Wolves

FOURTEEN

Les was anxious to escape Red Sphere and get back to Deliverance, but they had their orders from Commander Everhart. The mission would continue, even after his horrifying find back in the guts of the ITC ship.

What the hell were those things?

He tried to push the ugly images from his mind as he proceeded across the pier and away from the ships. Keeping his rifle cradled across his chest, eyes roving for potential hostiles, he ran toward his next objective.

In the center of a spherical island stood a three-story metal building. Like many of ITC’s facilities, this one had no windows and few entrances. But unlike most of the buildings back in the wastelands, this one had no markings whatever—no signage, nothing.

The aerial view had him wondering whether this might in fact be one of the Metal Islands that X and Magnolia were searching for. But there was no evidence of the cannibalistic Cazadores, or sunshine, or anything alive. And so far, the only two ships they had found were rust buckets.

They had several other vessels yet to search, though. He had seen them on the dive in and planned to get a better look as soon as he had the satellite uplink set up.

He glanced up at the swirling storm above him, where the clouds expanded like a rising loaf of bread. Lightning punched through the mass, to give a fleeting glimpse higher into the heavens.

Trey was up there, wondering where the hell his old man was.

I’ve got this, kid. Leave it to Pops.

Wind-driven salt spray beat against him on the final stretch away from the pier. He looked over the side, at the waves slapping the concrete. It would take hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of years for wind and sea to finish the structure off.

Les jogged the rest of the way to the central structure where two massive steel doors sealed off the only entrance he had seen so far. As he ran, the howling wind gained strength, slamming his body. He pushed through a gust, toward a rusted ladder leading to the flat rooftop three stories above, where radio towers rose into the sky.

That was his objective, the place Michael had told him to set up the satellite comm and try to get a signal to Deliverance. He slung his rifle and started up the ladder.

A glance over his shoulder halfway up gave him a decent view of the pier he had left behind. Two massive naval cruisers stood moored at the dock. On the weather deck of the ship to his left stood Michael, watching him with a pair of binoculars.

Les continued up to the roof. Several lightning scars marked the flat concrete surface. It would have been a great place to land a supply crate, but they couldn’t risk dropping precious supplies into the ocean.

He trotted across the roof, past the radio towers, to search the rest of the facility. Four piers stretched away north from the platform, and several more to the west and east. With his rifle scope, he zoomed in on a boat docked below, tethered by chains to thick steel bollards.

This vessel looked different from the two ships where the other divers were sheltered. Barely a third their size, it looked like a fishing boat, with nets still lying on the deck where they had been abandoned.

No way that’s been here for two hundred and sixty years…

Les scanned the area a final time and discovered two more ships, one of them a military vessel with gun turrets and angular armor plating. He zoomed his scope in on the hull. Although the flag painted there was faded, he could make out the blue and red stripes and white stars.

United States of America. This was the first time in his life he had seen the actual flag. He felt a stirring of emotion, knowing that this country had once been the most powerful in the world. Hundreds of millions of humans had lived there for centuries, in what people from the Hive would consider luxurious conditions.

But a single AI virus had brought the great nation down in just days and destroyed the entire world within weeks, leading to the Blackout.

The flag had been a symbol of strength and freedom. And today it also represented an opportunity. If they could get the ship working, they would have a way to fight the Cazadores.

With that thought came a chilling realization.

Katrina hadn’t sent them here for supplies. She sent them here to find military vessels that could help X and Magnolia if they ever found the Metal Islands.

A transmission hissed in his helmet. “What’s your status, Raptor Four?”

Michael’s voice snapped Les out of his speculations.

“Preparing to set up the sat comm, Commander.”

“Roger.”

Les trotted back to the towers centered in the rooftop where he took a knee, pulled out the satellite dish from his cargo pocket, and expanded it. The wind whipped against him as he worked, rippling his uniform. He had done this plenty of times before, but hacking into each facility was different. He used his minicomputer and extra battery to power the satellite link. Ideally, he would run it through the towers on the roof, but the power to Red Sphere appeared to be down.

Lightning flashed bright overhead, and he braced for the crack of thunder. The faster he worked, the better. He didn’t want to end up getting zapped like Erin.

After several minutes of fiddling with the equipment, he finally had it working. He extended the antennas and synced his minicomputer with the satellite. He had a signal, but it was weak.

Les sent his first transmission to Deliverance.

