Captives

TWENTY-THREE

“What do you mean, ‘don’t come’?” Katrina said. She looked up from the radar monitor to read Eevi’s face.

“Ma’am,” she said, “the airships picked up something on analog from Magnolia Katib, and she’s saying not to come to the Metal Islands.”

Katrina swallowed. “I want to know exactly what she said.”

Eevi played the transmission.

“This message is from Magnolia Katib. If anyone on Deliverance or the Hivereceives this, do not come to the Metal Islands. I repeat, do not come here. This is not the place we thought it was. There are too many soldiers to fight. Please, do not…”

The words from her friend hit Katrina like a gut punch.

“How do we know she wasn’t put up to it?” Eevi asked.

“We don’t.”

“Maybe we should think about postponing the mission, Captain.”

Katrina walked back to the windows overlooking the western sea. She grabbed the binos and looked at the island, now just a flat speck on the horizon, with a weak reddish glow from the river of lava.

The two Cazador ships and the trawler had sunk, and the soldiers on them were dead or soon would be. Changing the plan at the last minute had worked well. Instead of dropping the militia and freed prisoners on the fishing boat and moving the passengers of the airships to the container ship, she had ambushed the Cazador ship and destroyed all three vessels.

She would save all remaining ammunition for the attack on the Metal Islands and just let the sharks pick off any survivors.

The first phase had been a huge success, with no lives lost except for the enemy and one of the prisoners freed from the container.

“Captain?” Eevi said.

“I’m thinking,” Katrina said. The second phase of the attack was supposed to launch before dawn, but the message from Magnolia had her again reconsidering their plan.

“Thank you, Eevi, that will be all,” Katrina said without turning from the window.

But Eevi didn’t leave. Katrina could see her reflection in the glass.

“Ma’am, don’t you want me to respond to Deliverance?” she asked.

“The message from Magnolia isn’t anything we don’t already know,” Katrina said. “Just look out the window. We’ve already sunk three Cazador vessels with all hands. And we have two airships, one of them with a cargo bay full of troops, plus the Zion and a team of Hell Divers.”

“So, do you want me to transmit?”

“Yes. Tell them the message changes nothing.”

Eevi hesitated, then nodded and returned to the bridge.

Letting out a breath, Katrina held up her wrist computer to check the time. The mission clock ticked down.

One hour and five minutes to go…

Her nerves were stretched taut as a crossbow string. The very future of her people was at stake, and Magnolia’s words were really starting to mess with her head.

Maybe that was what the enemy wanted. Maybe the Cazadores had put her up to it.

Katrina returned to the bridge, trying not to dwell on her friend’s words. The members of her team who hadn’t moved to Deliverance were at their stations, armed with rifles and handguns in case they were boarded.

She summoned her most confident and authoritative voice as Eevi, Sandy, Jaideep, and Edgar stood at attention.

“All right, everyone, we’ve got just over an hour,” she said. “At go time, Deliverance will drop Trey, Vish, Alexander, Michael, and Les onto the capitol tower to rescue Magnolia, X, and Miles. They will also identify any aerial defenses that put the airship at risk.

Our job is to provide a distraction. We will punch through the barrier and take out any enemy vessels. Deliverance will target other defenses to buy the Hell Divers more time. The Hive will remain at a safe distance just in case the plan fails.”

“Just the divers?” Edgar asked. “What about the militia and the prisoners we freed from the container ship?”

“Deliverance will drop them off as soon as any aerial defenses are taken out,” Katrina replied.

“And what about the message from Magnolia?” Jaideep asked. “My brother is on Deliverance, and I don’t want him diving into a trap.”

“The message confirms that Magnolia is still alive, and that’s it,” Katrina said. “We already know they have warships, but neither of the ships we sank had antiaircraft weapons.”

“So what?” Jaideep said. “None of us know what’s waiting there.”

“No, we don’t. That’s why I’m sending a Hell Diver team to the surface before Deliverance drops off our other soldiers.”

The answer seemed to satisfy the rest of the group, but Jaideep shook his bandaged head.

“Any other questions?” Katrina asked.

“I don’t have a question, but I do have something I want to say,” Sandy said. She stepped away from her station and looked at each crew member.

“With the loss of Jed, this journey has been heartbreaking for me, and while I don’t know what’s going to happen an hour from now, I know in my heart this is the right thing to do. Our people deserve a place to live, and from what I’ve seen, the Cazadores don’t.” She raised her chin. “Today, I fight for Jed. Today, I fight for those who can’t fight for themselves.”

The others all nodded.

“For Jed,” Katrina said. “And for everyone on the Hive and Deliverance.”

