Hell Divers V: Captives

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Alexander and Trey had both managed to move back into stable position. Far above them, the airship was gaining altitude, using its thrusters to put some distance between it and the cannon below.

  “I think I saw one of the shots come from the top of that tower!” Vish shouted over the comms.

  At three thousand feet, he could see individual trees growing around the perimeter of some sort of arena or ball field, but no weapons.

  There was only one way to locate the cannon: watch the next shot. It came a beat later as a third shell streaked away. He had it.

  The cannon was hidden by the tree cover. An explosion flashed overhead, but Deliverance was now safely out of range.

  Michael bit down on his mouth guard, feeling the most dangerous emotion of all: hope.

  All right, you sons of bitches. Team Raptor is coming for you.

  A second ticked by as he prepared for the most important fight of his life. Now he saw that it was also going to be the most difficult fight of his life.

  A small army crouched in the cover of the trees, waiting for the small fire team of Hell Divers. Michael was close enough that he could see them aiming rifles and pistols into the sky.

  “Hostiles in the trees!” he barked over the comms.

  “Copy that,” Les replied.

  The other beacons on Michael’s HUD winked in acknowledgment. Flashes suddenly flickered across the canopy of trees.

  Tracer rounds cut through the air, lighting the predawn skies up with the glow of war. Gunfire from a hidden .50-cal machine gun swept the air. Michael was close enough to hear the sharp cracking sound, and then a scream in his ear.

  “Watch out!”

  It was Les. He maneuvered right next to Michael, tilting his visor to look back at Trey. The green flashes raked back and forth.

  “Fan out, fan out!” Michael yelled.

  They were falling in stable position at two thousand feet now, slowing down before pulling their pilot chutes. As he checked his HUD, a beacon winked out above him.

  Michael shot a glance back to see Vish spinning away, an arm and a leg blown off by the rounds.

  Higher in the sky, Deliverance was crossing over the stars, like a black beetle walking over shiny bits of broken glass. A red spark streaked away from the belly of Deliverance.

  Michael blinked, thinking at first that the ship had caught fire. But the spark turned into a projectile zipping toward him. A present for Team Raptor.

  The missile cut through the sky, screaming past the divers and detonating in the middle of the forest, in the most beautiful explosion Michael had ever seen. The blast erased the gunfire and sent burning human shapes in all directions—some flying through the air, others running, others crawling.

  Michael pulled his chute and ordered his team to do the same. The suspension lines drew taut, jerking him back into the sky, or so it always felt. Before grabbing the toggles, he pulled out a smoke grenade and dropped it in the dirt surrounding a sports arena like the one they had landed on in Florida.

  “DZ is the smoke!” Michael said over the comms.

  Cazador soldiers ran from the burning forest, several of them collapsing and rolling in the dirt. A husky man on fire jumped off the side of the tower—a big, slow meteor plummeting to the sea.

  But the missile hadn’t killed or maimed all of them. Several Cazadores had survived the inferno unscathed and stood their ground on the outer edges of the tree grove. They aimed weapons at the sky and opened fire on the divers.

  Michael dropped another smoke grenade, then pulled the laser rifle from the sheath over his back, taking care not to tangle it in the suspension lines.

  He pulled the right toggle to turn his canopy and give him a field of fire on the soldiers near the drop zone. His robotic trigger finger took the shot, and a single blue bolt flashed through the chest of a man crouching and firing into the air. He slumped over, smoke rising from the smoldering hole in his rib cage.

  Michael moved to the next target: a soldier hiding behind a clump of red lilies. He sprawled in the foliage, a bright red tunnel glowing in his side. The next soldier lost an arm, just as Michael had.

  With the drop zone mostly clear, he put the laser weapon back in its scabbard and checked his HUD.

  Alexander, Trey, and Les had pulled their chutes and were coming in fast behind him. Les knew what to do, but both Alexander and Trey seemed wobbly.

