Captives

TWENTY-TWO

“Clear a path!” Les shouted.

Everyone parted to make way for the thirty militia soldiers heading to Deliverance from the Hive. They tromped over the metal deck, cradling submachine guns—normally reserved for the Hell Divers due to the risk of an accidental discharge on the fragile ships.

But instead of yelling profanities or giving these men and women a hard time, the passengers on the way to their shelters moved aside to stand and pay their respects to the soldiers who would soon put their lives on the line for humanity.

The soldiers weren’t the only people headed to war. Civilians who had spent their entire lives working on the ship trailed the militia soldiers. Rodger’s dad, Cole, from the woodworking and clock shop; Marv from the Wingman; Dom from the Dragon; and dozens more: farmers, engineers, janitors, teachers, and even lower-deckers.

Les let them pass before taking the rigid passageway connecting the two airships. The tunnel was packed full of passengers being reorganized under the updated disaster mitigation plan that Ensigns White, Winslow, and Connor had put together. During the attack on the Metal Islands, most of the civilians, including his family, would remain on the Hive.

He wasn’t supposed to go to the Hive, but he had to see his girls before the ships uncoupled. Their shelter was already packed full when he got there. Fourteen passengers sat in the bucket seats, with red safety belts across their chests.

Seeing Phyl strapped into a child seat about melted his aching heart.

“Dad!” she shouted.

“Hey, sweetie.” He knelt down in front of her. To his surprise, Katherine unbuckled herself and wrapped her arms around him.

“I’m so glad you came,” she said. “I wanted to tell you something.”

The emergency siren ceased for a moment, replaced by the kind, firm voice of Ensign Ada Winslow.

“T-minus ten minutes before the ships uncouple. Please report to your shelters or stations immediately.”

As always, Les felt that he was running on a clock and that time was almost up.

Katherine tightened her grip around his neck and then pulled back to look him in the eyes.

“Now I understand why you became a Hell Diver and an officer,” she said. “Everything you’ve done has been for your family.”

He smiled. “I love you all too much to do less.”

“I know,” Katherine said. She looked up at the dented bulkheads of the shelter, then at the other people strapped inside. “This ship has carried us for long enough. It’s time to find a new home, even if we have to fight for it.”

“You’re right, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

Les kissed his wife on the lips and then kissed Phyl on her forehead.

“I’ll see you both soon,” he said.

“Look after Trey,” Katherine said.

“I will.”

He left the shelter and closed the hatch with a heavy but full heart. Knowing that his wife supported him gave him the energy to do what had to be done. After securing the hatch, he took off at a trot through the corridors.

Three engineers in red jumpsuits stood on the Deliverance side, waiting to retract the connecting walkway. He squeezed past them as the warning siren wailed.

When he reached the command center, the officers were finishing their final launch preps.

“Someone give me a sitrep,” Les said.

“We’ve confirmed one enemy vessel on the water,” Bronson reported.

Les stepped over to the porthole windows, but all he could see was darkness slashed by lightning. They were fifteen thousand feet above the ocean, far out of reach of any weapons the Cazadores could fire at them, and even if they did have some sort of missile, tracking the airships in the soup of electrical storms would be impossible, according to Timothy Pepper.

“Captain DaVita is moving into position,” Dave said.

“Good,” Les said, typing in his credentials. He eyed the empty captain’s chair. I sure hope you know what you’re doing, Katrina.

She had changed the plan at the last minute, and Les wasn’t sure the new one was any better. The bridge doors whisked open and Layla entered, but to his surprise, she wasn’t wearing her Hell Diver armor. Michael followed her inside.

“Commander,” Les said.

“Lieutenant, Layla is going to stay on the bridge during both phases of the attack,” Michael said.

Layla didn’t look too happy about it, and Les wasn’t going to ask questions. They didn’t have time.

“Captain, all systems are a go,” Ada said.

It took Les a moment to register that she was talking to him. With Katrina back on the USS Zion, he was in command of Deliverance. But if Layla wasn’t diving, then perhaps she should be the one at the helm. He thought on it for a few seconds before giving the order to uncouple the ships.

Ada gave the order to the engineers.

A loud clunk reverberated through the ship. Using the turbofans, Les carefully backed up, and Deliverance peeled away from the Hive for the second time in as many weeks.

On the bridge, Les watched the main display and tried not to think about the precious cargo inside the Hive. Deliverance had its own precious cargo to protect: a cargo bay full of soldiers and Hell Divers to deliver.

