Warriors

NINE

Les rushed to the rooftop with his team in tow. Since returning to the islands, he had only briefly seen his wife and daughter, and now he was heading back into the sky without even saying goodbye.

But he had a damn good reason. Their fate, and that of everyone on the islands, was wired to the heartbeat of a man ten floors below. A man who had been very hard to kill over the years—a man who some believed to be an immortal god.

It would take only one crazed Cazador to convince the others that this wasn’t the case, and the rumors spreading through the rigs seemed to be doing just that.

“He’s on his way to the Octopus Lords,” one militia soldier had overheard a Cazador saying at the trading-post rig.

“King Xavier has lost his mind,” another Cazador had said at the rig where they worked on the warships.

Les knew that if the rumors continued to spread and the troops rallied to finish off the king, they would start by hitting the capitol tower. Those weapons would also target their most valuable asset—Discovery.

As captain, it was Les’s responsibility to make sure they didn’t get the chance, even if it meant leaving his family behind. At least, from the sky, he could protect them.

He ran up the final stairwell, the sound of footsteps behind him. Layla had remained behind, but Rodger, Magnolia, Michael, and the greenhorn divers were following, all of them in their civilian clothing.

Sergeant Wynn waited for them on the rooftop outside the Sky Arena with several of his troops. They handed out several assault rifles and magazines.

“You might need these,” Wynn said. “Since we already unloaded most of the airship.”

The divers took the assault rifles, and Les took a moment to survey the rooftop. The area was devoid of civilians, but a militia patrol marched within view under the moonlight.

“What’s the status, Sergeant?” Les asked.

“All our weapons are directed at the Cazador ships and boats,” Wynn said. “Both Renegade and Elysium have moved positions, and dozens of smaller vessels have taken to the water with Cazador sailors and soldiers.”

“Holy wastes,” Magnolia breathed.

“Who is guarding the borders and watching for the machines or skinwalkers?” Les asked.

Wynn spat in the dirt. “We have vessels out there watching for hostiles, but not nearly enough.”

“What about Colonel Forge? Do we know where he is?”

“My scouts have reported he is on the warship Shadow,” Wynn replied, “and the company loyal to him has not joined Moreto yet. Forge is patrolling the border, watching for the skinwalkers, as directed by King Xavier in the last council meeting.”

“We need to get in the sky,” Les said. He started running toward Discovery. “Protect the capitol tower, Sergeant,” he said over his shoulder.

The divers followed him at a run all the way across the rooftop. Machine-gun nests pointed out over the railings. The militia had even installed a mobile missile launcher.

Also, the thirty-millimeter cannons taken off old-world warships were now mounted in strategic locations. They were the same cannons the Cazadores had fired at Discovery and the Hive during the battle for the Vanguard Islands.

Les swallowed hard at the thought of going back to war. This had to stop, and with X disabled, he had to be the one to stop it.

A voice called out from under the airship. Engineers, technicians, and mechanics were still at work, with Alfred and Samson supervising the repairs.

“Got another turbofan up and running,” Samson called out. “But we still have only three of the six thrusters operational.”

“We’ll deal with the thrusters later,” Les said. “Get back inside the tower unless you’re coming with.”

“I’ll come,” he grunted.

Alfred and his team of technicians also joined them.

They stopped at the side entrance to the airship. To Les’s surprise, Eevi was waiting at the ramp, wearing her white uniform and standing stiffly at attention.

“Captain, I hear you need a flight crew,” she said.

“You heard right.”

“Permission to come aboard.”

“Permission granted, Ensign,” he said. “Glad to have you back.”

Two militia soldiers opened the hatch and let them inside.

The passageway to the bridge took the team past the sealed interior launch-bay doors. Passengers rescued from Rio de Janeiro were still quarantined inside, and Les slowed to check on them.

Most of them sat or lay on their bunks, but several stood at the door, looking out. A girl the age of his Phyl smiled and raised a hand at Les. He tried to smile and waved back at her, then pushed onward.

