Michael and Layla walked over to stand by his side.
“I’d like to say something,” Michael said.
Les handed him the microphone. Static crackled over the speakers.
“We dive so humanity survives, and now we’re asking you to fight under one banner to free our friends and to make the Metal Islands our home,” Michael said.
He gritted his teeth, clearly in pain.
Layla reached out, but Michael shook his head. “I’m not done.”
She pulled back, and he said, “No one has endured more pain and suffering over the years than X. After saving the Hive over a decade ago, he was left for dead by the tyrant Leon Jordan, even when Jordan knew he was down there, and forced to endure severe hardship on the poisoned surface for years and years. When we finally found X in Florida, he was a broken man. But he did not give up. He took to the seas, and he found the Metal Islands.”
Michael paused again. “In Florida, I thought we were rescuing him, but he was really rescuing us. Now we have a chance to actually rescue X. To thank him for his service and sacrifices. I know that fighting in a war is a terrifying thing, but I’ll be there on the front lines, and I hope some of you will join me.”
He handed the microphone back to Les. Les squinted to make out two more people who had slipped into the back of the room. His heart leaped when he saw that it was Katherine and Phyl. They stood near the open doors, keeping back as if they were afraid.
“Lieutenant,” Layla said.
“Thank you, Commander Everhart,” Les said, snapping out of it and grabbing the sides of the lectern. “For those of you who are willing and able, we will have a briefing in the launch bay after this, to talk about the fight ahead.”
Sloan motioned with her baton. “Step forward if you’re volunteering.”
At first, the entire room remained silent. The baby had even stopped crying. What felt like a minute passed before the first person stepped forward.
“These are the people who killed my boy?” said Cole Mintel.
Les nodded.
“I’m not much for fighting, but I can hold my own,” Cole said.
“I’m in,” said Marv. He grinned. “I’m getting sick of serving shine to all you drunks anyways.”
Several nervous chuckles followed. A few more people stepped over to join the two men. Hushed conversations came from all directions, and the crowd began to move. Within a few minutes, fifty people had clustered at the front of the room.
It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
Michael leaned over to Les as Sloan began organizing the group.
“I’ve got an idea, Lieutenant,” Michael said. “One that might not require so many of these people to put their lives on the line if we do go to war.”
Les gave him a searching look. “What do you mean?”
Michael motioned for Timothy.
“We go back to Red Sphere. Get more laser rifles and hack some of the defectors to help us take over the Metal Islands.”
Les scrutinized Michael’s face, looking for the joke, but the injured diver, who had lost a freaking arm at the facility, looked deadly serious.
“I’ll lead the mission,” Michael said. “Got some unfinished business there.”
* * * * *
“I need that damage assessment, Eevi,” Katrina said.
“Working on it, Captain.” The former militia detective sat at a station, tapping at her keyboard.
Katrina knew she was being demanding, but she was anxious, and the way to keep things moving was to keep on her people. She needed them as sharp as a sword edge. There was some good news, though. Jaideep was going to be okay. He had a concussion and wouldn’t be fighting anytime soon, but it beat a broken neck.
She tapped her monitor for a frontal view of the ocean. The water was deep here, assuming the readings were correct. But the island wasn’t far away, and until she was sure of her instruments, she couldn’t risk hitting a shoal.
The electrical storm continued to rage around them, scrambling all transmissions in or out. It was also messing with their equipment. Every life scan they had run on the island came back inconclusive.
“Jed, Sandy, have you figured out where we are yet?” Katrina asked.
The two teenagers looked up from the paper maps they had found stored in an officer’s quarters. Since GPS wasn’t working, Katrina had them try to figure things out the old-fashioned way.
“My best guess is, we’re somewhere between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico,” Jed said.
“If that’s the case, then how far are we from the Virgin Islands?” Katrina asked.
“Somewhere around a hundred miles,” Sandy said.
Not very far. And they were out of the worst of the storm. For now.
The rain kept coming down in sheets, hammering the shutters. Katrina had lowered one and leaned over to look out the cracked panel—the only panel to survive the rogue wave. All the rest had blown out, leaving dangerous shards in the standing water on deck.
“Okay, looks like we got it,” Eevi said, smiling in the glow of her monitor as she scanned the data. “The hull breach was limited to the bow—only two compartments flooded. Nothing serious, Captain.”
“Power levels?” Katrina asked.
Eevi checked her monitor and said, “The new fuel cell we brought from Deliverance is still at ninety-eight percent, engines functioning at optimal levels.”
“Good news,” Katrina said. “Eevi, you have the bridge. Jed, Sandy, keep trying to figure out where we are. I’m heading topside.”
The Hell Divers all went back to work.
A sharp sword, Katrina thought.
Katrina cautiously made her way through the broken glass and water to a ladder leading to the command center for flight operations. The rectangular windows gave her a view of the deck, the ocean, and the island.
She brought the binoculars up to her eyes and zoomed in, using the night vision to scan for hostiles. The bio scanners may not be working, but her eyes wouldn’t lie.