  Michael looked away, grabbing both toggles and steering toward the sunken stadium. He passed over more gardens and a pool of water, but he wasn’t here to admire the beauty. He had come for one thing only: to kill these barbarians and save his friends and his people.

  The arena of sand rose up to meet his boots, and he pulled the toggles to slow his decent. Flexing his knees slightly, he did a two-stage flare. He hit the dirt a little hard and ran out the momentum.

  Gunfire lanced into the ground, kicking up dust. The two remaining shooters were running away from the burning forest, followed by at least ten more that Michael hadn’t seen earlier.

  He crouched down, released the collapsed chute, and pulled out his blaster, leveling it at the nearest Cazador. He waited for the sooty, half-naked enemy to get close. The man bared his sharp teeth like a wild animal and raised a pistol as Michael pulled the trigger.

  The blast opened a hole in the barbarian’s chest, and he fell on his face, raising a halo of dust around him. Return gunfire sounded, and a shot pinged off Michael’s robotic arm. He shielded his face, deflecting another round. The soldiers ran at him, screaming and firing their archaic guns.

  Michael fired the other shotgun shell into the gut of a man in armor, knocking him down. Then he drew the pistol at his hip and shot each of the other two soldiers.

  They slumped to the dirt, giving Michael a moment to gather his gear and pull out the laser rifle. The other divers had landed on his left and right flanks, but both Trey and Alexander had come in crosswind, hit the dirt hard, and gotten wrapped in their chutes.

  Les joined Michael, shouldering his assault rifle and laying down covering fire while the other two divers could get to their feet.

  Michael came back to back with the lieutenant, shooting bolts at the Cazador soldiers who had taken cover behind the trees. In the glow of the burning missile crater, he could see dozens of them, mostly armed with spears and swords.

  A shot kicked up dirt next to Michael’s boot, and he fired a bolt through the tree and the shooter behind it. The man gripped his burning midsection and fell sideways into a bush.

  It took the warriors only a minute to realize that whatever they hid behind was useless against his advanced weapon. One of them, a burly fellow with spiked hair, yelled commands in Spanish to the soldiers. Michael took off the crown of his head with a laser bolt.

  Shouts came from behind the divers, and Michael turned to look for the source. Across the rooftop, men streamed out of a small building on the roof of the airship. Two hatches had swung open, disgorging silhouette after silhouette of Cazadores who had climbed the stairs from the tower.

  “Don’t let them flank us!” Michael shouted. He looked for cover, but the DZ was on bare ground between the trees and the building. The only place to run was the spectator booths above the recessed stadium.

  The warriors still holding position in the forest seemed to hesitate, not knowing what to do now that their leader had fallen. And then, all at once, they screamed and ran out of the forest, straight at the divers.

  Trey and Alexander were by now on their feet and firing their weapons, cutting down the charging Cazador warriors. The two divers backpedaled as they fired, nearly running into Michael and Les, who had turned to engage the soldiers piling out of the open hatch.

  Team Raptor formed an armored phalanx, with enemies closing in from all directions. There was only one way off this airship roof.

  “Kill them!” Micha
el shouted. “Kill ’em all!”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  After swimming to exhaustion, Rhino and X had made it to the remains of the fishing boat. Its wooden hull still burned, and one of the sails lay stretched out in the water, like a broken bird wing.

  They searched in darkness through the debris field and found a bag and a few planks of wood, but nothing that would help them stay afloat.

  At least, the sharks hadn’t found them.

  Yet.

  X kept treading water. He was drained from swimming, and one calf was cramping. Though he didn’t have his armor to weigh him down, he was struggling to keep his head above the surface.

  It seemed that some monster was always trying to eat him, or some human was bent on killing him. All he wanted was a simple life and a place to settle down somewhere and live out his years with Miles.

  Was that too freaking much to ask?

  He kept searching through the flotsam for anything that would help him get back to his dog and friends.