“We’re clear,” Dave said.

Les nodded and did a systems scan, his eyes stopping on the display for the armaments. They had twenty cruise missiles ready to fly, and thirty bombs, including the remaining nuclear weapons.

He flipped the nukes offline. Red Sphere was one thing, but they weren’t going to use any of them at the Metal Islands, even if they did lose the fight. Poisoning the one known habitable spot on earth would doom anyone else out there.

And now Les knew. There were more bunkers and more people hiding beneath the surface in multiple places.

Ada suddenly hurried away to her station, pausing near Les.

“Sir,” she whispered, “I’m picking up something over an analog station that I think you might like to hear.”

“What message?”

“It’s really weak, sir, but I think it’s Magnolia.”

“Mags?” Les asked.

Michael and Layla both looked over at him.

“Yes,” Ada replied.

“Well, what did she say?” Les asked, locking eyes with Michael.

“Sir…” Ada cleared her throat. “She said don’t come to the Metal Islands. She said it’s a fight we can’t win.”

“They found the missing ship,” Rhino said. “Visibility is bad, but so far, it looks like no one’s on board.”

X rubbed his eyes. He had managed a few hours of sleep, but to feel human he needed another day.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Time to get your dead ass up. Come on.”

X got off his bunk and stood. His body felt a hundred years old.

“So, we’re going to look for the missing crew?” he asked.

Rhino scratched his head and walked back into the gangway—his way of saying yes. X limped after him down the narrow, rusted passage. Water leaked from a pipe, dripping into a brown puddle on the deck ahead.

He passed the berthing area, where Wendig and several other wounded soldiers lay resting in their bunks. She sat up and grinned at him.

X forced a smile. He still couldn’t believe the burly soldier had been a woman all along, and as much as he hated to admit it, he was starting to like her. Her aggressive personality, manners aside, reminded him of Katrina.

A part of him even felt bad about killing her cousin, Hammerhead. But the feeling passed. The guy had been trying to rip his head off, after all.

Rhino continued to the armory, where the other soldiers were already getting suited up and grabbing weapons under the Barracuda banner. X went to his locker and felt a little tug of nostalgia as, for a second, he was transported back to the launch bay of the Hive. He no longer remembered how many times he had suited up there with his brothers and sisters over the years. He missed those days.

But more than anything, he missed his dog.

He was anxious to get back to the Metal Islands. Maybe, his conduct during the fight would earn him a trip to see Miles.

The fleeting moment of wistfulness passed. The men and women inside this armory were not his brothers or his sisters.

They were his enemies—even Rhino, whom X had taken a liking to over the past few days. Wendig, too. He couldn’t let his guard down against them. They would kill him if given the order.

He opened his locker and grabbed his armor, wondering whether his real friends had anything to do with the missing crews on the two Cazador vessels.

X finished suiting up and took the sword and pistol that Rhino handed him. They walked through the ship to the weather deck, where the rattle of chains greeted them. Dozens of Sirens, exposed to the elements, pulled on their restraints and kicked the bars of their cages.

X kept his hands on his weapons. He didn’t pity the beasts, but he took no pleasure in antagonizing them.

Several of the children lay curled up in the corner of a cage, their eyeless faces keying on his battery unit. Shrieking through their gags, they sounded almost like birds.

X looked away to an island in the east. An orange river of lava poured into the ocean, raising a cloud of steam. To the west, the abandoned container ship drifted in the water. Beyond it, almost out of view, was a fishing boat with sails up.

He hurried to catch up with the other Cazadores gathering at the railing. Rhino gave quick orders, breaking a dozen soldiers into two groups. He led one group of four Cazadores plus X, and Sergeant Lurch led the other group of five. The men climbed down the rope boarding net to rowboats already in the water.

X grabbed the oars as Sergeant Lurch and his team veered off toward the fishing boat, which was much farther out. Instead of rowing, Lurch fired up the engine. Rhino cursed, and yelled after them, but Lurch didn’t respond.

Rhino sat down and grabbed a pair of oars. The team started rowing, and X joined in, though his arms were already aching. He still wasn’t fully awake, and fatigue made his movements sluggish. The other soldiers weren’t in much better shape.

X glanced at the dark water slapping the starboard side. Through the years, he had seen all sorts of mutant beasts, but the creatures that lived in the sea scared him more than those on land.

He looked up at the dark sky, exhausted and lost in his thoughts. The rowing became mechanical, and when he came out of his fugue, the container ship was just a few hundred feet out.

