He had uncoiled a rope from his gear and was on the top of the collapsed mound.
A moan came from Jo-Jo, who was staring at the overhead, dark eyes widening.
Ada shined her light on the dirt ceiling.
Crumbs of dirt trickled down the wall.
“Watch out—” Ada began to say when a cry cut her off.
She aimed her rifle at a root or tendril that had burst out of the dirt and wrapped around Tia’s legs, pulling her to the ground. Another metallic-
colored vine poked through the ground, then another. In seconds, the entire hill of loose earth from the collapsed tunnel was writhing with the strange ribbed tendrils.
These weren’t vines or roots. These were some sort of worm or snake.
T-shaped heads turned toward Ada, as if sensing her movement. The eyeless faces and shafts vibrated. Then the lips curled back to expose wicked curving teeth.
“Help!” Tia screamed.
The snake that had her threw more coils around her legs, waist, and chest.
“Gran Jefe, we need you!” Ada shouted.
She ran toward Tia, firing her laser rifle at the snake heads. One of them spun toward her, the face widening into flower petals around the jaw of sharp teeth.
She fired another burst, blowing the mutant snake’s face into pulp.
Another head shot toward her, clamping down on her rifle arm. She had her knife out before it could strike again. Ducking under, she hacked into the meaty coil.
Tia screamed as the snake pulled her into the tunnel. Her chest armor caught in the opening at her shoulders.
“Hold on!” Ada yelled.
Gran Jefe emerged on the mound with a cutlass in one hand and a snake wrapped around the other arm.
He pulled the snake out of the ground and hacked through the body. The head remained attached to his arm as the body squirmed on the ground.
Charging across the crest of the hill, he swung powerful strokes that cut through the thick, ropy flesh.
The severed bodies fell writhing at his feet, but three more burst from new holes behind him, wrapping around his ankles and legs. They coiled around his waist and chest.
Ada fired another flurry of laser bolts from the bottom of the mound, and two more snake heads fell, one rolling down the dirt slope to her feet.
A cry of human rage roared above her.
Gran Jefe had ripped in half one of the two snakes that held him. Then he hacked through the ribbed flesh still clinging around his legs and freed himself.
Ada ran toward Tia, who was still wedged halfway into the hole as the snake tried to crush her and pull her in.
“Help me,” Tia choked. “Help—”
Ada used the serrate edge of her combat knife to saw at the snake wrapped around Tia’s chest plates.
“I’ve almost got it—”
A furry hand reached past her helmet and grabbed Tia by the shoulder plate. Ada fell on her backside as Jo-Jo hauled Tia out of the tunnel in one powerful heave.
Ada sat up with a smile until she felt a powerful tug around her neck. The snake that had let go of Tia yanked her backward, dragging her toward a hole.
She kicked and squirmed, trying to get at her sheath knife as the beast got a coil around the nape of her helmet.
A towering figure loomed over her.
It was Gran Jefe, raising his cutlass. He brought it down toward her helmet. The tension released, and she sat up, holding her neck.
Gasping for air, she embraced Jo-Jo, who was crouched next to her, shaking and whimpering.
Gran Jefe turned his dripping cutlass to the other snakes still squirming up through the dirt.
“Come on!” he yelled, pounding his chest plate. “Bite! Bite!”
Ada crawled back to Tia, who coughed violently, gripping her chest and side.
The T-shaped heads shook their warning again, and all at once, the dozens of snake heads around them opened. Flowerlike flesh petals bloomed around the toothed gullets. One shot forward at the divers.
Jo-Jo caught it in her hand and easily ripped the body in two. She bit into the flesh, seemed to like it, and swallowed it. Gran Jefe swung his cutlass at the creatures, and Ada fired her rifle.
Suddenly, from the top of the shaft came a stream of brilliant flashes as laser fire sizzled into the ground around the divers. Snake heads and bodies burst in the spray.
Ada looked up to see a figure crouched at the top of the vertical shaft.
It was Kade, aiming his rifle. He continued to fire, and Gran Jefe cleared the rest of the mound with his cutlass, raising his blade in the air and belting out a roar of victory.
“You guys okay?” Kade yelled down.
Ada bent down next to Tia, who was sitting up now, holding her side. Gran Jefe stomped a snake still writhing on the dirt.
“I think I have a cracked rib,” Tia whispered.
“Tia’s hurt,” Ada called up.
Kade switched to the team comm. “Get topside. I’m going to meet Team Raptor a half mile from here and lay down covering fire if they need it.”
“Got it,” Ada replied. She checked Cricket again, but the life scan showed that the remaining snakes had retreated into the walls. She tucked Cricket into her vest and helped Tia to her feet.
“We’re clear,” Ada said.
Tia shook, injured and in obvious shock.
“Come, amigas,” Gran Jefe said. He started toward the rope hanging from the vertical shaft.
“I’ll go first and pull you up,” he said.
“Thank you,” Ada said. “Thanks for saving us.”
He just nodded, then took the rope and started climbing up. Ada stood sentry over Tia, who rested with her back to the wall.
Jo-Jo paced, still a little loopy but getting back to her normal self. She came over to Ada several times, hugging her the way a baby might hug its mother—if it had a mother half its own size.
