Warriors

THIRTY-FIVE

X hid with Magnolia and Rodger in a thicket at the edge of the beach. The distant sounds of gunfire had faded away, confirming the obvious: Mac and his team were all dead or in captivity.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. The skinwalkers weren’t supposed to have anyone in the refinery. He had seen the damn footage himself. He felt sick.

A few feet away from him, Ton and Victor watched the forest for pursuing hostiles. Both men were wounded. Ton had a bullet wound to the shoulder, and Victor had a through-and-through to the upper arm.

Magnolia lay beside Rodger and tried to keep him from moaning and giving away their position. It was just a matter of time before the skinwalkers found them here.

They hadn’t just ambushed his team. They had also attacked Shadow and Renegade. X lifted the binos, afraid to look.

Smoke wafted away from Shadow, but Renegade was gone, sunk by the submarines.

The skinwalkers had gotten the best of X twice now. Horn had ambushed him at his home and now at the outpost. And now Miles was dead, caught in the crossfire of a war X couldn’t stop.

“Miles, my sweet boy,” he mumbled.

He pushed up his visor and vomited onto the sand. Then he sobbed like a child.

Magnolia moved over and put a hand on his back. “I’m so sorry, X,” she said.

Rodger writhed in pain, and she returned to his side. The land mine had turned his right foot to mush, and his legs had suffered major trauma. If not for his armor, he would have lost them both. The dressing Magnolia had applied below the tourniquet was already bright red.

“We’ve got to get him aboard Shadow,” Magnolia said.

Using his spear as a brace, X pushed himself up. He couldn’t grieve for Miles right now, not until Rodger was safe and X had his revenge. Until they all had their revenge.

El Pulpo, Carmela, and their bastard son had taken too much from the sky people. X was going to make Horn and his mother suffer.

Across the green view of the ocean, Shadow sailed farther out to sea. On the deck stood a man wearing an orange cape. X zoomed in with the binos—it was indeed General Forge.

As long as the man was alive, they had a chance.

“Men,” Victor said.

Magnolia and X both spun about, X with his blaster, Magnolia shouldering her laser rifle. But Victor was pointing at the water.

X followed his line of sight, seeing nothing in the waves.

Victor kept pointing. “See. I see men.”

“Where?” Even with his night vision on, X didn’t see anything beyond the breakers but endless whitecaps.

Over the surf came a noise. Barking.

X lowered his blaster and walked out onto the sand.

“King, no,” Victor said.

“X, get back here!” Magnolia said.

X staggered out farther down the sloping sand toward the pounding waves. Were his ears playing tricks on him?

The barking came again and halted, and he strained to see the outline of a craft moving in the water.

“Miles?” X whispered. He stared in disbelief at what had materialized into a rubber boat. Not one but three, all carrying soldiers.

And a dog.

Miles leaped out into the surf and swam toward the beach. X ran out into the tide, battling the massive waves to get to his best friend.

“Miles!” he yelled.

A wave brought Miles right toward X. He wanted to grab the dog, but it was too dangerous while the spear remained attached to his stump.

Miles came ashore with the next wave. X wanted to hug the dog and hold him tight, but now wasn’t the time.

The three rubber craft beached, and militia soldiers and Cazadores jumped out. With them were Imulah and another scribe, bandaged and bleeding.

The soldiers pulled the boats up the beach, then grabbed gear and weapons.

“I took care of him like you said, sir!” a voice called out.

X spotted the soldier he had told to look after his dog. Brett something… He wanted to hug the guy, but he was too busy hugging the dog. Brett ran over, panting.

“Thank you,” X said. “I owe you, man.”

“We need medics,” Magnolia said. Brett turned and motioned toward the militia soldiers. Two of them ran over with packs. Another walked over to Ton and Victor, who were still watching the jungle for hostiles.

Victor waved the medic away.

“Fine,” he grunted.

“We need men to hold security along this tree line,” X said to Brett, pointing with his spear.

He counted ten militia soldiers and twelve Cazadores. Several wore the Barracuda logo on their armored chests. He didn’t want to tell them what had happened to Colonel Mac and Felipe, but he had no choice.