  Some people in this world had an intense will to live, coupled with the skills to keep them alive. X knew he was one of them. What he didn’t understand was why he continued to live.

  What made him different?

  Not some stupid prophecy, that much was certain. The fairy tale that Janga had preached for years on the Hive was nothing but bullshit. She wasn’t much better than the woman from the trading post who had sold herbs to his wife when she was dying of cancer.

  A destiny foretold wasn’t the reason he had survived long enough to reach the Metal Islands in the Sea Wolf. Certainly, he wasn’t any stronger or smarter than Cazador warriors like Fuego, Whale, or Wendig. He wasn’t stronger or smarter than the Hell Divers who died before him, either. Not Commander Rick Weaver, Aaron Everhart, or Erin Jenkins.

  Maybe he was just lucky. And maybe that luck was running out.

  “Hey, you see that?” Rhino asked.

  X brought his rambling mind back to the present and looked in the direction the Cazador lieutenant was pointing. It was a dark night with only a sliver of moon, but in the intermittent flashes of lightning, he saw the outline of what looked like one of the Cazador skiffs, and someone was standing inside.

  “Shit, is that …”

  Rhino was already swimming in a front crawl toward the skiff. For a man of his size and dense muscularity, he was a damn good swimmer. X fell behind quickly, too tired to do anything faster than a breast stroke.

  A voice called out at the halfway point.

  “¡Hola, hola!” Rhino yelled.

  The figure in the boat turned toward them. A Cazador soldier had survived after all.

  But rather than respond to Rhino, the man ducked down in the stern near the motor. He was trying to start the engine, X realized.

  X kicked harder, breaking into a crawl. Memories of the swamps back in Florida surfaced in his mind. Giant octopuses weren’t the only monsters in the sea.

  But he couldn’t think about those beasts right now. Maybe that was why he continued to survive. He rarely gave in to fear, preferring anger as a motivating force.

  “Hello!” Rhino called out. He swam the rest of the way to the boat and tried to climb inside, but the Cazador standing inside swung a cutlass, forcing him back into the water.

  X didn’t need to see a face to know that this was Sergeant Lurch. Why did everyone have to be such an asshole?

  He sucked in a long breath, filling his lungs, and ducked under the water. Once he was down, he frog-kicked and breast-stroked for as long as he could hold his breath.

  When he surfaced, Rhino had backed away from the boat, treading water.

  “Don’t do this, Lurch,” he said. “We can all make it out of here.”

  “Fuck you!” The sergeant swung the cutlass downward and came within an inch of lopping off Rhino’s ear.

  X went back under the water, this time swimming under the boat and surfacing on the other side.

  Lurch had his back to him, providing an opportunity, but X had nothing to fight with but his bare hands.

  That’ll have to do.

  The sergeant swung at Rhino again, and X grabbed the side of the boat and shook it as hard as he could. It worked, knocking Lurch overboard.

  X climbed over the side and slumped onto the deck. He couldn’t see much in the darkness, but he did see a broken oar with a jagged end.

  He could hear a lot of splashing and grunting in the water as the two Cazadores tried to drown each other. For a fleeting moment, he considered just leaving them to it, but there was something about Rhino that X respected—something he could relate to.

  X picked up the broken oar. To his surprise, Lurch managed to push Rhino under the water and hold him there.

  “Hey, numb-nuts!” X yelled.

  Lurch glanced up, then cried out as X plunged the jagged end into the side of his neck. The splintered wood broke through gristle and took off a flap of skin that hung like a speared fish.

  X stabbed again as the man thrashed with one hand and tried to clamp his neck wound with the other.

  Rhino broke back through the surface, gasping for air.

  X stuck the oar out, and Rhino grabbed on as X pulled him toward the boat, away from the thrashing sergeant.

  Rhino got his hands on the gunwale, and X helped haul him in.

  “Guess he won’t be giving you problems anymore,” X said.

  Lurch reached up at the boat, but he was weakening fast. X locked eyes with the dying man, then turned away.

