Warriors

FORTY-TWO

Raven’s Claw carved through the sea on a course for the Vanguard Islands. A day had passed since they left Aruba, but to Magnolia it felt like a lifetime.

She stood in the command tower, looking out over the deck below. Most of the fighting had taken place here after General Forge boarded with a team of his fiercest warriors. They barely won the hand-to-hand battle against the skinwalkers, leaving a deck slick with blood. No one had walked away from the fight without an injury, and most of the survivors were in the medical ward three decks below.

General Forge, Magnolia, Imulah, and X and Miles were in the command center. The king sat in a chair, stroking Miles, while the general stared out over the water, his arm in a sling.

No one had said much since they left Aruba and heard a single radio message from a militia soldier. It played endlessly in Magnolia’s head.

The machines are almost to the capitol tower! We can’t hold them back!

Raven’s Claw had lost contact shortly thereafter, and they were sailing home at full speed. Magnolia knew that the chances of anything being left by the time they arrived weren’t good. It was a two-day sail in the best conditions, and it wouldn’t take the machines long at all to kill everything that breathed.

“Try the radio again,” X said.

Magnolia turned the dials, but only static crackled back. It was possible the electrical storms were interfering with the comms, but it was more likely that no one was left to answer the radio.

X let out a long sigh and went back to stroking Miles.

“We must not give up hope,” Imulah said. “Lieutenant Wynn was ready for them, and we have the Octopus Lords on our side.”

Magnolia snorted.

The general turned from the window, his chiseled jaw covered by a bandage that moved while he spoke to Imulah. He was ready to fight, and so were his men, but Magnolia knew they couldn’t do much with what they had left.

“General Forge says we crushed Horn and Moreto, and we will do the same to the metal gods,” Imulah said.

“ ‘Crushed’ isn’t exactly…” A glare from X stopped Magnolia from finishing the thought.

She backed away from the three men and Miles. “I’ll go check on Rodger,” she said.

X nodded, and she went to the lower decks, which smelled of body odor, mold, and a putrid scent that she couldn’t and didn’t want to place. The skinwalkers, cannibalistic barbarians that they were, had lived in filth. And while she was glad they had salvaged the warship, restoring it to habitable conditions was going to take a lot of work.

Magnolia ducked under a bulkhead and into a passage with standing water. She took a detour to the shit cans. They were even worse than those on the Hive.

The draft in here was almost unbearable. She held her nose as she relieved herself in a stall missing a door. The bulkhead-mounted mirrors across from the toilet were stained and cracked, but she could still see her reflection.

Both eyes were swollen, her lower lip was cracked, and she had lost a tooth. If not for the fresh bandage on her head, she would look like a monster. Even now she looked awful. But she was alive.

She rinsed off her hands and went to the medical ward. Rodger was sitting up in his bunk.

“Mags,” he said, forcing a crooked grin.

She walked over, and his face returned to its perpetual frown.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Really tired, but I’ll live. How about you?”

Magnolia shrugged as she walked into the space crowded with injured soldiers. Ton and Victor were in adjacent beds, and beside Ton was the English-speaking Barracuda warrior Willis. Everyone was being treated for radiation poisoning, including Magnolia, who had been exposed to low doses with her helmet off.

She smiled at Ton and Victor and sat by Rodger’s side. His feet and legs were covered with a blanket, and she was careful not to sit on them.

“We still haven’t been able to raise the Vanguard Islands since the first message,” she said.

He looked down, then back to her. “I have faith in Tin, Les, Timothy, and Samson,” Rodger said. “If anyone can stop the machines, it’s them.”

Magnolia wished she had that same faith, but she feared that their mission had failed. Even if they had succeeded, it may well be too late for the Vanguard Islands.

Something in her gnawed like a parasite feasting on her guts. She had this horrible feeling her friends were all dead, not only at Kilimanjaro but at the islands.

Darkness swarmed her mind. All she wanted to do was curl up with Rodger and sleep. But if the Hell Divers had failed, there was another fight ahead.

Would it even be worth fighting if everyone was dead?

“I better get back topside and start helping with the weapons,” she said. “The skeleton crew needs help.”

“Wait.”

Rodger reached out and took her hand.

