Allegiance

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Through the wall of flames, Les could see something moving. A human figure. Burning.

  Les brought up his hand to shield his visor from the brilliant glow. Between blinks, he glimpsed a figure striding out of the wall of fire. Not a man, but a machine. The exoskeleton glowed orange in the all-consuming heat. Even as it began to melt, it kept walking, reaching out for Les with long metallic fingers.

  “no!” he shouted. “trey!”

  Les jerked awake from the dream.

  The beeping of a weather sensor reminded him that he was on the bridge of Discovery, sitting in the captain’s chair. He shook off the nightmare and tried to forget the image of his son’s smoking helmet. Each time, the scene was the same, and each time, he couldn’t reach the body.

  Les sat up straight, blinked, and looked at his watch. He had been out a half hour since talking to X about the mission to locate the Cazador warship Lion.

  “Timothy, got a twenty on that ship?” he mumbled.

  “No sir, we still haven’t located them.” The AI’s impeccably dressed and groomed hologram cast a glow over Discovery’s dimly lit bridge and its skeleton crew of Ada and Eevi.

  The ship rattled from a lightning strike below. Les leaned over his monitor to see that they were coasting a few thousand feet above the heart of the massive storm. He reached for the cup in the holder by his chair. Even cold, Cazador coffee was a thing of beauty.

  He downed the last of it, trying to banish the fatigue so he could focus. Aside from the catnap, he had been awake almost twenty-four hours. But that was fine with him. The nightmares were a far worse torture than sleeplessness.

  “Sir, the storm front is expanding,” Eevi reported. “It is now almost eighty miles long, with winds capable of gusting over seventy knots.”

  She continued rattling off data, but Les, even fortified with coffee, had trouble focusing on anything but the past. He should have dived with his son. He should have been down on the surface instead of up here, in this prison.

  He took a deep breath, trying to fend off the darkness. It was getting worse, and it wasn’t just from the lack of sleep or the grief.

  Maybe X was right. He needed a break.

  “No, you have a duty,” Les said out loud.

  Ada and Eevi looked up from their stations.

  “Sir, are you okay?” Ada asked.

  “Fine. Sorry,” Les replied.

  Timothy walked over and said, “Captain, I’m happy to take over in the search if you would like to go to your quarters to rest.”

  “I’m fine,” Les said. He got up from his chair and walked over to the porthole. Blue fire burst in the clouds below them.

  They were fifty miles east of the Vanguard Islands, on the final leg of their mission to check on the Lion. The hurricane had barreled into the area with almost zero warning, thanks to the electrical storms, and the crew hadn’t reported in for several hours.

  This was again likely a result of the electrical disturbance, but he wanted to be sure. Losing one of their three warships—especially now, with the message from Rio de Janeiro and the threat of the defectors, would be a terrible blow to their small fleet.

  “Hail them again, Lieutenant Winslow,” Les said.

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  Even in his exhausted state, Les could tell that his XO didn’t agree with coming out here. He wasn’t the only one changed by death. Ada, too, knew the trauma of loss. Her peppy, selfless attitude had darkened, leaving her prickly and angry. Most of that anger was directed at the people who had killed her mentor, Captain DaVita.

  She continued speaking into her headset and brought the channel up so everyone on the bridge could hear.

  Les peered outside but saw only the rain pummeling the glass and filling the bridge with a soft, percussive white noise.

  “They aren’t responding, sir,” Ada said.

  “Ensign Corey, do you have them on radar?” Les asked.

  Eevi checked her screen. “I don’t see anything yet, sir, but we’re nearing their last known location.”

  “How about this hurricane?” Les asked. “Still looking like the worst of it will miss the Vanguard Islands?”

  “I think so,” Eevi said, “but we all know how unpredictable these systems can be.” She checked her console again. “You see anything I’m not seeing, Pepper?”

  The AI crossed the bridge. “From my estimates, the Vanguard Islands will see increased wind and more heavy rain, but unless the path of the storm changes, there should be only limited damage.”

  “Good,” Les said. He stepped back up to the porthole window, listening to the barrage of thunder below them. He had seen a lot of bad weather in his day, but this wasn’t your garden-variety electrical storm.

  “I’ve got something on radar,” Eevi announced.

  Les hurried over to her station. “Is it the Lion?”

  “Yes,” Timothy replied.

  “Good,” Les replied. “At least, we know they haven’t been taken down by a storm wave.”

  “So we can go home now?” Ada asked.

  Les saw the fatigue in her eyes too, but he still wanted to confirm that they didn’t need assistance. “Hail them again,” he said.

  Ada did as ordered, but again lightning static crackled over the channel.

  Les stared out at the brilliant display. “We should descend for a closer look.”

  He caught the unease in the glance that Eevi and Ada exchanged. And he understood it well. He also felt conflicted about helping the people who had shot both him and his son in the fight for the Metal Islands.

  But the war was over, and the Cazadores hadn’t killed his boy. The machines had, and if Les wanted the rest of his family to survive, he needed to work with the Cazadores to secure the Vanguard Islands.

  “Take us down,” Les said before his crew could object. “Twenty degrees down angle.”

