The cargo ship was no more than three thousand feet away. She could hear shouting on deck. She was close enough that the EMP blast would also knock out the Zodiac’s motor.
Now she could see the source of the shouting. A Cazador stood on the deck, pointing in the Zodiac’s direction and yelling at the top of his lungs.
Drawing in a breath, she imagined the EMP grenade smacking into the deck of the container ship. Then she pulled the trigger and watched it shoot away. It landed on the weather deck and rolled behind an old-world vehicle that had tracks instead of tires.
Alexander turned the boat parallel to the container ship to get a better firing position. The armada of small craft racing toward the bay suddenly stopped dead in the water. But the invisible EMP blast didn’t stop the Cazadores’ guns.
A flash burst from one of the WaveRunners as a missile streaked away.
“Open fire!” Katrina yelled to her team.
She gritted her teeth as the missile vanished behind a wall of rock that blocked her view of the bay. She waited, dreading the sound of the explosion to follow. Instead, she heard the beautiful crack of the .50-cals. Green tracer rounds lanced across the ocean, riddling the disabled Cazador boats.
Soldiers jumped off their boats to avoid the hail of lead, but for most, it was too late. Explosions boomed all across the rough waters, throwing flames and body parts into the air.
Return fire from the container ship hit the water around the Zodiac, snapping Katrina’s attention away from the slaughter. She aimed her rifle at the muzzle flashes on the container ship. There were five different shooters, maybe more.
“Take down the hostiles on the deck!” she yelled.
Alexander and Trey both went to work, firing laser bolts and bullets at the men shooting at the Zodiac. Bullets punched through the rubberized canvas compartments, and air hissed out.
“Engine’s fried!” Alexander shouted.
Katrina bumped her chin pad to open a line to Eevi. “Don’t hit the fishing boat, and come pick us up. You have our beacon locations.”
In less than the time it took to blink, Katrina saw a red streak coming right toward her. There was no time to move or return fire. The bullet hit her upper chest, knocking her backward onto the boat’s soft floor.
The air broke from her lungs, and tiny stars burst across her vision. More rounds punched into the Zodiac, and water poured in over a deflating section of pontoon.
“Abandon …” she choked. Reaching up, she took Trey’s hand. As he helped her sit up, an explosion rocked the deck of the container ship, obliterating the hostiles.
Two entire stacks of containers burst apart, raining a loud clatter of steel chunks onto the deck. A container slid over the side into the water in a massive splash.
Alexander bent down and helped Trey keep Katrina up as the boat floor sank beneath them. She blinked away the stars and saw one of the most beautiful sights of her life. It wasn’t the sun or a sandy beach with palm trees—it was the USS Zion, barreling out of the bay at full speed, .50-cals firing at anything that moved on the container ship, and the MK-65 pounding the deck with explosive rounds.
Trey and Alexander got a life vest under Katrina’s head and torso. She sucked in air, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get enough. Beneath her armor, she could feel wet warmth moving down her ribs, confirming her fear that the bullet had penetrated.
Through blurry eyes, she watched people jumping from the deck of the container ship, some of them on fire, others trying to avoid the flames. They didn’t all look like soldiers, and she knew they were probably engineers, electricians, cooks, and servants.
As she maneuvered to keep the life vest under her, she recalled what Trey had said about attacking the ship. The fewer Cazadores, the better.
But what about the innocent men and women who weren’t soldiers? How were they any different from the men and women on the airships?
In war, there are no innocents. Everyone is the enemy.
Those words had come from a history book, probably the same one Trey had read in school. Still, as the weapons on the USS Zion slaughtered the Cazadores, she couldn’t help but feel a rising dread.
It’s us against them, she thought. Your job as captain is to ensure the survival of your people.
She hadn’t started this war, but if she survived this wound, she would damn well finish it.
FIFTEEN
The divers at Red Sphere had spent the past hour trying to open the steel door into the labs. Somewhere on the other side was an organic life-form that Timothy Pepper continued to detect in his scans.
Michael had a feeling the AI was right about it not being a spider. Their scans were picking up something else, something bigger, and he had to figure out what before they moved any deeper into the facility to find the defectors.
Les disconnected his minicomputer from the control manual and shook his head. “I can’t hack it, man.”
Michael swore under his breath. He was starting to lose patience. Nothing was going right. The pain meds had already worn off, and his bandage needed changed. On top of that, he was due for another round of ghost pains.
Think positive. You’re going to be just fine. Not an easy thing to do here in the very place he had lost his arm. But too much was at stake to let anxiety and pain mess with his head. X had suffered far worse than this, for far longer.
It was time to get serious about this shit.
Michael held up plan C: the laser rifle. “Everyone back,” he said.
“You’re kidding, right?” Les asked.
“You got a better idea?” Michael asked. “Come on, get behind the wall.”
The team moved back down the passage and around the corner. Even Timothy vanished and then rejoined them behind the barrier.
