Captives

SEVENTEEN

“Timothy Pepper of the Sea Wolf is not responding to any messages,” Sandy said from the bridge.

Katrina swore under her breath. Losing the AI had severed their one connection to the Metal Islands. She had just left the medical ward, where Eevi had wrapped a bandage around her chest.

Pain from the bruised rib stopped her halfway up the ladder. The dent in her armor could be pounded back into place, but it would take weeks to recover from the injury.

Wincing, she took in a shallow breath and let it out. She was lucky. The bullet could easily have pierced her armor and killed her. But it didn’t. She was still alive, and she was about to have an enemy ship and a trawler in her possession. Aside from the news about Timothy, today was shaping up to be a good day.

But before she could celebrate over the two captured craft, she had to make sure she had neutralized the threats on them. She continued up to the ops command center for a better view. Trey and Alexander were here, scanning the waters for any Cazador soldiers who may have escaped the slaughter.

The USS Zion was a good distance away from the two main enemy ships and the expanse of sea where the .50-cals had chewed apart the smaller vessels, but the Hell Divers were not going to take any chances.

The other divers were belowdecks in the combat information center or on the bridge, monitoring the weapons and scanning the water for heat signatures.

“Captain,” Trey said.

Alexander nodded and handed her a pair of binoculars. She aimed them at the bay, where smoke rose off the smoldering flotsam, and corpses wearing life jackets floated amid the debris.

“Captain, we have the MK-65 turret aimed at the container ship,” Alexander said, “but so far we haven’t seen much movement.”

Katrina centered the binos on the ship. Fire still burned in the operations tower, whose metal skin splayed outward like a crown.

On the deck, several stacks of containers had toppled onto their sides. Others floated low in the water. The starboard hull had gaping holes from several shell impacts, some of them still billowing smoke.

The devastation made her wonder whether the vessel could be salvaged. She was honestly surprised it wasn’t on the bottom of the bay.

“What should we do with the live ones?” Alexander asked.

“I say let ’em drown,” Trey replied.

She moved the binos back to the water between the Zion and the Cazador container ship. Clicking a button, she turned on the infrared function. Multiple heat signatures lit up.

Several soldiers hung on to their damaged vessels. Of the original warriors, only about ten to fifteen were still alive, and many of them had to be mortally wounded.

“We could always run ’em over,” Trey said.

Katrina lowered the binos to look at the young diver. “Your father would not be proud of that suggestion.”

“Why have mercy on them?” Trey asked. “There’s no way in hell they would do the same for us.”

“If I may,” Alexander said. “We used almost thirty percent of the working ammunition, so whatever we do, it shouldn’t involve any more of our reserves.”

“I do agree with that,” Katrina replied. She looked back out over the flaming junkyard strewn across the water. She didn’t have enough personnel to take these people captive, or the medical supplies to treat them for their injuries.

The other divers looked at her, waiting for her decision.

“We leave them,” Katrina said firmly.

Alexander and Trey both nodded, awaiting her next orders. She considered them carefully and decided to move forward with the salvage operation.

“I want a fire team ready to board the container ship as soon as possible,” she said. “I’ll take lead again.”

“What!” Alexander said. “All due respect, Captain, but you’re injured, and needed here. Let me take lead.”

“I agree with Alexander,” Trey said. “You need to rest.”

Katrina put a hand to the bandage wrapped around her chest. They were right; she just didn’t want to admit it. She was used to leading by example, but this time she was in no condition. If anything, she would just be a liability to the other divers.

“Okay, fine, but take Vish with you,” she said.

Alexander forced a smile. “Don’t worry, I got this.”

“What do we do with the live ones on that ship?” Trey asked.

“Depends on who they are,” she said. “If you discover civilians, then we’ll take them captive, but if they’re soldiers, you shoot to kill.”

“Understood, ma’am,” Trey said. He turned, but Katrina thought she saw him crack a half grin.

“Be careful, Trey. You, too, Alexander.”

They both nodded and walked down the ladder to the bridge, where Eevi and Sandy were busy monitoring their stations.

“Weigh anchor,” Katrina ordered. She pulled the receiver off the comm station and connected to the CIC. “Vish, report to the cargo bay ASAP. Jaideep, Edgar, you stay on those weapons and fire on anything that comes close to us. We’re leaving the bay.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Edgar replied.