The island definitely had flora. Beyond the rocky beaches, mutant jungles the color of blood and bruises covered the terrain. Surely there was some sort of fauna out there, but so far, they hadn’t spotted anything.
Now that they had confirmed the ship was still seaworthy, she just had to wait until Sandy and Jed figured out which direction to sail.
Several more sweeps yielded nothing except for the stone foundation and walls of an old building along the shore. Vines had overtaken the walls and brought the roof down.
Farther down the beach, debris that looked like the remains of a ship caught her attention, and she zoomed in to find a barnacle-encrusted hull that could be as old as the Hive. Nothing she saw suggested recent human activity.
There were no Cazadores in this area.
She panned the binos over the Zion’s deck and spotted Alexander, working on the enclosed turret of the MK-65. Trey, with a rifle, was at the stern.
A voice called up from the ladder below.
“Captain, we’re getting a transmission,” Eevi said. “You better hear this.”
Katrina hurried down to the bridge, where the comm system crackled with static and a voice.
“Does anyone … copy?” said a familiar voice.
She picked up the receiver. “This is Captain DaVita. Who am I speaking to?”
“Timothy Pepper.”
Samson must have decided to bring him back on.
“Good to hear from you, Timothy. Where is Lieutenant Mitchells? I need to talk to him.”
“I’m not sure where he is, Captain.”
“What do you mean?”
“Captain, this is Timothy Pepper of the Sea Wolf.”
Katrina almost dropped the receiver.
“The Sea Wolf has been relocated under the capi
tol tower of the Metal Islands, where X, Mags, and Miles are being held captive,” Timothy said. “This is my fir—”
Static crackled over the system, drowning out his voice.
“Timothy,” she said. “Timothy, do you copy?”
“Yes, I’m here, Captain.”
“Listen, Timothy, do you know if X and the others are alive?”
“I’ve translated several conversations from my captors and can tell you that at this moment, X is definitely alive. Apparently, he just achieved a great victory in the Sky Arena.”
“Sky Arena?” Eevi said with brows arched.
Gunshots snapped her attention away from the station. Everyone on the bridge hurried over for a view out the remaining window, to the MK-65 turret, where Alexander fired his assault rifle. She could see his muzzle flashes and the glow of his battery unit, but not what he was firing at. And she couldn’t see Trey.
Eevi let out a scream and pointed at the sky, where a second blue glow seemed to be floating away.
Katrina brought her binoculars up and found the battery unit, attached to Trey, in the talons of a huge bird. A dozen others swooped toward the ship, and into the automatic fire from Alexander as he retreated.
For a second, Katrina stood in the flight-ops command center, watching in horror as the bird flapped away. She thought of Les, and the pain he would feel if she didn’t get his boy back.
Two seconds passed before she snapped to action.
“Grab your weapons!” she ordered. “We’re going after him!”
SEVEN
Magnolia had never seen so much food in her life. She followed Imulah into a room of banquet tables decked in white cloths and gold runners, with old-world china dishes and glass goblets at each setting. Four chandeliers illuminated the bountiful feast being brought in by servants in clean white garments.
They carried all sorts of dishes: bowls overflowing with fruit, platters of meat and of fish, some of them with heads and eyeballs and fins.
The only thing from the ocean she had ever eaten was shark, and she wasn’t eager to try anything that could look back at her. But her stomach did growl at the sight of plates stacked with strips of crispy bacon and hunks of ham coated in a clear glaze.
She had felt sick after the spectacle at the Sky Arena, where she had been forced to watch a dozen other matches after X and Rodger’s bout with the giant.
In one contest, two male warriors were pitted against a woman with dreadlocks down to her lower back. She dispatched the first man quickly with her sword but let the other victim linger. After cutting his Achilles tendon, she straddled him and gouged out his eyeballs with her bare hands. That had the crowd standing, and it almost made Magnolia puke.
But that wasn’t even the worst part. Before Magnolia even had time to look away, the female warrior had sliced off his testicles and held them in the air, letting out a howl like a wolf.
In the sky, life was precious. Every single soul was important. But not here, apparently. On the Metal Islands, fighting and killing were part of daily life. They glorified it. And from what she could see, these people didn’t fear death.
After what she had just witnessed, Magnolia wasn’t so sure she wanted her friends to come rescue her unless they sent a volley of missiles and bombs down first. There was no way the people on the Hive could win a fight against this warrior society.
“Tonight, you sit next to el Pulpo,” Imulah said, gesturing toward a long banquet table at the head of the room. Dozens of chairs were set up along one side, most of them already occupied by el Pulpo’s wives. Two large wingback chairs, both decorated in octopus engravings, remained empty.
“Let me guess: this is my seat,” Magnolia said.
Imulah nodded politely. “Go ahead and have something to drink while we wait.”
Magnolia pulled the chair back from the table, drawing the attention of the other nine women. Sofia and Inge sat across from her, watching her every move as if she was a potential enemy, sizing her up with their youthful eyes. But they weren’t the only ones.
An older woman with braided dark hair narrowed her gaze and stared at Magnolia. She licked her lips and clacked sharp teeth together as Magnolia sat down.
