X turned as another soldier jumped from a boat onto the dock. This man was no militia guard. The dark, brawny fighter lumbered across the platform, the shaft of a double-headed spear gripped in his massive hand.
“You earned the title, Xavier Rodriguez,” Rhino said.
The warrior also had a new rank, now that X had bumped him up from lieutenant all the way to general. The promotion had not sat well with Vargas, Forge, and Moreto, the three colonels next in line.
Rhino stopped a few feet away and tapped one point of his spear on the dock. Then he pounded his metal armor, which still bore the insignia of the Barracudas.
“It was your destiny to become king,” he said.
X snorted. He didn’t want to be a king or a leader of any sort. He just wanted to retire and live out his days with Miles, a fishing pole, and a mug of shine.
The only rest you’re going to get is when you’re dead, old man.
“King, Commander, Immortal, Xavier, X—whatever you want to be called, we need to get going,” Sloan said. She stepped aside to let X and Rhino into the elevator. Miles moved inside between X’s legs.
The gate closed, and the cage started up toward the airship rooftop. The vantage gave the occupants a view of the latest construction project in the Vanguard Islands.
“They’re almost ready,” Sloan said of the oil rig that had been retrofitted with a single platform. Two ships were anchored alongside, their decks busy with cranes and other construction equipment.
The rig was one of twenty-one inside the territory and was about to become one of the most important. There were other rigs that also played vital roles in the darkness outside the Vanguard Islands, including a prison rig known as the Shark’s Cage, and several fuel outposts that X had just learned about. The Cazadores had a manned facility in Venezuela, called Bloodline, and another, the Iron Reef, in Belize. Both outposts held their precious fresh gasoline and diesel fuel, thanks to a fuel stabilizer that ITC chemical engineers had developed before the war.
“I could never do that,” Rhino said, looking at another team of Hell Divers sailing over the water. Their canopies were slowly spiraling down toward the ship waiting for them in the limpid blue water.
One of the divers narrowly missed the deck and splashed into the sea. A rider on a Jet Ski sped over the waves to fish him out before he could get ensnared in his lines.
“It’s great training,” X said. “Something I would have loved to have when I was just a greenhorn. When I first started, we dove blind as bats through storms.”
Several of the divers on the decks had stowed their chutes and used their boosters to pull them back into the sky. Discovery’s belly poked through the clouds, the open launch bay sucking them up like a whale swallowing fish.
Back from its third journey into the wastes, the airship had yet to find a single survivor. The Hive, too, had been searching for isolated pockets of humanity, with nothing to show for its twenty-plus missions.
The only dive with real promise of finding human life had ended with the death of Trey Mitchells, ambushed in Jamaica by a team of defectors. The machines had beaten Team Raptor to the signal, killing the survivors living in a bunker under the prison, and destroying the cryo chambers that housed other people and animals.
Discovery had dropped a low-yield nuclear bomb that ended the threat, but X knew that more teams of defectors were out there, hunting humans. The Cazador logbooks documented several encounters over the decades.
X’s most important job now was to make sure the machines never found the Vanguard Islands, and, if they did, to protect both sky people and Cazadores.
The battle for the islands, plus Trey’s death, had brought the sky people’s numbers down to just 402 people—even with the recent births, less than half their numbers of only a decade ago.
And this was why X hadn’t authorized a single mission since Trey’s death two months ago. It was time to protect and defend what they had, not risk more lives in an effort to save potential survivors in the wastes.
The elevator cage clanked to a stop, and Rhino opened the gate to the rooftop. A line of palm trees swayed in the wind. Evidence of the pitched battle for the capitol rig was everywhere X looked: bullet-holed palm trunks, and gouges in the dirt where damaged trees had been blasted over.
Rodger Mintel had put all the wood to good use, though, in the new shop that his parents, Cole and Bernie, had started on the trading-post rig. They were two of the first people X saw on the rooftop when he stepped out of the cage.
The Mintels had gathered with a group of mostly former residents of the Hive, but some Cazadores were here as well, including wealthy merchants, scribes, and farmers.
Several of the people Katrina liberated from the Cazador container ship before the battle had also joined them on the rooftop. Among those rescued were Victor and Ton, the two leaders who had joined the militia. They had gained some weight over the past few months, but both men were still thin under their armor—especially Ton, who couldn’t speak after losing his tongue to the Cazadores.
Victor had started to pick up English quickly, and spoke for both himself and the older African warrior. Despite all their tragedy and hardships, they always greeted X with a smile.
“Hello, King Xavier,” Victor called out with a thick accent. The middle-aged warrior pounded his armor proudly, happy to fight alongside the people that had saved him.
X raised a hand to both men as he walked toward the crowd.
It was easy to tell who was who. The sky people wore hats and covered their sensitive pale skin that had never seen the sun until recently. The Cazadores, by contrast, wore little clothing over their bronzed flesh, save for the merchants, who dressed strangely in fancy trousers and vests over white shirts. On their heads, they wore round white cloth hats, of the sort worn by sailors in archives of the old-world US Navy, but with small silver fins affixed to the crown.