“Command, this is Raptor Four. Do you copy? Over.”

Static crackled inside his helmet.

He waited a few seconds, then repeated the message.

Still no response.

After three more tries, he glanced up at the sky. The storm was too intense to penetrate, even via satellite, which reaffirmed the fact that they would not be riding their helium balloons back up to the airships.

That left him with only one option.

He left the equipment on the rooftop and ran back to the ladder, climbing down to the platform. Michael had his rifle out on the stern of the ship, and Les waved at him. They met on the deck, where Les explained the situation.

Michael said, “Guess we’ll have to go inside and try to get the power back on to activate the radio tower. If we’re lucky, we can get a transmission to Deliverance.”

Les gave a nod. “What about Erin?”

“I’m leaving her here with Layla. It’s safer.”

“Agreed.”

The two divers returned to the quarters on the ship. Erin was on her feet.

“You’re not leaving me here, so don’t even try.”

Les frowned. Apparently, they had kept the channel open outside.

“You two seem to forget who the weakest links are,” Layla added. “You need both of us.”

“Hey, I’m not discriminating,” Michael said. “But, Erin, you did just take a nasty shot of lightning.”

“And I said I’m fine.”

Les could see that Michael wasn’t in the mood to argue.

“Fine, but if you start to drag, we’re stashing you somewhere while we search Red Sphere.”

“Deal.”

The divers packed up their gear and followed Les into the passage. Erin managed to walk on her own until they got to the ladder on the ship. She stopped, trying to disguise the pain by turning her head the other way, or so it looked to Les. But he could still hear her labored breaths.

And she wasn’t the only one injured. Michael had a limp to his gait.

Maybe I should just go with Layla…

Moving into Red Sphere with two injured could be a liability, especially if they were all forced to run at any point. On top of that, Layla and Michael were too close emotionally, which already compromised them—although Les had never said a word about that.

He held rank on the airship, but when it came to diving, Michael was the boss. All Les could do was make a recommendation.

He stopped at the ledge of the ship, waiting for the thunder to pass before speaking.

“Commander, all due respect, but why don’t you let Layla and me proceed to Red Sphere? You’re hurt, Erin’s hurt, and again…” He held up both hands. “If we run into trouble, you both are going to be a liability.”

Layla put a hand on Michael’s armored shoulder. “He’s right.”

“Yeah,” Michael replied.

Erin snorted.

“Keep the comms open,” Michael said. “If anything seems off, you tell me.”

“Understood, Commander,” Les said. He gestured toward Layla. “Follow me.”

She paused and said over a private channel something that Les couldn’t make out. Then they were off.

Jumping onto the dock, Les noticed a patch of orange barnacles that he didn’t recall seeing earlier. There was also a growth of reddish moss—the same stuff he had seen in the bizarre graveyard inside the ITC ship.

Les had heard about the moss before. Michael had mentioned finding some at the Hilltop Bastion where Commander Rick Weaver was killed. But no one knew what it was, and Les avoided the strange growths.

As they approached the building, Layla pumped several shells into her shotgun. Then she slung the weapon and pulled out her handheld tablet. When they got to the wide entrance doors, Les wiped off the triangular security panel with his sleeve.

“Let me,” Layla said. Pulling a cable from her cargo pocket, she uncoiled it and plugged one end into her tablet, the other end into the panel. Les stood watch, rifle up.

“Michael told me about the creepy boneyard back on the ship,” Layla said. “Any idea what that’s all about?”

“My guess? I think the Cazadores were here at some point and had something to do with it. Either that, or it’s what’s left of Dr. Diaz’s team.”

“Or the defectors Diaz talked about in the video.”

“Could be.”

A beeping sounded, and she bent to look closer at the screen, tapping at the monitor. “Two more codes to crack.”

Les continued to scan the area with his rifle while they waited. Two minutes later, the doors creaked open to a cavernous space frozen in time.

Several old-world military vehicles sat in the front of the garage. They were armored with mounted weapons and welded metal cages covering the windows.

Their headlamp beams flashed around the room, lighting up cobwebs and floating dust particles disturbed for the first time in God only knew how long.

Not far behind the vehicles were several skeletons, curled up where they had died. Layla pointed at them, and Les took a step forward, his boots crushing metal.

Bending down, he found spent bullet casings.

“Reminds me of Hilltop Bastion,” Layla said. “And you know what we found there, right?”

Les replied, “Sirens.”

