Allegiance

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Magnolia watched tracer rounds lance into the water. Whatever they were firing at was big. The possibilities raced across her mind.

  “Come on!” Sofia yelled.

  They ran up to the command center. General Santiago and Lieutenant Alejo were on the bridge, monitoring the battle.

  “Sofia, find out what they’re firing at!” Magnolia shouted.

  As Sofia crossed the busy bridge, Magnolia and Rodger went to the port windows, where she switched on her infrared optics.

  A red mass flashed across a large section of water.

  That reading couldn’t be real. The beast would be almost as long as the warship.

  Magnolia bumped on her comm channel. “Captain Mitchells, do you copy?”

  Static crackled in her helmet.

  Les’s voice came over the channel, faint but recognizable. “Copy. Mags, are you okay?” he said.

  “What’s in the water?” she shouted.

  The gunfire outside made hearing difficult. She hunkered down to listen.

  “Come again, I didn’t catch your last,” she said.

  A momentary letup in the gunfire allowed her to hear the next response.

  “Timothy believes it’s some mutant version of a sperm whale,” Les replied.

  Magnolia stared at the gargantuan creature cutting through the water on the port side. She remembered reading about them when she was a kid and wondering what one might look like in real life.

  But this wasn’t what she had imagined, and she doubted this beast ate only fish and squid. It wanted to eat everyone aboard Star Grazer.

  “There are more—”

  The crack of gunfire made it impossible to hear the captain, and she stood back up just as the whale slammed into the hull.

  Glass shattered from the portholes, and a computer exploded in a shower of sparks and electronics. Two Cazador officers fell to the deck.

  As Magnolia pushed herself up, the vessel got slammed again, this time from the other side. Now she understood what the captain was trying to say.

  There was more than one whale out there.

  “We have to get to the Sea Wolf!” Rodger yelled.

  Sofia looked down at a monitor next to Santiago. “We’re taking on water,” she said.

  The general yelled at his crew, giving what looked like orders to abandon ship.

  Another message came over the open channel with Discovery. “Get away from the windows!” Les yelled.

  Magnolia pulled Rodger to the deck just as a missile came streaking through the sky. She didn’t see the explosion, but she heard it. A few beats later, a curtain of seawater deluged the ship, and she heard thuds against the windows. Looking up, she saw that it wasn’t just water. Blood and lumps of pink gore flecked the cracked glass.

  General Santiago raised a fist in defiance at the whale bits sliding down the glass.

  Rodger helped Magnolia to her feet. Two turrets on the bow rained machine-gun fire into the water, punching into the flesh of the biggest living beast Magnolia had ever seen.

  The bullets seemed only to peck at the thick flesh covered in orange barnacles and scars from what looked like tentacles. The creature slipped back under. On the way down, it slapped the weather deck with a tail fluke, crushing one of the turrets like an old-world beverage can.

  Santiago yelled something—a curse, no doubt—at the whale. He turned to one of his men and shouted more orders. Then he looked at Magnolia and Rodger and again waved them off the bridge.

  This time, Magnolia obeyed. She pulled on Rodger and ran outside with him and Sofia. A ladder took them back to the deck where the Sea Wolf was secured to a davit.

  Another missile streaked through the sky and hit the water on the port side. This time, she saw the geyser of water. And this time, no bits of flesh or blood rained down on the ship. Discovery had missed.

  Not entirely, she realized. The missile had angered the giant cetacean. She braced herself as the beast speared toward them, its barnacled back above the surface.

  “Incoming!” Sofia yelled.

  Magnolia reached out to Rodger just before they both went flying through the air. She lost her grip on Rodger’s hand and saw him slam into the rail, but she kept flying.

  Right over the side of the ship.

  She hit the water on her back, and darkness rushed around her.

  Panic gripped her as she tried to move, and for a moment, she simply sank into the ocean. She could see the rusty hull of the ship cruising past.

  Then she snapped alert and managed to bring her body vertical. She kicked toward the surface and pulled with her hands, all the while watching Star Grazer sail away.

  Her heart skipped at the sight of the giant twin screws. They churned the water in front of her as the warship passed, and she went cartwheeling away into the depths.

  Habits learned from years of Hell Diving kicked in, and she forced herself to relax. At last, she stopped spinning. After getting her bearings, she started kicking and pulling toward the surface.

  Not being able to see her surroundings fed her fear, but the only thing that mattered right now was getting to the surface. She could then radio Star Grazer or Discovery to come pick her up before one of the whales spotted her and swallowed her for an appetizer.

  She broke through the waves, pulling herself up while treading water. The armor made it tough, but she was well rested, and the fall hadn’t injured her.

  Turning in the water, she looked for the warship.

  She spotted it to the west, but it continued to plow ahead. The one machine gun still operational rained lead into the ocean, piercing the vast surface with an audible shick, shick, shick.

  Magnolia slipped back under the water and kicked back up, only to get slapped in the helmet by a wave. She fought back above the surface and glimpsed motion in the dark sky. A sudden beam shot away from the clouds as Discovery lowered.

  The light covered the area off the ship’s starboard side, where the whale had sounded. Magnolia bumped on her chin pad.