X was doing his best to assimilate the two societies, and events like today’s were perfect opportunities. The scars from the battle were deep, and reconciliation had been painful and slow. A lasting peace on the islands was going to take a lot of work. But according to his own people and most of the Cazadores, only one person could do it. And it meant X being king.
He cursed under his breath and strode over to the crowd with Sloan, Rhino, and Miles. Seeing the fresh mound in the graveyard caused him to slow. This one was different from the others. Though it had the same engraved wooden plaque, it was empty. Trey Mitchells was just ashes now.
X couldn’t imagine how painful the order had been, but Les had executed it, dropping the bomb that obliterated both his son’s remains and the machines that had killed him. That hard decision had proved he was the correct choice to replace Katrina DaVita as captain of the airship.
Les was in the crowd today, standing almost a full head taller than anyone around him. No wonder they called him “Giraffe.” Most of the people were busy watching the Hell Divers floating back up into the airship as their training for the afternoon ended, but Les saw X approaching.
“King Xavier is here,” he said in a commanding voice.
X shook his head as he walked. He would never get used to the ridiculous title. The crowd parted to let him through, treating him as if he were indeed the Immortal that Janga had promised them all in her prophecy. But he knew what he was: just a flawed man with a very high pain tolerance.
Familiar faces turned to watch him as he made his way toward the crew of Discovery. They waited in their white uniforms with the red embroidered Vanguard logo.
Absent was their AI, Timothy Pepper, piloting the ship for the Hell Divers so that its crew could be here for the ceremony.
Les gave a sharp salute, and X returned the old-world gesture. Lieutenant Ada Winslow, the new XO, also greeted him with a salute and a dimpled smile. Ensign Eevi Corey also raised her right hand sharply over
her brow. The former militia investigator and Hell Diver was now an officer on Discovery while her husband, Alexander, remained a diver. Also present was Michael’s girlfriend, Layla Brower, now seven months pregnant. She stood with a hand on her swollen belly.
She smiled warmly at X, and he smiled back as he walked to a platform built onto the hull of the ancient airship that served as the oil rig’s roof. He gripped the warm metal rail in his calloused hands. Miles, sitting on his haunches, nudged up against him again.
John Wynn, the new militia sergeant, stepped over, holding a walkie-talkie to his ear. The former communications expert from the Hive was now Sloan’s right-hand man.
“Almost ready, sir,” Wynn said.
With his hand again on the pommel of his sword, X turned to face the crowd, taking a moment to scan the familiar and not-so-familiar faces for a moment.
“Today, we gather for a pivotal moment in our history,” he announced after a pause. “But first, I’d like to take a moment to remember all those we have lost over the past few months, many of whom are buried here.”
Les held his head up high, so far holding back the tears. His daughter, Phyl, and wife, Katherine, were at the front of the crowd, their pale faces looking up at X.
X waited a few more seconds in silent commemoration of those who had perished. His gaze flitted to Katrina’s grave. Now he too was holding back tears. He could feel them welling up, and he didn’t especially give a shit whether anyone saw. Shedding a tear for Katrina was the least he could do to honor her memory.
“Captain DaVita made the ultimate sacrifice so we could have a home here,” X said. He drew the sword and raised it skyward. “Today, we honor her and everyone else who gave their lives so that humanity could survive and thrive together, in the sun.”
Wynn put the walkie-talkie back into a pouch and nodded—they were ready to proceed with the next part of the ceremony.
X lowered the sword and looked to the west. Discovery, with its belly full of Hell Divers, began its descent through the clouds.
It wasn’t alone. To the south, another airship hovered below the clouds. The whir of turbofans carried in the still air. The hull seemed to pop out of the cloud cover.
Seeing the smooth beetle shape of the Hive brought with it a pang of nostalgia. X straightened his back, sticking out his chest with pride at the sight of the airship he had spent most of his life protecting.
At the helm was Chief Engineer Samson, who had also been doubling as captain for the past few months while they figured out what to do with the ancient airship.
X had finally made his decision a week ago. It was time to put her to rest.
The Hive was officially being decommissioned and would be put down on the oil rig that el Pulpo had planned to turn into a prison for the sky people. Over the airship’s curved top, a platform would be added for gardens and maybe even a tropical forest, like the one on the capitol rig.
Rodger Mintel had worked with Samson and the lead technician, Alfred, on the massive project that required multiple ships, cranes, and dozens of workers.
X nodded, and Rodger joined him on the platform.
“You sure this is going to work?” X murmured.
Rodger pushed his glasses up farther on his nose and grinned. “What are you going to do to me if it doesn’t?”
“I’ll tell Magnolia you soiled yourself on one of your dives,” X said.
Rodger laughed deep and hard. “Try harder. She already knows, and still seems to like me.”
“Okay, then I’ll make you fight in the Sky Arena again. But this time, you won’t be wearing any clothes.”
“Oh,” Rodger replied quietly, his smile vanishing. He looked out over the water. “This better work, then, and if it doesn’t, I blame Alfred.”
X clapped Rodger on the shoulder and turned back to watch the Hive descend slowly over the oil rig in the distance.
