Captives

ONE

Xavier Rodriguez dunked the rag in the bucket of water, then placed it on his forehead. When he pulled it away, the cloth was stained red.

He was still bleeding.

Because you need stitches.

He needed more than stitches, though. He needed what humans had once called a vacation.

The worst part wasn’t the open wounds; it was breathing. He knew what bruised ribs felt like, and this was worse. There wasn’t much he could do if one of his ribs was cracked.

Looking down, he checked the nasty gash on the outer edge of his foot, where a bullet had dug a path. It still hurt like hell, and as if that weren’t bad enough, he was still pissing needles.

But he had to admit, this wasn’t the worst shape he had ever been in during his career as a Hell Diver. There were countless times on the surface when he had suffered far worse and would gladly have traded for his present condition.

He would heal. His body would regain strength.

And he would fight.

X spat a gob of phlegm on the floor of his prison cell and winced at the pain that shot up his sternum and across his ribs. When it passed, he moved over to the bars of his cell.

For three days now, he had called this place home. During that time, he had been in almost complete isolation, with no idea whether Miles, Magnolia, or Rodger were still alive.

“Let me…” His voice cracked, the words trailing off.

He rubbed his throat, scratchy now from hours of screaming. Screaming to let him out so he could kill el Pulpo and every Cazador soldier in the Metal Islands.

But the barbarians didn’t seem to give much of a damn.

The only person to answer his shouts was a slave boy who brought him water and scraps of food twice a day. If his mental clock was working properly, then the kid would be returning very soon to change out the Cazador version of a shit can on the Hive—which happened to be a bucket that looked indistinguishable from the one they brought him water in.

He just hoped they washed it out first. The last thing he needed was dysentery, especially without access to any of the lifesaving medicines he had carried on the Sea Wolf.

X waited by the bars, eyes on the hatch at the end of the passageway, where the boy would enter. This brig had dozens of other cells but no other prisoners. For some reason, they were holding him in solitary confinement.

No, not some reason. It was a deliberate mind-fuck. They wanted to make him desperate, so that by the time he saw the light of day again, he would honor his agreement to serve el Pulpo, like a weak-willed coward.

But what el Pulpo still didn’t understand about X was that he had already endured solitary confinement for most of a decade in his trek across the surface wastes. Those years were the hard part. This? This was like taking a nap.

“I can handle isolation,” he growled in his scratchy voice. “I invented isolation!”

Anyone who understood English would think him crazy, but that was the point. That was his game. Make them think he was crazy, so they’d let him out of here.

He turned to the small window in the cell—just a sliver no wider than a sword blade. All he could see was part of the oil rig, and a container ship that had docked there. A crane was unloading barrels from its deck while two men in dark suits and straw hats seemed to be tallying them. He still didn’t know where the Cazadores were getting usable gasoline, but they had found a stash somewhere. After watching for a few more minutes, he sat back down on the floor of his cell and went on checking his wounds. When he had finished cleaning them the best he could, he lay back with his head cupped in his hands.

It was hard to relax knowing that Miles and his friends were out there, but he needed his mental and physical strength.

So X did what X did best: he shut out the rest of the world and focused on surviving.

Sometime later, the metal door squealed open.

He got up and moved back to the bars, squinting into the light that streamed down the passage. It took his eyes a few seconds to adjust to the brightness, and when they did, a man, not a boy, stood outside the bars.

Not a man, either, X realized, but a slave, a coward.

Imulah, the scribe who served el Pulpo.

“Hello, Xavier,” he said in affable tones.

Two Cazador soldiers walked inside to stand guard in the open hatchway, holding spears in their armored hands. Helmetless, their eyes were full of rage and bloodlust, and they were fixed on X.

He didn’t blame them for wanting revenge. After all, he had killed a pile of these cannibals single-handedly. For a warrior society, its “warriors” didn’t hold up all that well against a seasoned Hell Diver.

When X didn’t reply, Imulah moved closer to the bars and said, “How are you feeling?”

This time, he replied by spitting another wad of snot at the servant’s feet.

Imulah took a step back and then sighed. “You and your lady friend are not as polite as Rodger. It’s very disappointing.”

“We aren’t used to being slaves like you,” X said.

Bending down, the bald, bearded man scrutinized X as if this were some wild creature behind the bars, and X glared back like that same wild beast.

“Normally, I speak with restraint when my handlers are listening,” Imulah said. “But the two guards you see do not speak your tongue, and I’m going to be very honest with you, Xavier Rodriguez.”

“Somehow, I doubt that.”