“We’re going to be okay,” he said. Then he brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “I love you, Mags.”

“So you can be romantic,” she said. “I love you, too. See you in a bit.”

She walked over to Victor and Ton before leaving. “How are you two feeling?”

Victor blinked at her, still sedated. He mumbled something to Ton, who gave a thumbs-up.

“Thank you for everything you did for the king,” she said.

Victor pounded his chest with his fist.

She continued, past Willis. He swung his legs over the bed and pulled an IV line out of his arm, then stood up with a pained grunt.

“Screw sitting here and shitting in a bucket,” he said. “You need help with those guns?”

“I’d love some.”

He followed her back to the upper decks, stopping to change into a suit before going outside. Magnolia changed into one, too, and stepped up to a porthole.

Lightning flashed across the horizon, illuminating the deck. Several Cazador soldiers worked on the twenty-millimeter cannons and several smaller machine guns mounted on the gunwales.

Most of the rockets had been expended, but the skinwalkers had several other weapons systems. She spotted the spearguns that they used to hunt Sirens.

Can’t use one of those on a machine.

There were two Mark 45 lightweight guns, but neither worked. If they could get them up and running, they might have a fighting chance to inflict major damage, as they had back at Red Sphere.

“We have to get those back in service,” she said, pointing to one of the cannons.

Willis nodded. “I’ll get a team on it.”

She spent the next hour working with him and a handful of Cazadores, including some mechanics who had managed to escape from Shadow and Renegade. The team finished with a final count on weapons and ammo.

There wasn’t much even if they could get one of the Mark 45 lightweight guns working, which the mechanics weren’t sure about. All tallied up, it was hardly enough to fight more than a few machines.

She thanked Willis and walked off the bloody deck. A ladder took her to a hatch that opened to another empty passage. Brooding, she walked to the command center.

Halfway down the next passage, a voice stopped her.

“There you are,” Rodger said.

“Rodge, what in the hell are you doing out of bed!”

She turned around to see that he wasn’t alone. Ton was there with Victor, and so was Imulah. The fact that they all had gotten out of their beds despite severe injuries told her something dire was happening.

“Come quickly,” Imulah said. “We made contact with the Vanguard Islands.”

Magnolia went over to help the injured men to the command center. As they approached, the crackle of static echoed off the overhead and bulkheads.

X was standing with Forge at the comms station.

“What’s going…” Magnolia started to say.

X turned with a finger to his lips.

She helped Rodger over, and Ton limped with Victor and Imulah.

“Destroyed… Trading post… Gone…”

The female voice kept breaking up, but she caught the gist of it. The machines had all but destroyed the Vanguard Islands.

Lightning forked through the sky, creating a resounding crackle over the comms.

The view was one Magnolia had seen all her life. She had always thought this view was all that existed on the surface: storms, wastes, and memories of a world destroyed.

But through it all, they had finally found a home, only to have it wiped out by the machines. She dreaded the thought of returning to a destroyed paradise.

“Machines are…” said the voice.

The message finally cleared.

“This is X,” he said. “Who am I talking to, and what the hell is happening?”

White noise filled the room, but it passed and a familiar voice surged over the channel.

“This is Ada Winslow, sir,” came the reply. “The machines attacked and sank Elysium…”

The radio cut out again.

“How can that be Ada?” Magnolia asked. “Is this some sort of a trick?”

“Ada, do you copy?” X said.

“Copy, sir.”

“It’s really you?”

“Yes, sir. I returned to help you.”

X paused, his graying brows coming together in confusion.

“We’re on our way, aboard Raven’s Claw,” he said. “How long can you hold off the machines?”

There was no reply. The radio had cut out again.

Magnolia felt her chest warm.

“Ada,” X said. “Ada, do you copy?”

He pounded the radio with his hand.

“This piece of shit,” he growled.

Lightning flashed outside the portholes. The warship was sailing toward another electrical storm—probably the cause of all the static.

They stood there for several minutes trying to get Ada back. Rolling thunder followed another barrage of lightning.

After the rattling stopped, the radio came to life.

“King Xavier, do you copy?” Ada said.

“Copy!” X almost shouted.

“Sir, I don’t know what you heard last, but we held the capitol tower and the Hive long enough for the divers you sent to Mount Kilimanjaro to complete their mission. The virus worked, sir. The defectors were shut down—worldwide.”

