“So, when are the airships going to meet us at the Metal Islands?” Vish asked as he gnawed at the leathery meat. “And what happens when they do?”
“What the hell do you think is going to happen?” Jaideep said with a sideways glance.
“It depends on whether el Pulpo surrenders,” Katrina said.
“I hope he does for his sake,” Trey said, “or my dad’s gonna rain missiles on him.”
Katrina glanced at Edgar Cervantes, who picked at his food quietly. He looked up but didn’t add his thoughts. He hadn’t said much since losing his cousin, Ramon.
“How are you feeling?” she asked him.
“I’m ready to fight, Captain, but I hope we can get the Cazadores to surrender without damaging the oil rigs. Our people will need a place to go.”
“I still can’t believe this is real,” Sandy said with a wide smile that showed off her crooked teeth. “I’ve always dreamed what the sun would look like.”
“And the ocean,” Jaideep said. “I can’t wait to learn how to swim.”
Vish said, “I’m going fishing and boating. Man, this is going to be—”
Katrina stood up and looked around her at all the youthful gazes full of fear and hope. But she couldn’t lie to them—having grand illusions about what they would find was dangerous.
“This is going to be hell,” she said. “Don’t forget, these people are our enemy, and they have our friends. We will have to fight, one way or another.”
She moved over to the portholes. The billowing mass of clouds flashed from within, and tendrils of lightning licked the water on the horizon. She watched the raging storm like a soldier looking for a weakness in the enemy’s defenses.
Right now, the storm was a bigger threat than all the cannibals in the Metal Islands.
But it was time to stop wishing the storm would weaken. It was time to make a decision.
“We have two options,” she said to her team. “Keep looking for a way around this system to the Metal Islands, or just punch right through it.”
She recalled Captain Maria Ash’s words from when Katrina was still a novice diver.
“Everything has a weakness,” Ash had said to a group of Hell Divers. “Even Mother Nature. Your job is to find it. Your life, and the lives of everyone you know, depends on you facing your fears.”
Katrina had come up with a few of her own mottoes over the years, and one of them seemed to fit the moment.
“The way to paradise is through hell,” Katrina said. “Eat up and get to your stations. We’re sailing through the beast.”
TWO
Michael Everhart sat on a bed in the Hive’s medical bay, looking down at the stump where his arm had been. Dr. Huff carefully peeled back the bandage.
“We have to let it breathe a bit,” he said in his crackly old voice, “and I want to check for infection.”
The oldest doctor on the ship—practically a fossil in Michael’s eyes—sat on a stool and pressed a pair of spectacles down on his nose. After three days of heavy sedation, Michael was finally being weaned off the hard-core drugs. The pain was bad, but all he could think about were his friends.
X, Mags, and Miles were out there, and Michael was eager to get back into the fight. He was beginning to feel like a caged animal here.
Doc Huff muttered under his breath as he slowly scanned the reddened skin on the stump. He had already removed most of the burned skin, and scabs had formed around the open wounds.
Michael tried to gauge the doctor’s reaction to it all. He was ready to get the hell out of the medical ward and back to the quarters he shared with Layla.
“Hmmm, no sign of infection there, but …”
“But what?” Michael asked.
The doctor gently rotated the stump. “Well, that’s … not …” he mumbled to himself, his dewlaps jiggling as he moved his head. “Everything seems to be healing nicely.”
“Great! So when can I get back to work?”
Huff looked up, his goggles steamed from his warm breath. “You are kidding, right?”
“Uh, no.”
The doc laughed nervously at that and continued looking over the injury. “We need to keep you on a schedule of cleaning this twice a day, Commander, and for the immediate future you’re going to be on a daily dose of the gel your team brought back from the surface. Plus painkillers as needed. They will help stop the phantom pains from driving you even crazier than you already appear to be.”
“I can handle them, Doc. I need to get back to work.”
Huff stood in front of the table and folded his arms across his chest, looking at Michael as a disapproving parent might.
“You’re clear of infection right now, but if you want to get one, then by all means, get back to work. It’s your choice. I can’t stop you.”
“Just get me wrapped again, Doc.”
Huff let out a sigh and picked up a vial of the nanotechnology medicine Team Raptor had found in an ITC facility. Michael remembered the raid, two years ago, that had netted the precious meds, but he never thought he would be the one to use it.
The doctor squirted the gelatinous blue ointment and used his gloved fingers to massage it around the stump. After coating it, he applied a fresh bandage. Michael gritted his teeth while the doctor applied the ointment that burned like hell.
“All set,” Huff said. “I’ll check on you later today. If you have any phantom pains, let me know and I’ll up your pain-med dosage.”
As soon as the doctor left, Michael stood and grabbed his shirt off the chair. The hell with sitting here and waiting to heal. He didn’t have the two weeks Dr. Huff had said it would take to heal completely.
Even with the applications of the nanotechnology, two weeks was way too long, and the gel did nothing to lessen the phantom pains.
He slipped his shirt over his head and his lean, muscular torso. Doing everything with one hand took some getting used to, but he was doing better on his own now.