  “Gracias,” Rhino gasped.

  X didn’t respond. He was trying to start the motor. He had to get the hell out of here and back to the Metal Islands to help with the attack.

  “How far out are we?” he asked.

  Rhino looked over his shoulder.

  “Twenty-five miles, maybe thirty—I’m not sure. Do you think you can fix it?”

  “I’ve fixed worse,” X replied. “The question is, do we have enough gas to get us there?” He had found at least part of the problem. The fuel injector was loose. He screwed it back in and then tried turning it on.

  The motor coughed but didn’t turn over.

  As he moved around to check the back of the engine, something slammed into the boat, nearly pitching him over the side. He fell to the deck, where his hand closed on a screwdriver. Rhino moved from starboard to port, peering into the water.

  “How is this asshole still alive?” X muttered. He went to look, when Rhino held a hand up. Then Rhino slowly picked up the broken oar.

  A dorsal fin as tall as Miles rose out of the water before vanishing again. The dead sergeant had attracted the beast with the lure of fresh blood.

  X quietly crouch-stepped back to the motor, holding the screw driver.

  The screwdriver would make about as good a weapon as it would a fishing pole. X grunted as the shark slammed them a second time, knocking him down on all fours. Rhino held his stance and plunged the oar into the flesh as it moved under the boat. He yanked it out, blood dripping off the end, and moved to the other side of the boat.

  “Ven aquí, pinche cabrón!” He raised the jagged oar like a lance.

  X found a loose vacuum tube and reattached it, then pulled the cord again. The motor coughed twice. He pulled again and it turned over, billowing smoke out of the back.

  “Hell yes!” X yelled.

  He pushed the throttle lever hard forward, knocking Rhino on his butt. The dorsal fin pursued them but then went under the surface as the shark went for easier pickings in the debris field.

  As they sped away, X looked over his shoulder and couldn’t help but chuckle, seeing the big man on his ass in the bottom of the boat.

  “You good?” X asked.

  “Yeah,” Rhino said, pushing himself up. “You?”

  “Depends.”

  Rhino s
tood. “Depends on what?”

  “On what happens next,” X replied. “I’m going to kill el Pulpo when we get back to the Metal Islands. If you have a problem with that, we should deal with it right now.”

  Rhino stepped up to the front, towering over X.

  Great. I was afraid of this …

  X still held the screwdriver he had used to fix the motor.

  “I do have a problem with that, Immortal.”

  X had really hoped it wouldn’t come to this. God damn it, why did everything have to be so hard?

  He prepared to jam the screwdriver inside the Cazador’s chin and up into his brain, killing the one man who stood between him and the Metal Islands.

  “I have a problem with that, because I’m the one who’s going to kill el Pulpo,” Rhino said.

  “Uh, what?” X relaxed a degree.

  “Sofia has been his prisoner for too long,” Rhino said. “It’s time I set her free. She is my true love. I’ve known her since I was a child. The Cazadores took both of us from the same bunker in Texas. I was forced into the army, and she was forced into marrying the king.”

  X shook his head. “What the hell are you talking about, man?”

  “I’ve fought all these years, enduring the loneliness and perils of a soldier’s life, biding my time until the right moment. That moment is now.” Rhino took a step back and looked into the distance.

  X was surprised at how much they had in common. He, too, had spent years biding his time on the surface, staying alive and waiting for the right moment. At one point, he had even given up.

  “I’ve always loved Sofia, and I always told her I would set her free. Your people have given me that opportunity, Immortal.”

  It hit X why he felt this bond with Rhino. They were the same breed of man. Both had been driven over the edge but somehow managed to come back from it and keep fighting.

  Rhino reached out with a battered and bruised hand. “Let me kill him, and I will help you free your dog and your friends. I will fight with you, Immortal.”

  X was sick of killing, sick of trying so hard not to die, but he would happily fight one more time with this man.