Thunder boomed outside, vibrating the metal shutters over the broken portholes. A moment later came the percussive white noise of more rain.

The storm had begun, and another, of a different sort, was imminent.

“Okay, everyone, let’s get to it,” Katrina said, clapping her hands together. They fanned out, and she returned to the command center.

Black storm clouds rolled over the dark water, blurring the boundary between ocean and sky. Not ten miles away to the east were the Metal Islands. In less than an hour, she would see the first habitable spot in her lifetime. Her heart skipped with excitement but also with an edge of fear.

She grabbed the assault rifle and threw on a vest over her uniform and Hell Diver armor. The armor was still tight around her chest even after pounding the dent out, but she could breathe, and the bruised rib was bearable.

Leaning down, she pulled magazines from the duffel bag and stuffed them into the slots in her vest. Then she clipped the command sword of the Hive on her belt. She exhaled, ready to go. Ready to fight.

As the minutes ticked by, she used the time to check the radar and scan the sky with her binos. At thirty minutes till go time, she picked up the receiver and opened a line to the Hive, breaking radio silence.

“Captain, this is Samson. Go ahead, over.”

She kept her voice low in case anyone on the bridge below could hear. She was more worried about that than about Cazadores listening in.

“How are things up there?”

“Good, Captain. We’re at twenty-five thousand feet, at the location you gave us. Skies are clear of storms in this area. Don’t worry about us.”

She paused for a moment, lowering the receiver before bringing it back up to her lips. “If things go wrong, you will be all that’s left of us. And if the worst does happen, you have your orders. Promise me you will follow them.”

Static crackled. This time, Samson was the one to hesitate.

“I promise, but don’t talk like that, ma’am. Everything is going to work out. I believe in you. Our people believe in you. Just do what you do best, Captain. Give ’em hell.”

The line cut off, and Katrina checked her wrist monitor again.

Twenty minutes.

In fifteen, they would break through the barrier between darkness and light.

Her heart pounded even harder, and she took several deep, slow breaths. This wasn’t like her. She had dived into the wastes dozens of times, fought monsters, survived the madman Leon Jordan.

So why did she feel that this was the end?

She rested her hand on the sword’s pommel. It was a symbol of her people, and she would wear it proudly into battle.

A beep from the radar snapped her to instant alert.

She opened a line to the bridge.

“You see this contact, Eevi?” she asked.

“Copy that, ma’am. Looks like a single boat.”

“Edgar, ready the MK-65,” Katrina said.

“On it, ma’am.”

Katrina stared through the binos. A hint of light appeared through the gloom. Was that the moon, or just her eyes playing tricks on her?

Another blip showed up on the radar. This one was much bigger than the others. It had to be one of the oil rigs.

Her eyes went from the monitor to the horizon. She didn’t need the binos anymore. The darkness seemed to pale. The wall was becoming translucent, with a weak but visible white light showing through the other side.

In five minutes, they would be through the barrier. Deliverance would be moving into position now, and Michael, Trey, Les, Alexander, and Vish would be preparing to dive.

Layla had taken over for Les as acting captain, and Katrina had full faith in her younger friend. She also had a sense of why Layla and Michael had decided that she not dive—something Katrina had suspected for a while now after a conversation with Layla in the locker room a month ago.

Their child would be the first born on earth to people of the sky.

The thought gave Katrina the reassurance she needed. Another blip appeared on the outer edge of the radar, then another.

Two minutes before breach.

She alternated her gaze from the radar, which now showed five contacts, to the view outside the porthole windows. The sky suddenly lightened, and a dot sparkled above.

The dot became two, and then twenty, and then a dazzling sky of stars.

She stared upward in awe as the mission clock hit sixty seconds.

“Are you seeing these?” Eevi asked over the comm.

“Yes,” Katrina replied. “I never saw anything so beautiful.”

“There are way too many,” Edgar said over the comm channel.

Katrina brought her gaze back down to a view of an oil rig, and dozens of silhouetted shapes in the water. She switched the binos to night vision.

Dear God…

In the green hue of the NVGs, she saw dozens of vessels. An entire armada was spread in a long row across the water. Fishing boats, speedboats, armored boats, and WaveRunners mounted by one or two riders carrying weapons.

Beyond the fleet, three long speedboats waited.

“El Pulpo,” she whispered.

A commotion on the nearest boat, a twin-hull vessel like the Sea Wolf, drew her attention. A sailor moved to the top deck and aimed binoculars at her. Then he waved wildly, and two men swung mounted machine guns toward the USS Zion.

“Captain, what are your orders?” Edgar asked over the comm.