Why the hell would any of them ever want to sit where she was sitting? There was no way they actually loved el Pulpo, or even liked him.
Right?
Magnolia took a goblet and drank. The fruity liquid was surprisingly good. She set the glass down as helmetless Cazador soldiers in body armor filed into the room.
Next came a group of men wearing immaculate gray or dark-blue suits similar to the old-world suit that Timothy Pepper wore. Two of the men had slicked-back hair and neatly trimmed beards. One wore eyeglasses and carried a clipboard under his arm. It was the same guy she remembered at the dock when she arrived. He had stood there writing with a pencil, glancing up over his spectacles every few strokes as he tallied supplies and boats, or people, or whatever the hell he was doing.
The other men were bald and freshly shaved. She picked up voices in Spanish, English, and a language she didn’t recognize. They all took their seats, but no one ate. Apparently, these people did have manners, after all.
Unable to resist, she finally took a piece of bacon and crunched it down, again drawing the attention of the wives. Inge clicked her tongue and looked away in disgust. Sofia cracked an amused half smile.
Magnolia shrugged and kept eating.
Servants continued bringing in more food and filling up glasses with the berry-colored liquid. The chandeliers were dimmed as a man brought in a torch and lit the sconces on the walls. An orange flicker of flames danced across the bulkheads.
Magnolia twisted in her chair to look out the porthole windows behind her. The glass provided a view to a jeweled sky, the most beautiful she had ever seen.
A shooting star ripped through the darkness.
For a moment, she felt a hint of joy. But she suppressed it, not allowing herself feel anything but anger. To buy into the pomp and pageantry was to betray her friends. Also, it was dangerous to let her guard down. She had to stay sharp and ready to seize the moment if the opportunity to escape should appear.
She turned back to the table just as a loud chanting began. The soldiers all stood and beat their chests as el Pulpo ducked through an open doorway and entered the room, with a smug grin on his scarred face. His eye roved from face to face until it locked on her, and his grin widened.
A dark-skinned warrior, one of the most massive men Magnolia had ever seen, followed the king into the room. The soldier held a chain with Miles tethered at the other end.
The dog trotted after his handler, head down, tail between his legs.
Everyone stood to greet King Pulpo, but Magnolia remained in her seat and took another drink. She wiped her mouth with her forearm and set the glass back down.
“Now is when you stand,” said Imulah. He walked over and leaned down, whispering in her ear. “You’d better start showing some respect, or you will end up with a back worse than Sofia’s.”
Recalling the crosshatched scars hidden beneath the young woman’s long hair, she finally did as he instructed.
El Pulpo made his way across the room wearing light armor—only plates on his forearms and shins. An open red silk shirt showed off his burly chest and a long seashell necklace. The strip of hair above the octopus tattoo on his forehead was slicked back with some sort of grease.
The warrior accompanying the king yanked Miles toward the table and made him sit beside the chair reserved for el Pulpo. The dog obeyed, going down on his haunches.
“It’s okay, boy,” Magnolia said.
Miles looked up and let out a soft whine.
I know. I miss X, too.
“Magnolia,” el Pulpo said almost politely. Then he gestured toward the massive warrior looming behind him. “Meet Rhino,” he
said.
The man held out his hand to Magnolia. “Lieutenant Rhino,” he said in a gruff voice.
She twisted to give the hulking bodyguard and, apparently, officer, a once-over. He was by far the most muscular person she had ever seen. He had short-cropped dark hair and wore shiny silver octopus cuffs above his biceps, and hoops hung from his pierced ears and between his nostrils. His long goatee ended in a silver bead.
“Not very polite, are you?” Rhino said.
“Not to cannibals—even the ones that speak English.”
He dropped his hand back to the pommel of the sword at his hip, and stiffened as el Pulpo took a seat.
The king held up his hands to silence his subjects. When the side conversations had died down, he raised his goblet. Imulah translated for Magnolia as el Pulpo spoke.
“Tonight, we make a very special offering to the Octopus Lord of the depths. Tonight, we will send the body of one of the fiercest warriors in the history of our people.”
At first, Magnolia feared they were talking about dumping X into the ocean, but then she saw two soldiers dragging Hammerhead’s corpse into the room.
They hauled the body to an open area left of the tables, right in front of a hatch, which Imulah opened to a balcony overlooking the ocean.
Moonlight streamed into the room, casting a white glow over Hammerhead’s pale skin. Strips of flesh had been taken from his thigh and arms, leaving glistening wounds.
Magnolia dropped the piece of bacon in her hand and gagged. She had seen the hog pens, but was she even eating pork?
Imulah returned to Magnolia’s side and translated as el Pulpo spoke.
“Before we feast and prepare our offering, I want you all to meet the man known for killing Hammerhead. His sky people call him ‘the Immortal,’ and now I understand why.”
Two more soldiers walked X into the room, holding swords to his back. His hands were cuffed and his feet shackled. He wore long pants and a ragged shirt that showed off the cuts and bruises from the fight.
Hell Divers V: Captives Page 8