“It’s okay,” Ada said soothingly. “We’re going home now.”
Tia moaned on the ground.
“I’m having a hard time breathing,” she said.
“Go easy, try to relax,” Ada replied. “You’ll be back on the airship in no time.”
Gran Jefe finally reached the top.
“Okay, you’re next,” Ada said. She wrapped the rope around Tia in an improvised swami harness.
“Too tight, too tight,” she cried.
“It has to be tight,” replied Ada, whereupon she stepped back and raised a hand to Gran Jefe. Using a jumar in each hand, he pulled the slightly built young woman up by brute strength alone.
“You’re going to be okay,” Ada said.
She turned back to the tunnel with Jo-Jo to watch for hostiles.
“I . . . I can’t breathe,” Tia said halfway up.
“You’re almost there,” Ada said.
“I . . . my vision is going . . .”
The young diver was going to pass out.
Gran Jefe pulled faster, and Ada’s lamp told her the moment Tia’s arms went limp by her sides. By the time she got to the top, she wasn’t answering on the comm.
“Tia,” Ada said. “Tia, do you copy?”
The tail of the rope came down, and Gran Jefe poked his helmet over the side. “She sleep, okay.”
Ada handed the rope end to Jo-Jo.
“No, you go,” Gran Jefe said.
Ada wasn’t going to leave her companion down here again, but she couldn’t send her up first—no way would the monkey stand for that.
“No, we go together,” Ada said over the comms. “Throw down the other rope and make sure both are anchored.”
A second rope snaked down a few seconds later.
“Just like we trained,” Ada said. “Okay, Jo-Jo?”
The monkey whined.
A
da hugged her dearest friend in the world, then stepped back and clipped her carabiner to a figure-eight knot at the rope’s end.
“Okay,” Ada said. “Pull me up.”
Gran Jefe yanked her off the ground, and she started up the wall with Jo-Jo climbing by her side.
Ada looked over every few feet to offer words of encouragement.
“Almost there,” she said.
They were finally leaving this hell behind.
But as they got closer to the surface, Ada could hear that this wasn’t the end of the fight.
Bombs and gunshots rang out in the distance.
There was still the battle to take the canal.
Ada watched the rim of the shaft as Gran Jefe hauled her higher. She was nearing the top. Lightning backlit his helmet and the pincer trophy he had taken from the tunnels.
When she was five feet from the top, he snubbed the rope around a load-bearing column and paused to take a rest.
She kept her feet against the dirt wall and looked down at Jo-Jo, who had fallen slightly behind. She was used to climbing trees, not a rope.
“Ada,” Gran Jefe said.
She looked up.
“Is Tia okay?” she asked.
“Sleeping,” he replied. “Just like you will be soon.”
Hearing the shift in his tone, she stared up.
“Yo sé,” he said. “I know what you did. Mi primo—my cousin—was in that contenedor.”
“What . . .”
So he knew about the day she dropped the Cazadores in the ocean, drowning them all inside the shipping container.
“No,” she said. “I’m sorry. I . . .”
“Too late. Now your turn. Something I been waiting a muy long time for.” He stepped closer to the edge, dropping her a few feet. He laughed. “You think I leave the army for this pinche job? Hell Divers—¡pendejos!”
Ada felt the wash of terror, then the calm of resignation. It all made sense—how he had treated her from the beginning, and why he wanted to kill her.
“After you die, I’m going to eat your mascota.” He patted his gut. “I bet she taste muy sabrosa.”
After snubbing the rope around the column, he let go of the jumar ascender in his left hand and reached over his shoulder for the pincer claw.
Ada considered pleading with him, but words wouldn’t make any difference. She had to act. If she killed him, he would drop the rope.
He brought the pincer’s sharp edge to the rope. Ada whipped the knife from its sheath on her calf. And in the split second he was distracted, she hurled it at his visor.
The blade clanked over the crest of his helmet and cartwheeled into the darkness.
He laughed again. “See you in hell, amiga.”
“no!” Ada yelled.
As he scissored the rope with the sharp claw, Ada scrabbled frantically for purchase on the wall. But her fingers just slid down the crumbling dirt and rock.
Flailing for something, anything, her foot hit an outcropping and she pitched backward, like during the early seconds of a dive.
With maybe two seconds before she hit the ground, she reached over her shoulder to punch the booster, hoping it would deploy in time. The balloon burst out and rose above her as she passed Jo-Jo, who reached out uselessly for her.
Ada glanced down at the dirt rising to meet her body. She knew not to bring her legs up, and stiffened them to protect her spine. Her boots hit the ground, and an electric jolt ran through her as her legs telescoped.
She crashed onto her back, her vision blurring.
A memory from childhood filled her mind’s eye. She was playing with a doll she had made with her parents. Their deaths came next, followed by her first love, a boy who died not long after they agreed to marry. Next came the war with the Cazadores, and the aftermath, when she had committed mass murder.
Most of the images were painful reminders of a miserable youth. But they gave way to some happy memories. Memories of paradise, and a year spent with Jo-Jo. Eating fruit on a sundeck, swimming with dolphins, and enjoying time with her friends at the Vanguard Islands.
