Magnolia had also maneuvered into a “suicide dive,” as they called it, and was coming up fast. A moment later, she was rocketing down beside Michael, the glow of her battery unit illuminating her slender but muscular form. She glanced over, and though he couldn’t see her face behind the mirrored visor, he knew she was grinning.
“This isn’t a race,” he said over the comms.
“Nope, but I’m going to beat you to the ground anyway.” She moved her helmet downward and continued past him, blasting through a cloud that enveloped her in darkness.
At ten thousand feet, going this speed, they were only a minute from the ground. Soon, he would be able to see the surface and their target—a former prison, according to the database on Discovery.
Michael remembered, as a kid, reading about the search for alien life on other planets. Now he had an inkling of what scientists must have felt back then when looking for evidence of life in the distant stars.
In a way, the divers had found modern aliens in the mutant creatures on the surface, which would have fascinated scientists from the past. But who would have thought that finding humans would be a far greater challenge?
At eight thousand feet, Michael checked over his shoulder again. Trey had angled into a nosedive as well, his lanky form spearing through the darkness. To the west, a flash lit up the belly of a storm cloud.
With the electrical storm moving in, Team Raptor would have to work fast. It was one of two reasons they had dived rather than risk taking Discovery down to the surface. The second reason was simple: Michael didn’t want anyone to know they were coming, and three divers were harder to detect than an airship.
And Hell Divers were also easier to replace.
At six thousand feet, a web of lightning forked across his dive zone. He stared at the shifting clouds, trying to determine the best route through the hidden storm. With almost zero time to react, he cut left and was greeted by another wind shear that sent him spinning.
He fought to bring the heavy robotic limb back to his side, and finally managed to center his mass into a stable nosedive. At five thousand feet, he checked the digital map on his HUD and saw they were off target for the drop zone.
He adjusted his trajectory, cutting through the sky diagonally, working his way back toward the area indicated on his minimap. The altimeter was quickly ticking down to four thousand feet.
The clouds seemed to lighten as he closed in on three thousand feet. He was now slicing through the clouds at over 160 miles per hour. A few beats later, he got his first glimpse of the surface, which looked like a desert of black dunes.
Using his chin, he bumped on his night-vision goggles. After a few blinks, his eyes adjusted to the green hue, and he realized that the surface wasn’t a desert at all, but rather the ocean.
The divers sailed toward the landmass once known as Jamaica. Ja-may-ka, he thought, trying to picture what this place had once looked like.
Blue light came up on his left as Trey joined him. Magnolia moved in on his right flank.
At two thousand feet, the divers maneuvered from their nosedive into stable position with their backs to the sky, knees and elbows bent at ninety degrees. Trey nodded several times at the shoreline as they prepared to sail over.
Michael peered down, trying to see what had caught his attention. He didn’t see anything at first but finally spotted several large craft that looked like beached whales—ships anchored in a bay.
No way those have been there since the war.
The shoreline vanished as the divers sailed over charred and blasted terrain. There wasn’t much to look at in the final seconds of the dive—just another dead, colorless landscape that dampened any hope of finding people here.
At twelve hundred feet, Michael reached down to his thigh and pulled his pilot chute, holding it out for a second before releasing it to haul out the main canopy. The other divers did the same, their suspension lines coming taut, giving them the sensation of being yanked back up into the sky.
He grabbed his toggles, careful not to squeeze too hard with the robotic hand. He steered toward fields of black that really did seem like a desert now that the divers were farther inland.
The black landscape undulated with mounds and humps as far as he could see. For the first few seconds under canopy, he didn’t see anything in the desolate landscape. Flitting his gaze from the ground to his HUD, he finally identified their target.
The concrete prison complex was tucked away in the bleak terrain of seemingly endless bare dirt, and he picked it out only by matching up his view with the target on his HUD. Then he saw the radiation levels that Cricket was already reporting from the ground.
Michael swallowed hard at the readings. The sensors on Discovery had placed the area somewhere between green and yellow, but as he sailed toward the drop zone, he saw that the rad levels were closer to yellow, which lowered the prospects of finding anyone alive.
And it was likely his fault. The nuke they dropped on Red Sphere had caused the increase in radiation levels, perhaps dooming any humans who had managed to survive under the ground all these years.
Michael focused back on the digital map. There was no sign of the road marked on the translucent subscreen of his HUD, and the only buildings aside from their target were eroded down to the foundations.
Another bad sign was the rusted girders of larger buildings on the horizon—more evidence that a nuclear blast had torn through this area, killing everything in its path.
Michael wondered whether this signal, dubious from the outset, would prove to be a waste of time. But it was too late to turn around now, with the ground rising up to meet his boots. Magnolia and Trey were right alongside him, nose to the slight sea breeze. When they were about to hit the square of dirt, they pulled on the toggles to slow their descent.
Michael performed a two-stage flare. Dust puffed up under his feet on impact with the solid ground. He ran out the momentum and came to a stop. They were about a mile from their target.
Cricket flew over, red hover nodes whirling. At some point, Michael had to get the thrusters on the back working so it could fly faster.
The divers quickly stowed their gear and their chutes, which they would reuse on the next dive. Once they were packed away safely, Michael pulled out his laser rifle and scanned the landscape for any sign of hostile life. Nothing came back on infrared besides insects and what was perhaps a rat. The small animal ducked into a hole.
“Place looks pretty barren,” Magnolia said, checking the battery of her laser weapon. Trey palmed a magazine into his assault rifle. With their weapons ready, they covered their battery units with leather flaps—a design of Rodger Mintel’s that helped lessen the glow and avoid detection by Sirens.
Michael thought of his friend back at the Vanguard Islands. Rodger’s diving days were on hold due to injuries he had received from the Cazadores, but X had put him to work on other vital projects.
“Let’s go,” Michael said.
Cricket took point, and the three divers moved out, fast and low. There was nothing out here, not even the barbed plants or glowing trees that had spread across much of the terrain in other locations.
Michael flashed hand signals directing the team toward a hill. Then he used his wrist computer to give Cricket orders. The robot hovered up the rocky slope to do a scan.
It came back clear, and Michael motioned for the divers to follow him to the top. They crouched, and he raised binoculars to his visor.