Warriors

THREE

An alarm blared across the airship, and this time, Les couldn’t just order Timothy to shut it off. This was an automatic emergency siren and would blare as long as the threat remained.

He stopped inside the enclosed ladder that led down to the bridge.

“Timothy, what the hell triggered that alarm?” Les said into his headset.

“Most of my sensors are offline, Captain, but I detected a fire in compartment four. I’ve already sealed off the section and am neutralizing the flames.”

“That’s right above engineering,” Les said. His blood iced at the implications. The wiring there powered the turbofans and the six thrusters.

“Come on!” Les said to the three militia soldiers behind him. Corporal Banks didn’t waste a moment.

They pounded down the ladder to a landing, cleared the next flight, and hit the final landing outside engineering with a thud.

“Michael, Mags, where are you?” Les asked over the comms.

“Outside the hatch up to the top mezzanine,” Michael replied.

“Be careful, and don’t hit anything critical,” Les said.

“Aye-aye, Captain.”

“Timothy, you got a reading on the Sirens inside engineering yet?” Les asked.

“Afraid not, Captain,” replied the AI. “Most of my sensors are still offline.”

“What about the cameras?”

“Offline in that sector.”

“Damn it, Timothy,” Les said. He turned to face Banks and the other two militia soldiers.

“It’s up to us to kill these things,” Les said. “Make those bolts count, and make sure you have a clear shot.”

“Yes, sir,” the soldiers said simultaneously.

Les nodded, and Banks twisted the wheel handle and popped the hatch open. Another soldier followed Les through the gap and into the large open space.

They stood near the starboard hull, where the boilers were positioned in a row along the bulkhead. On the far side of the boilers towered the central nuclear reactor. This part of engineering was bright as day, but several of the lights behind the reactor flickered.

The huge bulb-shaped engine hummed so loud Les couldn’t hear much else, but he couldn’t miss the two piles of Siren scat on the other side of the boilers.

A streak of white goo curved around the tanks and led out into the central deck between the tanks and the reactor.

Les crept around the boilers, crossbow shouldered, checking the deck and then the mezzanines above for Michael and Magnolia. Across the chamber, a diver was moving slowly toward the top of the reactor.

The speaker in his helmet crackled. “Captain, we’ve contained that fire,” Timothy said. “Too early to say how bad the damage is, but we’ve lost control of turbofan three.”

“Copy that, Timothy.”

Coming up on the last boiler, he gestured for the militia soldiers to fan out through the gaps between the tanks. He moved around the first boiler and out onto the open floor near the Siren scat.

With his bow, he swept the area between the reactor and the other industrial equipment that powered the airship. The militia soldiers moved with him, their weapons covering all directions.

Magnolia and Michael were both crouched down on the mezzanine, pointing at the back of the reactor, where one light flickered.

The trail of goo led right toward the reactor.

Les gave the signal to advance, and the three militia soldiers fell into combat intervals, their footfalls nearly silent amid the hum of the reactor. Michael and Magnolia crouch-walked on the platform, getting into position.

Moving his finger to the trigger, Les led the way, taking slow strides. The whitish slime curved around the left side of the reactor.

Large conduits snaked out the side. He carefully stepped over one, then brought his crossbow up at the space behind the reactor.

What in the holy wastes…?

A webwork of glistening slime stretched across the conduits, forming an enclosed tent that was some sort of nest. Michael looked down from the end of the mezzanine, and Magnolia aimed her crossbow.

The militia soldiers moved in to cover Les as he pulled out a knife and sliced through the gooey ropes. The thick and ropy material fell away, and after clearing a path to the nest, he sheathed his knife.

Instead of giving the order to fire, he motioned up to Magnolia and bumped on the comm channel. “Mags and I will shoot first,” he said. “If we miss, Banks and his men will fire. Michael, you’re the last resort.”

“Copy that,” Michael replied.

Les eyed the conduits. The metal was sound, but a bolt could puncture the exterior and shred the wiring inside. If that happened, they were in a world of trouble.

Reaching up, Les turned on his helmet light, illuminating the nearly translucent tent in the dark space. Something was definitely inside the folds of the hardening goo. He lined up his arrow and pulled the trigger.

The bolt punctured the nest, and a screech rose over the sound of the engine.

Before Les could back up, the Siren, a winged male, burst out of the nest and jumped into the air on springy back legs.