  “Captain Mitchells, do you copy? It’s Magnolia. I’ve fallen overboard!”

  The only response was static.

  Magnolia watched in horror as the monstrous sperm whale surfaced off Star Grazer’s port beam. A rising wake followed the creature as it swam toward the bow. She could hear the crunch that was the beginning of the end for the warship.

  Star Grazer swung around from the collision, giving Magnolia a view of the starboard side. Several boats were already being lowered from their davits. One snapped loose and fell into the water.

  She hit her chin pad again, opening a line to Rodger.

  “Rodger, do you copy?” she said.

  White noise crackled in her ear. Then a voice. “Mags …”

  “Rodger!” she yelled.

  She slipped under the water but could still hear his faint response. He sounded hurt.

  She kicked back up over the waves in time to see the warship begin to founder. Soon, the compartments would fill with enough water that it would drop like an anchor.

  Discovery hovered over the sinking vessel, and another missile streaked away from the launch tubes. The blast sent a red-tinted geyser into the air. Les had found his target.

  “Target destroyed,” came a voice over the channel. “Magnolia, do you copy?”

  “I’m here!” she yelled, raising her arms toward the sky. “South side of the ship, off the stern, a quarter-mile out.”

  Discovery rotated over Star Grazer, its frontal beam flitting back and forth across the surface. Several rowboats moved away from the warship. As it dipped, she saw that the Sea Wolf was still on the deck.

  “Get the Sea Wolf first!” she yelled.

  She wasn’t sure there was time to save the boat, but it looked as if Les was going to try. Cables lowered from the belly of the
airship.

  “Rodger, where are you?” Magnolia said.

  Panic whispered inside her as she treaded water, watching helplessly as Discovery tried to save the Sea Wolf before it sank with the warship.

  She pulled herself into a front crawl, fighting the weight of her armor to keep above the waves. At least, she didn’t have to worry about swallowing any water.

  “Rodger,” she said again. “Do you copy?”

  “Mags,” came a reply. “Sofia … she has me … where …”

  About halfway to the rowboats, Magnolia rolled onto her back to rest her muscles. She couldn’t make much sense of what Rodger was saying, only that he was with Sofia.

  Seeing that Discovery had cables lowered and attached to the Sea Wolf also helped calm her thumping heart. She rolled over and began a front crawl when an expanse of warty, barnacled flesh slid through the water in front of her.

  What in the wastes?

  She flip-turned out of the crawl and kicked backward, away from the creature. What she saw under the surface was nowhere near the size of the whale that sank Star Grazer. The animal swimming parallel to her was the calf of one of the mutant sperm whales. It swam in a circle, coming back around.

  Though much smaller than its parents, it was still big enough to swallow her whole. She didn’t have her laser rifle, and she had lost her blaster in the fall.

  She pulled herself back above the surface, where she again treaded water as she reached over her back. Her two sickle-shaped blades were still sheathed. She grabbed the hilt of one and pulled it out. Then she ducked under the water to look for the creature.

  The calf continued circling her, studying her with one huge eye. Magnolia tried to guess where in that bomb-shaped body she should thrust her blade, and waited for her moment.

  The beast opened a long jaw of conical teeth and gave a long, clicking sigh that she could easily hear underwater.

  This wasn’t the snarl of a predator. It was the sound of a baby that had just lost its mother. The orphan calf finally turned and swam away into the depths.

  Magnolia kicked back up to the surface and sheathed her blade. She turned just in time to see the massive screw propellers of Star Grazer disappear below the surface.

  A beam hit her from above. In the glow, she saw the hull of Sea Wolf locked against the belly of Discovery.

  “Get me out of here!” she yelled.

  EIGHTEEN

  When the radio popped, X had dozed off. He nearly fell out of his chair reaching for the comms equipment.

  A weak voice vied with the static crackling that filled the capitol tower’s command center. Miles looked up from the deck, then quickly lost interest. Resting his head between his forepaws, he closed his eyes and let out a sigh.

  “No, no, no,” X muttered. He hadn’t heard from Les or anyone else on the airship for almost two days and was starting to worry that something had happened.

  Of course something happened.

  “Captain Mitchells, do you copy? This is Xavier.”

  X waited for a response, lowering his head as if in prayer, but that just made him feel more tired. He glanced at the wall-mounted clock. It was well past midnight.

  He rubbed his eyes and slapped his cheeks. For the past two days, he had slept only a couple of hours at a time, just as he had during those years back in the wastes. But instead of fighting for survival, he was fighting a more internal battle.

  Mallory had hit a nerve the night of the funeral for her husband and son. Her assessment of his leadership had him wondering about his ability to protect his people. He certainly hadn’t saved Rhett or DJ.

  Since then, he was second-guessing all his decisions, from letting the Cazadores keep their army and navy to sending his people and the only airship back into the killing wastes. Hell, he was even starting to wonder whether decommissioning the Hive had been the right call. What if someday they needed to escape this place?

  He tried the radio again. “Captain Mitchells, this is X, do you copy? Over.”

  More static filled the room.

