Warriors

THIRTY-TWO

A third of a world away, forty thousand feet in the sky, Michael thought of X as Discovery hovered over enemy territory. He felt a queasiness in his gut from the fear that something had happened to X.

He shook it away. They had already lost Cricket, and now they were facing an impossible decision.

“This is now a volunteer-only mission,” Les said. He looked down at a white line on the deck. “We all saw what’s down there. I won’t blame you if you don’t want to dive.”

The seven other Hell Divers stood in the launch bay with Timothy, who was here to interpret for Hector.

The tension was palpable among the men and women who could very well decide the future of humanity. Michael was both honored and horrified to be one of them.

He clenched and opened his robotic fist. “We’re running out of time,” he said. “We have to make a decision.”

“Why can’t we just launch the nukes and try to take out the machines that way?” Lena asked. “The mountain can’t be that deep.”

Michael recalled when he had considered dropping the nukes in the ocean, where they couldn’t cause the human race any more harm. But now those same bombs could potentially save humanity from the very machines that had destroyed the world.

“If we fire the nukes and they don’t work, we ruin our chances of going in on foot,” Les said. “The radiation would be too deadly even for our suits. As I said, you don’t have to come if you don’t want to, but if you’re coming, join me.”

He stepped over the painted white line.

“All due respect, Captain,” said Arlo, “but if we dive, how do we get past those defenses we saw on Cricket’s feed?”

“Ever hear of the kamikaze?” Ted said. “They were Japanese pilots during World War Two that—”

“I know what they are,” Les said. “They did their duty for their country during war, and we’re going to do ours as well, for all humanity.”

“I have a suggestion, if I may,” said Timothy, speaking up for the first time.

“Go ahead,” Les said.

“Perhaps a distraction might help you get into the base. We have enough rockets to take out the bulk of the defenses that Cricket documented—not all, but most.”

“That will tell ’em we’re here,” Arlo said.

“They know we’re here,” Michael said.

Les nodded. “It gives us a chance to sneak in and evens the playing field if we use nukes. So the question is, who’s with me?”

“I’m with you, sir,” Michael said.

“I’m here to avenge Ramon,” Edgar said. He put an armor-piercing round with his cousin’s name written on the brass into the sniper rifle and worked the bolt.

Sofia stepped over the line.

Arlo grunted, “Got to prove I’m thunder and lightning, I guess.”

He stepped over, and Hector did, too, leaving just Lena and Ted grounded.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Arlo said. “Remember what you told me last night?”

“Shut up, Arlo,” Lena said. She walked over and grabbed Edgar’s hand.

“Oh, I see how it is,” Arlo said.

Ted sighed and stepped over the line. “I can’t let Arlo die alone.”

“I ain’t dyin’,” Arlo said.

“You’re all very brave,” Timothy said. “I will watch over you the best I can with the crew while you’re on the dive, and once you near the target, we will give the DEF-Nine units some fireworks.”

“Upload the DZ on our minimaps,” Les said. “And get the rest of the support crew in here.”

Timothy uploaded the drop zone the team had chosen from the maps and satellite imagery. It was in the middle of a valley that would give them cover and let them avoid some of the forest.

Samson, Eevi, Alfred, and the two technicians who had signed on for the dangerous journey all filed into the launch bay.

Michael checked his wrist monitor. Cricket was still online somehow, though so damaged that it couldn’t fly. He kept an eye on the cameras that were still documenting the graveyard.

Samson, Alfred, and the two technicians walked around checking that all dive systems were operational.

Michael checked the charge on the laser rifle. It was down to just 8 percent. He jammed the battery back in, then stepped aside and opened the note that X had given him before they left. He had yet to read it, wanting to save it for the last minute.

“Timothy, take us to twenty thousand feet,” Les said.

As the ship started down, Michael opened the note.

“Clear launch bay,” Les said.

Michael looked up from the note, saving the rest.

“Good luck, and Godspeed,” Alfred said. “I pray you all return safely.”

Samson coughed into his handkerchief. “Give ’em hell,” he rasped.

He and Les shook hands, and he turned to Michael.

“Be careful, Tin,” Samson said. “I want Bray to grow up with a father and become as good a man as I’ve watched you become.”

“Thank you, sir.”

They hugged for what Michael realized was the first time. Even more surprisingly, Eevi also gave Michael a hug.

“I don’t blame you for Alexander, you know,” she said.

“Thank you,” Michael replied. “He was a good man and died bravely to save us.”

“He sure was…” She took a deep breath. “Good luck down there.”

The support crew departed, and while the Hell Divers lined up to jump, Michael went back to reading the note.

Michael stopped reading and looked up to blink tears from his eyes.

“T-minus five minutes to launch,” Timothy said.

“Status reports,” Les said. “Phoenix One, online.”

“Phoenix Four, ready to dive,” Lena said.

Ted and Edgar both confirmed they were good to go.

“Raptor One, ready,” said Michael.

“Raptor Two, ready,” said Arlo.

“Raptor Three, online,” said Hector.

“Raptor Four, good,” said Sofia.

“Nearing jump altitude in one minute,” Timothy said.

