Ada put her helmet back on, then grabbed her gear and headed topside. She could operate the sails from inside the cabin, but she needed to see better.
Light rain pattered on her suit. The wind gusted, though without its earlier ferocity. Still, it was just enough to power the sailboat through the water faster than the ship she was chasing.
Unlocking the wheel was trickier this time and took some fiddling. When it was free, she steered toward the northeast, hoping to avoid the brunt of the storm.
For the next hour, she stood there, her excitement growing as she drew closer to the Vanguard Islands.
The sky opened up, and thunder boomed closer now as the lightning illuminated the way back to the islands.
A half hour later, she spotted something through the rain. At first glance, the ship was far larger than the Cazador warships like the Lion. Even bigger than their largest, Elysium.
Curious, Ada pulled out the binoculars and waited for the next lighting bolt.
When it came, what she saw in those split seconds was unlike any ship she had seen in the Cazador fleet. It had a landing strip like the old-world aircraft carriers she had seen in photos.
But that made no sense. She had never seen this ship in their fleet when she arrived at the islands, nor did she know of an aircraft carrier at any of their outposts.
Ada scoped the horizon again, looking for aircraft, but in the next flash, she saw nothing on the runway. That didn’t mean there were none belowdecks.
She swallowed at the implications. If this was a craft X didn’t know of, it could very well be a serious threat to her people. There was only one way to find out: get closer.
With only a few hours before she reached the barrier, she must act fast.
Returning to the cabin, she moved quietly past the sleeping Jo-Jo and sat at the controls. After a few false starts, she managed to raise the secondary sails.
The wind caught in them, and as the sailboat picked up speed, she guided it northeastward, away from the storm.
For the next half hour, she waited belowdecks, eyes fixed to the porthole. The ship seemed to be growing in size.
But how?
The sailboat had already made up so much ground that . . .
“Shit!” she shouted.
The sailors must have spotted her boat.
She hurried back toward the hatch, scaring Jo-Jo off the bunk.
“Stay put!” Ada yelled.
Grabbing her rifle in one hand, she opened the hatch, then shut it behind her to seal the monkey inside. She climbed up to the deck above the cabin, with a round chambered.
The rain slanted down in sheets now.
She trained the rifle scope on the ship and groaned with relief—it wasn’t turning.
Ada steered away, then raised her scope again. She was so close, in the lightning’s glow she could see small figures moving on the deck. The scope went dark, and she waited for the next strikes to show her who these sailors were.
An overhead bolt lit up the deck, and she spotted several armored figures. But something about them was off.
The view darkened. Ada cursed as her boat dropped farther away.
Holding the scope as steady as she could on the heaving sea, she glimpsed a faint orange light glowing on the deck. A figure walked out to join the armored soldiers.
But this was no Cazador. It wasn’t even a man. The figure she was looking at had a glowing orange visor.
These weren’t Cazadores. They were machines, and they had found the Vanguard Islands.
THIRTY-FOUR
The mission clock read three hours. That was also how many miles the Hell Diver teams had traveled from their drop zone. It wasn’t just Lena slowing them down. Twice now, they had hidden from drones searching for them.
Les looked at a secondary clock. It was nine thirty at night. A third clock brought up the time in Aruba. It was four thirty in the afternoon there, and the Barracudas would be on their recon mission by now. That didn’t leave the Hell Divers much time to shut down the machines.
Another drone passed over the jungle canopy, thrusters flaring as it rocketed westward with the howling wind.
“They definitely know we’re here,” Michael said.
Edgar nodded. “They’re searching for us.”
The windstorm picked up, rustling the foliage and making the tree branches creak around the hidden divers. As soon as the drone vanished, Les gave the signal to advance. Taking point, he brought the team deeper into the jungle. He used his rifle barrel to push away barbed plants and a sharp purple weed he had never seen before.
A snake with spots that looked like eyeballs slithered in front of his boot. He halted, letting it pass, then pushed on. In the green hue of his optics, he noticed a clearing that provided a window to the arid landscape where the ITC Victory had crash-landed.
They were more than a quarter mile away from the ruined hulk, but he could still see it. A tree canopy grew out of the curved rooftop.
Decades of exposure to the elements had blown away much of the outer hull, spreading pieces across the landscape. Most of the debris was small: aluminum plates and interior bulkheads. But also, several stabilizing fins had sheared off.
From the looks of it, the airship hadn’t crash-landed as Les had expected. So why would Captain Rolo come here of all places, when it was the base for the machines.
There had to be something he didn’t know, something that Captain Maria Ash had kept from her crew—something not in her records. Perhaps the deranged Captain Jordan destroyed it. Or perhaps Captain Ash had.
His mind whirled with various scenarios as he trekked through the jungle. Had they known about the machines all along?
If Pedro was right and humanity had launched an offensive to destroy the machines here, then it was a hell of a coincidence that Captain Rolo should come here almost 230 years later.
Unless he was tricked.