Another bolt sailed through the air from the platform above, missing the beast and punching through the aluminum deck in front of Les. He pulled out his knife just as the creature leaped to the side of the reactor.

The militia soldiers squeezed off their arrows. Only one hit the Siren, in the shoulder. It extended its wings and dropped toward Les.

The maw of jagged teeth opened in the eyeless face as frayed wings spread outward. He shoved the blade into the sinewy chest muscles. The beast came down on it, knocking Les backward into a conduit that gave under the weight of his armor.

Even with two arrows protruding from it and the knife deep in its chest, the monster was still very much alive, writhing in agony and slashing at Les.

The conduit holding Les up sagged, threatening to shear away from the bulkhead and uproot the wiring inside. He pushed at the beast, but that just made things worse. Claws scraped his armor, and searing pain knifed into his shoulder.

“Help, God damn it!” Les shouted.

The three militia soldiers moved in with knives drawn, cutting and stabbing the beast across the arms and back.

Les tried to push it off again. It screeched in his face, obscuring his visor with saliva. The wings beat the air, pulling the creature backward with the knife still in its chest.

It slashed at one of the militia soldiers, knocking him backward. It tried to gain altitude, but the wings slammed into the conduits, trapping it above Les.

Michael aimed his crossbow down from the platform. “Get out of the way!” he yelled.

Les rolled off the damaged conduit and hit the deck. He scrambled several feet before looking over his shoulder.

The Siren crashed to the deck in a crumpled heap of wings and limbs, an arrow shaft jutting from the back of its skull.

“Got it,” Michael said. “You okay, Captain?”

Les gave a thumbs-up, then pushed himself off the deck, grabbing his crossbow.

Banks was crouched next to one of his men, who gripped a gut wound.

“Get him to the medical ward,” Les said. “Banks, you’re with me. There’s still another one of those things.”

“Hang in there, kid,” Les said to the young soldier.

He glanced back up at the mezzanine, but Michael and Magnolia had already left to search for the last Siren.

Les slotted a new bolt in his bow and bumped on the comm channel.

“Timothy, get Alfred down here to clean this place up and make sure we didn’t screw anything up,” he said. “And get me a damn twenty on the second Siren.”

“On it, sir.”

Les and Banks took off for the exit.

“Any ideas where this thing is going, Michael?” Les asked.

The reply crackled into his helmet.

“To find food, if I had to guess,” Michael replied.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Banks said.

The thought made Les run faster. “Have we secured all the shelters, Timothy?”

“Yes, sir, and I’ve got cameras monitoring all of them.”

“Michael, you and Mags go to the medical ward,” Les said. “I’m heading to the bridge.”

“Got it, sir.”

Banks and Les hurried up a ladder and out into a passage. The alarm siren was finally off. They ran all the way to the bridge. Both Cazador soldiers, armed with spears and swords, stood sentry outside.

Les nodded at them and moved inside the bridge to check on Eevi and Layla. Timothy stood with them, his glow illuminating the grieving Eevi’s features.

“What’s the status of the ship?” Les asked.

“Turbofan three is offline,” Timothy said, “and we have multiple exterior panels that were broken during that stunt we pulled back in the city.”

“Stunt?” Les snorted. “Oh, you mean when you turned on the thrusters and told me that the ship was clear?”

“No, I meant when you used our friend Cricket as bait,” replied the AI.

“You think that’s when the Sirens infiltrated our outer panels? Because if that’s the case, you should have detected that hours ago!”

“Guys, stop,” Layla said, rising to her feet. “This is not anyone’s fault.”

Les turned for the door. “Tell me when you find that Siren, Pepper.”

He moved out into the passage to continue the search.

Everyone on the comms reported the same thing. No one had any idea where the thing was.

Les felt a stab of fear. The thing had already caused damage in compartments ten and fourteen, knocked out a turbofan, and…

The floor shuddered.

Les halted in the passage as the lights winked off.

“Timothy, what the hell is happening now?” he said into his headset.

There was a slight delay, enough to make Les wonder whether it was intentional.

“Captain, this is Alfred. One of the valves to the reactor is damaged. We’re diverting power from several sectors to keep the thrusters online.”

The lead technician confirmed Les’s worst fear.

“How bad is the damage?” he said.

“Bad enough, sir. The conduit housing the valve is severely damaged.”