Imulah glared at X. “You have no choice but to fight in el Pulpo’s army. If you don’t, he will torture Magnolia and Rodger and eat them in front of you, along with your dog.” He paused and then finished his thought. “He said your dog will make a good aperitivo—‘appetizer,’ I believe, is the word you might understand—before the main course.”

X grabbed the bars, baring his teeth much as Miles would.

Imulah, surprisingly, held his ground.

“I was once like you,” he said quietly. His voice took on a melancholy tone. “I was once a warrior. My people fought the Cazadores when they found our small outpost on the island of Ascension. There weren’t many of us, but those of us who could fight, fought.”

X narrowed his eyes.

“El Pulpo and you are from the same place?”

“Indeed, we are,” Imulah said. “We are descendants of the sky people that landed on the island and took shelter for over two hundred years in an ITC facility. Long before he became the king of the Cazadores, el Pulpo was just a boy named Maximus, the son of a man who died in the battle for our outpost. I, too, fought and lost that day. I was forced to endure the sight of most of my friends and family slaughtered, and I will never forget seeing Maximus…”

Imulah shook his head. “Even as a young boy of nine, he killed three Cazador warriors and bit the nose off the man who finally captured him. He was born to fight.”

X had a hard time believing the story. Was this just a ploy to change his mind?

“Like me, Maximus became a slave when our people were conquered. He ended up thrown into the Cazador war machine, where he fought his way to power, climbing from spearman to king—over a mountain of dead warriors.”

The story made sense, although X wasn’t sure why el Pulpo didn’t speak fluent English, unless he had forgotten what he knew as a child and grew up speaking Spanish.

“He led us to the greatest find of all,” Imulah said. “To a place that held millions of gallons of gasoline, all preserved by an ITC additive that kept gasoline as fresh as the day it left the refinery.”

“So you don’t get your oil from the rigs?” X asked.

Imulah chuckled. “Of course not.”

X looked again at the two men standing guard and giving him angry glares. The shorter of the two bared his teeth at X, and X gave him the middle finger, not knowing whether the guy even understood the gesture.

Imulah must have. “This is why el Pulpo respects you,” he said. “He sees strength in you that he has seen in only a few men. He understands why Magnolia and your people call you ‘the Immortal.’”

The scribe stood, wincing as his joints creaked.

“Perhaps, someday, you, too, will become king of the Cazadores,” he said, clasping his hands behind his robe. Then he turned and left, stopping a few feet shy of the open hatch to let the servant boy inside.

The boy carried a bucket of water in one filthy paw, and an orange, a bread crust, and a few scraps of dried fish in the other.

“Better drink and eat up,” Imulah said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small jar, then handed it to the boy to give to X.

“Use this on your wounds,” Imulah said. “It will help them heal faster. You’re going to need all the strength you can get. Your first fight at the sky arena is tomorrow night.”

Captain Katrina DaVita stood alone on the bridge of the stealth warship USS Zion, staring out over a dark horizon. Lightning cleaved the clouds, leaving behind streaks of blue visual residue that faded long before the clap of thunder reached her ears. Waves continued to pummel the vessel.

The Metal Islands were out there, and so were her friends, somewhere beyond the soup of electromagnetic storms.

She resisted again the impulse to take the warship off autopilot and plow full steam ahead. But as captain, her responsibility was to the population of the Hive and Deliverance first, then to X, Magnolia, and Miles.

But knowing they were out there, imprisoned or perhaps worse, continued to haunt her and the rest of the team. For now, they had to find a way around the monster storm blocking the way and keep trying to make contact with the airships so they could firm up their battle plan.

Interference from the electrical storm had kept her from speaking to Chief Engineer Samson or her XO, Lieutenant Mitchells, for several days now. The storm was messing with everything, including their radar and instruments.

The panels in the cruiser’s bridge beeped as she scanned the data. Normally, she liked the solitude of working alone, but too many things weighed on her mind tonight. The open water posed countless threats: mutant ocean denizens, AI defectors that were out there somewhere, potential Cazador pirate ships, and a monster storm that had a fifty-mile front and covered at least two thousand square miles.

The rain sheeted down on Trey Mitchells and Jaideep Abhaya as they patrolled on the deck below, the battery units giving their shapes a faint blue glow. The clouds flashed into view behind an intricate skein of lightning. The crack of thunder followed just seconds later, rattling the bulkheads.

She sent a message over the comms to pull Jaideep and Trey back inside. As the warship plowed into the oncoming waves, the blue-lit figures on the deck below changed direction, moving back toward the safety of the ship.

Katrina checked the radar next. The readings were still scrambled.

“Piece of crap,” she muttered.