The very thought froze him where he stood. This place gave him the creeps. First the horrifying scene on the ITC ship, and now a scene of slaughter. He didn’t want to keep walking into the dark building, but he didn’t have a choice. Sirens or no Sirens, his mission was to get the satellite link up and running.

“Come on,” he said to Layla.

She kept her shotgun slung over her armor and pulled out the Uzi as they walked deeper into the garage, shell casings snapping and cracking under their boots.

On the other side of the vehicles, a door stood ajar. Les grabbed the handle and slowly pulled it open. Layla squeezed through with the Uzi up.

Following her into a passage, Les could see over her head since she was a good foot and a half shorter than he.

Layla motioned toward an elevator ahead. They stopped near the open doors and shined their beams into the shaft. The beams shot into the darkness, but he couldn’t see the bottom.

“Let’s try and find another way down,” Layla said.

They walked side by side to an intersecting corridor.

On the right lay another body, mummified in the closed space. This had been a woman. Scraps of a chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear hazard suit covered her dried skin, and a helmet with a crushed visor encased her head.

To the left, the passage was blocked with metal barriers, all of them pocked with bullet holes. They took a right, continuing deeper into Red Sphere, their lights sweeping over evidence of another battle. Brown streaks led to a door on the right side of the hallway, and Les saw the first signage in the building. It read simply, stairs.

“Let’s try it,” he said.

Layla opened it into a concrete stairwell. She slipped inside and set off toward a landing below.

Les shuddered with dark imaginings of what awaited them.

They continued down, flight after flight, for several minutes. Oddly, there were no doors at any of the first ten landings. This building was buried deep beneath the waves.

Layla finally stopped at the first door.

Les opened it and moved into a passage. His headlamp revealed more metal barricades blocking the end of the hallway. At a door on the right, he stopped and gave a hand signal. Layla met him there and tried the knob. Locked. She pulled out a small packet from her vest and shook out some lock-picking tools.

“Wait,” Les said. His beam had revealed another way into the room. About ten feet down, a window had been shattered.

Moving cautiously around the broken shards, he directed his light to a gap in the furniture piled up against the window.

On the far left, something had broken its way in.

“I’ll go first,” Layla said.

He helped her climb onto the windowsill. A shard of glass dislodged from the mullion, hitting the floor with a crunch. Les lifted her higher, and she dropped through the gap.

“I’ll be right back,” she said.

Les waited in the hallway while she searched the other space. Two minutes later, the handle clicked and the door opened.

Their two beams speared through the darkness, uncovering a space filled with laboratory workstations and storage areas. Some of the surfaces still held vials and medical equipment.

“Holy shit,” she whispered. Layla held her light on another skeleton at the other end of the room. Normally, the remains of people on the surface didn’t bother her, but Les quickly saw why this one did.

It was split in half lengthwise.

He moved over and crouched down beside the female skeleton, also wearing a CBRN suit. Even the helmet had been split smoothly down the middle. Black grooves extended away from the remains, where the weapon had carved the floor in a straight line.

“What kind of blade could do this?” Layla asked.

“I don’t know, but I doubt it was the Cazadores.”

Les straightened up and kept moving through the lab. Tools and shattered monitors littered the floor. They explored the rooms for the next half hour and finally emerged into a clean room.

Suits hung from hooks, and helmets were stacked neatly on a shelf. Much of the place seemed undisturbed. Whatever happened here had happened fast.

The next door, blown completely off its hinges, led to offices furnished with desks, several couches, and more monitors. Layla shined her light at a framed map on the wall. Hurrying over to it, she brushed off a thick layer of dust and pointed at the cracked glass.

“Looks like the operations center,” she said. “It’s a few levels from here.”

She led the way, and Les followed, sweeping his light and rifle over more debris. The next hallway had been barricaded with furniture and steel door frames, which had done little to hold back the defectors—whoever the hell they were.

A nearly perfect line had sliced through the barriers, leaving a three-foot gap between the pieces. The floor was marked with the same black groove as in the first lab.

The more Les saw, the more this looked like what he had seen on the rooftop. Maybe it wasn’t lightning after all up there.

“A blade didn’t cut that person in half,” Layla said. “This was some sort of laser.”

Les remembered the video from Dr. Diaz, saying the defectors had military-grade arms. Maybe their fabled laser weapons weren’t a myth, after all.