Normally, a red light would have swirled in the launch bay, warning everyone to keep clear, followed by a pulsating blue. But Timothy had the entire ship in stealth mode.

“Ah, shit, this is really happening,” Ted said.

“You’ll be okay,” Edgar said. “Remember your training.”

Michael continued reading the letter from X.

Michael tucked the note back in his vest just in time for the final warning.

“Prepare to dive,” Timothy said. “You dive so humanity survives. Good luck, my friends.”

Michael nodded at the AI. “Thank you for everything, Timothy.”

A countdown came on their HUDs.

Michael’s heart thumped with conflicted emotions. These could very well be the last moments of his life. He didn’t want to leave Layla alone to raise Bray. But if he didn’t do this, their home would never be safe.

Ten…

Nine…

Eight…

The launch-bay doors hissed open, letting in the gusting wind. Michael and Les both stepped out in front of the groups and shook hands.

“For Trey,” Les said.

“For Trey, sir,” Michael replied.

Three…

Two…

One…

“We dive so humanity survives!” Les shouted. He leaped into the darkness, and Michael followed right behind, yelling the same thing.

They speared into the inky void. Normally, Michael felt weightless the first few seconds of free fall, but today he felt gravity pulling down on him, or perhaps it was something else.

He brought his hands to his body and formed a human spear.

He bumped on his night vision, and the view turned green. The sky was packed with clouds, but there was no hint of lightning.

He looked up past his boots to check the other divers. Everyone was out of the launch bay. Normally, the battery units would glow, but today they were all covered.

Michael moved away from Les. The other divers did the same, fanning out from each other for safety.

They shot through the cold mattress of dense cloud cover like bullets through smoke. Michael shifted his gaze back to his HUD to check the DZ Timothy had selected.

The teams were already down to twelve thousand feet. At this speed, they would be on the ground in five minutes or less.

Michael rocketed through the billowy clouds. The beacons of the other divers blinked on his HUD.

As they neared the surface, the cloud cover lightened. At eight thousand feet, it was thin enough that he saw light in the east.

He bumped off his night-vision goggles and focused on a patch of pulsating red and purple much like what he had seen on the dive into Rio de Janeiro. It had to be the jungles they had seen via Cricket’s feed.

Les emerged on his left, still in a nosedive like Michael. A side glance confirmed that Sofia had also caught up to them. The other divers were still five hundred to a thousand feet higher.

The floor of black turned white as they neared a new cloud layer.

The easy dive was suddenly shaken up by a pocket of turbulence. Michael almost hit Sofia but managed to move away before he clipped her.

A scream sounded somewhere above—a male voice, probably Arlo.

The teams were all over the place in the clouds. For five seconds, Michael spun out of control. Then he suddenly burst through the bottom of the clouds.

Making a hard arch, he then pulled back into stable position and saw that Sofia had done the same thing. She was a natural. It took Les a bit longer to get his long frame into a stable fall.

Glancing up, Michael searched for the other divers using his NVGs.

Hector burst through the clouds next, cartwheeling. Ted and Arlo weren’t in much better shape, but both Lena and Edgar had managed to regain control of their fall.

At five thousand feet, Ted and Arlo didn’t have much time to get back into stable position.

Come on, Michael thought. You can do this.

The young men battled their way out of their spins and got back into nosedives. That left Hector. He seemed almost limp.

Had someone hit him and knocked him out?

Michael didn’t want to break radio silence to find out. He tried to slow his speed and make his way over to Hector. It was terribly dangerous to approach the spinning Cazador, but Michael wasn’t about to lose a member of Team Raptor.

At two thousand feet, Michael made his move. He grabbed Hector, trying to push him into a stable position. It didn’t work and almost knocked Michael out of his dive.

“Hector!” Michael yelled.

The diver didn’t respond.

Michael went back in again for one last attempt. That was when he saw Hector’s open face shield. Frozen eyelashes hung over his closed eyes, and his lips were dark.

What the hell…

Michael had no idea how the visor had opened, but he had heard about this happening on a long-ago dive. The poor bastard had probably died of asphyxia during the first minute, when his face froze from the thirty-below air at a hundred miles per hour.

A glance down revealed the first look at the desertlike terrain of the surface. The other divers had already pulled their chutes above the DZ.

At a thousand feet, Michael had to make one of the hardest decisions of his career. He pulled away from Hector, knowing there was nothing he could to do for him now.

Then he pulled his own chute, and the suspension lines came taut. He grabbed the toggles and looked down, his breath catching when he saw a diver right in Hector’s path.

“Lena!” Michael shouted.

He couldn’t tell whether she heard him, because her canopy blocked his view. He flinched as Hector’s body slammed into her chute, collapsing the two leftmost cells and sending her careening out of control.

The ground rose up to meet the divers—only seconds from touchdown for those with canopies, but it was the end for Hector. He frapped into the earth.

Michael tried to focus past the devastating loss. Lena was still in trouble, and they were almost on the ground in hostile territory.

The DZ was in a mile-long valley with jungle growing around the rim. Steep cliffs blocked much of the access, but he spotted the path out that Timothy had plotted on their minimaps.