She could hear the near panic in his voice, but there was none in her reply.

“Open fire, and give ’em hell.”

The MK-65 fired a shell at the twin-hulled boat, and the man with the binos vanished in a puff of smoke and debris. The blast consumed two WaveRunners, setting the riders ablaze.

“Manual firing,” Katrina ordered, keeping her voice calm. “Conserve ammo. Pick your targets wisely.”

“Copy that,” Edgar replied. His voice had calmed, too. “Firing on three, two…”

Another shell from the enclosed turret blew up a fishing boat with mounted machine guns. Orange flames spread across the dark water.

They had caught the armada flat-footed, but the Cazador sailors were quickly moving their vessels into combat intervals. Small-arms and machine-gun fire from the armada pinged and ricocheted off the armored warship’s deck and hull.

Katrina watched as one of the ships rotated a turret mounted with what looked like a rocket launcher. The barrel stopped, pointed right at the top of the island.

She grabbed her rifle and ducked as the glass shattered around her, raining onto the deck. Keeping low, she moved to the ladder. Just as she was about to duck into the opening, she glimpsed a missile streaking toward the command center.

Michael stood at the launch bay door on Deliverance, peering into a cloudless sky in the early morning hours. The half-moon was high overhead, shining through a sky so clear, he could see the oil rigs twenty thousand feet below.

But if he could see the surface, maybe the Cazadores could see him. That was where Katrina came in.

She had already started the attack. Miniature explosions flickered in the distance—shells and missiles exploding over the water.

He raised his prosthetic arm and turned to his team. They had already gone through their systems checks and were ready to dive.

Les, Trey, Vish, and Alexander stood behind him, carrying assault rifles, blasters, pistols, and one of the two laser rifles. Michael carried the other. They had covered their battery units with strips of black tape to hide the glow, and they all wore black jumpsuits under their dark armor.

All lights on the airship were turned off to conceal their approach. The light cloud cover passing below also helped.

Static crackled in his earpiece, followed by Layla’s voice.

“Team Raptor, you are clear for launch,” she said.

“Good luck,” Timothy said. “I hope to see you all again very soon.”

A private channel opened between Michael and Layla.

“Be careful, Tin. I love you.”

“Copy that. I love you, too.”

He had already promised her he would come home to her, and hearing her voice reminded him again of what was at stake.

He opened a channel to his team.

“Our target is the capitol tower below,” he said. “The one with the saucer-shaped rooftop. We believe that Magnolia, X, and Miles are being held there. Look for aerial defenses on the way in. Our second objective is to identify those and report back so Deliverance can take them out with missiles.”

The helmets all dipped in acknowledgment. He took a sip of water from the straw in his helmet. He wasn’t well rested, and the flesh where his stump connected with the prosthesis throbbed despite the fresh application of nanotech gel, but he was ready for this.

Ready to dive into the first habitable drop zone in the history of Hell Diving. As he scanned the surface, he thought of all the divers who would have loved to see this.

“This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for,” he said. “The moment that humanity has been waiting for. Hundreds of our brothers and sisters have dived so we could survive and find this new home. We just gotta dive one final time.”

He stepped toward the edge, his gut tightening. The other divers stepped up behind him, getting their first view of the Metal Islands. Michael pointed his robotic hand at the capitol tower.

“Dive with me!” he yelled. “For X, and Mags, and Miles, and humanity!”

They all cheered as Michael leaped out of the cargo hold. The others followed, each of them shouting the Hell Diver motto as they stepped up to the edge and jumped.

“We dive so humanity survives!”

Michael dived headfirst, tucking his arms against his body. For the first few seconds, he felt the usual weightlessness as he speared through the clearest skies of his diving career. It didn’t take long to work into an aerodynamic position. There were no crosswinds here, no turbulence threatening the stable fall. He checked his HUD for the other beacons. The other dots beeped on the minimap, and he watched the Metal Islands grow larger.

As he rocketed toward the ocean, he checked the naval battle raging to the east. Katrina was vastly outnumbered. Some forty boats were attacking her. But none of them were warships like the USS Zion.

The light from muzzle flashes and explosive detonations flickered over the water.

He stared down at the capitol tower, searching for any aerial defenses protruding from the tower’s walls. He noted a platform about two thirds of the way up, but he saw no heavy weapons.

And why would they have them? They probably had never been attacked from the sky in all the history of their settlement here. They had probably never been attacked at all.

At ten thousand feet, he glanced over his shoulder. In the green backdrop of his NVGs, he identified the long frame of Les Mitchells cutting through the sky, head down, body straight as a spear. He had almost caught up to Michael.