“Come on, we’re almost there,” he said, flattening his body and squeezing through the gap in the barrier. Halfway through, he stopped, his light capturing a scene on the other side.

“What’s wrong?” Layla asked.

Les swallowed hard, unable to form a response.

Skeletons. Dozens of skeletons, all of them cut into pieces like butchered animals. Guns, some sliced in two, lay next to their former owners. Burn marks crisscrossed the overhead and walls.

A battle had happened here, and from the looks of it, the losses were one-sided.

Could this be Dr. Diaz and his team?

“What do you see?” Layla asked, trying to move past him.

He moved ahead to let her in. They had to go through the mass grave to get to the operations center. She took in the scene of carnage better than he had expected. Keeping her voice low, she said, “Lasers.”

Les held his breath as he passed through the slaughterhouse, as if he were trying to keep out the scent of rot, even though little was left but skeletons and tattered suits.

He halted at another door, also broken off its hinges. Layla went first, and he followed her into the room, where dozens of monitors lined the walls. All the chairs and desks were gone, used in the barricade in the hall they had just left behind.

“I’ll try to bring on backup power,” Layla said.

Les nodded and stood at the doorway, trying his best not to look at the bones strewn about. The bodies had been sliced in almost perfect lines. But the more the thought about it, the less shocked he was at the display of firepower. After all, this was nothing compared to the power of a nuclear weapon.

The real question now was, who were the defectors?

“I’m in,” Layla said a few minutes later. “I think I can tap into a battery and get your uplink working topside.”

Les moved to watch her work. She had a single screen online, its glow covering them in an eerie blue. Tapping the monitor, she said, “Bringing on battery backup in, three, two, one…”

The lights suddenly flickered and lit up the room. He turned to look at the hallway. Brown streaks painted the walls—blood and gore of those who had perished here.

“Okay, let’s see if this works,” Layla said. “Go ahead and try the uplink.”

Les raised his wrist computer, which was still synced with the satellite on the rooftop. With a cord, he patched the computer to the screen, and Layla did the rest.

“Command, this is Raptor Two,” she said. “Do you copy?”

White noise broke over the channel, and then a voice. “Copy you, Raptor Two, this is Ensign White. It’s great to hear your voice.”

Les checked his first impulse, and instead of whooping with joy, he drew in a long breath of relief through his nostrils.

“Same here, Ensign White,” Layla replied.

“Captain DaVita is currently not on the bridge, but I’ll connect you, Raptor Two.”

Les checked his magazine while they waited—a nervous tick, since he had yet to fire his weapon. He ejected it, then palmed it back in with a click.

“Raptor Two, this is Captain DaVita,” she panted. “Is everyone okay down there?”

“Les and I are fine, but Erin and Michael were both injured on the dive.”

“How bad?”

“They’ll be okay, but as you probably know, we’re stranded here by the storm.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m working on figuring a way to get you all home. In the meantime, have you been able to search the facility and docks?”

“Yes,” Les replied. “I think I found what you sent us here for. It’s a military vessel. Looks like some sort of stealth boat, but I don’t know if we can make it run. Commander Everhart ordered us to contact you first.”

“A stealth boat,” Katrina said. A brief pause of white noise sounded. “Your mission is to get that ship working.”

Layla and Les exchanged a glance, but before either of them could reply, a distant screech like rusty hinges echoed through the room. They both turned to look into the corridor.

“What the bloody hell was that!” she whispered.

Les shook his head. “I have—”

The sound came again, like an axle that needed greasing, followed by an electronic wail that reminded him vaguely of a bird. His first thought was Sirens.

“Layla, Les, do you copy?” Katrina asked.

“We’re here,” Les said. “But I think something else is, too…”

The birdlike screech continued, growing louder.

Les flicked the safety off his rifle and brought it up to his shoulder. He stepped out into the hallway, careful not to crunch any broken glass.

He pivoted right, training his rifle on the elevator shaft at the other end of the passage, well past the ghastly remains strewn about.

Several recessed lights in the ceiling flickered, still working after all these years, but long sections of hallway were still in shadow.

He took another step, his boot crunching a shard of glass.

A screech rose from the open elevator shaft, and a sudden orange glow lit the inside where the doors had been pulled back. Looking closer, he saw claw marks in the metal wall and the frame.

Les pulled his hand off the stock of the carbine, holding the gun in one hand and signaling Layla with the other.

She didn’t need verbal orders. She knew that it was time to run.