A deep, sad whining snapped her out of the trance, and she cracked one eyelid to see the face that she had grown to love.
Jo-Jo hovered over her, whimpering and nudging her.
And above the creature, at the top of the shaft, Gran Jefe stood looking down. He finally backed away.
Ada blinked away the stars until she saw her twisted legs. She felt no pain below her head, which pounded like hell.
There was no denying the truth. Her body was destroyed, and there was no coming back from this. She tried to bump on the comm channel, but she couldn’t even do that.
Jo-Jo nudged her, crying so loud, Ada could hear her over the ringing in her ears.
“I’m . . .” Ada choked. “Sorry . . .”
The monkey put a paw on her chest.
“I love you,” Ada said. “I’m sorry I . . .”
Red encroached on the edges of Ada’s vision, threatening to consume her. Struggling to take her final breaths, she saw the pain in her companion’s eyes. And in that moment of clarity, she saw it turn to rage.
Ada used her last breath to whisper her final words.
“Find X and Miles.”
* * * * *
“All clear in the dark,” Victor said over the comms.
Hearing the words, Michael breathed a sigh of relief, but that didn’t mean the spearmen and the secret stash of food they were guarding at the prison rig were safe. This was no time to relax—for a variety of reasons.
The future of the islands also depended on what happened next over a thousand miles away. X and the Hell Divers were fighting for their lives, and Michael was doing damage control back at the islands, where actions and attitudes from the diverse populations already foreshadowed what would happen if X failed.
Part of Michael felt anger toward X for leaving this responsibility to him, but he understood now why X had selected him for it. X trusted only a few people, and someday when he was gone, Michael would have to step up.
This was dangerous training, but no more dangerous than diving. X believed the mission to secure the Panama Canal and establish outposts was vital to the survival of the Vanguard Islands. He didn’t go because he was bored with being king or because he just wanted to get out there and kill something. X went because he saw no other option for saving the surviving remnant of the human race.
In the command center atop the capitol tower, Michael stared out the viewports overlooking dull-gray water and low storm clouds rolling from the west, dumping more rain on the distant rigs.
Steve was in a chair at the war table, arms folded across his chest, snoring. The man had finally run out of steam.
Pedro fiddled with the radio, still trying to reconnect with the Vanguard army or the airship—anyone who could give them an idea of what was happening in Panama. He switched back and forth between the seat in front of the radio and one facing a monitor that showed the location of the two drones being used to relay transmissions.
“Nothing yet?” Michael asked.
Pedro shook his head. “The new storms block the signal,” he said. “I have moved one drone, but it could be few hours before we know what is happening in Panama.”
Michael didn’t have a few hours to put preparations in place for what might happen if the mission failed. And based on the last transmission, things were grim out there.
Almost as bad, according to Pedro the Wave Riders had intercepted that transmission.
The report would no doubt already be spreading, and if people thought they were doomed, they would start trying to seize resources. He couldn’t sit by and simply wait to react.
He sat down in front of the radio and sent a message to Lieutenant Wynn. “Lock the entire capitol tower down and prepare the defense
s.”
“On it, sir.”
An hour later, the hatch opened up and Steve jerked awake, standing up to greet the lieutenant, who rushed inside.
“We’re almost finished,” Wynn said, panting.
“Good.” Michael slung his backpack over his shoulder. “Pedro, stay here and keep me updated. Steve, with me.”
Steve started to follow, but Michael stopped. “Bring a weapon.”
“Sir?”
“Pedro, keep that crossbow close,” Michael said. “I’m not expecting anything, but we need to be ready for an attack.”
“By who?” Pedro asked.
“Anyone.”
Michael and Steve followed Wynn out of the command center and went to the top deck. Militia soldiers were loading arrows the size of men into the emplaced crossbows at the edges of the rooftop.
All the spare .50-caliber ammunition had been taken to Panama, along with most of the other calibers. The guards assigned to the rigs were down to one magazine each, and a sword or spear of choice.
“I’ve assigned thirty of my most trusted soldiers to the capitol tower,” Wynn said. “Just in case, we should be able to hold it against small raiding parties if anyone decides to try anything.”
“Good,” Michael said. “This is just a precaution.”
“Or perhaps not.”
Imulah came running through the gardens, calling out for Michael.
“Chief, I just got word that the radio transmission was intercepted at rig nine.”
“That’s a Cazador rig,” Michael said.
“Indeed it is.”
“Lieutenant, who do you have on that rig?”
Wynn thought on it for a minute. “I have two militia soldiers who work with the Wave Riders.”
“The Wave Riders . . .” Michael said. He thought back to the Jet Skis that had seen his boat outside the prison rig.
Michael desperately wanted to tell Wynn about the food there and to assign soldiers to protect it, but he simply couldn’t trust them.
“Contact your men there and see if anything’s happening,” Michael said.
“Okay.” Wynn stepped away with his radio.
Imulah cupped his hands behind his back and stepped up next to Michael, under the thick canopy of a tree that shielded them from the rain.
Hell Divers Series | Book 8 | King of the Wastes Page 41