Good to have you with me, Giraffe.

As Michael looked back down at the capitol tower, a flash of light broke through the darkness. Something streaked past him.

It took him a brief moment to realize that the Cazadores had fired something at the divers. The explosion came several seconds later, like the boom of nearby thunder. Another look behind him revealed that the shell wasn’t meant for the divers after all.

The cannon, or whatever they had fired into the sky, was aimed at Deliverance. Bright orange flames bloomed by the airship’s starboard hull.

Michael bumped on his comm channel. “Layla, get out of there!”

“What the hell was that?” she replied.

Another shot whistled past the divers, this one cutting right between Trey and Alexander. They rolled out of their nosedive, losing their angle and spinning away.

Michael flinched as Deliverance vanished in a blast of orange.

“NO-O-O-O-O-O-O!” he shouted.

He stared into the sky, not daring to blink.

“Layla!” he yelled. “Layla!”

The explosion faded away, and the shape of Deliverance returned. He remembered to breathe.

“Get out of there!” he yelled.

And the airship did appear to be moving.

“We’ve taken damage,” Layla said. “Turbofans one and two are out.”

“Use the thrusters!”

Static crackled over the channel, drowning out her response.

Michael’s altitude was down to fifty-five hundred feet, with the top of the tower a few hundred feet closer. The fear of losing the airship and everyone on it terrified him.

He looked away from the altimeter reading, to something else that made his stomach knot. The saucerlike roof of the capitol tower wasn’t just any curved plate of metal. It was the remains of an airship.

He was wrong earlier. An airship had indeed come here, and if Layla didn’t get Deliverance out of here, the Cazadores were going to have a second trophy to add to their collection.

Now he knew why Magnolia sent the message. Katrina had underestimated their enemy. He had underestimated them.

Michael shook off the tentacles of fear. The only way to survive was to fight. He scanned the forty-story capitol tower for the weapon that had fired on Deliverance.

“Does anyone have eyes on that cannon?” he yelled.

“Negative,” Les replied.

So far, he didn’t think Team Raptor had been spotted, but the moment they opened their chutes, they were going to be targets for small-arms fire. The tower had plenty of places to hide weapons, and hundreds of windows to shoot from. On the airship rooftop, a forest of trees surrounded a central amphitheater or stadium, but he didn’t see any threats. He glanced back up at the sky.

Alexander and Trey had both managed to move back into stable position. Far above them, the airship was gaining altitude, using its thrusters to put some distance between it and the cannon below.

“I think I saw one of the shots come from the top of that tower!” Vish shouted over the comms.

At three thousand feet, he could see individual trees growing around the perimeter of some sort of arena or ball field, but no weapons.

There was only one way to locate the cannon: watch the next shot. It came a beat later as a third shell streaked away. He had it.

The cannon was hidden by the tree cover. An explosion flashed overhead, but Deliverance was now safely out of range.

Michael bit down on his mouth guard, feeling the most dangerous emotion of all: hope.

All right, you sons of bitches. Team Raptor is coming for you.

A second ticked by as he prepared for the most important fight of his life. Now he saw that it was also going to be the most difficult fight of his life.

A small army crouched in the cover of the trees, waiting for the small fire team of Hell Divers. Michael was close enough that he could see them aiming rifles and pistols into the sky.

“Hostiles in the trees!” he barked over the comms.

“Copy that,” Les replied.

The other beacons on Michael’s HUD winked in acknowledgment. Flashes suddenly flickered across the canopy of trees.

Tracer rounds cut through the air, lighting the predawn skies up with the glow of war. Gunfire from a hidden .50-cal machine gun swept the air. Michael was close enough to hear the sharp cracking sound, and then a scream in his ear.

“Watch out!”

It was Les. He maneuvered right next to Michael, tilting his visor to look back at Trey. The green flashes raked back and forth.

“Fan out, fan out!” Michael yelled.

They were falling in stable position at two thousand feet now, slowing down before pulling their pilot chutes. As he checked his HUD, a beacon winked out above him.

Michael shot a glance back to see Vish spinning away, an arm and a leg blown off by the rounds.

Higher in the sky, Deliverance was crossing over the stars, like a black beetle walking over shiny bits of broken glass. A red spark streaked away from the belly of Deliverance.

Michael blinked, thinking at first that the ship had caught fire. But the spark turned into a projectile zipping toward him. A present for Team Raptor.

The missile cut through the sky, screaming past the divers and detonating in the middle of the forest, in the most beautiful explosion Michael had ever seen. The blast erased the gunfire and sent burning human shapes in all directions—some flying through the air, others running, others crawling.