Lena swung around using her toggles and finally managed to get control. One by one, the other divers performed two-stage flares and stepped out of the sky.

Arlo and Ted both crumpled after running a few strides, but Sofia and Les landed gracefully. Lena hit hardest, crashing and tumbling.

Michael managed to stay on his feet and ran out the momentum. He crouched down, released his chute and packed it down, and scanned for hostiles.

Edgar was the last down. He collapsed his chute and raised the sniper rifle, ready to fire on any machines waiting for them.

The team packed their chutes quickly. Edgar got to Lena first. She gripped her ankle, grunting in pain.

Michael trotted over. “How bad is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Lena said.

“We need to move,” Les said, crouching. “Can you walk?”

Edgar helped her to her feet. She yelped when she weighted the sprain.

Les looked to Michael but didn’t say a word. They both knew she would slow them down.

“What happened to Hector?” she mumbled.

Then she saw Sofia, kneeling by the body. Only the armor and jumpsuit held it in a recognizably human shape.

“It was his visor,” Michael said. “Somehow, it opened during the dive.”

“At least he didn’t suffer,” Arlo said.

Michael didn’t want to tell him the truth: that for an agonizing minute or more, Hector had likely suffered far more than if he had just crashed into the ground. And screaming would have made it worse, sucking freezing air into his lungs.

“What do we do with him?” Ted asked.

“Grab his vital gear and ammunition,” Les said. “Then bury him.”

The divers worked quickly, digging a shallow grave and covering the dead Cazador with dirt while Edgar held security with the sniper rifle.

When they finished, they each put a hand on the mound of dirt and whispered a few words.

“I’m sorry,” Michael said when it was his turn.

Les motioned for the teams to move out.

“Michael, you’re on point with Edgar,” he said. “Ted, Arlo, you got rear guard. We don’t stop until we get out of this valley.”

The divers moved out in combat intervals, navigating the foreign landscape cautiously but fast along a creek that flowed through the valley. Leafy mutant flora grew along the banks.

Michael kept the laser rifle shouldered, using his infrared optics to scan for life. Nothing bigger than a rabbit showed.

He stopped at the edge of the creek. The fast-flowing water was clear, nothing like the swamp murk he was used to seeing on dives. He tapped his wrist computer. The temperature was sixty degrees, and the air was free of radiation. It was one of the cleanest green zones he had ever dived.

Michael set off toward a creek bank of rounded river rocks, his boots sloshing in the ankle-deep water. The path out of the valley was just a quarter-mile north.

The team crossed two at a time, with Edgar supporting Lena.

Michael took cover behind a boulder, aiming his rifle at the distant cliffs and scanning for machines. Lightning fired from the belly of a cloud.

Thunder clapped a few seconds later.

The team joined him at the rocks, where Michael guided them toward a stand of trees.

Another thunderclap echoed through the darkness. This one didn’t fade away.

Michael halted, straining his ears.

A rumbling noise sounded in the distance. Here in the valley, it was difficult to gauge the direction.

He flashed signals toward the trees, and the team took off for cover. Edgar slung his rifle, picked Lena up, and ran with her.

The thunderous sound grew louder. Michael looked up through the dense canopy but saw nothing.

It was Arlo who spotted the drone. He raised his assault rifle, but Les pushed down on the barrel and shook his head.

A drone not much bigger than Cricket flew over the trees, then out over the valley, trailing a purple exhaust plume. The circular body had an antenna on the crest of what looked like an insect head covered in spikes.

Michael motioned everyone down. They went to their bellies and hugged the trees for any concealment they could get.

The drone circled once, then hovered low over the water.

Shit, our tracks! Michael thought.

He aimed his laser rifle at the machine, but it continued south—away from their location, but back toward where they had buried Hector.

Les was quick to get the divers up. “On me,” he said.

They moved out of the trees at a run, toward the rocky incline leading out of the valley. Lena was limping still, enduring the pain.

Les slowed the pace up the narrow cleft out of the valley. Nearing the top, Michael moved his robotic finger to the laser rifle’s trigger guard, ready to let the bolts fly into the trees growing along the valley rim.

He saw no movement among the large trunks, which would provide excellent cover. He motioned the divers to hunker down behind him. Then he took off in a crouching run to the trees.

Picking his way around exposed roots, he took up position behind a huge trunk. An infrared scan of the jungle to his left revealed no sign of life, and his NVGs didn’t pick up any machines in that direction.

Then he looked eastward, to his right.

The terrain there was flat, as he had expected. What he didn’t expect to see was an airship on the ground.

He zoomed in on the faded ITC logo on the hull. “My God,” he whispered.

It was the ITC Victory, the airship that Captain Sean Rolo had flown here decades ago despite Captain Maria Ash’s warnings.

She had been right all along.

Michael finally understood why she had never flown beyond the shores of North America and had always chosen green-zone dives to keep them in the air. It was the reason the Hive became the last survivor of its kind.

Perhaps Captain Leon Jordan, despite his evil ways, was trying to keep the same truth a secret: that out here, there was nothing but death.

But it was finally time to face the future and end this war forever.