If all went according to plan, the inside quarters would be reclaimed by many of the sky people currently living in community housing on a rig guarded by militia soldiers. Soon, they would wake up every morning to a view that none of them would have dared dream of only a few months ago.
For 250 years, the airship had done her job, keeping the remnants of humanity alive above the storm clouds. Now she could finally rest in paradise.
But for X and many of the other survivors, there was no rest. They had to find a way to produce more food, strengthen the economy, keep the peace, and protect their borders. If that weren’t enough, X hoped someday to continue the missions to the wastes, to find human survivors still out there—people who had no idea the Vanguard Islands existed. People the Hell Divers would save and bring here as humanity slowly rebuilt.
The whir of the turbofans rose to a high whine as they eased the airship’s mass down onto its final resting place.
X glanced at Rodger.
“It’ll hold,” Rodger said without taking his eyes off the Hive.
Samson slowly lowered the belly over the top of the rig. Cranes swung over from the anchored ships to clamp on to the hull. Long steel arms filled the deck of one of the large ships. Eventually, they would support a platform that the cranes would place over the top of the airship.
The distant clanking and clanging began as workers started bolting the Hive to the rig’s steel superstructure.
Rodger stepped closer to the railing. “Please hold,” he said. “Please …”
Wynn held his radio to his ear, listening to a transmission that X couldn’t make out over the noises. A smile broke across his craggy face.
“Alfred confirms that the ship is secure on the pad, sir,” he reported.
The crowd burst into applause, and X joined in the celebration. More clanking noises sounded as beams were bolted and welded into place. But that was just the first part of today’s decommissioning.
X raised the sword again. “Today, with the official decommissioning of the Hive, we reflect on our past and look to the future,” he said. “A new generation of Hell Divers has been training to ensure a safe future for Cazadores and sky people alike.”
X nodded at Rhino and the other Cazadores who had helped, including Imulah. The scribe stood in the crowd with his hands clasped behind his back. He had proved to be a valuable asset in helping the sky people understand how the Cazador culture worked—a key factor in peacefully assimilating the two societies.
Others, too, had helped, including Sofia Walters, the happy widow of el Pulpo. The feisty raven-haired woman was one of a dozen rookie Hell Divers preparing to jump through the clear sky with the vets.
She wasn’t the only Cazador to volunteer. Hector Rivera and Alberto Ortiz, two former soldiers who had served as mechanics on wasteland missions, had also joined up. They had assimilated well so far, thanks to Sofia’s help.
Many new divers came from the ranks of the sky people. Ted Maturo and Arlo Wand were Hive mechanics who had received Samson’s blessing now that the Hive was being decommissioned. Lena Clayton, a young militia enforcer, had also stepped up. She was fast and agile, but without the snarky attitude that Magnolia had at her age.
“They dive so humanity survives!” X yelled.
A team of Hell Divers leaped out of the belly of Discovery. They pulled their chutes almost immediately and flew their canopies toward the roof of the Hive.
He spotted the red glow of Magnolia’s and Michael’s battery units. They were the first to land on the smooth top of the airship. The ceremonial dive was Michael’s idea—a fitting tribute to the home that had kept one of the last bastions of humanity alive.
After all that had happened, X never thought he would see two dozen divers aloft at the same time. He smiled and swallowed to fight back the emotions.
But not everyone appeared to be impressed by the sight.
Across the water, Cazador civilians had gathered on the decks of ot
her platforms to watch the ceremony. Unlike the people here and on the airship rooftop behind X, they didn’t appear to be clapping or cheering. Many of them surely saw the Cazador Hell Divers as traitors.
It was another reminder of just how fragile the peace was at the Vanguard Islands. The job he had inherited was, in some ways, even more difficult than his former job of keeping the airships in the sky.
X looked past the Hive and the other rigs to the darkness beyond. It wasn’t just the tensions of two vastly different societies learning to live together that had him worried. Far more concerning were the threats that lurked behind that swirling black wall.
The biggest threat to humanity wasn’t other humans or even mutant monsters—it was machines.
TWO
Two hours after the decommissioning ceremony for the Hive, Magnolia was taking the elevator to the top deck of the capitol rig with Rodger. She was more nervous about the council meeting than about the low-altitude dive.
As the cage rattled upward, she looked out at the workers securing the Hive onto the rig in the distance. From here, in their new yellow jumpsuits, they looked like bees at work on a comb.
All the banging and construction noise had attracted a pod of spinner dolphins, which were jumping playfully and doing barrel rolls in the air.
She smiled, soaking in the magnificence of nature that she had never known during her life in the air. This place was a miracle that humans might not deserve after what they had done to the planet.
A dolphin leaped out of the water, spinning on its axis, and splashed back down.
“Pretty awesome, right?” Rodger said. But he wasn’t paying attention to the dolphins. His eyes were on the second phase of construction.
“Those cranes are securing vertical beams to support the platforms we’re adding,” he said. “In time, the people living there will be able to open hatches to balconies for a view of the water, and soon we’ll add an entire new platform above the curved roof, for a garden and rain catchment system.”
Magnolia leaned in to give him a kiss on the cheek.
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