Rodger looked over at Magnolia, his swollen eyes widening behind his glasses.

This couldn’t be real, could it?

“We won the war,” Ada said. “The Hell Divers defeated the machines!”

For a moment, no one said a word except for Imulah, who interpreted for Forge.

Then X stomped the ground and reared his head back, letting out a howl of glee. He got down and hugged Miles, who also began to howl.

Magnolia remained frozen in place, unable to fathom what she had just heard. Over two hundred fifty years after the apocalypse, the Hell Divers had defeated the ancient enemy that started the war.

She was aware of Rodger pulling on her arm, and Imulah laughing with Forge in a rare display of emotion. But she couldn’t quite grasp that this was real.

It wasn’t until X kissed her on the cheek that she snapped out of it.

“They did it, kid,” he said. “They really fucking did it. Giraffe and Tin saved our home.”

“They saved the world,” Magnolia mumbled in disbelief.

Michael stood at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro, blasted by windblown sand. Over three weeks had passed since Les uploaded the virus that shut down the machines, and Timothy had sealed the deal by ramming Discovery into the tower. The defectors could never come back online.

Michael had never felt such a conflicted wash of emotions. But why now, after saving humanity from extinction? On the way back from a supply run into the destroyed base, he stopped at the graveyard. He knelt at the rows of mounds covering the remains of his friends and the prisoners killed during the battle. Hector, Ted, and Lena were all buried here. Nothing remained of Samson or Les, but Michael had dug a grave for them anyway.

Behind him stood Kade, Captain Rolo, and the surviving crew of Discovery.

Eevi, Pedro, and Alfred and his team, along with Sofia, Edgar, and Arlo had joined Michael on the supply mission. Captain Rolo had also brought a small team of men carrying crates from the machine base—mostly medicine, but some weapons, too.

Arlo limped over and knelt beside Michael. Edgar had a limp as well, but he had lucked out when the drones hammered his sniping position. Sofia was also lucky to be alive.

Lena hadn’t been so lucky. Losing her had hit Edgar hard, and while he hadn’t spoken much about it, Michael knew he felt guilty for not saving her. Arlo showed the same guilt over losing Ted, one of his best friends.

The dry wind swept over the ground, whipping up dust off the mounds in front of the four divers.

Four left.

A tear rolled down his face. They had lost much, but they had completed their mission, and the fallen divers’ sacrifice would never be forgotten.

They had won a monumental victory, yet they might never know how X had fared in Aruba, or whether the Vanguard Islands had survived. He and the other survivors were stranded here with no way home.

A tear fell from the other eye.

His home and his family were almost half a world away. Somehow, he would get back there even if he had to walk and swim the whole way. Nothing would stop him from seeing his wife and their son.

He got to his feet as another dust storm swept across the plains outside the walls. Kade led the crew behind the factories, to a road strewn with destroyed defectors. All had gaping holes in their skulls, where Kade and his people had shot them after the virus shut them down—a precaution.

That day had been a celebration of freedom and the end of an enemy that had all but wiped humanity out.

The fight against extinction wasn’t over yet, though, and Michael had a feeling it was going to be a long road ahead. Especially for these people.

At first, he didn’t understand why the machines had even kept them alive, but it was obvious now that they all had worked in the factories.

They were slaves—labor to help build more machines.

And some of them had been subjected to worse horrors, turned into machines with human brains and awareness. Michael had blown the factories sky high after the battle, ending the suffering of the tortured beings inside the macabre laboratories.

Gusting grit buffeted the group as they walked toward the massive blast doors built into the mountain. Timothy and Les had supposed this was the entrance to their command center and mainframe, but it was actually an entrance to a base built here before World War Three.

The doors screeched apart to reveal a long concrete passage. Several old-world vehicles sat on rusted hubs.

The group walked over a mile before reaching the secondary entrance. Kade used a key to open the steel door, and Michael helped him push it open.

The passage narrowed considerably, allowing just enough room for Michael to walk with Kade. He respected the old Hell Diver greatly for keeping his people alive all these years.