“Any of you Cazadores speak English?” X asked.

“I do, King Xavier,” said a man in full armor. He walked over, holding a long rifle with a scope.

“What’s your name?” X asked.

“Willis.”

X explained what had happened, and the soldier interpreted for the other Barracudas. Several lowered their heads, clearly distraught, but they put aside their grief and fanned out with their weapons.

Brett got down on a knee, still trying to catch his breath.

“What the hell happened out there?” Magnolia asked.

“Fucking subs. General Forge took one out with cannon, but Shadow got hit by multiple rockets, and Renegade took one to the starboard hull.”

“They must have seen us coming somehow,” said a female militia soldier. She had a see-through visor, and X recognized her freckled face.

Libby was just nineteen and had gone from school on the Hive to farmwork on a Cazador rig, and now to fighting.

“We barely escaped,” she said.

“What about Raven’s Claw?” X asked.

“Not sure, sir,” said Brett. “I didn’t see it, but General Forge is on the hunt. At least, that’s what we were told before the comms on Shadow went down.”

“What do we do?” Libby asked.

X looked at her, then scanned the other frightened faces behind the masks. The Cazadores’ helmets were pointed his way, and while he couldn’t see their features, he knew that they, too, were scared. Most of those here on the beach were young people, just as in old wars.

Now they were cut off, and X had no idea where Horn and his main forces were. The recon mission had not merely failed; it had ended in a slaughter.

But how had Horn known?

“Sir,” Brett said. “I mean, King… What do we…”

“We do what the Cazadores do,” Magnolia said. “We go hunting.”

Miles wagged his tail.

“You aren’t coming,” X said. “You’re staying with Rodger and…”

X wasn’t sure who to put with them, but he couldn’t leave them on the beach. He couldn’t risk sending them to Shadow, either. Not with another submarine and Raven’s Claw still out there.

“Victor, tell Ton I want him to stay here and guard them,” X said.

Victor interpreted, and Ton nodded. A medic had already finished plugging his armor.

“The militia stays here, too,” X said. “You got that, Brett? Keep an eye on the jungle and beach. If anyone approaches that looks like them, you shoot. Got it?”

“Where are you going?” Brett asked.

“Mags, Victor, and I are going to find Moreto and Horn,” he said.

“No,” Rodger moaned. “You can’t leave me.”

X bent down to the medic wrapping Rodger’s foot. “Give him some morphine,” he whispered.

The medic nodded and fished inside her pack.

Rodger reached out to X. “Don’t do this to me, King Xavier,” he slurred. “I can still fight.”

“Don’t worry, Rodge,” X said. “I’ll save some for you.”

Rodger grunted in pain as the medic stuck a shot between armored plates, into his suit.

X walked over to Imulah. “You okay?”

The scribe shook his head. “The radiation…”

“Is minimal. You’ll be fine without a suit for a little while.”

“What are you going to do, King Xavier?” Imulah asked.

“Finish what I came here for,” X said. “Hang in there, mi amigo.”

X went to the Barracuda who had spoken English.

X said, “Willis, I want you to take eight men down the beach and try and flank the outpost. Don’t attack unless you think you can win. I want the other four here with the militia, to protect the wounded and Miles.”

Willis nodded and pounded his chest.

By the time X returned, Rodger was passed out. Magnolia put her face shield up against his.

“He’s going to be okay, Mags,” X said. He went down on one knee beside Miles. “Look after Rodge, okay, boy?”

Miles’s tail swung back and forth, hampered by his suit.

Rising to his feet, X checked the ocean. Shadow sailed toward the harbor, in pursuit of the last sub and Raven’s Claw.

“Good luck, General,” X said softly. “We’re both going to need it.”

Victor waited at the jungle’s edge with his cutlass in hand. His left arm hung limp against his side. The medics would dress the bullet wound when they could.

Magnolia checked her laser rifle.

“You guys ready for this?” X asked.

Two nods.

X led the way. Together, they set off through the jungle, taking a new path—this time without a mine detector.