“Michael, take the divers to loading dock two,” Les said. “Samson, Eevi, with me.”

Michael peeled off at the next intersection with the divers. Two more militia soldiers stood guard outside the bridge. They used the keypad to open the doors.

Overhead lights clicked on as Les stepped inside the empty space. “Fire her up, Timothy,” he commanded. “We’re taking off.”

The AI appeared in the center of the bridge, the glow washing over the stations.

“I was hoping you’d say that, sir,” said Timothy. “I’ve had plenty of time to watch the events unfolding outside, and frankly, I don’t like what I’m seeing with the cameras.”

“That makes two of us.”

Les took the captain’s chair, and Samson and Eevi sat at the stations to get them operational. With Layla staying behind, he must rely on the two of them and Timothy to get them in the air and keep them there.

“Path is clear for liftoff,” Timothy said. “Turning on turbofans and retracting legs.”

The deck rumbled, and the bulkheads vibrated with a distant whining sound.

Several warning sensors rang out, but Les ignored them, keeping his attention on the monitor to his right. The working turbofans activated at a low speed, lifting the airship slowly off the surface.

“Steady as she goes, Timothy,” Les said.

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

The speakers crackled with a message from the combat operations center.

“Weapons systems are online,” Samson said. “What’s left of them, that is.”

“Timothy, how many missiles do we have?” Les asked.

“Twenty of the smaller Sidewinders, eight Hellcats, and three cruise missiles, plus twenty-one bombs,” Timothy said. “That’s the good news. The bad news is, we’re almost out of twenty-millimeter ammo.”

“We won’t be needing it tonight,” Les said.

The airship rumbled as it continued to rise off the rooftop. They were even more vulnerable now that they had risen into the sky. Being grounded had at least provided some cover from the Cazador warships.

“Eevi, I want you to identify and then target every single Cazador vessel out there with our Sidewinders and Hellcats,” Les ordered.

“Define ‘every single Cazador vessel,’ ” she replied, visibly taken aback.

“The warships all the way down to the fishing boats.” Les turned toward her. “Anything bigger than a WaveRunner or a dinghy.”

“Roger that, sir.”

Les tapped his screen again, opening the hatches over the bow windows. The Sirens and the bats had done a number on them. Cracks webbed across the glass, but at least they were clean of blood, giving a clear view of the dazzling star-filled sky.

He swung his monitor away on the stand and got up from his chair. Through a section of unbroken glass, he studied the water below. He had no problem identifying both Elysium and Renegade.

“Eevi, are they targeting us?” Les asked.

“Not yet, sir.”

“Send out an alert to hold on to something, then fire the thrusters and get us out of range ASAP.”

Les strapped into his chair as a message to hold on went out in English, Portuguese, and Spanish. The short wait was agonizing, and he braced to take enemy fire. This wasn’t his first time to face the possibility of being blown from the sky, but he hadn’t expected it to happen here at home.

The enemy fire never came, and the bank of boosters finally fired, propelling the airship into the sky.

Les had to give X time to heal by keeping the Cazadores away from the capitol tower. The king had gambled and lost, leaving himself even more exposed to assassination attempts.

Now it was on the Hell Divers in the lower compartment, the militia on the rooftop, and the few trusted Cazador allies like Colonel Forge to protect them—assuming that Forge was indeed an ally.

“Ten thousand feet and climbing,” Timothy said. “Life-support systems at seventy percent.”

“Thrusters are holding, but I’m diverting power from the turbofans,” Samson said.

“I’ve got weapons locked on every vessel in range,” Timothy said.

Les was fully prepared to give the order to send them to their Octopus Lords. But the thought reminded him of something Ada Winslow would have said. He thought of his former XO as the airship climbed.

Sloan was telling people she had killed herself, but Les knew the truth. He wondered where she was now, whether she was even still alive out there.

She had been right all along. The Cazadores would try to kill King Xavier.