Katrina turned to see Alexander and Eevi embrace. They held each other for several seconds in a tight hug. The stolen moment gave her time to question her own orders. What if more enemy sailors were hiding on the boat?

“Captain, how are you feeling?” Sandy asked.

Katrina decided to let her orders stand. She limped over to Sandy.

“I’m fine—just a bruised rib,” she said. “How are you holding up?”

Sandy lifted a shoulder. “I thought killing Cazadores would make me feel better, but I don’t know. I almost feel… guilty.”

Katrina pondered the words. Part of her felt the same way.

“This is war, Sandy,” she said. “We have to be strong. It’s only going to get harder from here on out.”

A beep sounded—a welcome distraction.

“Anchors up, Captain,” Sandy said.

Katrina bit the inside of her lip and moved over to her station. She tapped the touch screen, and brought up the controls, plotting a course around the bay to flank the container ship and the fishing vessel.

A message from the cargo bay played over the comms as she worked.

“We’re ready to move out,” Alexander said.

“Stand by for my order,” Katrina said. She hit another button to raise the hatches over the broken porthole windows, giving her a view of the burning container ship.

Her eyes flitted from the view outside to her screen. The scanners continued to search the waters for hostiles. Eevi had manually adjusted the sensors to pick up anything the size of a human. They had tried it on the container ship, but the fires were messing with the infrared sensors.

Katrina steered the warship out of the bay, providing a new view of the fishing vessel in the distance. She cursed when she saw that it was moving.

A flash of lightning confirmed what she thought she had seen in the darkness. Now that the trawler’s engines were out, the Cazadores aboard were trying to escape under sail.

She picked up the receiver to connect back to the CIC. “Edgar, I want you to target that fishing boat with the MK-65, but hold your fire until I give the order.”

“Roger that, Captain.”

She put the receiver back down and kept the heading toward the container ship. Smoke dissipated from the bridge as a light rain suffocated the fires. The drops pattered inside the porthole frames on the Zion, but Katrina kept the hatches open to give her a view of their target.

She used the manual controls to guide the warship around the two Cazador vessels. The MK-65’s enclosed turret rotated toward the fishing ship. Her plan was to board the container ship first, clear it, and then go after the trawler.

“Alexander, Trey, Vish, you’re clear to launch,” she said.

The team left the ship in a second Zodiac. It wasn’t long before they came into view. Blue battery units ascended a ladder to the davits from which the Cazadores had lowered their boats.

Eevi and Sandy moved over to the porthole windows with Katrina to watch. They were close enough that Katrina could see dead bodies with her NVGs. The blue glow of the Hell Divers faded away, melting into the interior passages.

“We’re in,” Alexander said over the comms.

A beeping sound issued from the radar station, and Katrina motioned for Sandy to check the monitor. Eevi remained beside Katrina, chewing on a fingernail as her husband moved deeper into the ship.

“They will be okay,” Katrina said, trying to reassure Eevi.

“Uh, Captain,” Sandy said, “looks like those sensors have picked up multiple heat signatures in the bay, moving fast.”

“Is it possible one of the boats came back online?” Katrina asked.

“I’m not sure,” Sandy said.

Katrina moved back to the ladder. “Eevi, you have the bridge. I’m headed back to the command center.”

“Got it, Captain.”

Katrina stopped halfway up to catch her breath and hold her aching chest. Then she continued to the top and centered her binos on the bay. The green hue of the night-vision optics didn’t reveal any moving vessels.

Distant gunshots rang out from the container ship, and a voice came over the comms. “Captain, we’re engaging a group of four Cazadores,” Alexander said. “Two are down, two more on the run.”

Be careful, God damn it.

She trained the binos on the ship, but a quick scan revealed nothing. She turned them back to the bay and switched to infrared. Sure enough, a pair of red heat signatures moved through the water.

Katrina switched to night vision, expecting to see Cazadores using oars or paddles to escape in boats. But these weren’t boats, and they weren’t Cazadores.

“My God,” she whispered. The two sharks were fifty feet long, almost double anything from the books she had read growing up.

Dorsal fins cut the surface as they navigated the debris field and searched for food. She zoomed in to see one of the beasts swallow a flailing survivor in a single bite.

The other men tried to climb onto the destroyed boats. One of them made it onto a WaveRunner just as a shark grabbed his leg, severing it with razor-sharp teeth. The soldier slumped into the water, where the second shark inhaled the rest of him.