It was time to get out of here and join Layla on the bridge, and then he was off to search the records for any information he could dig up on the AI defectors. After losing his arm to the machines, he wanted to learn everything he could about them.
He left the medical bay without drawing any attention. The nurses on duty and Dr. Huff were with other patients, and even if they tried, they couldn’t stop him from leaving.
He was down an arm, but he was still a Hell Diver.
What he hadn’t expected were the stares and the comments as he made his way through the Hive, toward the tunnel connecting it to Deliverance. Everyone he passed stopped and stared, or else turned and followed him, calling out questions.
“Did the Sea Wolf really make it to the Metal Islands?”
“Is the Immortal fighting the cannibals?”
“Did they eat your arm?”
Michael let out a snort and pushed on, trying to jog. Lightheaded from the drugs, he quickly had to slow down to a fast walk through the freshly painted passages. He took comfort in the artwork. Captain Jordan’s legacy was being purged from the ship, and everything he had destroyed was slowly being brought back: the records restored, new paintings gracing the bulkheads, and spirits lifted with hope.
In the skies, hope is a dangerous thing.
But this was the first time in his life that he felt it for more than a fleeting moment. X had indeed found the Metal Islands—a real place that could house the population of both airships.
A home for the future of humankind.
The question was, how much would it cost them to take it from the Cazadores? Or could these two very different groups find a way to coexist?
His gut told him that neither option would be easy and both would be costly.
More voices followed Michael down the passages, and he stopped when he saw Phyl Mitchells. The young girl car
ried a small chalkboard under her arm.
“Hi, Commander Everhart,” she said politely.
“Hey, kiddo, how’s school?” He leaned down to check the scribbles on the board. “Is that algebra?”
She nodded but still wouldn’t meet his gaze. Her eyes were on his stump.
“What … what happened?”
“I got hurt, but I’m going to be okay.”
“I’m glad you’re okay,” the girl said, “but do you know when Trey is coming home?”
“Soon. He’s on a really important mission.”
Curious eyes met his gaze. “Mission?”
“That’s like a job to do.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry about your big brother; he’ll be okay.”
“Okay,” Phyl said. “I hope you feel better soon.”
Michael watched her go until she was around the next corner. Like the rest of these people, the kid had no idea yet what was going on.
Michael jogged the rest of the way. By the time he got to the bridge of Deliverance, he was out of breath and sweating. His stump throbbed with every beat of his heart, and he cradled it in his good hand, gritting his teeth.
Ada Winslow, the young ensign, looked up from her station as he passed the two militia guards and walked through the open hatch. Her freckled face held a worried look.
“Commander Everhart. I wasn’t expecting y—”
Layla cut her off with a shout across the room. “Tin! What in the wastes of Hades are you doing here?”
Michael smiled. “I got sick of sitting in that rat cage.”
Ensigns Dave Connor and Bronson White both stood at their stations, studying him with empathy—especially Dave, who had lost a leg in an engineering accident years ago.
“Welcome back,” Bronson said in his chalky voice.
“Good to see you, Commander,” Dave said.
“Good to be here,” Michael said. He walked through the circular open space. The stations surrounding the central island flashed with data and reports.
He still remembered the first time he was here in one of the comfortable leather chairs after Pipe and Commander Rick Weaver lost their lives at the Hilltop Bastion.
The sad losses played over in Michael’s mind, and he winced at other painful memories. Erin Jenkins, Rodger Mintel, his own father … The list went on and on.
“Tin?” Layla said. “Are you okay?”
He nodded and sank into the chair beside the radar station she was monitoring.
“I’ve got something to tell you,” he said. “But first, how about an update? Have we heard anything from the USS Zion yet?”
Her dimples framed a frown.
“I’m afraid not. Nothing from Timothy Pepper of the Sea Wolf, either.”
“Damn …”
“The electrical storm separating the USS Zion from the Metal Islands is likely blocking the signals.”
“Let’s hope that’s the reason,” Michael said. He swiveled the chair over to the computer monitor and pecked one-handed at the display.
“What did you want to tell me?”
“Give me a second,” Michael said as he kept typing.
Another voice entered the bridge, and they both looked up to see the tall frame of Les Mitchells duck beneath the hatch lintel.
“Commander Everhart!” Les said “It’s great to see you up and about.”
“Good to see you, Lieutenant,” Michael replied.
Les walked through the bridge and joined Michael and Ensign Winslow at the radar station.
“How’s the recruiting going?” Michael asked.
“Slowly,” Les said. “Everyone wants to ask about the Metal Islands. When I tell them about it, they keep hearing sunshine and balmy ocean breezes and ignore any mention of cannibalistic barbarians that currently reside on the rigs.”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Michael said. “I got harassed on my way here.”
“Maybe it’s time to tell them the truth,” Layla said.
Les shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’ve been waiting for orders from Katrina before doing anything except recruiting.”
“I also think it’s time we sit down with Samson and talk about bringing Timothy Pepper back online on the Hive,” Layla said. “I think we’re going to need him.”