Behind the final door, he saw what they had been promised in the radio intercepts from the machines. A massive vault with high ceilings sprawled out before them. The bunker had its own water supply, farm, and everything else they had on the airships, but without the risk of crashing to the wastes. It was big enough to house two thousand people—about four times the current population.

Only 510 survivors remained. Many were in such poor health, Michael wasn’t sure they would make it. They needed medicine—the purpose of this scavenging mission.

Kade directed the men carrying the crates to a packed medical ward.

Michael slung his laser rifle and took off his helmet as he walked into the open chamber. All ten metal tables were occupied with people eating dinner. Everyone wore dark-blue uniforms from the bunker, with the flag of some old-world government.

Most of them turned, eyes flitting toward the divers.

For the first few weeks of living here, the former prisoners had shied away from Michael and his team, but now they were more curious, especially the children.

Alton, the boy Michael had first seen when breaking through the window of the warehouse, had become his shadow. He was behind Michael now, walking with his tattered stuffed elephant.

“Commander Everhart,” Alton said politely. “Where are you going?”

Michael nodded at Edgar to keep going with the others. Then he crouched in front of Alton.

“I have to go to an important meeting,” he said.

“Can I come?”

“No, I’m sorry, bud, but this is about our future—grown-ups only.”

The boy’s brown eyes swept the high ceilings and then the rooms across the chamber.

“Are we going to live down here forever?” Alton asked.

“No,” Michael said. “I’m going to take you someplace where you will see something you’ve never seen before.”

“The sun?”

“And the ocean.”

The kid’s eyebrows rose. “Promise?”

“I promise.”

Alton smiled and ran off toward his smiling mother. Michael waved at her, feeling a sense of dread. He was a long way from the Vanguard Islands, and he had promised Layla that he would someday hold their son just as Alton’s mother held him now.

Michael went through the chamber and took a stairwell two levels down. Another hallway led him to a room that had been designed as a command center. There was radio equipment, computers—everything that generals and high officials needed to monitor a war.

Alfred and his team were working on several of the computers, but they hadn’t been able to get any of the comms to work.

Michael went to a conference room and opened the door. Edgar, Arlo, Sofia, Pedro, and Eevi were already seated at an oval table with Kade, Captain Rolo, and several leaders from the other two airships. This was their second planning meeting, and Michael hoped it would go better than the first.

Across the table sat Captain Linda Fina of the ITC Requiem. The old woman’s wispy hair and wrinkled face reminded Michael of Janga. Fina was the descendent of French ITC soldiers, and she spoke several languages.

“Commander Everhart,” she said in a croaking voice. “Please have a seat.”

Anderson Links, a bald man with dark skin and a long beard, had served as a lieutenant under Captain Rolo.

The other two attendees, a man named Dmitri Vasilev and a woman named Olga Novak, were the only remaining officers of a third airship, the ITC Malenkov. The Russian ship was the third lured here with the promise of the bunker.

“Let’s get started,” Rolo said. “Commander Everhart, you and your divers have the floor first.”

Instead of sitting, Michael moved over to a wall of maps. They all had seen them. Everyone in the room knew how far they were from the Vanguard Islands. That was why half the group had argued to stay here.

After all, this was better than their former living conditions, and they had supplies to last for years.

But the other half of the group, Michael included, wanted to leave. The question was, would they be allowed to leave with supplies that his opponents thought would be wasted on a doomed endeavor?

“I know it sounds impossible to reach the Vanguard Islands on foot,” Michael said. “But even if it takes years, I’m willing to take the risk out there in the wastes.”

Edgar chimed in. “For me, seeing the sun and living somewhere on the surface, the way it used to be, was worth diving for. It was worth dying for, and many of us did die to make it here.”

“This place isn’t exactly safe,” Arlo said. “And I, for one, would rather spend a few years trying to get home and see the ocean again, than stay in this rabbit hole.”

Everyone listened while an interpreter explained what the divers were saying. When they finished making their case, Captain Fina spoke.

“We are grateful you and your team came here to destroy the machines and, ultimately, to save us,” she croaked. “But traveling to the Vanguard Islands on foot is a death sentence.”

“A poor deployment of resources,” said Lieutenant Links.

Olga Novak spoke through a translator. “If we believed we could make it to the Vanguard Islands, or knew of places to find vehicles and then boats, we would try, but until then, we agree that staying here is the best course of action.”