In a matter of minutes, the two monsters had picked the bay clean of bodies, living or dead. Katrina stared in horror, holding the binos to her eyes as the sharks turned and swam toward the USS Zion.

Another message crackled from the comm system. “Captain, this is Alexander, do you copy?”

“Go ahead, Alexander, I copy,” she replied, trying to mask her fear.

“We have neutralized all hostiles so far, and… we found something, Captain.”

“Found what?”

“You’re going to have to see this to believe it.”

The hybrid human lay unconscious on the metal table, water dripping off its wrinkled flesh. Layla had pumped the guy full of morphine after taking him out of the chamber, but Les wasn’t convinced that would keep him from getting back up and doing what he warned them of: killing them all.

He checked the straps on the man’s wrists and metal ankles. They seemed secure, but metal limbs were powerful, even though they were attached to a body that looked over a hundred years old.

Michael checked the restraints over his legs. “He’s secure. Go ahead and hook him up to the computer.”

Les reluctantly uncoiled a cable from his gear and connected the nodes to the man’s neck. Then he plugged in his wrist monitor and raised his arm to check the vitals.

This couldn’t be right.

“How is this guy still alive?” Les asked. “I’m not getting a heart rate, and he doesn’t look like he’s breathing.”

“That is because he has no heart and no lungs,” Timothy said. “But if you take a closer look at your monitor, I’m sure you will see electrical activity in the brain, which is actually a computer the size of a fly—a fruit fly.”

Les did a double take as he saw what looked like brain waves on his screen.

“I don’t like this,” he repeated for the fifth time. “What’s the point of talking to this… guy. Especially after what he said when he was still in the tank.”

The words repeated in his mind.

Destroy me before I kill you all.

“I want to ask him a few questions,” Michael said. “Maybe he can help us.”

Les tried not to snap, but this was crazy. “Commander, he just said he would kill us all if he got the chance. Did you not hear that?”

Timothy folded his arms across his translucent suit jacket. “That’s why I suggested hooking him up to a monitor. I should be able to hack into his brain while he is unconscious. There is little risk to you all from doing this.”

“Little risk?” Les asked. “The guy is basically a defector with skin. Remember? The machines that nearly killed us the last time we came to this hell hole?”

“He’s asleep, Lieutenant,” Michael said. “And we have him secured to the table. I say we let Timothy do this.”

Layla looked over at Les. “Before we leave, I personally want to know what work was being conducted here. We may never have the opportunity again.”

“The answers reside in his skull,” Timothy said. “He may also know where the defectors are.”

“You guys are nuts,” Les said. “You, too, Pepper.”

“I do take slight offense at that,” the AI replied.

Les heaved a breath, fogging the inside of his visor. “Well, if you’re going to hack in, hurry up. I want to find what we came here for and get out of this underwater dungeon.”

“What else do you need from us?” Michael asked Timothy.

The AI moved over to the head of the table, where the hybrid’s metal crown rested. “Hook up the electrical nodes to Layla’s computer, and I will get started.”

They worked quickly, Layla doing most of the prep. After she had finished hooking up the cords to the additional computer, she took out her tablet.

“You’re up,” she said to Timothy.

The AI flickered several times and closed his eyelids. “Tapping into the network… working on getting past the firewall…”

Les directed his flashlight through the other labs as they waited, growing increasingly uneasy. They had been down here over eight hours already, and he wanted to get moving.

“This firewall is tricky,” Timothy said.

Les paced as they waited, and checked his submachine gun several times. He had a round chambered, and he knew that the magazine was full, but he was nervous, and fidgeting with the gun took his mind off the reality of his situation—at least, for a few moments. But it wasn’t long before he focused back on the situation.

Trey was sailing across the dangerous seas for the Metal Islands, and more than Cazadores were out there waiting. He needed to get back to his boy.

“We’re in,” Timothy finally said.

Les moved back to Michael and Layla, who hovered behind her tablet. She placed it on a lab table, using the kickstand to keep it upright.

“I’m scanning millions of documents, downloads, and memories,” the AI said. “But I’m narrowing the search to anything that may contain… Ah, here we go.”

A video feed came on.

“This will give Layla a good idea of the work they were performing here,” Timothy added.

The familiar face of an olive-skinned man wearing a surgical mask around his neck came online. He smiled at the camera.

“This is Dr. Julio Diaz, recording on February fifteenth, 2041. We are now operational and beginning our tests on the first subject.”

