It was already too late.
Several red streaks darted into the sky. Not cannon rounds—these were lasers.
One of them struck Cricket, and the view went topsy-turvy as the drone fell.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Michael said.
“Turn the hover mode back on,” Timothy said calmly.
“I’m trying!” Michael snapped.
The drone continued to plummet, the view of the sky and ground spinning. One of its arms had sheared off. The divers crowded around Michael. He tried to regain control of the drone, but time was running out. In just seconds, it would hit the dirt.
“Eevi, any sign of hostiles in the sky?” Les asked over the internal comms.
“Negative, Captain,” she replied. “What’s going on out there?”
“No, please, come on . . .” Michael said. He kept tapping the monitor, trying to activate hover mode. “Cricket, come on. Please, buddy, don’t do this to me again.”
The nodes finally switched back on around a hundred feet from the surface, but it wasn’t enough to prevent the drone from crashing. Dust bloomed out around the feed on their subscreens.
The divers stood watching as if in a trance. Like Les, they were staring at their HUDs, waiting for the dust to clear. When it finally did, a view of the desert came into focus. Spindly foliage protruded from the cracked earth. Somehow, the camera feed continued.
“Can you move Cricket?” Les asked.
Michael’s helmet shook. “I’ve lost control of all motion systems. The only thing I can move is the camera.”
“Sir, can you zoom in?” Arlo said.
“On what?” Michael said.
“Those skeletal tanks. I think . . .”
“This isn’t just a desert,” Sofia said.
Michael zoomed the camera in on white bones sticking out of the ground.
“It’s a graveyard,” she said.
The launch bay fell into silence as the drone’s cameras provided a panoramic view of a battlefield. Hundreds of bones, some of them still in helmets and armor, littered the sand-colored dirt. Les saw several weapons with rusted barrels strewn about.
The remains of thousands littered this one dry field alone. And for every ten human skeletons, there was one destroyed machine.
Les broke the silence that hung like humidity in the launch bay.
“If they didn’t know we’re here before, they do now,” he said. “Get us out of here, Timothy. We’ll be diving in after all.”
thirty-one
X stood with Miles on the platform outside Renegade’s command center, watching the dark water. He pictured Ada out there, trying to row across the rough sea to Florida. If she was even still alive.
Hang in there, kid.
She would still be a long way from his old apartment, but he hoped the survival gear and the note—if she found it—would help get her there safely. It would take a miracle, but he hoped to see her again someday.
A light rain drizzled down, dripping off the overhang that shielded X and his dog. Here they were together again, out in the wastes.
“Just like old times, buddy,” X said.
Miles wagged his tail in his hazard suit, but only for a few half-hearted strokes.
“About how I feel, too,” X said. He glassed the horizon with binoculars and his NVGs.
Clanking sounded from the hatch that opened onto the platform. Ton and Victor turned from their post, but seeing only Magnolia and Rodger, they relaxed.
“Sir, we’re closing in on the location General Forge selected for anchorage,” Magnolia said. “Sonar and radar look clear for subs and surface vessels. We’re ready to go when you are.”
“You sure you’re up for this?” X asked. “Your head—”
“Is fine,” she interrupted.
“You know I’m ready,” Rodger said.
Miles looked up at them both, then nudged X as if he could understand what they were talking about.
On the deck below, the Barracudas were moving about. Most wore full protection from radiation, even though historical records put the outpost in a green zone.
The militia soldiers hung out on the opposite side of the deck, watching and not helping. As long as the two sides didn’t fight, X didn’t really care.
He glanced west. At Shadow’s bow stood the silhouette of a Cazador soldier in full armor. X turned off his optics. Lightning illuminated the orange cape flapping behind the man’s armored shoulders.
Forge stared into the distance. X had met with him several times on the journey and had grown to respect him more each time.
Like X, the general had no wife or kids. He had given his life to the Cazador military. But he wasn’t savage like so many others. He was strategic and intelligent.
And while he wasn’t Rhino, X was starting to trust him. After all, he had kept the secret that could have caused a war, and he had given up the precious nanotech gel to help X heal. Not to mention helping save the capitol tower from the Sirens.
X turned his NVGs back on, searching the ocean for a glimpse of what awaited them. Being in the dark both literally and figuratively was gnawing on his sour stomach. He had no idea what was happening in Africa. The team would have arrived by now.
He also had no clue whether Horn—or his evil mother—was even on Aruba.
He doubted that Moreto was still back at the Vanguard Islands, though. If she had somehow swum to another rig after jumping off the Hive, they would have found her during their sweeps after the attack. If X had to guess, she had made it to a submarine and was now hiding in a bunker.
When X found her, it would be a nice surprise.
He was distracted by the sound of someone shouting in Spanish. It was coming from the deck. At the rail, a pair of Cazadores looked over the side as a clanking sound rang out.
They were anchoring.
The Barracuda soldier switched to English. “Launch the boats!”
X patted Miles on the head, then went to the lower deck with his team.
Mac greeted them there. He wore his armor and had a helmet tucked under his arm.