Michael pulled his chute and ordered his team to do the same. The suspension lines drew taut, jerking him back into the sky, or so it always felt. Before grabbing the toggles, he pulled out a smoke grenade and dropped it in the dirt surrounding a sports arena like the one they had landed on in Florida.

“DZ is the smoke!” Michael said over the comms.

Cazador soldiers ran from the burning forest, several of them collapsing and rolling in the dirt. A husky man on fire jumped off the side of the tower—a big, slow meteor plummeting to the sea.

But the missile hadn’t killed or maimed all of them. Several Cazadores had survived the inferno unscathed and stood their ground on the outer edges of the tree grove. They aimed weapons at the sky and opened fire on the divers.

Michael dropped another smoke grenade, then pulled the laser rifle from the sheath over his back, taking care not to tangle it in the suspension lines.

He pulled the right toggle to turn his canopy and give him a field of fire on the soldiers near the drop zone. His robotic trigger finger took the shot, and a single blue bolt flashed through the chest of a man crouching and firing into the air. He slumped over, smoke rising from the smoldering hole in his rib cage.

Michael moved to the next target: a soldier hiding behind a clump of red lilies. He sprawled in the foliage, a bright red tunnel glowing in his side. The next soldier lost an arm, just as Michael had.

With the drop zone mostly clear, he put the laser weapon back in its scabbard and checked his HUD.

Alexander, Trey, and Les had pulled their chutes and were coming in fast behind him. Les knew what to do, but both Alexander and Trey seemed wobbly.

Michael looked away, grabbing both toggles and steering toward the sunken stadium. He passed over more gardens and a pool of water, but he wasn’t here to admire the beauty. He had come for one thing only: to kill these barbarians and save his friends and his people.

The arena of sand rose up to meet his boots, and he pulled the toggles to slow his decent. Flexing his knees slightly, he did a two-stage flare. He hit the dirt a little hard and ran out the momentum.

Gunfire lanced into the ground, kicking up dust. The two remaining shooters were running away from the burning forest, followed by at least ten more that Michael hadn’t seen earlier.

He crouched down, released the collapsed chute, and pulled out his blaster, leveling it at the nearest Cazador. He waited for the sooty, half-naked enemy to get close. The man bared his sharp teeth like a wild animal and raised a pistol as Michael pulled the trigger.

The blast opened a hole in the barbarian’s chest, and he fell on his face, raising a halo of dust around him. Return gunfire sounded, and a shot pinged off Michael’s robotic arm. He shielded his face, deflecting another round. The soldiers ran at him, screaming and firing their archaic guns.

Michael fired the other shotgun shell into the gut of a man in armor, knocking him down. Then he drew the pistol at his hip and shot each of the other two soldiers.

They slumped to the dirt, giving Michael a moment to gather his gear and pull out the laser rifle. The other divers had landed on his left and right flanks, but both Trey and Alexander had come in crosswind, hit the dirt hard, and gotten wrapped in their chutes.

Les joined Michael, shouldering his assault rifle and laying down covering fire while the other two divers got to their feet.

Michael came back to back with the lieutenant, shooting bolts at the Cazador soldiers who had taken cover behind the trees. In the glow of the burning missile crater, he could see dozens of them, mostly armed with spears and swords.

A shot kicked up dirt next to Michael’s boot, and he fired a bolt through the tree and the shooter behind it. The man gripped his burning midsection and fell sideways into a bush.

It took the warriors only a minute to realize that whatever they hid behind was useless against his advanced weapon. One of them, a burly fellow with spiked hair, yelled commands in Spanish to the soldiers. Michael took off the crown of his head with a laser bolt.

Shouts came from behind the divers, and Michael turned to look for the source. Across the rooftop, men streamed out of a small building on the roof of the airship. Two hatches had swung open, disgorging silhouette after silhouette of Cazadores who had climbed the stairs from the tower.

“Don’t let them flank us!” Michael shouted. He looked for cover, but the DZ was on bare ground between the trees and the building. The only place to run was the spectator booths above the recessed stadium.

The warriors still holding position in the forest seemed to hesitate, not knowing what to do now that their leader had fallen. And then, all at once, they screamed and ran out of the forest, straight at the divers.

Trey and Alexander were by now on their feet and firing their weapons, cutting down the charging Cazador warriors. The two divers backpedaled as they fired, nearly running into Michael and Les, who had turned to engage the soldiers piling out of the open hatch.

Team Raptor formed an armored phalanx, with enemies closing in from all directions. There was only one way off this airship roof.

“Kill them!” Michael shouted. “Kill ’em all!”