Les put aside the questions and went back to listening for drones and searching for machines on the ground. A bug with a faceful of eyes landed on his shoulder. He swatted it away and brought the rifle scope up to his visor.
The next leg would take them out of the jungle and into the open for at least five minutes before they reached the airship. Then it would be another four to five miles to the foot of Kilimanjaro and the factories they had seen from the air. He had no idea how they would make it that far without being seen unless Timothy came through with his distraction.
The wind picked up again, blasting a wave of grit into the jungle.
Les crouched and turned to the divers. They all seemed to have come through the initial shock of losing Hector, but he could tell by the way some of them moved just how scared they were.
That was good and bad. Fear got rid of cockiness, but it also made people do dumb things. He had to stay sharp to keep these young divers alive.
“Listen up,” Les said. “We’re heading for the wreckage of that airship, moving out in teams, with Raptor going first.”
“Why Raptor?” Arlo asked.
Michael moved in front of Les and held up his laser rifle. “This is why,” he said.
“Ted, you help Lena,” Les said. “Edgar, I need you to keep an eye on things with that rifle of yours, okay?”
Getting a nod from Edgar, he looked to Lena.
“I think I can put my full weight on it now,” she said.
Les watched as she tried it, though he couldn’t see whether she was wincing inside her helmet.
“I’m good,” Lena said. “Really.”
Les stood for a better view of the terrain separating them from the airship. Seeing no contacts, he signaled to advance.
Michael took point with the laser rifle. Arlo and Sofia followed him out into the screaming wind. Their receding figures seemed to dissipate like phantasms in the green hue of his
optics.
A hundred yards out, Michael stopped and crouched behind a boulder at the edge of the debris field. Sofia and Arlo huddled there with him for a few minutes, then ventured into the wreckage.
The wind whipped the branches overhead, and one cracked off, falling next to Les.
Team Raptor was almost impossible to make out now. He spotted Michael darting to the hull of the ship. A platform still hung from an open hatch in the hull, and he raised his rifle inside to have a look. Then he turned and waved at the jungle before vanishing again in the whirling sand.
“Let’s go,” Les said.
Ted kept close to Lena, and Edgar took rear guard. Les went first, taking the same route as Michael but not stopping at the boulder. He went all the way to the scattered metal scraps, keeping low. The wind let up slightly, and he watched Michael walk up the platform and into the airship.
What the hell was he doing?
Les finally stopped behind the curved blades of a turbofan that had broken off. The other divers of Team Phoenix clustered behind him, checking the sky in all directions. From here to the airship, there was scant cover for someone as tall as Les, and the howling wind made drones hard to hear.
Edgar glassed the skyline with his spotting scope.
“We’re clear, sir,” he said.
The wind stirred up a vortex of dust, blocking his view of the airship. It blew open a suitcase, the contents long gone.
For a fleeting moment, the wind seemed to die again, and he saw the full outline of the airship, including the whipping forest canopy growing out of the rooftop.
He gave the order to advance. The other divers kept close as they navigated the field. Lena was limping again, with Ted helping her fight the wind.
Halfway across, the storm kicked up dust that brought visibility down to just a few feet. Sand scoured his armor, pushing him backward.
Les kept his helmet down, eyes on the barely visible ground. The storm continued to gather strength until the team found itself in near-blackout conditions.
Les looked back to Ted and Lena, scarcely able to make them out. He couldn’t see Edgar at all. There was nothing to do but hunker down and wait it out.
Over the howl came a thrumming sound that sent a spike of fear through Les. The thrumming grew to a blast.
Another drone.
The team was trapped in the open, unable to move, as the unmanned hunter hovered somewhere overhead.
Les pressed his long frame into the dirt, wishing he could shrink. He motioned for Ted and Lena. They started crawling.
Leading the way, he squirmed over to a dislodged fin. He grabbed the side and tried to lift it up, then halted when he saw the faded lettering on the metal: “ITC Requiem.”
But that made no sense.
He didn’t have time to figure out where this airship came from or where the ITC Victory was. Lena moved toward him on all fours, about ten feet away.
Les still didn’t see Edgar, but he spotted Ted.
The diver was battling the wind from a standing position. Les tried to wave him down, but Ted was looking away, his helmet down.
The thrumming came again, drawing Ted’s attention.
He looked to the sky and raised a hand to his visor. Les got up on one knee, ready to run over and pull Ted down.
A bolt of light flashed through the swirling gust, too blue and straight to be lightning.
Ted fell backward in the dirt, a sizzling hole in the upper-left quadrant of his chest armor, where his heart had been.
No!
Les held in a scream and dropped back down with Lena.
More bolts punched into the ground, kicking up dirt and leaving little smoldering craters. Les pushed the fin up and pulled Lena underneath.
Then he raised his assault rifle to the sky, aiming at the source of the lasers. A bolt blasted the ground to his right. He rolled away, banging into another piece of debris from the airship. A laser whizzed past his helmet.
Les got up on a knee and aimed where the bolt had come from.
This time, he spotted the drone hovering.