But that still didn’t absolve her of her sins. She had disobeyed orders and committed mass murder and deserved punishment for putting everyone at risk. Still, Les felt conflicted in a way he hadn’t before. He pushed the thoughts aside.

“We’re almost out of range of their weapons,” Timothy said. “Should be clear in thirty seconds.”

Les began to relax. If the Cazadores were going to fire, they would have already. But that didn’t mean they weren’t planning something.

“All clear,” Timothy said.

“Good, you have the bridge,” Les said. “Let me know ASAP if anything happens on the surface.”

Samson coughed into his handkerchief and then stood up at his station.

“Where are you going, sir?” he asked in a scratchy voice.

“To brief the Hell Divers on what Pedro told us about the defectors.”

Eevi also stood. “I’d like to hear this, too.”

“And I,” Samson said.

“I can handle the bridge, sir,” Timothy said.

Les realized that they both needed to know. He jerked his chin for them to follow, and together they left the bridge.

“It’s good to be back at work,” Eevi said. “Keeps my mind off Alexander.”

“That’s how it’s been for me after losing Trey,” he said.

They walked the rest of the way in silence, aside from Samson’s sporadic coughing. When they got to compartment two in the lower decks, all the divers were in their armor and preparing their gear for a dive.

“We’re out of enemy firing range,” Les said. “So everybody can relax for now. Timothy’s got the Cazador vessels on the surface locked on, just in case.”

The divers circled around, more relaxed now.

“I’ve got something to tell you that’s classified,” Les said. “Something I learned from Pedro.”

“The leader of the refugees?” Sofia asked.

“Right. Timothy, bring up the recording of my conversation with Pedro and feed it through the monitor in compartment two.”

The divers huddled around the wall-mounted monitor. A video of Les talking to Pedro inside the launch bay came on the screen.

Wearing a space suit to avoid exposing the refugees to germs, Les had Timothy with him to translate their conversation.

“Turn up the volume,” Les said.

“Pedro, I want to be very clear, we’re here to help you,” Les said in the feed. “We’re going to bring your people to a place where the sun shines and the water is clear. A place without monsters and the machines we call defectors.”

The bunker survivor revealed very little emotion throughout their conversation.

“But this place we call home isn’t safe from the machines, and I need to understand better what you know,” Les said.

Pedro raised a bushy brow. He finally spoke, and the conversation continued to feed through the monitor in compartment two.

“The machines have a base—a place that humanity tried to destroy during the war many, many years ago. Unlike most of the major cities, Rio de Janeiro survived the nukes, but the machines forced my ancestors underground months after.”

“The machines came to the city to hunt survivors?”

“Yes,” Pedro said. “My ancestors joined a coalition of other surviving South American countries to fight them many, many moons ago, and we launched an offensive to their base in East Africa.”

Even now, watching the video on-screen, Les got the chills.

“It was believed that they could shut down the machines if they destroyed the ITC hub facility,” Pedro said. “The offensive did destroy many of the machines, but in the end, it failed, killing every man and woman who set out to destroy them.”

“And afterward?” Les asked.

Pedro looked at the floor in the video. Then he glanced back up. “We hid like everyone else out there, and we never came out until you and those monster men found us.”

Ada hid under a lab station. She had never experienced fear like this—so paralyzing, she couldn’t move anything but her trembling lips.

The station was in the back of the pitch-dark lab. For the past eight hours, she had hunkered down with her legs pulled up to her chest, like the skeletal remains of the scientist she had discovered. Praying that the creatures prowling the passages wouldn’t get in.

But at some point, she would have to face them. She couldn’t bring herself to move from under the lab station. No matter how much she wanted to be like X, she couldn’t summon the courage.

He would never have gotten on this ship. He would have stuck to his plan and kept rowing until he couldn’t row anymore. The risk wasn’t worth the simple rope and tools she had scavenged, or the brief respite from the choppy water.