The rusting hulk towered over the little boat. Above the barnacles and red moss that encrusted the hull, bullets had pocked the steel plating. Flotsam drifted in the surrounding water, and several containers lay on their sides, on a deck blackened by an explosion.

This had to be Deliverance’s doing.

Trying to be discreet, X moved his helmet to scan a bit of sky with every pull of the oars. He had a feeling they were long gone after making a hit-and-run attack.

That was exactly what he would have done if he were trying to pick off the Cazador vessels. But where were the soldiers who had crewed this ship?

He shipped the oars as another soldier waited to tether the rowboat to the massive container ship.

Rhino raised a spear gun with a grappling hook and rope and fired it over the ship’s rail. The smallest man on the team grabbed the rope, which was knotted every few feet, and pulled it snug. Then he started climbing. When he reached the top, he dropped two thin lines of nylon cord. A man sitting in front of X tethered the boat to one line, and the end of a rope ladder to the other. Then the climber hauled up the ladder and fixed it to the rail.

X was the next to last up the rope ladder and down into the dark hold. He bumped on his headlamp. Flashlight beams penetrated the inky darkness, revealing crates stacked four high, and a tracked vehicle like the one they had used to pull the wagonloads of captive Sirens.

Rhino grabbed X by the shoulder and spun him around.

“You listenin’?” he asked.

X shook his helmet. “I didn’t hear you say anything.”

“I said, you’re with me and Stirling.”

X nodded. He was out of it and needed to get his shit together.

The other three soldiers set off through the ship, and X tagged along behind Stirling and Rhino, his pistol locked and loaded. They made it about five minutes before finding the first sign of a battle. Several bullet-riddled corpses littered the narrow passage. But some of the wounds looked different from those left by a bullet.

He bent down to examine one.

“You ever seen somethin’ like this?” X asked Rhino, who hovered over his shoulder.

“Yes, once before. Those are made by weapons we don’t possess.”

“What kind of weapons?”

Rhino glanced up at the overhead as a vibration rumbled through the vessel.

It sounded to X as if some gigantic monster had woken up angry. “What the hell is that?” he asked.

Stirling turned around, his submachine gun cradled over his armored chest plates. He said something in Spanish, but as Rhino replied, the tremor increased, making the spent bullet casings on the deck jitter audibly.

A whirring like the rush of wind came from above, and X knew exactly what was making the sound: a trap, set by his friends.

“Get out!” he yelled.

Before he could move, a violent quake shook the container ship, and the bulkhead behind him exploded in a wave of fire and shrapnel.

X hit the deck hard and crawled away, watching in horror as another explosion tore through the overhead behind him, crushing Stirling.

As the smoke cleared, X could see the pinned man’s fingers swiping at the air.

“Leave him!” Rhino shouted. “He’s done!”

The hand went limp under the flaming debris, and X stumbled after Rhino. Another blast rocked the ship, and he braced himself against a bulkhead. The vessel heeled steeply to port, and a loud gurgling followed. They were taking on water.

Keeping low, X moved through the smoke. His helmet gave him filtered air, but it did nothing to help him see through the dense cloud.

Rhino staggered through an open hatch and started up a ladder. X pounded up the rungs after him as the ship shuddered again. The impact knocked him down on the next landing and slammed Rhino into the handrail.

A soldier from the other team stood on the ladder overhead, his flashlight angled down at X and Rhino.

“Go!” X said, pushing on Rhino’s wide shoulders.

Reaching the top, the soldier spun the wheel handle and opened the hatch just as an explosion rocked the weather deck. The blast sent him flying backward along with Rhino.

X flattened his body against the bulkhead and shielded his visor from the wave of flames. Heat washed over him in a scalding bath. When it passed, he opened his eyes and looked to the landing below. Rhino used the handrail to pull himself up.

The other man hadn’t been so lucky. He had smashed into the bulkhead, where a steel strut impaled him through the chest.

Rhino gave his dead comrade a passing glance and started back up the ladder. “Keep going, Immortal,” he said.

X led the way this time, bumping off his light as he stepped out onto a deck ablaze with burning debris. Turbofans whirred overhead, and he looked up at a beautiful and terrifying sight.

Deliverance hovered over the water just off the starboard hull.

He ducked as a missile streaked away and slammed into the side of the trawler. Sergeant Lurch and his crew were trying to escape in their boat, but the blast overtook them, lifting the bow into the air.