She picked up the radio and buzzed the Combat Information Center, where Eevi Corey and her husband, Alexander, were working up a weapons inventory.

“How are things coming down there?” Katrina asked.

“Good, almost done,” Alexander replied.

“Meet me on the bridge in fifteen minutes.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am.”

Katrina considered calling the medical bay to check on Edgar Cervantes, who was still recovering from his injuries at Red Sphere, but she didn’t want to wake him if he was resting.

The comm station beeped, and she moved over to pick up the call from Sandy Bloomberg and Jed Snow. The two youngest members of the crew were tasked with sweeping the compartments belowdecks for supplies.

“Captain, this is Sandy, do you copy?”

“Copy. Go ahead, Sandy.”

“We’re finishing the search of the locked compartments and have uncovered some dried food and a water-recycling system.”

“Great work,” Katrina said. “How about weapons?”

“Negative,” Jed replied.

Katrina swore under her breath. She was hoping they would uncover more of the laser rifles the AI DEF-Nine units had used to such catastrophic effect at Red Sphere. Even a few of the advanced weapons would be a boon to the Hell Divers in the fight once they arrived at the Metal Islands. She prayed the Cazadores didn’t have any of them.

“Report to the bridge in fifteen minutes,” she told Sandy and Jed.

Several other beeps sounded, and Katrina hurried back through the bridge to check the reports. A ship of this size should be crewed by over a hundred people, but she had just eight, and most of them, including her, had no experience with an operations system this old.

Happily, the ship was advanced enough that it could run almost on autopilot, although she still preferred to have a human at the helm.

Maybe she shouldn’t have sent Les and Layla back to the Hive.

She shook the doubt away. Second-guessing her decision wasn’t going to do any good. Leading required her to stay confident in the wake of the tragic deaths they had suffered over the past few days.

Losing Erin Jenkins and Ramon Ochoa at Red Sphere had hit the team hard, and Michael Everhart’s devastating injury compounded the loss. He would survive, but his diving days could be over. And how helpful could he really be in the coming war?

And although she really could have used Layla and Les, they were where they needed to be. She needed a fighting force, and Les was the only officer diplomatic enough to recruit one.

The hatch whisked open, and one by one, the greenhorn divers entered the bridge for their briefing.

She scrutinized the only Hell Diver team she had left. The youthful faces of Jed, Sandy, Vish, Jaideep, and Edgar reminded her of soldiers from the Old World. There was a reason that militaries wanted young people, and not just because they were faster and stronger. They also believed they were invincible.

The difference between a Hell Diver and an old-world soldier was the difference between a gladiator and a prize fighter—like the gladiator, anyone who joined a Hell Diver team knew that death was coming sooner or later.

She pushed the thoughts aside. They had a lot to cover.

“It’s nasty out there,” Trey said.

Jaideep shook his long hair and flopped into a chair.

“Trey, why don’t you go see if you can reach the airships,” Katrina said.

“Yes ma’am,” he replied politely. Stepping through the maze of stations to a bank of communications equipment, he sat and placed his helmet on the deck.

Lightning outside the porthole windows flickered through the bridge as the divers took a seat and more of the greenhorns stepped onto the bridge. Edgar Cervantes limped in after the others, doing his best to keep a straight back.

“You could have stayed in the med ward,” she said.

“Doing fine, Cap.”

Katrina could see the pain he was trying so hard to conceal.

“No dice,” Trey said after fiddling with the equipment. “Samson still ain’t answering. Can’t get Lieutenant Mitchells, either.”

“’Cause of that storm,” Vish said.

Another round of beeps went off, and Eevi walked over to check the weather station. The former militia investigator glanced back at Katrina.

“This isn’t good, Cap,” Eevi said.

Katrina gave a nod and, in her command voice, said, “All right, everyone, have a seat and grab a bite. I have some updates to give and a decision to make.”

All took seats around the metal table and dug into the fresh food they had brought down from Deliverance. The fruit was already starting to go bad, but the tomatoes were still firm and red and juicy. They also had some week-old bread and jerky left over, but that was it.

Once they finished this meal, they would be forced to use freeze-dried stuff and protein bars made in the bowels of the airships.

“Sandy, Jed, what did you find belowdecks?” Katrina asked, licking tomato juice from her fingers.

“Not much, really,” Jed replied. “We have about two weeks of food that we brought down from Deliverance. But the new stuff… not sure if it’s any good. Freeze-dried, and packaged well, but it’s dirt old.”

Sandy nodded. “And the water-recycling system isn’t working. Without it, we have two weeks of water, at best.”