“Commander, all due respect, but I have more experience with that weapon,” Les said. “If we’re going to do this, best to let me.”
“Be my guest,” Michael said, handing it over.
“Try this one,” Layla said. “Just so we know it works.”
Les took the new rifle from her and moved around the corner to check the target. “If the laser bolts cut through, I’ll try and make us a smaller door, but make sure you guys stay back.”
“Be careful, Giraffe,” Layla said. “And make it big enough for you to get through.”
That got a weak chuckle, which ended in silence as Les crouched with half his body behind the corner, and half in the hallway. Then he lined up the iron sights and pulled the trigger. The brilliant line hit the door, bathing the corridor in a red glow.
“It’s working!” Les said.
A minute later, the door came crashing down on the concrete, shaking the floor and echoing through the space. Michael cringed at the noise.
“If any of those things are still ticking, they know we’re here now,” Layla said.
Timothy reappeared, and his voice came over the comms. “Still not detecting any exhaust plumes. But the organic signal is stronger.”
While the other divers listened and scanned their HUDs for movement, Michael moved around the corner to see the glowing red outline of a doorway inside the door.
Les handed the laser rifle back to Layla as Michael sucked water from the straw in his helmet and waited for a wave of dizziness to pass. Then, taking point, he approached the opening cautiously, flitting his helmet beam across the dark lab.
Dust particles, stirred by the crashing steel door, danced like snowflakes in their headlamp beams as they entered what appeared to be an undisturbed space. Four separate rooms, all blocked off by glass walls and secure doors, made up the labs.
As they progressed deeper, Michael saw that the four sections were just half the space. Through another glass wall, he could see two more walled-off sections. In both rooms, white suits hung from hooks on the racks, and coiled red cords
dangled from the ceiling.
He checked the room on his right, which contained white lab tables and several chairs. But there were no cobwebs—or evidence of any other living thing, for that matter. The high-tech lab appeared to have done exactly what it was designed to do: keep even the most microscopic particles out—or in.
The thought made him shiver as he brought up his hand and signaled the team to check out the first four sections. He went left, directing his helmet beam at the enclosed glass space filled with several dozen three-foot-tall stasis chambers.
Each of these glass cylinders contained murky green liquid. Skeletal remains rested on the bottom of one of them, but the water was too clouded for him to make out the species.
“Over here,” Michael said over the comms.
Layla and Les joined him outside the glass wall.
“Gross,” Layla said.
Les shined his beam inside. “What are those?”
“No idea,” Michael replied. “Timothy, where is that signal coming from?”
“I can’t get an exact location, but it should be somewhere inside this room.”
Michael moved to the next glass enclosure, where eight metal vats were lined up against a gray wall. The lids were closed, and thick electrical cables ran up to a bank of boxes that once fed them power.
“This must be where Dr. Julio Diaz worked,” Les said quietly.
“Maybe we’ll finally learn what that work was,” Layla replied.
Michael really didn’t give a damn what the doctor did. He just wanted to figure out what was making the signal, then find the machines so they could get the hell out of here.
He moved past several lab stations. On the long tables were microscopes, computers, and trays of vials. Several robotic machines with spiderlike arms were huddled in the corner of the room.
“Looks like an operation area,” Layla said. “Maybe they used it for experiments.”
They moved on to the final walled-off area, their headlamps shooting through the glass and illuminating a clean room where scientists had once prepped to enter the lab.
A faint clanking noise pulled Michael back the way they had come. His beam hit the opening Les had cut in the door.
“Did you hear something?” Michael asked.
Layla and Les shook their heads. He motioned for them to return to the first section of labs, where the stasis chambers were sealed off.
“See if you can hack this door,” Michael said to Les.
Les hooked up his patch cords and began the process while Michael and Layla walked around the glass walls, shining their lights into the chambers beyond. Cables ran up from the floor to the chambers they had once powered to keep the contents alive.
There were twenty chambers, all filled with the same murky fluid that kept him from seeing what else they contained. He went back to the one with the bones that could be a small human skeleton.
“A child,” he whispered.
A click sounded.
“Got it,” Les said.
The divers met Timothy outside, where his hologram spread a bright glow through the open room.
“Stay sharp,” Michael said.
They fanned out down the aisles of stasis chambers, their light beams flitting back and forth. Michael headed straight for the cylinder with the child-size remains. He used his gloved hand to wipe off the glass, but that didn’t help any.
There was only one way to see what was inside.
“Everyone out of the room,” Michael said.
“Why?” Layla asked. “What are you going to do?”
He raised his laser rifle, prompting Les to gently pull Layla away. Michael waited until they were outside the glass walls. Then, back-stepping a few feet, he aimed the laser rifle and pulled the trigger.
Glass exploded, and fluid sloshed onto the floor, pushing Michael back a few more steps. All that remained on the floor of the stasis chamber was the skeleton.
He had stepped around the puddle to examine the remains when he again heard the mysterious clanking noise. He glanced over his shoulder at Les and Layla, who both nodded. They had heard it this time.