The camera panned from the young doctor to a white calf with black spots. Cables led away from the plastic skin protecting the animal, and four mechanical legs.

“This is Spade,” Julio said. “As you can see, we’ve removed all four of his limbs and replaced them with robotic limbs. These vacuum-sealed biostasis vats will accelerate the healing process. Once that’s done, we will begin the tough part of my work: replacing parts of the brain with our new microchips.”

Les looked over at the man lying on the table. Had he been one of Julio’s patients 260 years ago?

Not possible.

Les remembered the boneyard he and Michael had found on one of the ships docked outside. Bones from humans and animals. The defectors had worn some of them as decorations. A memory of a machine sporting a cow skull surfaced in his mind as he looked back at the calf on the video.

What sort of macabre experiment was going on here?

Timothy brought up a new video dated seven days later. The calf was standing, using the new mechanical limbs to walk around the white lab. It stumbled, fell, and pushed itself back up.

“Today, we will begin the process of removing Spade’s brain and replacing it with a microchip,” Julio said. “Once this process is complete, we should be able to control the animal—much like operating a remote-control drone.”

Another video popped online, showing the surgery. Julio and several members of his team were dressed in white surgical gowns, but they weren’t performing the surgery themselves. They were sitting at consoles and supervising as a surgical robot with six white limbs worked on removing the top of the calf’s skull.

“Is that an ITC spider?” Layla asked. She wasn’t looking at the screen, but at the machines in the corner of the room.

“Yes,” Timothy said.

“I mean those,” Layla said, pointing.

The AI turned from the table. “Oh, yes, those are the same machines that performed the surgery you’re watching now. I believe we have one on Deliverance.”

Les didn’t know much about it—only that it used similar technology to the early da Vinci surgical systems that were discontinued and taken over by ITC, like most technology in the twenty-first century.

“I’m excited to begin the final stage of our little friend’s journey,” Julio said. “Once we complete the transition to mechanical parts, we will then begin the most important part of our research: to make Spade the longest-living cow in the history of his species.”

“Did I miss something?” Layla asked.

Timothy paused the video. “Yes, I believe we did. Let me see if I can go further back.”

Les scanned the labs again and locked his headlamp on the medical machines in the corner. The spiders were really starting to freak him out.

“Relax, Lieutenant,” Michael said, although Les could hear the edge to his voice, too. “Aside from this guy, we’re alone down here.”

“I just want to get this mission over with,” said Les. “We still don’t even know where the defectors are.” He looked at the mission clock. “We’re going on nine hours down here.”

“I know, I know,” Michael said.

“Here we go,” Timothy said.

The divers turned back to the tablet. Dr. Diaz and his team clinked glasses on the deck of a villa overlooking the ocean. Clouds crossed the blue sky as they celebrated, and a breeze rustled the fronds of palm trees on the beach.

“Good evening,” Julio said. “Today, I want to thank every one of you. We have come a long way in a short time. That the United States Navy commissioned us for biostasis research just five years ago is hard enough to believe. And now we have secured our biggest contract yet, with Industrial Tech Corporation’s biomedical division. This will allow us to take our research a step further, using animal-machine hybrids that will help us in our goal of increasing the quality and length of human life.”

He raised his glass again, and the rest of the team followed suit.

“Interesting,” Timothy said as soon as the video ended. “I have just completed a scan of some other files and discovered that Dr. Diaz’s team was using tardigrades and wood frogs in its research on stabilizing cells to survive harsh conditions such as freezing.”

“ITC was working to extend biological life spans,” Layla said.

“Yeah,” Michael said. “Like, trying for immortality.”

Les shook his helmet in dismay as he looked at the wizened old half man, half machine on the table. “If you call the singularity ‘immortality.’ I don’t call that living if you take away what it means to be human. I mean, come on, this guy doesn’t even have a heart.”

“It’s just more evidence that humans created the world we live in,” Michael said. “We created these things, the defectors, and the virus that caused the blackout during World War Three.”

Silence settled over the divers. Even Timothy remained quiet. He unfolded his arms and let them hang, as if he didn’t know what to do with them.

“Is there anything else?” Layla asked. “Do we know who this guy is?”

Les put his machine gun in the other hand. “How about where the defectors are?”

Timothy scratched his meticulously trimmed jawline. “One moment, please.”

