Looking at her tablet, Eevi rattled off the new inventory.
“Ten assault rifles, two thousand rounds of ammunition, and a tank of gasoline with over five hundred gallons remaining,” she said.
“Excellent,” Katrina said.
Eevi continued, explaining the cache of frozen fish found in the belly of the ship that would last months if they could keep it cold. Even better, the ten captured Cazadores had jumped overboard when she aimed the MK-65 at the container ship’s hull.
The sharks had gotten their fill of meat over the past few days, and after seeing the butcher shop aboard the container ship, Katrina didn’t feel even a twinge of empathy.
Next on the chopping block was el Pulpo.
She planned to kill the bastard herself, just as she had Captain Leon Jordan. But first, she needed to sharpen the sword hanging from her belt.
The thought snapped her back to reality. She had much to do before she could hack off the cannibal king’s head.
“Captain, we just picked up something on radar,” Sandy said over the comms. “Looks like Deliverance. They’re coming in from the southwest.”
Katrina lifted her binos off the porthole sill and pointed them to the southwest, using the night-vision optics to scan the clouds. She held them for several minutes until she saw the flames from the six thrusters appear through the clouds. The sight filled her with pride… and adrenaline.
“Let’s go,” she said to Eevi.
They climbed back down to the bridge, where Jaideep, Edgar, and Sandy sat patiently at their stations.
“Okay, people, this is it,” Katrina said. “You all know what to do. You have the bridge, Eevi. I’ll be in the cargo hold.”
She moved through the USS Zion as fast as she could, going through the plan in her head. Everything that happened from here on out had to go smoothly, or the entire plan would derail.
When she got to the cargo bay, the door was already open. The wind outside was blowing the rain sideways.
Alexander, Trey, and Vish watched over the captives they had moved over from the container ship. There had been twenty-one new people, but a blanket covered the recently deceased woman, dropping the number to twenty. A grieving man knelt beside the body.
This was just the beginning.
Katrina took a quick inventory of the other newcomers. Only five men were in any sort of fighting condition. Victor was the leader, but he could speak only a few words of English, and communication was difficult. That would change, she hoped, when Deliverance showed up and she had Timothy to translate.
A draft of wind hit her as she made her way around the group. She put a hand to her bruised ribs. It still hurt like hell to breathe deeply.
Deliverance’s turbofans whirred as the airship moved into position, its smooth black belly hovering five hundred feet above the stealth warship. One of the children pointed at the sky, and all the newly liberated people looked up in wonder, as if at an alien craft descending from the heavens.
Katrina smiled and nodded at all the new faces. Most of them looked at her with wrinkled brows, untrusting.
She couldn’t blame them. This was only the second group of outsiders most of them had ever seen, and she didn’t fully trust any of them yet, either.
She moved over to the open door as Deliverance rotated a few degrees to hover over the USS Zion. The cargo bay in the warship’s belly opened. A rope dropped from the airship, and the blue glow of a battery unit came sliding down it. The moment the diver unclipped from the rope, another diver emerged from the airship and rappelled down into the cargo bay.
Footsteps clattered in the cargo bay as the captives from the container ship all got up for a better view of the two Hell Divers, one of whom was a good foot taller than the other.
Alexander and Vish remained standing guard, but Trey ran over to greet his father.
“Dad!” he yelled.
Les hurried over and hugged his boy.
“Captain,” he said, nodding to Katrina.
“Good to see you again, Lieutenant,” she said.
Layla took off her helmet, smiled, and went to give Katrina a hug, then stopped when she saw the thick bandage around her chest.
“That doesn’t look good,” Layla said.
“It’s not a big deal,” Katrina said. “How are you?”
Layla shrugged, and Katrina looked back up at the airship, sensing that her friend was worried about something besides the imminent battle.
“So where is Commander Everhart?” Katrina asked.
“Med bay, healing from his procedure,” Layla said.
“Procedure?”
“He’s got a surprise to show you,” Les said.
“I guess I’m heading up to Deliverance for a bit,” Katrina replied. “I’ll go with these people once we work out a bucket system to get them up there.”
Layla turned to look at the recently freed prisoners. “What are we going to do with them?” she asked.
Les and Layla took a long look at the haggard lot, who seemed to be studying them in return, as if they were alien creatures from another planet.
“I hope you have a plan,” Les said.
“I do,” Katrina said. “We’re going to save these people. Just as we’re going to save X, Magnolia, and Miles.”
TWENTY-ONE
Michael moved the index finger of his new hand. That was the intention, anyway. He stared at the robotic fingers, willing them to move. One by one, he flexed them, curled them, wiggled them in the air. Then he clenched them into a titanium-alloy fist.
“How does it feel, Commander?” Timothy asked.
“Uh, it feels weird.”
He sat up straighter, his back resting against the plastic frame of the bed in Deliverance’s medical ward. The spider had connected his nerve endings and muscles to the hyperalloy robotic arm from Red Sphere, and the nanotechnology was working to make the connections heal faster than normal—much faster.
Michael unclenched his robotic hand and moved the fingers, clumsily at first, but he already had them doing things that the real ones could not.
It was just Michael and the AI in the private quarters, but Michael could hear commotion outside. The prisoners Katrina had freed on the container ship were being moved to the airship for medical treatment.
“This is really weird,” Michael said.
“Sir, it will take some getting used to,” Timothy said. “The nanotechnology will strengthen the connections between your nerves and muscles, and the wires from the robotic arm. You should be fully operational in a few days.”
Operational, Michael thought. Like a machine.
Having robotic parts, especially parts that had belonged to Dr. Julio Diaz, was starting to freak him out. It wasn’t until the spider finished the job and he woke up and saw his new arm that he really started thinking about what this would mean.
It means you can fight again. It means you can dive again.
“This was the only way,” Michael murmured.
“Pardon me, sir,” Timothy said. “I don’t understand your question.”
“Oh, nothing.”
Timothy cupped his hands behind his back. “Are you in any discomfort, Commander?”