Tracer rounds ripped across the water, and X turned to see a warship heave into view around the island’s peninsula, machine guns blazing. The rounds cut the men in Lurch’s boat to pieces. One of them made it into the water but went under as more bullets pounded the surface.

Another missile streaked away from the airship and hit the other Cazador ship in the bow hull, opening a gaping rent in the heavy steel plate. On the deck, motion flickered in the barred cages.

X almost felt bad for the beasts trapped inside as they vanished in a fireball that cooked them alive.

Two of the ship’s turrets were still active, and the Cazador soldiers inside cranked their machine guns up toward the airship. The bow turret exploded a second later as the attacking warship turned its guns on the Cazador vessel.

Fires burned all around X, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the battle. His people had finally come, and they were slaughtering the Cazadores.

“Immortal, let’s go!” Rhino yelled.

It was a reminder to X not to appear jubilant over the slaughter. Checking his enthusiasm, he finally forced his gaze away from the battle and ran after the lieutenant. Containers lay on their sides, the burning contents spilled onto the deck.

X jumped over a pile of boxes as the ship heeled farther over. They were taking on water fast.

Out of the corner of his eye, X watched Deliverance slowly rotating. Katrina, or whoever was in command, was preparing to finish the container ship. This wasn’t the first time an airship captain had tried to kill him. This time, at least, they didn’t know he was down here.

Rhino peeled his boots and armor off at the rail, and X followed his lead. He hated to lose the protection, but he didn’t want to meet the Sirens’ fate, as burnt meat on the deck.

“¡Rápido!” yelled the lieutenant.

A missile thumped away from Deliverance as X took off his helmet and breathed in smoky air. His eyes followed the streak to the ship’s stern. The blast lifted him off his feet and slammed him into the rail, knocking the air from his lungs.

Another explosion rocked the vessel, this time knocking him over the side. He flailed for something to grab as he fell, but all he saw was the hull of the rusted ship, and Deliverance hovering overhead.

He smacked into the water, and darkness surrounded him. Swimming hard, he heard containers slide off the tilting deck and splash into the water behind him.

The ocean swallowed the Cazador ship. Rhino swam in a powerful front crawl, putting distance between his body and the suction, but X was too close.

Pulled down by the vortex, he panicked, clawing at the surface.

No! Not like this… Please, not like this!

As he was pulled down farther and farther, he forced himself to relax, as he would in a dive. Fighting would only waste the limited air in his lungs.

The cold, swirling water finally let him go, and he began kicking and pulling toward the sliver of light that seemed impossibly far away. Lungs burning, he fought the growing impulse to breathe while underwater.

At last, unable to fight it any longer, he let out the spent air in his lungs and breathed…

And breathed again. A wave slapped him in the face, and he coughed. The realization hit him: a drowned man didn’t cough. He was alive and afloat—barely.

Above him, the blue flames of Deliverance’s thrusters faded up into the swirling dark clouds as his friends left the scene of devastation they had wrought.

Seeing the airship leave him brought back the painful memory of Hades over a decade earlier, when the Hive, instead of catching his helium balloon and pulling him in, had turned away and left him to the cold emptiness of the sky.

The memory filled him with anger. And it was happening again.

He kicked and pulled and kicked some more, using what strength he had left. If he must die, he would fight every inch of the way.

Gradually, he became aware of Rhino’s voice over the ringing in his ears. The Cazador lieutenant was treading water and pointing at the trawler. The burning mass was still afloat.

Gasping for air, he swam after Rhino, who had almost reached the fishing boat.

But as X swam toward it, he saw that the trawler, too, was sinking. He looked around them for something they could hold on to, but there wasn’t much of anything still afloat.

The Cazador ship they had taken from the Metal Islands had joined the container ship on the ocean floor. Several largish pieces of debris floated in the water, but without the NVGs, he couldn’t make them out.

All he could see was the silhouette of the warship his people had used to ambush the Cazador vessels. Like the airship, it was sailing away from the destruction it had caused. Of the hundred-plus Cazador soldiers who had set out from the Metal Islands, only one remained.

But soon enough, he, too, would be gone, and so would X.

“Those were the sky gods,” Rhino said between gasps.

X spat water and said, “My people. My friends.”

To his surprise, Rhino laughed.

“Guess your people try to kill you, too,” he said.

“My people didn’t know I’m…” His words trailed off. His people hadn’t known he was down here this time, but Captain Leon Jordan had certainly known and had left him on the surface to die.

Maybe the people in the sky had something in common with the people of the Metal Islands after all.