She muttered a curse. “You’re never going to listen to me, are you?”
X grinned. “Probably not.” He pointed at the radio. “If Captain Mitchells sends another transmission, be careful what you say, just in case our enemies are listening.”
“Understood, sir.”
X patted Miles on the head. “I’ll be back soon, buddy.”
Rhino opened the door, and they stepped out into the sunshine. A short walk brought them into a stairwell they took down to the boat port. A fishing boat waited in the shadows near the back of the moorings, past the fancy boats.
Mac sat behind the wheel. In the seat beside him, Felipe honed a blade. Both men wore hooded anoraks with long sleeves. Rhino put his on as soon as he got in the boat.
“Isaiah moored the Angry Tuna there this morning,” Mac said. “He’s already in position.”
X took a seat between Rhino and Felipe as Mac fired up the engine. He was surrounded by Cazador warriors heading out to kill more Cazador warriors. It seemed crazy that keeping humanity alive required so much killing.
There was a reason the world had ended, and this was it, X thought to himself. The machines may have helped speed up the process, but basic human greed had all but doomed his species. He had never understood this simple truth before now.
X gripped the sword that Katrina had used in battle against the Cazadores. She had given her life to save their people, and Michael and Les were out there doing what they had to do. Now it was his turn. If it meant slicing open Vargas’s throat, so be it. He probably should have done that on day one.
The boat sped away from the capitol rig in warm sunlight. X kept his hood pulled up to hide his face from curious eyes. He didn’t look over his shoulder, afraid that if he did, he would change his mind about this crazy scheme.
“Listen up,” Mac said. “This plan is simple, but we all have a role.”
Felipe tilted his head, and Rhino translated.
“Once we get to the rig, we enter through a ladder on the eastern side,” Mac said. “From there, we go through the inside of the rig, avoiding all the open trading areas.”
The boat hit a wave at an angle and slewed a little sideways. Mac straightened out and backed the throttle off a notch. “The brothel Vargas visits is just off an open area, and there are two floors above it that give a clear view of the front entrance.”
“That’s where Isaiah is going to be?” Rhino asked.
“Yes. He’ll take out the front guards with his bow while we enter through the back. There will be at least two more guards there, maybe three, that we have to kill before we get to Vargas, who should be busy when we arrive.”
“You’re sure he isn’t a thirty-second kind of guy?” X asked. “He always seemed like one. I ask because that gives us a very small window.”
Mac laughed. “The shop owner is a friend of mine. She said Vargas typically goes for the full treatment, including a long massage.”
“And the girl?” X asked. “Is she in on this?”
“No, but I’ll make sure she gets a really good tip and doesn’t say a word.”
X didn’t like that she would see their faces, but that was the least of his worries right now. The Praetorian Guards were all skilled in close-quarters fighting. They had to surprise these guys and kill them fast. Sure, he could go in blasting with his new weapon slung over his robe, but there were too many civilians in the area for a shoot-out. This would require precision and sharp swords.
“We do this clean,” X said. “Clean and fast.”
Rhino explained the rest of the plan to Felipe. The young man grinned and went back to honing an already razor-edged small knife with a curving blade. An identical blade was sheathed on his belt.
“Heads up,” Mac said. “Almost there.”
The trading-post rig appeared small on the horizon, but even at this reduced speed they would be there in minutes. X used the time to rehearse everything in his mind.
He prayed that Michael, Magnolia, Rodger, and Sofia made it back to the airship safely, but the horrific losses filled him with a deep dread. Looking out at the horizon, he also wondered where Ada was.
X would never admit this to Rhino, but when he went to visit her, he had actually gone there to kill her. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it, so instead, he had helped her escape.
“Come back in five years,” he had said, “and I will welcome you back to the islands.”
It was half the time he had spent alone on the surface, and if she survived as he had, then he would forgive her for her sins.
The map he had given Ada was to the place in Florida where he had lived several years. If she could get there, she would have access to the resources that had kept him alive until the sky people landed and rescued him.
But he doubted she would make it that far. In a way, X had effectively killed her by sending her out there.
“Here we go,” Mac said. Felipe hopped up on the bow and eased the craft into a mooring between two tethered boats.
Notes from a guitar and several wind instruments drifted away from the trading post. The tone was calming, beautiful even.
This was it. Time to fight again. And as always, he would rise to the occasion, ready to fight for humanity even if it meant losing more of his own.
The vines had burrowed deep inside the earth, forming tunnels wide enough for a person to navigate. Michael and Sofia had scrambled into one of them but now had to crawl as it narrowed.
After an hour, they finally came to a chamber that let them get off their bellies. Michael managed to get into a crouch, and Sofia came up on her armored kneepads.
“We’re lost,” she said.
“I know that.”
Sofia twisted and stretched her torso. “Now that we can turn around, maybe we should get back topside,” she said. “Edgar and Arlo are gone. You have to accept that, Commander.”
“I have, but I haven’t given up on finding the people who took them.”
“Why? What’s the point? Are you going to kill them? Kill the people we came to save?”
Michael wasn’t sure what he was going to do. He just knew he wanted to find the survivors, even if they turned out to be Edgar and Arlo’s killers.
He looked at his wrist computer, checking to make sure Rodger and Magnolia were still alive. Both their beacons came online. They appeared close. In fact, they seemed to be somewhere right above him and Sofia.
“How is that possible?” Michael whispered. He considered using the comm channel, but he didn’t know who might be out there listening.
Sofia wiped grime and sap off her visor and said, “Commander, my battery’s at forty percent and I’m almost out of water. I could use something to eat, too.”
Michael checked the data on his subscreen. The radiation and air toxicity were surprisingly much lower underground than above and kept getting better the deeper they descended.
He pulled a sealed energy bar from his vest pocket. “You should be okay to open your visor for a minute or two,” he said. “Go ahead. I’m going to eat something, too.”
Over their chewing, they began to hear the faint sound of voices echoing in the passage.
“Do you hear that?” Sofia said.
Michael nodded and shut off his helmet light. She did the same. Darkness swallowed the divers, but it wasn’t the pitch black that scared him—it was the voices.
“Can you make out what they’re saying?” Michael asked.
“Sounds like Spanish, but I can’t make it out.”
“I thought the people we came here to save spoke Portuguese.”
“Maybe not all of them,” she said. “And Portuguese sounds a lot like Spanish, only softer.”