“Shit!”

“This wasn’t the beasts. The damage is from an arrow.”

Les cursed again. “Just fix the damn thing!”

He flipped on his headlamp and took off in the darkness.

Maybe Timothy was right. Maybe this was partly Les’s fault. He had used Cricket as bait to draw the Sirens away from the divers in the city.

It was also possible the beasts had gained access when he landed the ship to evacuate the divers and the survivors from the bunker.

Either way, he had failed to keep the monsters from entering the ship.

“Sir, I’ve located the second Siren,” Timothy said. “Inside the launch bay.”

Les cursed under his breath at the news. Of course the thing had gone to the launch bay. With all the people inside, it was the biggest food source on the ship.

“Everyone meet me there!” Les yelled back. Cradling his bow, he ran as fast as his long legs would carry him. Knowing the passageways by heart helped him calculate the distance.

It would take him two minutes to get there—more than enough time for the Siren to shred through the rescued passengers.

Worse, these people didn’t seem to know how to fight.

Les thought of his boy as he ran. Trey had sacrificed himself to find people in the wastes, and now that they had, Les would do anything to save them, even give his own life.

He was the first to reach the dark passage to the launch bay. Michael and Magnolia rounded the next corner and arrived a second later. Their headlamps captured the terrified faces of the refugees pounding on the hatches and glass. Behind them, Les glimpsed the Siren slashing at three men. One of them jabbed at it with a metal leg from a cot.

Les twisted the handle. Locked.

“Timothy, open the door!” he shouted.

“Sir, I can’t…”

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“Alfred shunted power from that sector of the ship.”

Les backed away and kicked the door. That did nothing but hurt his foot. He kicked again, and again.

“Out of the way, sir,” Michael said. He used his robotic hand to smash the lock. When the door clicked open, Michael and Les grabbed the inside edge and pulled. The beast’s ethereal screeching rose above the shouts of terrified passengers.

Les couldn’t worry about the quarantine—the Siren’s knife-size claws would kill them faster than any invisible germs.

Michael grunted, and finally the two men pried the door open. The people on the other side flooded out, and Magnolia squeezed in, with Les and Michael right behind her.

Les shouldered his crossbow. The beast was on its back, wings extended. Two men stomped on the wings while a third straddled the chest. The dreadlocks over his shoulders confirmed what Les suspected. It was Pedro, the leader of these people.

He bent over, pushing on something.

Les hurried over to help. The beast jerked on the deck as Pedro shoved the cot leg into its open mouth, crunching through teeth and bone. He kept pushing until the creature went limp.

Covered in the creature’s blood and bleeding from several gashes of his own, the man limped away from the dead beast.

“Timothy, report to the launch bay,” Les said quietly into his headset. “And get a medical crew here ASAP.”

Pedro put his hand to the back of his dreadlocks and pulled it away bloody. Les stepped back to scan the room for bodies.

A man lay in a puddle of blood with several people crouched around, sobbing. They looked up when a blue glow washed over the open space.

“Tell them it’s okay now,” Les said to Timothy’s hologram. “Tell them the beasts are dead and we are sorry, and that in a few hours they will see the sun as we promised.”

X raised his wrist computer toward the dark sky. It was a balmy fifty degrees Fahrenheit, with a hint of radiation on the surface. Sporadic jags of lightning cut through the black drape of sky, illuminating the cracked earth he trekked across.

A rusted sign marked the way.

Déjà vu enveloped him. He had seen this one before.

Welcome to Florida, the Sunshine State.

Miles trotted ahead, the hazard suit crinkling over his muscular body. Muzzle to the ground, he sniffed toward a cluster of blue weeds that writhed like octopus limbs at the side of the road.

“No!” X shouted.

Miles halted, just out of the tentacles’ reach. A single sting could end the dog’s life with a lethal dose of venom.

“You know better than that, boy,” he said, bending down.

The dog tilted its loose-fitting helmet for a better view of X. Then it brushed up against his hand as if trying to lick his gloved fingers.

X chuckled and stood. “Stay next to me this time, buddy.”

Side by side, the man and his best friend set off again down the apocalyptic road toward their new home on the coastline. The view seemed to shift as he walked, and in a moment of clarity, he realized he was in a dream he couldn’t rouse himself from.