As she sat there cursing her stupidity, she suddenly realized she hadn’t heard the beasts for a while.

In fact, she wasn’t sure when she had heard them last.

This is your chance, girl. Time to move your ass.

She reached up and turned on her helmet lamp, praying for it to work. The beam lit up one of the exploded glass chambers across the room.

Careful not to make a sound, she scooted out from under the lab station. Then she pushed herself up and started back toward the hatch she had entered.

Crossing the lab gave her time to look at the broken vats. Skirts of glass shards lay on the deck where the chambers had shattered. From the looks of it, whatever was inside had broken out.

But what?

She had spent so much time hiding, she hadn’t been able to explore this lab. Now wasn’t the time to start, though.

Her lamp showed a path to the hatch. She kept it aimed ahead, trying to ignore the brown stains on the overhead and the deck. It was hard to ignore, just outside the beam of her light, what looked like a ripped garbage bag made of skin.

She froze, keeping her head forward.

The edges of the white glow illuminated the rust-colored pile, but she didn’t need the full beam to recognize human remains.

No, you don’t need to look.

She couldn’t help herself, though, and the beam roved to the pile of bones. Moving the light away, she kept walking, alternating glances between the hatch and the deck. The last thing she wanted to do was step on glass.

Halfway across the lab, she spotted something on the bulkhead to the right—something she had missed on the way in. Another room lay beyond the shattered glass wall. Inside, a row of empty cages sat against another bulkhead.

Again powerless to resist, she angled her light at the room. Most of the cages were open, but several had closed gates. The bars of several were pulled apart, as if the animal inside had bent them back to escape.

She returned to the vats.

Whatever animals the lab technicians had kept in this space had broken out.

But how?

It doesn’t matter. They’re here.

Ada pressed on, not stopping until she got to the hatch. She slung her rifle, grabbed the handle, and listened for the beasts outside.

Hearing nothing, she pulled up the bar, flinching at the clicking noise. She pulled her rifle out again, heart pounding.

No more screeches echoed through the ship. Once she had her breathing under control, she strode into the passage with her rifle barrel pointed to the right.

The beam revealed no contacts that way, but she did see the vegetation. Seeing nothing to her left, she went that way, back through the engine room.

A few minutes later, she was heading up the same dark ladder she had unwisely descended. The next level up, the remains of plants she had chopped littered the floor. But they looked different somehow.

Drawing closer, she saw why.

Something had eaten them.

The ends of several vines were frayed like a gnawed rope, and purple goo wept from puncture wounds in the thicker limbs. Her light confirmed teethmarks.

But if these beasts fed on the flora, why hadn’t she seen that earlier?

Perhaps these vines were like a farm they hadn’t yet harvested, and her cutting through them had prompted a feeding. Tamping down the panic, she hurried through the half-eaten mess.

One of the vines reached up as she stepped over it, snagging her ankle. She kicked out of it and took off at a wary jog.

She reached the passage where she had to crawl under the broken overhead and support beams. To avoid any unnecessary clanking, she put everything hanging off her belt into the backpack.

Her lamp flickered as she approached the sharp debris.

No, no, no!

She shook it, and when the beam came on again, she wasted no time. Crawling under the crossbeams would take a few minutes if she was fast but going fast could compromise her suit. She wiggled under the beams and collapsed bulkheads, keeping low, rifle in her right hand.

Halfway through, she spotted the end of the low passage. From there, it was a short hike back up to the weather deck and her boat.

Salvation was near. She just had to make it a bit farther.

The rifle barrel hit a bulkhead with a loud clank. A screech came in reply.

Ada scrabbled forward, low and fast. The screech had come from behind her, but she dare not turn with her lamp.

On all fours, she crawled under a section with higher clearance.

Almost there, almost…

The screech turned into a hiss. This time she did risk a glance.

Fur darted away from the beam, and the hissing faded. She started crawling fast when the creature bolted into the collapsed passageway, red eyes glowing in the light.