A flurry of bolts zipped from the drone as he pulled the trigger. Rounds from his rifle found the target, sparking on impact and sending the machine spiraling away.
Les looked at the burning holes in the ground to his left and right, then at the one that had missed his crotch by inches.
He was lucky. Far luckier than Ted.
Partly in shock, Les crawled back over to the metal fin to get Lena out. Before he got there, the drone’s hum rose over the whistling wind.
The noise sucked the air from his chest.
He spotted the same drone flying back toward his location, smoke fanning away from the holes he had blown in its outer armor.
Bolts sprayed the ground, and Les bounded away, back toward where Ted had fallen. Edgar was there, on his back next to Ted’s body, searching the sky with his NVGs.
Laser beams pounded the dirt as the machine homed in on their location. Les rose on both knees, raised his rifle, and was aiming when bolts cleaved the sky, slamming into the smoking side of the drone.
It burst into pieces, raining shrapnel on the surface.
“Over here!” yelled a voice.
Les turned to see Michael, who had run out into the storm.
“Help me with Ted!” Edgar shouted over the wind.
“We can’t take him with us!” Les called back.
Grabbing Ted’s rifle, Edgar jumped up and followed Les to the dorsal fin, where Lena had crawled out. Together, they made their way to Michael and, finally, to the cover of the airship hull.
Arlo and Sofia stepped away from the hull.
“Where’s Ted?” Arlo asked.
Les shook his head, and Arlo bowed his. The two had been good friends and had grown even closer since joining the Hell Divers.
But this was the reality of being one.
“We can’t stay here,” Michael said. “Gotta keep moving!”
He ran along the starboard side of the airship, under broken portholes. The legs had collapsed long ago, and the bottom of the ship had pushed dirt outward into a low, sloping wall smoothed by the wind.
Fighting strong gusts, the divers came up on the stern. Michael shouldered his weapon as he reached the debris of broken fins and rudders at the back of the ship.
Beyond there, Les couldn’t see much in the swirling grit. According to his HUD, they had another four miles’ march to the mountain, most of it in the open, in the wind.
If they made it that far, they must then infiltrate a base, find the mainframe, and upload the virus.
Passing another hatch, Les looked inside. Maybe they could shelter in the ship. Not much was left. Pitted bulkheads were covered in dark moldy growth. Electrical wires hung like spilled guts from the overhead. More discarded suitcases littered the decks. One contained a plastic doll.
It was as if these people had landed and then disembarked, leaving their belongings behind. But why? And if these were not Captain Rolo’s people, who were they?
“Captain,” called a voice.
Michael had stopped ahead, kneeling to glass the terrain in the distance. He waved Les over. The other divers followed close behind, hugging the bulkhead like scared children, except for Edgar, who stood tall with his rifle, scanning the debris field they had crossed.
Les squatted beside Michael.
“No sign of drones,” Michael said. “But we’ve got to cross that.”
He gazed out at a flat, desolate windswept area. Grit clouded the view, but there was something moving out there. An orange glow.
Michael saw it, too, and aimed his laser rifle.
“Get the others into the ship,” he said. “Tell them to hide.”
Les spotted three orange lights moving in the storm. Gripping his assault rifle,
he thought of Phyl and Katherine.
He had known that this moment would come, but somehow he didn’t feel ready.
Did you expect to get in there without a fight?
“I’ll take them, sir,” Michael said. “You should go with the others.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Les replied. He motioned for Edgar to get the other divers inside the airship. Edgar nodded and corralled Sofia, Lena, and Arlo into the open hatch where they had found the doll.
The orange lights on the plateau brightened until Les could see the titanium-alloy skulls. Seeing the defectors sparked something inside him. He inched away from the hull.
“What are you doing, sir?” Michael asked.
“Aim for the chest or the head. I’m going to get us three new laser rifles.” With that, Les took off running into the storm, away from the orange visors and back out into the debris field.
He ducked behind a boulder and propped up his rifle. Michael fired a beat later, opening up with calculated single bolts.
An orange visor went down, fading out, but the other two headed right for the airship. Les aimed at the head of one just as they returned fire at Michael.
He pulled the trigger, but his aim was slightly off, going high. The shots did the trick in attracting the droid. In an abrupt mechanical motion, it turned and strode in his direction.
Les kept steady, lining up the crosshairs on the robot’s chest, aiming for the battery unit.
Bolts flashed, slamming into the rock and sandblasting his face shield. Les fired again, burst after burst into the metal exoskeleton, but none penetrated.
The robot kept coming. Lasers pounded the boulder.
Les hunkered down as low as possible, chest heaving.
The other defector sprayed the hull of the airship, but Les couldn’t see Michael, nor did he see return fire.
Shit, shit, shit!
Les buried his fear and prepared to get up and fire, but something felt wrong, as if these were the last seconds of his life. He knew that if he exposed himself now, he would die.
Then he heard the crack of automatic weapons.
Not one. Bursts from two. Then a third.
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