It came again a few beats later, louder this time—a mechanical noise, not something an organic life-form would make.
“Timothy,” Michael whispered over the comm channel. “Are you picking up any exhaust plumes?”
“Negative, Commander.”
Stepping back from the bones inside the destroyed chamber, Michael walked carefully around the skirt of broken glass and green fluid.
The laser bolt had bored through another cylinder and the metal wall behind it, where a red hole glowed. He stopped a few feet away and bent down to direct his light at the opening. The beam penetrated into what appeared to be another room.
“Check this out,” Michael said. He made his way around the final two chambers and found a door he had missed earlier, hidden in the shadows in the corner, behind several other vats.
“That signature is getting stronger,” Timothy said.
Layla and Les stopped outside the new door.
“I didn’t see this earlier,” Layla said quietly.
“Me, either,” Michael replied. “Les, see if you can get it open.”
While Les again unpacked his minicomputer and patch cords, Michael moved over to the still red-hot opening in the wall and looked through it.
The helmet beam illuminated another lab, full of larger stasis chambers, but unlike the smaller ones, the liquid inside these cylinders wasn’t green, and the remains weren’t skeletal.
“Mother of God,” Michael whispered.
Inside each chamber was suspended a naked man or woman. Cords were attached to their extremities.
The door to the lab clicked, unlocked, and Les stepped away.
“What?” he asked, oblivious to what Michael was seeing through the hole.
Layla stepped up to the open doorway. “Holy wastes!” she gasped. “What in the apocalypse are those?”
Michael moved over to examine the stasis chambers inside the room. The new angle gave him a view of several bodies that didn’t appear totally human after all. Some had mechanical limbs and even heads that looked … robotic.
“Guess we finally know what Dr. Diaz was doing here,” Layla whispered.
Les stared for a moment and then shook his head. “I had a bad feeling about coming back here. Looks like I was right.”
Timothy reappeared in the entryway of the room, his glow spreading outward and illuminating more of the chambers.
“Commander, I have a theory on what we’re seeing here,” the AI said.
“What’s that?”
“Hybrids.”
“Hybrids?” Layla asked.
“Yes, and I believe most of them were still alive and hooked up to backup power before we dropped the EMP bomb.”
Layla shook her head. “No, that can’t be.”
“You’re saying we killed them?” Les asked.
“Not all of them,” Timothy replied. “I’ve pinpointed the location of the organic life-form.”
“Show us,” Michael said.
The three divers followed the AI, weapons up, beams playing over the chambers containing the human-machine hybrids.
Timothy moved down the center aisle and stopped beside one of the vats. The man inside was so wrinkled from age and immersion that his skin looked like a dried piece of fruit. His bald head had slumped against his chest, exposing a smooth metal crown. Most of this man was now machine. Only the arms, chest, and head remained human.
Unlike the other bodies, this ancient man wasn’t wearing a breathing apparatus—probably because he didn’t have lungs, Michael realized.
“So where is it?” Layla asked as she walked around the other chambers. “I don’t see any live ones.”
“Right
here,” Timothy said. He turned his hologram toward the man in the chamber in front of Michael.
Layla stared. “He’s still …?”
The hybrid slowly opened his eyelids, looking out with one human eye and one mechanical eye that roved from Les to Michael. When it focused on the holographic shape of Timothy, the human eye widened, and the robotic eye glowed orange.
“Holy shit,” Les said, backing away. “What the heck is this thing?”
Michael stayed where he was, watching the old man squirm inside the vat, his wrinkled skin like plastic. He tried to speak, bubbles bursting from his mouth. The terror in his features and movements was difficult to watch.
This man had suffered for God knew how long.
The hybrid’s lips continued to move, trying to speak to the divers. He squirmed against the restraints holding him in the vat.
“This is wrong,” Les said. “I really think we should get out of here.”
The hybrid managed to raise a hand, putting his palm against the glass. A stream of bubbles burst out of his mouth as his lips moved and the robotic eye flashed an angry orange.
“Timothy, can you make out what he’s saying?” Michael asked.
There was a long pause from the AI before he replied.
“Yes, Commander,” Timothy replied. “He’s repeating, ‘Destroy me … destroy me … before I kill you all.’”
* * * * *
Throughout dinner, the clanking of hammers and the whine of electrical equipment played like some undisciplined, atonal band. And it appeared to be music to el Pulpo’s ears. He watched the construction crews as he mowed through his three courses of fish, ham, and chicken. He was plainly delighted at the work being done on the rig.
To Magnolia, the noise was grating and unpleasant, but at least it distracted el Pulpo’s attention from her. She picked at her food as the crews worked into the night on the prison that would hold her people captive.
Under the table, Miles whined as if he knew what it meant for his friends. She could tell he was itching to rip his handler’s throat out, but there was nothing he could do against the spiked collar.
Hell Divers V: Captives Page 18