A collection of memories surfaced. The next thing he saw was a land bridge. Again déjà vu struck. He remembered what had happened here, and watched it unfold in slow motion.

Several fissures broke the ground. Jumping back, Miles went over the side of the embankment. X bolted after the dog, leaping another chasm.

Scrabbling with his forelegs, Miles tried to climb back onto solid ground.

“Miles!” X shouted.

Before X could get to him, a reddish tentacle shot out of the water and grabbed the dog, yanking him into the muck.

No matter how hard he tried to wake, X was stuck in the purgatory of sleep.

He jumped into the fetid water, darkness swallowing him like quicksand. Kicking upward, he broke the surface in time to see the twenty-foot monster swim past with Miles in its grip.

He pulled out his knife and slashed the creature, opening a long gash.

Pinkish eggs jettisoned from the rubbery hide. The beast let go of Miles and snaked backward through the water toward X. A fanged reptilian mouth opened.

The dream transported him again, this time to some sort of limbo between reality and nightmare. Voices seemed to call out in the ether. He could feel his wounded body again and the chill from his fever.

A few voices seemed familiar, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. They faded away, leaving him with a sensation of near weightlessness, like during the first few moments of a dive.

The dreams returned, and he was in a military bunker where he had taken refuge with Miles on his way to the coast. It was here that he repaired an old-world motorcycle. Here was also where he started coughing up blood. The continued exposure to toxins and radiation had finally caught up with him.

He was transported into yet another dream—more a collection of memories and not as vivid. He drove the bike with Miles strapped into the custom seat. A view of Miami’s ruins stretched across the horizon.

They had finally reached the coast, and the place he made into a home for himself and Miles. The high-rise building overlooked the shore, where glowing red vines flashed.

Not long after settling in, he had learned it was cancer eating his throat. Miles had whined all day, sensing something dramatically wrong with X.

The memories faded away into darkness, and he returned to the limbo between reality and dreaming. X recalled how he had felt lying in that small apartment, sealed off from a toxic world, coughing up blood while Miles watched helplessly. It was similar to how he felt now, stuck in a bed overlooking the ocean, with Miles at his feet.

Back then he had pondered killing Miles to prevent him from suffering and starving while X rotted away from cancer.

The dream pulled X back in, and he recalled that he had taken the other option.

To fight.

The throttle rattled in his weak hands, sending vibrations through his cancer-riddled body as he motorcycled to an ITC facility, to find the medicine that might save his life.

Along the way, he coughed flecks of blood onto the inside of his face shield. The blurred view almost made him dump the bike when a pack of Sirens attacked. But the blades attached to the hubs had saved his life, cutting several beasts in half.

The scene moved to the inside of the building, after he had scavenged the life-saving cancer medicine. He crouched in a dark passage, listening to something he had never heard on the surface: human voices.

He had tried to make it past them, but the Siren-hunting Cazadores had captured him and put him in a cage. Now he was face-to-face with el Pulpo. It was the first time they had met, the day he gouged out the king’s eye with a needle.

More events streamed across his consciousness, as if he were watching an old-world video with himself as the star. But the next scene of this kaleidoscopic video was one he didn’t remember.

X stood on a debris-littered beach. A fishing boat lay in the sand. The boat looked familiar.

Boot prints led away from the boat and into an embankment covered in red vines and tall bluish weeds. Skeletal palm trees towered above him, their fronds shifting in the toxic wind.

He followed the tracks to a field of more weeds. The blue tendrils writhed like sea anemones underwater, ready to latch on to a bug or beast. Or perhaps a human.

The tracks led into the field. Searching for a way around, X found more prints. Drips of blood darkened the soil along the path.

The dream seemed crystal clear, as if he were actually back in Miami, on the hunt for this mysterious person. The trail continued toward the row of high-rise apartment buildings once owned by wealthy residents of this city.

He stopped again to look at one he recognized. A black tarp covered a balcony door on one of the upper floors—the place he and Miles had called home several years ago.

It all came crashing over him. The boat, the tracks—they had to belong to Ada Winslow, the former executive officer of the Hive and Discovery, who had killed an entire crew of Cazador sailors. He had exiled her out here, with a map to his former home.

The tracks continued through the city’s ash-covered streets. He ran, needing to find her. Several spent cartridge casings and more blood dotted the ground on the next street.

A Siren carcass lay on a curb, bugs consuming the flesh. Maggots spilled out of the open mouth. The rot meant it had been here for some days, but where was Ada?

