The divers never jumped from this spot, but the cable system was here, and it was built to carry heavy cargoes.
The wind howled through an open hatch in the deck, where three technicians were lowering the two hoist cables.
Alfred looked up. “Sir, due respect, but what are you doing here?”
“Helping.” Les put his helmet on and secured it with a click. Moving over to the technicians, he gripped the handle and peered down into the water while the cables lowered.
Les opened a channel to the bridge. “Timothy, do you copy?”
“Copy, sir.”
“Tell the captain to get all crew into that…” His words trailed off when he saw that the ship’s rescue boat was no longer mounted in its davits on the side of the warship.
“Did they already abandon ship?” Les asked. He saw movement on the deck—several Cazadores leaning into the steady wind, waving their arms in the air.
“Sir, I did not catch your last,” Timothy said, “but the secondary rescue boat was lost in a wave.”
Les scanned the warship. A half-dozen containers were still chained down on the deck. The bow climbed over another mountain of seawater, then vanished for a moment.
The wind pushed on the hovering airship, jolting it slightly. He gripped the handle harder and shouted, “Hold us steady!”
The wind roared in the open hatch, and rain clattered against his armor. He strained for a better view, spotting the Lion as it rose onto another wave.
“Timothy, tell the captain to get every sailor and soldier aboard into one of the containers,” Les said. “We will pull them up and transport them back to the islands.”
“Sir, the weight could be too much,” Alfred protested. “Especially in this storm.”
“Do it,” Les said.
Alfred gave a reluctant nod to the two other technicians. They went back to work, and Les bent down to watch. Another wall of water hit the hull of the warship, but the containers all held.
A moment later, the Cazadores aboard the Lion streamed out toward the cluster of containers. He thought of the container that Katrina had found before reaching the islands, where the Cazador crew had stored human captives for their flesh. Ton and Victor, two of the survivors, now fought in the militia. Like Ada, neither man seemed to have forgiven the Cazadores for what they had done.
For a fleeting second, Les considered letting the bastards all drown. But doing so would make him no better than they, and if the Cazadores back home found out, it would ignite another war.
Static crackled in his helmet. “Sir, you’re not going to believe this, but I’m picking up another message from the source of the signal in Rio de Janeiro,” Eevi said.
“What…” Les stuttered. “What are they saying?”
“They’re asking for our location, sir.”
The message made Les freeze in place. “Do not respond yet,” he said.
“Roger that, sir.”
His mind raced with the possibilities. Was this real? Was it a trap?
He pushed them aside to focus on the lowering hoist cables. They had reached the deck of the Lion. Les bent down and watched the technicians using an automated system to clamp on to the top of the container at both ends.
“It’s secure, sir,” said Alfred.
The last personnel on the Lion ran out onto the deck, sliding and falling and then pushing themselves back up before clambering into the container. They closed the doors to keep out the wind and rain.
“Bring them up,” Les said. “Timothy, hold us as steady as you can.”
“Will do, sir,” replied the AI.
The clank of the cable windlass echoed in the room. The container rose off the deck, leaving the Lion to drift aimlessly—a ghost ship with no one at the helm.
Another wave slammed into the bow, inundating the weather deck.
Les gripped the safety handle again, holding tight.
The container was halfway up now.
“It’s a lot of weight,” Alfred said.
“The cables will hold,” Les said. He opened a line back to the bridge. “Hold us steady, Timothy. Once the container is locked into place, we head back above the storm.”
The load swayed slightly, and the hull groaned and creaked.
“Sir, I’m having a hard time keeping us steady,” Timothy reported.
“Too much weight,” Alfred repeated.
“I said it’ll hold,” Les said. “The cables can carry far more than that.”
“But the storm—”
The ship lurched, cutting the AI off.
“Shit!” one of the techs yelled.
“Oh, God, no!” cried the other.
Les looked down in time to see the container splash down into the sea. The ocean swallowed it in an instant, as if it were nothing more than a pebble.
The cables swung loosely in the wind.
Les yelled, “What the hell happened!”
The technicians all shook their heads. “That wasn’t us,” Alfred said.
“The cables didn’t just snap!” Les shouted.
Another voice came over the comms channel in his helmet, hard and flat.
“Let them drown,” Ada said. “They deserve worse.”
EIGHT
The storm beat the shutters covering the council chamber windows. X sat on the ridiculous throne, his hands folded into a pyramid that covered the gray stubble on his square jaw.
There was much to contemplate tonight, despite the fatigue weighing on him. His joints, his muscles—everything hurt, even his liver. And he hadn’t even been drinking—not the hard stuff, anyway, although he was starting to enjoy wine. “It’s basically fruit juice,” he kept telling everyone.
This wasn’t the first time he had stayed up for two days straight. In the wastes, he had survived days on end without more than a few hours’ sleep.
Miles, on the other hand, needed his rest now more than ever. The old Siberian husky hybrid slept on the tile floor in front of the throne, his fur rising and falling gently with each breath.
Having the dog with him kept X calm in the face of an uncomfortable reality. In a matter of hours, the truce between his people and the Cazadores had been threatened not once, but twice, by the actions of two criminally stupid individuals.
Everything he had worked so hard for over the past few months was suddenly on the verge of crashing down like an airship into the wastes. It had started when a Cazador mechanic smashed in the head of DJ, an engineer on Samson’s crew, with a length of pipe.
Then Lieutenant Ada Winslow had dropped a shipping container full of Cazadores into the ocean. And all this while they were still facing humanity’s greatest threat of alclass="underline" the defectors. The machines were out there, and X had a feeling it was going to be a race against time to save the survivors in Rio de Janeiro from them. Indeed, the defectors may already have reached the shores of Brazil and begun looking for the bunker. It was also possible they had been there all along and the message was from them. The implications filled X with dread.
He looked up as the double doors at the end of the chamber creaked open. Rhino walked inside, bowing slightly.
“King Xavier,” he said, “I’ve gathered the people you requested.
“Bring them in.”
Rhino motioned for the group to enter. Leading them was Captain Mitchells, still in his white uniform. Lieutenant Sloan, Sergeant Wynn, and three militia soldiers followed, their armored bodies surrounding Lieutenant Ada Winslow and Ensign Eevi Corey.
X rose from his seat, resting his hand on the pommel of his sword. Miles glanced up and then let out a sigh and rested his head back on his paws.