“I guess you’re coming with us,” Mac said.
“You guessed right,” X said. “And Rodger and Mags are coming, too.”
Victor and Ton stepped forward.
“Oh, and my friends Ton and Victor,” X said. “We’re all coming on the recon mission.”
All around them, the deck hands, sailors, and soldiers went into action. The anchors went over the side of the warship, splashing into the choppy seas. Pulley systems dropped the black fiberglass boats into the water.
The militia soldiers continued to watch the Barracudas without offering to help. One of them, Brett, seemed to be laughing.
X had heard in passing about a problem between Brett and Rodger.
He walked over to the militia guards, Miles at his side.
“Brett,” X called out.
The young soldier turned.
“I’ve got a job for you.”
“Yes, sir,” Brett said. He stood ramrod straight, showing X respect that he had lacked with Rodger and Magnolia.
“Watch my dog, and make sure he doesn’t get a scratch while I’m gone,” X said. “Anything happens to him, you’ll have worse things to worry about than the skinwalkers.”
Brett looked down at Miles.
“Got it?” X said.
“Yes, King Xavier, sir,” Brett replied.
X patted him on an armored shoulder pad with the blade of his spear. “Good man.”
He returned to the rail, where the Barracudas were preparing to climb down to the boats already lowered to the water. The strike team was twelve strong, with Felipe and Mac leading.
X looked at his dog one last time and pointed his spear at Brett. “Not a scratch!” X shouted.
Brett raised a hand in acknowledgment.
A line had formed at the two ladders leading to the boats below. X got behind Magnolia and Rodger while Ton and Victor slung rifles and traded their spears for cutlasses.
X had a blaster, a .357 Magnum revolver, his captain’s sword, and the half spear attached to his arm. The other half of Rhino’s spear was sheathed over his shoulder.
“Let’s go!” Rodger yelled.
Several Barracudas waiting to climb down turned toward him.
X pulled Rodger aside.
“Hey!” Rodger protested.
“Cool it, man,” X said. “I know what you’ve lost, but no one should be eager to kill for revenge. It results in bad decisions, trust me.”
“Every man is different,” Rodger replied coldly. “You should know that better than anyone.”
He returned to the line behind Magnolia. She looked at X before carefully slipping her helmet over her bandaged head.
It wasn’t just Brett who had an attitude.
Rodger was losing his cool and putting them all at risk. X was starting to regret bringing him along, but the sneaky diver was known to stow away on ships, and he would have found a way out here regardless.
X climbed down with Ton and Victor to one of the boats. Rodger and Magnolia got into another.
For a fleeting moment, X considered yanking Rodger and locking him in the brig until he got his head on straight. But he didn’t get the chance.
Mac swirled his finger through the air, telling the pilots to start their engines. The two sleek boats sped away from the warship.
General Forge remained on the deck. He held up a cutlass and yelled at the departing boats.
“What’s he saying?” X asked Mac.
“We have the Octopus Lords on our side,” he replied. “Victory is ours for the taking.”
X raised his spear arm to the general before turning back to the bow. They thumped over the waves for the next twenty minutes, beating around to the other side of the island, where they would beach and trek in.
Lightning streaks provided an almost constant blue glow over the water, and not long into the ride, a soldier spotted the landmass. Felipe handed X a pair of binoculars. Through them, he could see a shoreline of sandy beaches.
The recon boats rode the waves staggered in a combat interval. The black vessels would be almost invisible to the naked eye, and the lightweight fiberglass hulls would help keep them off radar.
They slowed on the approach to shore.
Nature had retaken this area, with thick jungles growing to the high-tide boundary. X scanned with his NVGs for several moments but saw nothing moving in the underbrush or around the trunks of trees.
The canopy towered over the shoreline, some of the mutant palms leaning over the sand. Victor pointed his rifle at the beach, and X brought up the binos again.
A pole stuck out of the ground, a skull mounted on top.
The sight didn’t seem to bother Mac. He motioned for the teams to beach. As soon as the boats hit solid land, the warriors jumped out and pulled them up.
X noticed several more shriveled heads and skulls on spikes farther down the beach. While the other soldiers worked to cover their landing, he went to the nearest spike.
Magnolia joined him to examine the egg-shaped head without eye sockets.
“It’s a Siren,” she said.
“Lovely,” X said.
Behind them, several soldiers used palm fronds to sweep the tracks away, leaving no trace of their landing. Once the boats were securely stashed under camouflaged tarps, the two strike teams set off into the jungle.
Felipe and another soldier, both with mine sensors, took point. They moved quickly but cautiously, trying not to disturb any of the underbrush. Several Barracudas used their machetes to hack away the poisonous plants and open a doorway for the teams.
X used his captain’s sword and his spear to push away limbs covered in pine cone–like growths. Several burst, covering his blade in goo that stretched into a web.
The Cazadores worked their way through the foliage, hardly making a sound despite their bulky armor. It was all too reminiscent of his first mission with the Barracudas, almost a year ago, when he was not their leader but a prisoner.
Only Rhino, Wendig, and X had survived the journey. The two warriors would live on in his mind as long as he drew breath.