Michael let his stump down, his eyes on the bandage. “Knowing now that Timothy Pepper of the Sea Wolf helped X get to the Metal Islands, I’m of a mind we can trust his counterpart on the Hive.”
Les looked at Michael with uncertainty. “You lost your arm to an AI back at Red Sphere, but you’re okay with bringing a different AI back online?”
Michael and Layla exchanged a glance.
“I’m with her,” he said. “Pepper is not a defector, and I don’t think we have any choice at this point. We’re low on people and need the help.”
Les pursed his lips to one side and then said, “Okay, I’ll talk to Samson, and if he agrees, we’ll bring Pepper back online.”
* * * * *
Magnolia scanned the sky outside her window for any sign of the Hive, Deliverance, or the glowing blue battery units of Hell Divers falling through the clouds. In her mind’s eye, she could picture the chutes blooming out, and the muzzle flashes of assault rifles flickering like mutant lightning bugs as the sky soldiers lowered to the rescue.
Where were they?
On the fourth day of her captivity, she was starting to wonder whether the remaining divers were going to show up.
All she could see were the shiny, smooth edges of the airship above. She had studied it for several hours, looking for markings or anything else that might identify the craft as the ITC Ashland, commanded by Captain Marcus Bolter.
But what did it matter? Whoever had flown the ship here was long dead by now. Just bones or fragments, like most of the Old World.
Voices and a knock on the door pulled her away from the window. She hurried over to her bed, sat, and placed her hands on her lap.
The door to her small room opened onto a balcony outside, where two olive-skinned soldiers stood guard. The older of the two gestured with his spear.
“Come,” he said.
The other soldier, no more than a teenager, looked at her chest as if trying to glimpse what was under her torn shirt.
Standing, she covered herself with her arms and followed the men outside. She raised one hand to shield her eyes from the sun. After being cooped up for four days in a dimly lit room, she wasn’t prepared for natural light.
The older guard led her down the walkway, and the younger one followed. Both men wore faded dungarees, a machete, and a knife. Neither had a firearm, but she had no doubt they both were skilled spearmen.
She stayed close to the rail separating her from a ten-story plunge to the sea. To the west, three boats curved through the water. One looked oddly familiar.
Magnolia stopped to squint at the view.
The Sea Wolf.
Two boats were pulling the twin-hulled vessel toward the tower where she had been held prisoner.
“Rápido,” said the man behind her, prodding her side with the wooden shaft of his spear.
She glared over her shoulder at the teenage warrior, who bared his sharp teeth. Magnolia returned the gesture, showing her own teeth.
He seemed to like that and chuckled, gesturing to his bearded cohort. They exchanged a few words in Spanish and then drew close, hemming her in between them.
“You like?” she said to the younger one. She let her hand fall away from her chest, giving him a peek. “How about you?” she said, eyes flitting to the other man.
His beard split open in a wide display of cracked brown teeth, and he reached out for her while his comrade goaded her with the butt of his spear. She slapped the weapon away, and the older guy shoved her backward in
to the railing.
When she regained her balance, she raised her right fist, then caught him square in the jaw with her left.
This got a chuckle from the younger guard.
Not wasting the moment, she put her full weight behind a kick to the injured man’s solar plexus, which slammed him into the opposite rail and toppled him over the side.
A long scream rang out, cut off by a loud smack and splash. The remaining soldier darted over to the rail and looked over the edge. He turned, his grin replaced by a snarl, only to find Magnolia holding the fallen spear, leveled at his Adam’s apple.
Now she was the one to grin … until she heard the click of a hammer.
The young soldier showed his sharp teeth again, but Magnolia kept the spear point at his throat. A quick glance behind her revealed four rifles trained on her from the open hatch.
So much for her escape.
A shortish bald man in a brown robe stepped through the wall of armored bodies and weapons. He moved into the light, and she saw that it was the scribe, Imulah. He clasped his hands behind his back and shook his head at Magnolia.
“This is not a good start to your residence here,” he said. Four armored soldiers followed him onto the balcony. They held their rifles and spears on her as the scribe stepped over to the railing for a look at the limp body below being hauled from the water into a boat.
“One of the first things I learned during Hell Diver training was, water won’t save you if your chute doesn’t open,” Magnolia said. “In fact, if you fall far and fast enough, it’s like hitting concrete.”
Imulah tilted his head as if trying to figure out whether she was joking.
She wasn’t.
“My instructor—the man who took el Pulpo’s eye, by the way—said you’re supposed to stiffen your legs and roll if your chute fails.”
Magnolia jerked her chin at the railing. “Or if you fall over a balcony. Too bad bucko didn’t take any Hell Diver courses.”
“Drop the spear, Magnolia,” Imulah said. “You don’t want to anger King Pulpo again. He is a patient man, but his patience goes only so far.”
“Screw that prick Pulpo!” she snapped. “Take me to my friends, or I’m going to feed this asshole’s Adam’s apple to the fish.”
Hell Divers V: Captives Page 3