X selected a route thick with vegetation, knowing it would be less likely to have mines. He chopped a barbed frond with his spear. Purple sap spurted like blood from an artery.

Magnolia hacked at branches with her sickle, and Victor used his cutlass. By the time they reached the clearing, their blades were sticky with sap.

X took up position behind a thick palm trunk and glassed the field with the binos. Over decades of use, the night-vision goggles had become like a set of glasses, helping him see things other divers would miss.

On this sweep, he saw nothing between his position and the oil refinery.

“X,” Magnolia said quietly.

He joined her at the base of another tree.

“Look at the turbines,” she said.

X used his binoculars again, centering them on the turbines in the other direction. A rope hung from one of the blades. He followed the rope to the ground, where several people wearing black suits stood pulling the rope.

“What in the…” he whispered.

Victor joined him and Magnolia to watch. The people were unarmed and looked just like the ones X had seen in the video from Cricket’s recon and in the meat locker.

Both Magnolia and Victor aimed their rifles, but X waved them down. He zoomed in on skinwalkers standing around a perimeter with their rifles. They seemed to be guarding the workers in black suits. He hadn’t wanted to believe it earlier, but now he knew.

The skinwalkers had done the unthinkable—something no Hell Diver or even Cazador had ever done. They had awoken genetically modified humans at the ITC chambers and were now using them, for both slave labor and food.

X zoomed in farther, trying to see their features behind the plastic visors. Only then did he see what they were doing.

The four groups of slaves stood in single files, hoisting fresh bodies up to the turbine blade. All were Barracudas.

X watched in impotent rage as Felipe was hauled up. When the workers got him up to one of the blades, the skinwalker soldiers shot crossbows, pinning the young warrior’s corpse to the blade.

Closing his eyes, X tried to block out the evil. When he opened them again, another corpse was going up on the third turbine. This one had a prosthetic leg, and a stump where a prosthetic hand had been broken off.

X centered his binos on the dead colonel, who no longer had a helmet, or even a face. The bastards had mutilated him and the other Barracudas.

“What’s around his neck?” Magnolia asked.

X zoomed in on a sign pinned to Mac’s chest armor. He tried to read it as the workers pulled the limp body up.

The words were in Spanish and written in smeared blood, but X knew enough Spanish to read them. “Vienen las máquinas.”

Horn wasn’t bluffing. The machines were on their way to the Vanguard Islands.

The Hell Divers were running out of time.

If X and his war party encountered defectors at the Outrider, they would be in major trouble. The divers had to get into the base and upload the virus before it was too late.

Three new laser rifles scavenged from the machines would help, but the team had already lost Ted and Hector, and they still had several miles to travel before they even got within view of the base.

And now they didn’t have Cricket’s cameras. The drone’s feed had switched off an hour ago.

Michael trekked through the wastes with a heavy heart. At this rate, they wouldn’t make it far if they encountered more machines. It wasn’t a matter of if, but of when.

He didn’t know what was stopping the machines from finding them now. They knew that the divers were here, but they hadn’t sent out any of the beetle-looking tanks. Only a few drones and a single foot patrol of DEF-Nine units.

Maybe we’re not a threat to them.

Michael could use this to his advantage. The machines were going to be sorry they hadn’t taken the Hell Divers more seriously.

He led the other five divers into the darkness and the howling wind, moving from cover to cover, stopping every few minutes to scan the skies.

There wasn’t much out here now that they had left the ITC Requiem behind. Michael had plenty of questions about the airship. He still hadn’t found Captain Rolo’s ITC Victory, but he was starting to put the pieces together.

It was a hell of a coincidence for the Victory to show up where humanity had made a final stand against the machines during World War III. But two warships was beyond any possible coincidence. They had come here for a reason that Captain Maria Ash and Captain Jordan either had hidden or never knew.

If he survived, Michael would very soon find out what that reason was.

Grit swirled across the plains, making it difficult to see, but Michael spotted cover at a dry riverbed snaking across the cracked ground. A fence of spindly trees grew on the banks, their branches dangling like Cazador fishing poles.

He directed the team toward the watercourse. To his surprise, a weak trickle flowed through the channel below, but the creature drinking there surprised him even more.