Mac stopped ahead and held up his prosthetic hand. A cawing sound echoed through the canopies as a bird with a beak the size of its head took flight.
The teams pushed onward, fanning out and navigating the dangerous passage with the two mine detectors on point. X ducked a branch covered in spikes.
Magnolia kept to the right, using her curved blades to plow the way for Rodger. The jungle gave way to a clearing where the Barracudas had taken up positions behind boulders covered in bird guano.
X joined her and Rodger at the low rocky escarpment bordering an open field that separated them from the oil refinery and ruined old-world resorts. Patches of weeds grew out of dirt blanketed in gray ash.
Wind turbines two hundred feet tall, stained mostly black with time, stood like giant sentinels. Several of the blades had broken off over the years, and one stuck out of the ground like a massive spearhead.
X noticed several skeletal objects that looked almost like huge insects clinging to some of the poles. More hung from the turbine blades, as if they had been caught in a spider’s web.
Mac ignored these, also. He gave Felipe and the other point man the signal to advance. They set off first, swinging their elongated mine detectors with a ten-foot range.
Once they reached the turbines, Mac sent the next group.
The divers’ and the Barracudas’ matte-gray armor matched the color of the ash, but X worried about their tracks.
Glancing behind them, he saw no way to avoid leaving evidence without taking extraordinary measures. The Barracudas didn’t bother trying to erase the tracks as they had on the beach.
Next, Mac gestured to X. Ton and Victor went ahead of him, their round shields slung over their backs, rifles up.
X sheathed his sword and held his blaster in his left hand. He couldn’t fire a rifle accurately anymore, but with a blaster, he just needed to aim in the enemy’s general direction and pull the trigger.
He took another look at insect remains or whatever was clinging to the poles. Coming closer, he realized they weren’t mutant bugs, but human skeletons. And maybe some Siren. The brooding turbines were like massive scarecrows to scare off man and monster, using corpses of the skinwalkers’ victims.
But the Barracudas weren’t deterred, and neither was Magnolia. She was the first of the three divers to reach one of the turbines. Mac got there next and raised his fist. The Barracudas crouched in the field, keeping low. X did the same thing, and Rodger followed suit.
After a brief conversation with Mac, Felipe took off toward the next landmark between the teams and the target—a row of silos and shipping containers.
Using his mine sensor, he cleared a path there, stopping several times to flag mines. General Forge had mentioned the possibility, but their presence still made X uneasy.
Felipe finished his sweep and vanished into the maze of structures. He returned a few minutes later, running in a low crouch.
Mac spoke to the young warrior, then came back to X.
“Felipe says the area is clear,” he said, “but we have to move through those silos to get to the buildings. From there, we should be able to see the harbor and the outpost. You might want to hang back a bit, King—”
“Forget it. I’m coming.”
“Okay, let’s move out, then,” Mac said.
The soldiers took off in combat intervals along the path Felipe had swept earlier. Something felt off to X as he followed them, as if they were being watched—by man,
monster, or machine, he couldn’t say. Then again, there wasn’t much difference in this place.
Ton and Victor seemed nervous, too, as they moved toward the shipping containers.
The first of the strike team took up position there while the single file moved along the cleared path. Once they were all there, Mac again signaled to advance.
This time, X followed Felipe, who pointed with his cutlass inside the open door of a container. Stacked cages contained the remains of several Sirens and other mutant beasts, decomposed to just bones.
The next shipping container had two gurneys holding human skeletons, both of them missing their limbs.
Ton and Victor stopped to look, no doubt recalling the horror they had experienced at the hands of el Pulpo’s army.
X patted them both on the back and kept moving.
Several spiny rats skittered out of another container, leaving wet tracks in the dirt. A glance inside revealed fresher kills. X flicked on his helmet light over a limbless body on a table. The corpse had on one of the black suits he had seen in the video footage captured by Cricket.
He held up a hand to Magnolia and then went inside. His helmet beam illuminated a humanoid male face on the table, eyes closed. He stepped over for a better look.
Something about this man seemed off. Higher cheekbones and smooth, almost plastic-like skin. But this was real bone and flesh, so not a robot.
Moving to the head, he sheathed his blaster so he could open the eyelids. The orbs were pure black.
That was when X noticed the ITC logo on the breast of the uniform.
He reeled away from the table.
“X, what is it?” It was Magnolia’s voice.
“I think I found out who those people in the video were.”
Magnolia walked into the container, and X pointed with his spear.
“Genetically engineered humans, pre-Siren stage,” X said. “Horn must be raiding ITC facilities to build an army and a workforce—and for meat on the hoof.”
“Sick bastard,” Magnolia said.
“What are you doing?” Rodger said quietly from the open door. “Oh, shit . . .”
The three of them went outside and followed the Barracudas through the maze of meat lockers. At the end of the lot, they reached a fence topped with razor wire. The refinery was just on the other side, its silos towering in the air. Forking electricity illuminated more skeletal remains on pikes. The team split up and snipped through the fence at two entry points.
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