A scream escaped her when she saw the thing. The face and torso looked ratlike, but it had prosthetic legs and arms made of metal.

It scuttled toward her, the metal claws clicking on the deck. The same thing she had heard below.

Ada swung her rifle around and got the abomination in her sights. The thing opened its mouth, a snakelike tongue slithering out along with a hiss. Still screaming, she pulled the trigger.

The bullet took off a leg, and the creature flopped onto its side.

Not waiting to see whether it got back up, Ada crawled until she was free of the cramped passage. Standing, she slung her rifle, knowing she wouldn’t have time to load another round.

She unsheathed the machete instead and took off running for the hatch that led back to the deck outside. More hissing and screeching followed.

From the sounds, she had at least three of the mechanical rodents trailing her. When she got to the hatch, she swung it open and looked back just as they came skittering around the corner.

Only these weren’t all rodents. One was bigger than the others and had the face of a primate. Some sort of monkey, also with prosthetic metal limbs and tubes coming out of its torso.

She screamed again in horror.

Grabbing the hatch, she slammed it shut before any of the creatures could get outside. They thumped into the other side, mechanical claws scratching on metal.

Ada ran toward the bow of the ship. Halfway across the deck, something shattered behind her. Two of the creatures skidded down the bulkhead of the crushed command center. Another leaped out of the broken window.

Gripping the machete, she sprinted to the gunwale and peered over. Her boat was still there, but the chain had come undone and it was hanging only by the rope. She swung her legs over the other side as more creatures flooded out of the command center.

She would never be able to climb down before they got to her. The only option was to jump. But she couldn’t swim and jumping into the boat would break her legs and maybe her neck.

Her eye caught the life buoy she had seen earlier. It lay between her and the monsters, but she had no choice. For this to work, she must act fast.

With her machete in the air, she ran at the three monsters, screaming like a Cazador during the battle for the Metal Islands.

The monkey-faced creature leaped at her, and she swung the blade, hacking off its nose and knocking it away. Both rodents jumped at her at the same time. She ducked below them and slid.

Coming to a stop, she grabbed the buoy and wrapped it around her body with the rope and pack she wore.

A dozen of the mechanical hybrid monsters darted toward her from the command center, crossing the deck like a swarm of insects.

She ran, swiping at the two rodents that had jumped over her seconds earlier. Her machete took off two legs of the first beast, and she kicked the second in the face, sending it sailing like an old-world soccer ball.

When she got back to the gunwale, she took off the buoy, her bag, and the rope, which she uncoiled. The bag went overboard, onto the boat’s deck.

She tied one end of the rope to the machete’s hilt and snugged the machete between the rail bracket and the top edge of the hull, then grabbed the free end of the rope. Putting the buoy around her midsection, she climbed up onto the rail, hoping she had the courage to jump.

But the screeching, hissing monsters were all the motivation she needed. Holding the rope, she sprang out, over the boat, and watched the water rush up to meet her boots. She splashed under the surface.

She pulled on the rope she held, praying that the machete would stay locked in place. Hand over hand, she hauled herself toward the surface.

She finally burst through and flopped over the waves like a fish on a line. Then, kicking and pulling, she got to her boat.

Grabbing the side and hooking a heel, she managed to pull herself over the gunwale.

The mechanical monsters were already skittering down the hull like crabs.

She shook the machete loose, and when it fell, she pulled it out of the water and swung it against the bow rope mooring her boat to the ship. It took three hacks to sever the line, and two more to cut the stern rope. When it snapped, the boat lurched and she fell on the deck.

Dripping, she scrambled to the controls. The engine fired right up, and she steered away, not looking back until she had put some distance between herself and the ghost ship.

The hybrid beasts were climbing back up the hull, heading back to their lairs now they had missed out on their meal.

No more exploring, she thought. Stay focused and stay on course.

Speeding away, she wondered whether X would be proud of her performance back on the ship. One thing she had learned: she had better survival skills than she’d thought.