That was all Katrina had counted on needing, until the storm interfered. She followed an arc of lightning outside the port window, thinking about their odds. It could take a week or more to get around the storm, and she doubted X and Mags had that much time.

“What’s the sitrep on the weapons systems?” Katrina asked. “We got those figured out yet?”

Eevi let Alexander explain. He let out a sigh, which told Katrina it wasn’t going to be good.

“Like the food, these weapons are old. I’m guessing only about half the cruise missiles will even fire, and some might actually pose a danger to us. Four of the five .50-caliber machine guns are working, but only one of the MK-65 five-inch cannons is working. The one Layla used back at Red Sphere…”

“I wouldn’t say working,” Eevi said.

Alexander sighed. “I believe it fires, but the turret won’t respond to commands.”

“Lovely,” Katrina said. “I was hoping to use that gun to punch a nice hole in el Pulpo’s palace.”

“Let me see what I can do about that,” Alexander said, grinning. “I’ll keep working on it, Cap. Maybe I can get the other one working, too.”

“We still have the laser rifle from Red Sphere; don’t forget that,” Eevi said.

Katrina nodded. She had sent one of the laser weapons up with Les for when Deliverance attacked the Metal Islands, and kept the other here aboard the USS Zion. The weapon’s shoulder stock was sticking out of a bag a few feet from her chair.

“Anything else?” she asked.

“We have two old inflatable boats called Zodiacs,” Eevi said. “The engines are battery powered, and I’ve charged them both. Only time will tell if they hold the charge.”

The ship swayed, and Katrina reached out to steady herself on a station. She wasn’t used to the violent roll and pitch of the open sea. She preferred the sky to this crap any day.

“Good job, everyone,” Katrina said as she dug into her meal.

They ate quietly over the next few minutes. She listened to Jaideep and Vish joke around and share their food. Jed and Sandy were doing the same thing.

Their bond had strengthened in the past week. The two teenagers sat close together, arms touching—close enough to confirm Katrina’s suspicions. The way they gazed at each other removed any doubt. She remembered the way she once looked at Xavier, and it wasn’t much different from what she was seeing in the two young divers in front of her. Sandy smiled as Jed offered her the last chunk of bread from the Hive.

“Anyone wanna swap some bread for this savory guinea pig jerky?” Trey asked. He opened a tin and held it up.

“Sure,” Vish said. He broke off a hunk of crust and tossed it to Trey, who tossed him a strip of jerky.

“So, when are the airships going to meet us at the Metal Islands?” Vish asked as he gnawed at the leathery meat. “And what happens when they do?”

“What the hell do you think is going to happen?” Jaideep said with a sideways glance.

“It depends on whether el Pulpo surrenders,” Katrina said.

“I hope he does for his sake,” Trey said, “or my dad’s gonna rain missiles on him.”

Katrina glanced at Edgar Cervantes, who picked at his food quietly. He looked up but didn’t add his thoughts. He hadn’t said much since losing his cousin, Ramon.

“How are you feeling?” she asked him.

“I’m ready to fight, Captain, but I hope we can get the Cazadores to surrender without damaging the oil rigs. Our people will need a place to go.”

“I still can’t believe this is real,” Sandy said with a wide smile that showed off her crooked teeth. “I’ve always dreamed what the sun would look like.”

“And the ocean,” Jaideep said. “I can’t wait to learn how to swim.”

Vish said, “I’m going fishing and boating. Man, this is going to be—”

Katrina stood up and looked around her at all the youthful gazes full of fear and hope. But she couldn’t lie to them—having grand illusions about what they would find was dangerous.

“This is going to be hell,” she said. “Don’t forget, these people are our enemy, and they have our friends. We will have to fight, one way or another.”

She moved over to the portholes. The billowing mass of clouds flashed from within, and tendrils of lightning licked the water on the horizon. She watched the raging storm like a soldier looking for a weakness in the enemy’s defenses.

Right now, the storm was a bigger threat than all the cannibals in the Metal Islands.

But it was time to stop wishing the storm would weaken. It was time to make a decision.

“We have two options,” she said to her team. “Keep looking for a way around this system to the Metal Islands, or just punch right through it.”

She recalled Captain Maria Ash’s words from when Katrina was still a novice diver.

“Everything has a weakness,” Ash had said to a group of Hell Divers. “Even Mother Nature. Your job is to find it. Your life, and the lives of everyone you know, depends on you facing your fears.”

Katrina had come up with a few of her own mottoes over the years, and one of them seemed to fit the moment.

“The way to paradise is through hell,” Katrina said. “Eat up and get to your stations. We’re sailing through the beast.”