The tablet screen glowed again, and this time a video came online of one of the defectors dragging a man into the lab by his shredded legs. Blood streaked across the trail behind them.

He squirmed and screamed in the machine’s grip. “Stop, please! I beg you! I will destroy all my research. I promise!”

The orange visor of the defector dragging the man flashed.

“So is that Dr. Diaz?” Layla asked, leaning closer to the tablet.

Another machine reached down and grabbed the man by the arm, helping the first one lift him onto a table.

“This was recorded in the same lab we’re in now,” Timothy said.

The video feed moved over a row of tables beside Julio. A woman lay on her back, her features erased by a gaping hole in her face.

“That must be what’s left of Dana,” Michael said.

“So Julio never escaped after diving into the ocean,” Les said.

Before anyone could answer, a recorded scream made the three of them start.

The two defectors raised their long arms, their exoskeletons opened, and mechanical saws extended. The blades came to life, the whine rising over the doctor’s screams as they lowered to his flesh.

The machines started on his legs and then worked their way up to remove his arms, each time searing the wound to stem the blood loss.

He was still conscious when they moved to his head, but Les had to look away when they started on his chest. The grotesque scene was too much even for him.

As the surgery scene played on the tablet, the man on the table in front of the Hell Divers began to quiver. His body convulsed, and the robotic limbs rattled against their metal restraints.

Les went to get morphine from the medical pack. They had to get him sedated again. Apparently, the memory was stirring this man awake.

But why? Unless…

“Holy shit,” Les gasped. “Is this guy Dr. Diaz?”

The thin, wrinkled lips of the man on the table opened. “No,” he croaked. “No, stop. Ple-e-e-e-ease!”

“Unplug those cords,” Michael said to Layla. She quickly pulled the sensor nodes away from the head, but it was already too late. The man-machine broke one of his restraints with ease. The eyelids snapped open, both the human eye and the mechanical one homing in on Les. The freed metal arm reached toward him, and Les jumped back just before the robotic fingers could grab his wrist.

The divers all backed away as the hybrid doctor snapped all the other restraints. It sat up and tilted its wrinkled face at them. Layla reached out to grab the electrical cords, but the hybrid was faster. He smacked her with his robotic arm, knocking her backward into a table.

Michael fired a laser bolt at the machine as it moved. The blue flash took off its right arm at the shoulder. Les aimed his rifle at the head and fired a burst that missed, punching into the wall.

The hybrid got up on all fours, directing its gaze at Les. But this wasn’t the same soulless gaze he had seen in the other machines. Part of Dr. Julio Diaz was in there—the same part that had begged the divers to destroy him when they found him in the stasis chamber.

Michael squeezed off another bolt, this one sizzling through the chest and bringing the hybrid to the ground, where it landed on its back, twitching.

“Hold your fire,” Michael said to Les. He looked over at Layla. “You okay?”

She was already getting back up but had her hand on her belly. “I… I think so.”

Timothy held up a hand to stop Michael from shooting again. “We still don’t know where the defectors are,” he said. “Before you destroy Dr. Diaz, perhaps we should ask him.”

Michael kept the laser rifle aimed at the downed machine. Its chest smoked and sparked, and blood leaked from the shoulder of the severed arm. The hybrid continued twitching. “Defectors…” it said in a cracking voice.

Timothy bent down and said, “Doctor, please tell us where the DEF-Nine units are.”

The hybrid rotated his head toward the AI. “Gone. They left after an… attack… There is only one left now.”

The words chilled Les, but they didn’t stop him from stepping closer to the hybrid. “Where did they go?”

The hybrid looked up at him. “Intercepted a… signal, but I do not know their destination.” The wrinkled forehead creased in anguish. “Please… you must destroy me.”

“You achieved your goal of immortality,” Layla said as she limped over.

“No,” Michael said. “No one lives forever. Not even X.”

He fired a bolt through Julio’s skull, ending his suffering. Michael lowered the weapon and walked over to the robotic arm he had blown off. Picking it up, he looked over at the spider machines in the corner.

“No,” Les said. “You can’t be serious, Commander.”

“We came here for defectors, and I’m not leaving without something that will help us when we get to the Metal Islands,” Michael said. “Besides, now you guys can call me ‘Tin’ again.”

They didn’t quite laugh, but the words helped ease the tension.

“Timothy, do you think you can get that spider on Deliverance up and running?” Michael asked.

“Certainly, sir.”