores. People who had lived underground for centuries.

On this mission, the Hell Divers’ motto had taken on a new and terrible significance. They dived so humanity survived—by saving the remaining humans before the defectors could find and kill them all.

“All clear, Team Raptor,” said Les. “Good luck, and Godspeed. Radio silence except in emergency.”

“Copy that, sir,” Michael said. He checked on Arlo, who gave a thumbs-up.

Michael shouted their motto and dived headfirst into the clouds. He pulled his body into stable falling position, arms out, elbows and knees at ninety degrees. Glancing up, he looked at the airship one last time, thinking of Layla and Bray. In his heart, he knew he would see her again and would meet his son.

A deep breath, and he put them out of his mind to focus on his team.

Edgar’s beacon began moving in the subsquare of his HUD. Next came Alexander, Sofia, and finally Arlo.

Michael’s suit whipped and rippled in his ears as he dropped through the clouds, eyes roving constantly between his HUD, the dark surface, and his aerial surroundings.

Fourteen thousand feet… twelve thousand…

At ten thousand, everything looked good. No lightning, turbulence, or rain. The cloud cover even seemed light. By all appearances, the pocket Timothy had discovered seemed to be a hidden paradise like the Vanguard Islands.

At eight thousand feet, one of the beacons on his HUD started picking up speed. It was Arlo, in a nosedive. For some reason, he was trying to catch up.

“God damn it,” Michael muttered. He kept the radio link off, observing the captain’s order of radio silence.

If defectors were down there, he didn’t want them picking up any chatter—even though he wanted to scream and tell Arlo to pull out of the suicide dive. The kid probably thought diving into the wastes was easy, because they’d had an easy dive today. But conditions could change in a heartbeat.

Sofia closed in on the right flank of Edgar and Alexander, just as they were trained to do. When Michael looked down again, they had broken through the cloud cover at five thousand feet. The pulsing mutant flora lit up the surface in a network of red and purple that looked like a vascular diagram.

He had never seen anything like this before.

The vegetation provided enough glow that they may not even need their night-vision optics on the surface.

The wind suddenly grew shrill, almost like a human scream.

Not the wind, he realized. The scream came from his speakers. Someone had bumped on the comm channel. Rotating forty-five degrees left, he saw that Arlo had clipped Sofia after coming out of his nosedive, probably due to a pocket of turbulence, as Michael had feared.

Both spun away from Edgar and Alexander.

“Son of a bitch!” Michael shouted in his helmet to no one but himself. He glanced back again, resisting the urge to yell orders into the comm link.

While Arlo quickly pulled himself back into stable position, Sofia cartwheeled through the air. Extending his legs behind him, Michael let the relative wind resistance push him toward them, but he was moving too slowly to help.

Lightning flashed in the west, the direction they both were headed. He checked the HUD again. The drop zone was big but not boundless. If they drifted too far off, they could easily hit the edge of the storm.

But what could he do?

He couldn’t reach them—he was already five hundred feet below both their positions.

Edgar and Alexander kept on the plotted course. It was the contingency plan should something like this happen. They couldn’t risk the entire team trying to save one diver.

Michael quivered with rage. Arlo’s stupid hotdogging was the reason for Sofia’s off-kilter flight.

At three thousand feet, the blasted ancient city came into view. Shattered buildings and bridges and towering granite domes filled his vision. Mutant forests covered much of the landscape, hiding God only knew what kinds of fearsome creatures.

Michael checked one last time to see Sofia in a stable fall. The sight was a relief, but they weren’t out of this yet. The two rookies were way off course. Once they landed, he would have to trek over and find them.

At two thousand feet, he pulled the pilot chute from its pocket on his right thigh. It caught air and dragged out the canopy, which billowed overhead, jerking him vertical. Reaching up, he grabbed both toggles and steered over a spire of rock. At its summit stood a colossal statue of an angel or a god, holding its arms out over the city. Gliding over, he saw that one of the arms had partially broken off, and a hunk of the head was missing.

He looked away, sailing toward the city and the shoreline beyond. Waves crashed against the eroded seawall surrounding the bay. He searched for the Sea Wolf but couldn’t spot such a small vessel in all that ocean vastness.

According to his HUD, the DZ was right below him, but that couldn’t be right. The ground below was a sinkhole, its depths glowing red like the eye of a defector.

He toggled right, and both Edgar and Alexander followed his lead. The three divers aimed for the rim of the hole, where several buildings formed a skirt of debris. Vines and bristly, leafless trees grew out of the rubble.

As Michael started to flare, he saw something moving on the surface near the scree apron, walking on two legs. He caught only a glimpse, but this didn’t look like a Siren or a monster, and it was not a machine.

It looked like a naked human.