  X stood up, stretching his tired muscles. What he needed was a long swim.

  No, you need sleep.

  Candlelight flickered over the command center, just two floors below the Sky Arena. It wasn’t a big space—just a few tables, two desks and chairs, and the bank of radio equipment—but it served as his war room.

  A flat-screen computer sat on one of the tables, and rolled-up maps covered the other. Stacked on a desk were several books that Imulah had found documenting Cazador missions. X picked up the record of General Santiago’s mission to find the skinwalkers—the mission that had turned up Gael. He thumbed to the page with the sketches: a beach, an old lighthouse, and what looked like an ancient fortress—nothing he hadn’t seen before in the wastes.

  But the bizarre scarecrow-like human remains that Horn and his crew had assembled were unlike anything X had encountered during his decade in hell. The barbaric nature of the kills was beyond even what Sirens did. Sirens killed without regard for their victims’ suffering. But skinwalkers went out of their way to prolong and intensify the suffering.

  And it was eerily similar to the defectors’ ghoulish handiwork. Why?

  It didn’t matter, really. All that mattered was being ready to stop them if prisoner Gael was right.

  The radio crackled again. “This is Captain Mitchells. Does anyone copy?”

  “Giraffe!” X shouted. “This is X! What’s your status?”

  “Sir, we’ve got a major problem out here.”

  “What happened now?”

  “Whales happened, sir. A group of them attacked Star Grazer …” Les paused long enough for X to deduce that the ship was now at the bottom of the sea.

  “She’s gone,” Les confirmed.

  X stared at the handset. Two Cazador warships gone in the same week.

  “Survivors?” X asked after the pause.

  “We rescued about a third of the Cazador crew and the Sea Wolf, but the vehicles and all the fuel are gone, sir.”

  “How about our people?” X asked.

  “All present and accounted for.”

  “Good, and General Santiago?”

  “Alive,” Les said. “We’ve been trying to get ahold of you for days now. Should we come home, or proceed? Now that we’re no longer caravanning with a slow-moving warship, if we continue at max speed, we can reach the target in only a few hours.”

  Just a few hours. His team was tantalizingly close to the target, to finding out whether there were indeed survivors out there. Or defectors …

  “Sir, the skinwalkers—they could be sailing Raven’s Claw to the islands,” Les said. “Don’t underestimate them, sir. What we saw was pretty horrific.”

  “I know, and I won’t,” X replied. “I’ve got our defenses squared away, I think.”

  “I can turn us around and be back in a day, sir.”

  An airship would certainly help mitigate the emerging skinwalker threat to the Vanguard Islands, especially now that they had lost Star Grazer. But Discovery was practically within pissing distance of its objective. X didn’t want to scrub the entire mission without first doing some aerial scans to see what they were dealing with. And, of course, the defectors could be there, hunting down the survivors.

  He couldn’t abandon them now.

  Static crackled from the speakers.

  “Check out the signal,” X said. “Find those survivors, and if defectors are there, destroy them. Then get your asses back here.”

  “Yes sir,” Les said. “And, Xavier?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Look after my family. They’re all I have left.”

  “I’ll make sure nothing happens to them,” X promised. “You have my word, Captain.”

  The door opened just as the line severed, and X got up to greet
Lieutenant Sloan.

  “Was that Discovery?” she asked.

  X gave her the gist of the call.

  “Damn,” Sloan said.

  X was sick of questioning his decisions, and he was even sicker of doing nothing. He scooped a handheld radio off a charger and handed it to Sloan.

  “Deploy a team of soldiers to the Hive,” he said. “I want two machine-gun emplacements on the roof, and one of our turret-mounted thirty-millimeter cannons.”

  “Protecting it from what kind of attack, sir?”

  “From Raven’s Claw,” X said. “I want this by sunset.” He looked at the clock. “You’ve got eighteen hours, Lieutenant. Can you make that work?”

  “I’m not the one that’s always late,” she said, cracking a rare smile.

  “Yeah, yeah,” X said.

  Miles got up and followed him out of the command center. He went left down the hall. Around the next corner a militia guard stood outside a door.

  X went inside the former brig that his people had retrofitted into an armory. Their weapons were neatly stacked on shelves on the other side of the barred barrier splitting the quarters in half.

  Behind the bars, a man named Dusty sat at a desk. He stood, shook his long gray hair back, and gave X a mostly black smile.

  “You must be here for your new gun,” he said.

  Dusty walked back into the armory, past a shelf of militia armor and helmets. Stopping at the rifles, he bent down and picked up a modified AK-47-shotgun combo.

  “Just sign here, sir,” Dusty said, handing a clipboard through the window.

  They had implemented the same rules governing weapons as on the airships: every firearm accounted for at the end of each day.

  Dusty grinned as he walked over to the barred door. Unlocking it he proudly handed X the gun.

  “Would love to see how it fires in person.”

  X took the rifle. It was lighter than he had expected. He raised it toward the ceiling, looking through the scope. Then he lowered it and put the strap over his shoulder.

  “And the ammo?” X said.

  Dusty threw his arms up. “Well, shit, can’t forget that.”