A four-legged beast that looked like a cross between and a cat and a dog looked up at Michael with eyes that glowed green in his NVGs. Long, rigid bristles rose up across its neck and along its back.

Michael froze.

The animal seemed to do the same. The tail dropped between its hind legs. Opening a mouth full of sharp teeth, it let out an almost human-sounding laugh.

Then it turned and took off running. Rising on its hind legs, the beast jumped to the opposite bank and bounded up and over the top. A cackle filled the night as the creature retreated across the fields.

“What the hell was that thing?” Arlo asked.

Lena limped over. “It looked like a hyena but with a few adaptations, like those spines.”

“At least there is life out here,” Sofia said. “That means the machines don’t kill everything.”

“Just humans now,” Edgar said. Leading the way with his sniper rifle, he set off down into the riverbed. Using the watercourse for cover, the divers followed its snaking path upstream, toward the snowcapped volcano in the distance.

A drone flew low over the foothills, searching the canopy of trees growing along the base of the mountain. It circled several times, then shot back over the jungle, in the direction of the smokestacks.

Michael could see the smoke streaming out into the sky but still couldn’t see the silos. He could see radio towers, and a satellite dish protruding from a cliffside like a mechanical ear.

Flat, dry terrain stretched from the divers’ position to the scree slopes around the base of the mountain.

“We have to cross that?” Arlo whispered. “We should have just dropped on the mountain and rappelled down.”

“Quiet,” Les snapped.

Michael took a sip of water through his straw and tried to calm his nerves. He had tried his best to bury all thoughts of what was happening both on Aruba and in the Vanguard Islands, but downtime like this gave his mind time to stir up worries, like a gust of wind stirring up grit.

A sonic boom snapped him right out of it. The divers all hunched down as a drone rocketed across the sky. It stopped over the mountain and then lowered. Another drone rose into the air over the cliffs and climbed into the clouds. Thrusters pulsated, and it blasted away across the skyline.

Edgar panned his spotting scope over the flat, sere terrain, then looked over. Lightning reflected in his mirrored visor.

“We got a window, Commander,” he said.

“This is our chance,” Les said. “Move fast and stay low.”

Michael got up and started off across the plains. The team ran in a crouch. Lena was still limping but keeping up.

A half mile into the trek, they paused to rest at an outcropping of boulders. The wind had died down enough that Michael could see the hills. He sheltered behind a rock and gestured for Edgar.

“Find us a path,” Michael said.

“Northeast looks clear with several more outcroppings if we have to hide,” Edgar said, handing Michael his spotting scope.

There were several clusters of buildings across the plateau. But it was the jungle at the base of the foothills that most interested him. If they could reach it, they could sneak to the foothills and then into the rocks surrounding the fortress at the foot of the mountain.

He rotated the scope to look at the smokestacks and the fortress walls. They had to get inside there somehow.

“We make a run for the jungle,” Michael said, “then work our way up to the rocks to look for a way in. Everyone on me, fast and tight.”

He took off running. The trees were a mile and a half away—normally about a thirteen-minute run in armor, but he had to go slower for Lena.

Minutes into the trek, he spotted the mounds of earth they had seen from Cricket’s camera. And while he couldn’t see cannons or turrets, he knew they were there, hiding.

A branch snapped under Michael’s boot. He kept going, ignoring it. After another snap, he realized that they weren’t sticks. Bones littered the dirt ahead.

He slowed his pace. They were in the graveyard they had seen from the sky. The round rocks he had spotted at their last position weren’t rocks, either.

Shells of vehicles littered the ground. The nose of a helicopter and a wing of a fighter jet stuck out of the ground to his right. And bones were everywhere. Armor, too—all of it scoured by the wind over the centuries since the human army lost the battle to stop the machines.

Michael kept walking, then broke into a trot. Every bone that snapped under his heavy boots made him think of the dead. These people couldn’t all have been soldiers. Like the Hell Divers, they had probably come from all walks of life. Teachers, engineers, chefs—people trying to save what was left of their world.

And they had failed.