He kept moving until the dream suddenly ended, darkness like a wave washing away the city. Light broke through his vision. In the glow, several blurred faces hovered over him. One seemed furrier than the others.

Miles…

He had woken from his dream to the same familiar voices from earlier.

“X, can you hear us?”

The gruff female voice belonged to Sloan.

“King Xavier,” she said. “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” he growled.

Sloan, Dr. Huff, and Samson were huddled around his bed. Miles was at his feet, tongue out, panting. He moved over and nudged X’s bandaged right leg.

Huff tried to push him back, but the dog bared his teeth.

“How long have I been out?” X asked.

“Since just after the council meeting,” Samson said.

“And how long ago was that?”

“I don’t got a watch, but it’s been about a day,” Sloan said. “We have Ton, Victor, and an entire militia patrol standing guard outside your room just in case anyone gets any ideas about finishing you off.”

“Finishing me off…” X mumbled.

He tried to sit up, but his body wouldn’t respond. He felt paralyzed, as if he had been pricked by one of the blue weeds in his dream.

X didn’t even feel the doc pull off the chest bandage to check his arrow wound, but he saw the reaction.

Huff winced. “It’s infected, badly,” he said.

“Not surprised, considering X doesn’t listen to orders,” Sloan said. “Honestly, you’re lucky those arrows weren’t dipped in poison.”

X tried to move again, but his limbs wouldn’t respond. He tried to wiggle his toes and got one to move.

“Did you say I’ve been out a full day?” he muttered.

“Pretty much,” Sloan said.

X turned his head slightly to look at the hall. “Then where’s Michael, Les, and everyone else? They should be back by now.”

Samson coughed into his handkerchief and moved away from the bed. Huff looked up.

“You really should let me take a look at you, too,” said the doctor.

Samson waved a hand. “I’m fine—just a cold.”

X finally managed to sit up slightly. Nothing like fear to energize a dying body, he mused.

“I asked a question,” he said. “Where is the crew of Discovery?”

Clenching his jaw, he braced for more bad news.

“There was an incident on the airship,” Sloan said. “A pair of Sirens somehow got inside after they left Rio de Janeiro.”

“You got to be fucking kiddin’ me,” X grumbled.

“I wish I were,” Sloan said. “Fortunately, there was only one casualty and minor injuries.”

“It was Discovery that took the most damage,” Samson said. He went into the technical details until X cut him off.

“English, man,” he said.

“A reactor valve was damaged, and they lost power to all six thrusters,” Samson said. “They also lost turbofan three.”

“So what’s keeping them in the air?” X asked.

“The rest of the turbofans.”

“How long until they get back?”

“Could be a while unless they get the thrusters back on,” Samson said. “Sounds like they’re going to put down to fix them, so they don’t risk crashing to the surface.”

X swallowed hard at the news, his throat burning just as it had when the cancer was eating away his esophagus. Spots darted in his vision.

Out his open window, a tiny black dot inched along the horizon.

“Is that a Cazador warship?” X asked.

Sloan looked, then nodded. “Colonel Moreto,” she said. “She left for Belize this morning, but appears to have turned back around.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

X closed his eyes, trying to fend off another wave of dizziness and anxiety.

Huff finally finished changing the dressing and moved on to the next one.

“Here, drink,” Sloan said. She helped X sip some water while the doctor worked.

When he finished, Huff said, “Go back to sleep, King Xavier.”

X nodded. This time, he wasn’t going to argue, even if it meant returning to the nightmares. He closed his eyes, then snapped his battered eyelids back open.

X grabbed Sloan’s wrist and said, “Lieutenant, if something does happen to me and I don’t make it, tell Michael I want him to take care of Miles.”

“You’re going to make it,” Sloan said.

He gripped her wrist harder. “Just promise.”

She glared at him and then nodded. “Okay, I promise.”

He let go of her wrist and reached down to Miles. The dog licked his hand, and X closed his eyes and the let darkness swallow him again.

“Oh, and, Lieutenant, watch out for bird lady,” X said. He opened his eyes, suddenly feeling vulnerable. “I don’t want her slitting my throat while I sleep.”

“You have my word, sir.”

He looked out the window at the warship one last time, but he was no longer thinking about Moreto. He was thinking about Ada, alone on the ocean.