  “Descending,” Timothy reported.

  The hull groaned in reply.

  “Winds out of the northwest at almost seventy knots,” Timothy added.

  Eevi and Ada tensed, grabbing the arms of their chairs.

  “All due respect, Captain,” Eevi said, “but why are we risking our ship to check on them? We already know they’re down there.”

  Ada looked at Les for his response.

  “Because it is our duty,” he replied. “Do you have a problem with my order, Ensign?”

  “It’s just …” Eevi began to say. Her words trailed off, but Ada, who held rank over the ensign, picked up the thread.

  “This is one of the ships that attacked the USS Zion, is it not, sir?” Ada said. “One of the ships that murdered Captain DaVita.”

  Les licked his dry lips. She was right, damn it, and he hated that some of the warriors on that ship may have fired the very rounds that killed her.

  Still, he had a duty—and orders from X—to make sure the warship was not in trouble.

  “Those Cazadores have sworn an oath to fight for King Xavier Rodriguez, and he has given us the task of checking on the warship as part of our patrol. Do you understand, Lieutenant?”

  Her freckled brow scrunched, and she nodded.

  “We are all human and should work together,” Timothy said.

  The other officers didn’t acknowledge the AI or correct him, but Les nodded. Part of Timothy still believed he was human, and maybe, somehow, there was a bit of him left in all that artificial intelligence.

  What Les knew for certain was that Timothy had been a good person. He had died taking care of his family and had suffered terribly since then, yet he still did everything in his power to help his species.

  The hull creaked and groaned as the airship lowered through the storm.

  “Turn on frontal beams,” Les ordered.

  The bright lights activated, cutting through slantin
g rain that looked like knives hitting the bow. Lightning flashed, followed a few seconds later by a thunderclap loud enough to rattle the hull.

  “We’re at four thousand feet,” Timothy said. “The Lion should heave into view in a few minutes.”

  Les stared ahead, trying to see through the storm. The ship held steady, withstanding the storm better than he had expected. She was a solid ship, built to last, and she had spent only a tiny fraction of the Hive’s time in the sky.

  “Two thousand feet,” Timothy said.

  The beams raked the surface, hitting what looked like a sloshing tub of water.

  “Dear God,” Les whispered.

  Even from this height, the waves appeared gigantic. And down there, plowing through them, was the bow of a small Cazador warship, bobbing like a toy.

  “There they are,” Les said. “Eevi what’s their bearing?”

  “Due west, sir.”

  “Ada, try hailing them again.”

  This time, Ada received a garbled reply in Spanish.

  “They are taking on water,” Timothy translated. “The captain is making a run for the islands to try and escape the worst of the hurricane.”

  “That’s fifty miles away,” Les said.

  “Forty-nine now, to be precise,” Timothy replied.

  Les watched in dismay as the Lion seesawed over the monster waves. A crate on the deck snapped free of the chain holding it down and slid down the deck as the ship climbed over another wall of water.

  “They aren’t going to make it,” Les said. “We have to do something.”

  “What can we do?” Ada asked.

  “Timothy, approximately how much does the boat weigh?” Les asked.

  The AI raised a brow. “The ship, sir? Far too much.”

  “Not the ship—the ship’s boat,” Les said. “Maybe we could lift them up and carry the boat back to the islands.”

  “In these winds?” Ada said, looking at Les as if he were crazy.

  He did feel that he was starting to go off the rails, but most of that had to do with lack of sleep.

  Get it together, Mitchells. Lives, and the airship, are on the line here.

  He picked up the radio and called the launch bay. “Alfred, I need your team to lower the cables. Proceed to the lower bay, ASAP.”

  The lead technician came back on the horn. “Sir, for what reason?”

  “Just get down there,” Les said. He cradled the handset and crossed the bridge, but Ada moved to block his way.

  “Sir,” she said, “You’re risking Discovery by doing this. You heard what Timothy said about the winds.”

  “The ship can handle it, and we need their help, Lieutenant,” Les said.

  “Why do we need their help?”

  “Because the battle between our two societies is over, and the war with the machines will require every single man and woman,” Les fired back.

  As if in reply, the hull gave out a long groan.

  “You’re on the ragged edge of insubordination, Lieutenant,” Les said. “Now, step aside.”

  Ada clenched her jaw but moved aside and let him pass.

  The passages were deserted, all crew members either at their stations or in their shelters. Discovery could take much more punishment than the Hive, especially since Samson had it retrofitted with stronger shields against the lightning.

  Les ran to his locker in the launch bay and got into his suit and armor. Helmet in hand, he took a ladder down to the lowest deck, where the belly of the airship opened under the turbofans.

  The divers never jumped from this spot, but the cable system was here, and it was built to carry heavy cargoes.

  The wind howled through an open hatch in the deck, where three technicians were lowering the two hoist cables.

  Alfred looked up. “Sir, due respect, but what are you doing here?”

  “Helping.” Les put his helmet on and secured it with a click. Moving over to the technicians, he gripped the handle and peered down into the water while the cables lowered.

