“Copy that,” X said. He cradled the handset on the dashboard and looked back at Michael.
“Ballsy, kid,” he said.
“Like you with Ted this morning?” Michael replied.
X touched his bandaged head. “I haven’t even told you about the Siren yet.”
“Siren?” Samson said, looking over from behind the wheel.
X laughed. “It’s a long story.”
“I don’t have any pressing appointments,” replied Samson.
“We got time,” Rodger said, slouching in a chair and holding his stomach.
Michael took the seat beside him.
“You best get cleaned up, Rodger Dodger,” X said. “Don’t want Mags seeing you like this, do you?”
Rodger managed a shrug. “I don’t think anything I do will win her over. I’ve carved her animals, saved her life, and she’s even seen my butt. Few women can resist that.”
Samson chuckled. “You’re forgetting about the rest of you.”
“Give her time,” Michael said, punching Rodger on the arm.
Rodger sat up. “I am, but she’s really playing hard to get.”
“Layla was that way, too,” Michael said.
X and Samson leaned forward as the boat approached the capitol tower.
“What in the unholy wastes is going on here?” X muttered.
The bow of the Sea Wolf cruised into the open boat port and a scene of chaos.
Two militia soldiers had a Cazador mechanic pinned down on the dock where the cigar boat was tethered. Meanwhile two Cazador soldiers were shouting, holding their spears in a fighting stance.
“Is that DJ?” Samson said, standing for a better look.
The Sea Wolf motored closer, and Michael saw the engineer crumpled on the dock. His head looked like strawberry jam.
X cursed long and evenly in a low voice.
“So much for that peace, King Xavier,” Samson muttered.
SEVEN
The nightmare was always the same. Les stood on the poisoned surface in Jamaica, in full Hell Diver armor and gripping a laser rifle. The defectors came storming out of the former prison, firing bright-red bolts that sizzled through the air.
Trey ran with Michael and Magnolia while Les held his ground and covered their retreat. He went down to one knee and fired three bursts at the closest machine—humanoid in shape and wearing a vest of human skin. Red eyes glowed from a metal face also covered in hide.
Les aimed and pulled the trigger, melting an orange hole the size of his fist through the titanium exoskeleton. He followed with a bolt to the cranium, and the machine slumped over, raising a poof of dust from the fractured pavement. Two more defectors strode out through the prison’s destroyed western wall. One dropped to all fours, charging like a lion.
“Get in the air!” Les yelled. “go!”
He punched his booster, and the balloon fired from its canister, filling with helium and yanking him off the ground. As he was being pulled into the sky, he fired at the hurtling machine. It leaped into the air, reaching for his boot.
The dreamscape shifted, and he was on the bridge of Discovery with Michael and Magnolia. They both were dripping with sweat and screaming about the machines.
“You have to drop a bomb!” Michael said. “We have to finish them!”
“Before they take Trey and use…” Magnolia’s words trailed off.
Trey. Where was his son? Les looked around him on the bridge and saw the horrified faces of Ada and Eevi looking back at him. Timothy was also here, looking as solemn as ever.
“Les,” Michael said, grabbing him. “I’m sorry beyond words, but we have to drop a bomb on the prison and destroy the machines.”
The nightmare then would transfer back to the surface, outside the prison. Les stood in the open; staring at the smoking helmet of a Hell Diver lying on the cracked earth. He choked as he walked toward his son.
As he approached, something came whistling down from the sky. A thump sounded, then a beeping noise. The walls of the prison vanished in a burst of dazzling white. The fire engulfed Trey’s armor and rushed toward Les in strangely slow motion.
Through the wall of flames, Les could see something moving. A human figure. Burning.
Les brought up his hand to shield his visor from the brilliant glow. Between blinks, he glimpsed a figure striding out of the wall of fire. Not a man, but a machine. The exoskeleton glowed orange in the all-consuming heat. Even as it began to melt, it kept walking, reaching out for Les with long metallic fingers.
“no!” he shouted. “trey!”
Les jerked awake from the dream.
The beeping of a weather sensor reminded him that he was on the bridge of Discovery, sitting in the captain’s chair. He shook off the nightmare and tried to forget the image of his son’s smoking helmet. Each time, the scene was the same, and each time, he couldn’t reach the body.
Les sat up straight, blinked, and looked at his watch. He had been out a half hour since talking to X about the mission to locate the Cazador warship Lion.
“Timothy, got a twenty on that ship?” he mumbled.
“No sir, we still haven’t located them.” The AI’s impeccably dressed and groomed hologram cast a glow over Discovery’s dimly lit bridge and its skeleton crew of Ada and Eevi.
The ship rattled from a lightning strike below. Les leaned over his monitor to see that they were coasting a few thousand feet above the heart of the massive storm. He reached for the cup in the holder by his chair. Even cold, Cazador coffee was a thing of beauty.
He downed the last of it, trying to banish the fatigue so he could focus. Aside from the catnap, he had been awake almost twenty-four hours. But that was fine with him. The nightmares were a far worse torture than sleeplessness.
“Sir, the storm front is expanding,” Eevi reported. “It is now almost eighty miles long, with winds capable of gusting over seventy knots.”
She continued rattling off data, but Les, even fortified with coffee, had trouble focusing on anything but the past. He should have dived with his son. He should have been down on the surface instead of up here, in this prison.
He took a deep breath, trying to fend off the darkness. It was getting worse, and it wasn’t just from the lack of sleep or the grief.
Maybe X was right. He needed a break.
“No, you have a duty,” Les said out loud.
Ada and Eevi looked up from their stations.
“Sir, are you okay?” Ada asked.
“Fine. Sorry,” Les replied.
Timothy walked over and said, “Captain, I’m happy to take over in the search if you would like to go to your quarters to rest.”
“I’m fine,” Les said. He got up from his chair and walked over to the porthole. Blue fire burst in the clouds below them.
They were fifty miles east of the Vanguard Islands, on the final leg of their mission to check on the Lion. The hurricane had barreled into the area with almost zero warning, thanks to the electrical storms, and the crew hadn’t reported in for several hours.
This was again likely a result of the electrical disturbance, but he wanted to be sure. Losing one of their three warships—especially now, with the message from Rio de Janeiro and the threat of the defectors, would be a terrible blow to their small fleet.
“Hail them again, Lieutenant Winslow,” Les said.
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
Even in his exhausted state, Les could tell that his XO didn’t agree with coming out here. He wasn’t the only one changed by death. Ada, too, knew the trauma of loss. Her peppy, selfless attitude had darkened, leaving her prickly and angry. Most of that anger was directed at the people who had killed her mentor, Captain DaVita.