Michael kept running, trying to put them out of his mind and focus on the mission. But every step was a challenge. He felt that he was in a graveyard possessed by the ghosts of fallen warriors, all of them counting on the Hell Divers to finish what they themselves had failed to do.

His thoughts returned to Layla and Bray. He was trying to save his family, just as these people had tried to save theirs.

Thinking of X enabled him to refocus. The king was off fighting the skinwalkers, to save not only his family but the Vanguard Islands, too. And if X and General Forge ran into defectors there, it could be a slaughter.

Michael narrowed in on the trees, running faster, rifle cradled and eyes forward.

To defeat the machines, he must become one.

He was a quarter mile from the tree line when another drone rose into the sky. He didn’t see it at first—only the sound of thrusters. But then it burst through the smoke wafting away from the factory stacks.

Michael kept running, close enough to the fortress now to see a dirt road leading away from two massive steel doors that must be an entrance. Both were sealed shut.

He glanced over his shoulder. The divers were keeping up with him, even Lena. They bolted for the acres of trees and red sage-like bushes—ample concealment for scouting out the base.

Somewhere behind them, another drone thruster roared. Everyone hit the ground, praying that their suits would mask their heat signatures.

He stared ahead, not daring to move, staring into the empty orbits of a cracked and wind-polished skull. A rib cage stuck out of the ground nearby, and beside it a skeletal hand, a wedding ring still on the third finger.

Michael again thought of Layla and Bray.

You’re going to see them. You’re going to get out of this.

As the machine closed in, that little promise to himself seemed hard to believe.

Michael flitted his eyes to see the drone up close for the first time. This model was much more advanced than Cricket. It had no limbs and a curved shell. Spikes jutted from the armor, and an antenna tested the air.

The thrusters in back turned off as the underbelly opened. It switched to hover mode, and all those spikes extended into what were surely weapons.

Heart thumping, he resisted the urge to raise his laser rifle and blast the damn thing out of the sky. If he did, they were so close to the base that the machines would send everything down on them.

The drone lowered until it was ten feet above him, close enough that the hover nodes kicked up a rooster tail of dust. The force of the draft exposed a skull still wearing a helmet that didn’t look much different from his own.

Michael tried to calm his pounding heart as the drone flew over him. He waited for a flurry of bolts that never came. The draft of air passed right over him as it flew over the other divers.

He remained frozen, and the noise moved farther away. He swallowed hard and then flinched at another noise—a beeping sound.

Michael’s gut clenched when he realized what was causing it: his wrist monitor.

He brought it under his body and shut it off, but too late. The humming returned, drawing closer.

He prepared to roll away and fire his laser rifle, waiting for just the right moment. But just when he flipped onto his back, the thrusters on the drone fired. Blue flames scorched the air as it zipped away.

He didn’t waste a second getting up. The team followed him toward the trees while the drone flew away to the eastern edge of the battlefield.

Michael recognized the location. Cricket had somehow come back online—not to warn Michael, but to provide a distraction. He looked over his shoulder just as the enemy drone located Cricket’s broken body. A flurry of red lasers pounded the ground, finishing off the mechanical Hell Diver that had saved countless human lives, including Michael’s.

Anger flared, and he halted, but Les pulled on his robotic arm. He chambered the anger for later and ran to the jungle on the captain’s heels.

When they got there, Edgar was aiming his rifle toward the fortress walls.

“Guys, we have a major fucking problem,” he said quietly.

The gate Michael had seen earlier widened, giving them the first look inside the base. Marching forward were three DEF-Nine units, followed by another three.

Within seconds, a small army had left the base, marching down a sloped road.

“Holy shit,” Edgar said. “Take a look at this.”

He handed Michael the spotting scope, and Michael zoomed in, expecting to see even more machines inside the base. But he saw other figures—not machines at all.

These were humans, all of them shackled and chained.

A drone hovered over the group, and a defector led them across an open area, toward the factory smokestacks. The gates slowly closed, again blocking the view.

Mechanical joints clanked in the distance as the defectors marched down the road and spread out.

“What do we do?” Arlo asked.

Les looked toward Michael.

They both answered at the same time.

“We hide.”