  Les opened a channel to the bridge. “Timothy, do you copy?”

  “Copy, sir.”

  “Tell the captain to get all crew into that …” His words trailed off when he saw that the ship’s rescue boat was no longer mounted in its davits on the side of the warship.

  “Did they already abandon ship?” Les asked. He saw movement on the deck—several Cazadores leaning into the steady wind, waving their arms in the air.

  “Sir, I did not catch your last,” Timothy said, “but the secondary rescue boat was lost in a wave.”

  Les scanned the warship. A half-dozen containers were still chained down on the deck. The bow climbed over another mountain of seawater, then vanished for a moment.

  The wind pushed on the hovering airship, jolting it slightly. He gripped the handle harder and shouted, “Hold us steady!”

  The wind roared in the open hatch, and rain clattered against his armor. He strained for a better view, spotting the Lion as it rose onto another wave.

  “Timothy, tell the captain to get every sailor and soldier aboard into one of the containers,” Les said. “We will pull them up and transport them back to the islands.”

  “Sir, the weight could be too much,” Alfred protested. “Especially in this storm.”

  “Do it,” Les said.

  Alfred gave a reluctant nod to the two other technicians. They went back to work, and Les bent down to watch. Another wall of water hit the hull of the warship, but the containers all held.

  A moment later, the Cazadores aboard the Lion streamed out toward the cluster of containers. He thought of the container that Katrina had found before reaching the islands, where the Cazador crew had stored human captives for their flesh. Ton and Victor, two of the survivors, now fought in the militia. Like Ada, neither man seemed to have forgiven the Cazadores for what they had done.

  For a fleeting second, Les considered letting the bastards all drown. But doing so would make him no better than they, and if the Cazadores back home found out, it would ignite another war.

  Static crackled in his helmet. “Sir, you’re not going to believe this, but I’m picking up another message from the source of the signal in Rio de Janeiro,” Eevi said.

  “What …” Les stuttered. “What are they saying?”

  “They’re asking for our location, sir.”

  The message made Les freeze in place. “Do not respond yet,” he said.

  “Roger that, sir.”

  His mind raced with the possibilities. Was this real? Was it a trap?

  He pushed them aside to focus on the lowering hoist cables. They had reached the deck of the Lion. Les bent down and watched the technicians using an automated system to clamp on to the top of the container at both ends.

  “It’s secure, sir,” said Alfred.

  The last personnel on the Lion ran out onto the deck, sliding and falling and then pushing themselves back up before clambering into the container. They closed the doors to keep out the wind and rain.

  “Bring them up,” Les said. “Timothy, hold us as steady as you can.”

  “Will do, sir,” replied the AI.

  The clank of the cable windlass echoed in the room. The container rose off the deck, leaving the Lion to drift aimlessly—a ghost ship with no one at the helm.

  Another wave slammed into the bow, inundating the weather deck.

  Les gripped the safety handle again, holding tight.

  The container was halfway up now.

  “It’s a lot of weight,” Alfred said.

  “The cables will hold,” Les said. He opened a line back to the bridge. “Hold us steady, Timothy. Once the container is locked into place, we head back above the storm.”

  The load swayed slightly, and the hull groaned and creaked.

  �
��Sir, I’m having a hard time keeping us steady,” Timothy reported.

  “Too much weight,” Alfred repeated.

  “I said it’ll hold,” Les said. “The cables can carry far more than that.”

  “But the storm—”

  The ship lurched, cutting the AI off.

  “Shit!” one of the techs yelled.

  “Oh, God, no!” cried the other.

  Les looked down in time to see the container splash down into the sea. The ocean swallowed it in an instant, as if it were nothing more than a pebble.

  The cables swung loosely in the wind.

  Les yelled, “What the hell happened!”

  The technicians all shook their heads. “That wasn’t us,” Alfred said.

  “The cables didn’t just snap!” Les shouted.

  Another voice came over the comms channel in his helmet, hard and flat.

  “Let them drown,” Ada said. “They deserve worse.”

  EIGHT

  The storm beat the shutters covering the council chamber windows. X sat on the ridiculous throne, his hands folded into a pyramid that covered the gray stubble on his square jaw.

  There was much to contemplate tonight, despite the fatigue weighing on him. His joints, his muscles—everything hurt, even his liver. And he hadn’t even been drinking—not the hard stuff, anyway, although he was starting to enjoy wine. “It’s basically fruit juice,” he kept telling everyone.

  This wasn’t the first time he had stayed up for two days straight. In the wastes, he had survived days on end without more than a few hours’ sleep.

  Miles, on the other hand, needed his rest now more than ever. The old Siberian husky hybrid slept on the tile floor in front of the throne, his fur rising and falling gently with each breath.

  Having the dog with him kept X calm in the face of an uncomfortable reality. In a matter of hours, the truce between his people and the Cazadores had been threatened not once, but twice, by the actions of two criminally stupid individuals.

  Everything he had worked so hard for over the past few months was suddenly on the verge of crashing down like an airship into the wastes. It had started when a Cazador mechanic smashed in the head of DJ, an engineer on Samson’s crew, with a length of pipe.