Michael was beginning to lose patience with these people.

“I say if they want to go, we give them supplies to go,” Kade said. “Also, they have their own from their airship, which was destroyed, mind you, while saving us.”

The others hashed it out while Michael stood with Sofia, Arlo, and Edgar.

A rap came on the door, and Alfred stepped inside.

“Commander, we’re picking something up on the radar,” he said. “You’d better come out here.”

Michael joined Alfred and his technicians around a radar screen in the adjoining room. A dot pulsed on the green screen, inching closer to the mountain.

“What is it?” Michael asked.

“No idea, sir, but it’s definitely heading for the base.”

“Keep me updated on the internal comms,” Michael said, referring to their headsets that still worked. He motioned for Pedro, Kade, Sofia, Arlo, and Edgar to follow him.

They met back in the main chamber, trying to avoid scaring any of the people still eating their meal. Several looked up as they passed.

Michael couldn’t help rushing across the room. This could be some machine that they hadn’t been able to shut down—an aircraft come from across the globe to exterminate them, or a swarm of drones moving as one. If so, they were already dead.

Thirty minutes later, the team arrived at the blast doors. A thin guard with a buzzed head snored in a chair.

“Don, wake up!” Kade said.

The man nearly shot out of his seat. “What?”

Michael secured his helmet. “Open it,” he said. “I’m going to check this out.”

Kade gave the guard the order, and the man pushed a lever. The doors screeched open, and sand blew in.

Michael told Pedro and Arlo to stay behind while Sofia, Kade, and Edgar followed him into the storm. He set off down the road, NVGs on to guide him in the darkness.

“Alfred, do you copy?” Michael said.

Static hissed in his helmet.

“Copy, sir.”

“You got a location on this aircraft?”

“Currently at two thousand feet and lowering,” Alfred said. “Looks like it’s about a mile outside the main gates. I’m uploading the coordinates to your HUD.”

Michael held up a hand, trying to see through the swirling grit that pecked his visor.

“Come with me,” Kade said.

Michael and Edgar followed the diver deeper into the base, carefully maneuvering around the debris from Discovery and the demolished tower that had housed the machines’ mainframe.

Michael looked away from the rubble pile. Les had given his life to stop the machines. But now Michael had a gut feeling this was some sort of machine they didn’t know about.

The team stopped at a three-story building with a ladder on the backside. Kade went up first, Michael next. The top gave a better view of the skyline above the dust storm.

Michael finally saw a dot emerge on the minimap in the corner of his HUD subscreen. The aircraft was half a mile away, at a thousand feet.

The divers crouched and raised their laser rifles, scanning the dark clouds. Whatever was out there was lowering slowly.

A shape emerged in the cloud cover, then vanished. Michael moved his finger to the trigger.

Lights suddenly blazed through the darkness. Michael raised his hand to hold fire. That whir sounded familiar.

Rising from his hunched position, he stared in disbelief at the beetle shape descending over the base. It couldn’t be…

There in the whipping grit, spinning up whirlwinds with its turbofans, hovered the airship he had spent most of his life on. The hull was patched, and fresh paint marked the bow.

Vanguard.

The turbofans slowed and shut off as legs extended downward and connected with the dirt.

“Come on!” Michael yelled.

He nearly slid down the ladder.

When his boots hit the ground, he took off running. By the time he reached the launch bay, it had already opened. A platform lowered.

A figure in a Hell Diver suit emerged on crutches. A more slender Hell Diver followed.

Michael had stopped a few feet from the platform, his heart about to burst.

A woman emerged in the launch bay wearing a hazard suit, one hand on her swollen belly.

“Tin!” she called out.

Miles, Ton, and Victor all emerged with her, but they parted to allow another diver out of the launch bay. This one was missing an arm.

Dressed in full armor, the legendary king of the Vanguard Islands was the first to walk down the ramp and set foot on African soil. Michael stared in disbelief.

After all the horror they had experienced, this seemed too good to be true. In his years as a Hell Diver, he rarely saw happy endings.

“Is it really you?” Michael asked.

“You just going to stand there all teary-eyed?” X asked. “I figured you’d be a little happier to see us and this bucket of rust!”