“Dive with me!” he yelled. “For X, and Mags, and Miles, and humanity!”
They all cheered as Michael leaped out of the cargo hold. The others followed, each of them shouting the Hell Diver motto as they stepped up to the edge and jumped.
“We dive so humanity survives!”
Michael dived headfirst, tucking his arms against his body. For the first few seconds, he felt the usual weightlessness as he speared through the clearest skies of his diving career. It didn’t take long to work into an aerodynamic position. There were no crosswinds here, no turbulence threatening the stable fall. He checked his HUD for the other beacons. The other dots beeped on the minimap, and he watched the Metal Islands grow larger.
As he rocketed toward the ocean, he checked the naval battle raging to the east. Katrina was vastly outnumbered. Some forty boats were attacking her. But none of them were warships like the USS Zion.
The light from muzzle flashes and explosive detonations flickered over the water.
He stared down at the capitol tower, searching for any aerial defenses protruding from the tower’s walls. He noted a platform about two thirds of the way up, but he saw no heavy weapons.
And why would they have them? They probably had never been attacked from the sky in all the history of their settlement here. They had probably never been attacked at all.
At ten thousand feet, he glanced over his shoulder. In the green backdrop of his NVGs, he identified the long frame of Les Mitchells cutting through the sky, head down, body straight as a spear. He had almost caught up to Michael.
Good to have you with me, Giraffe.
As Michael looked back down at the capitol tower, a flash of light broke through the darkness. Something streaked past him.
It took him a brief moment to realize that the Cazadores had fired something at the divers. The explosion came several seconds later, like the boom of nearby thunder. Another look behind him revealed that the shell wasn’t meant for the divers after all.
The cannon, or whatever they had fired into the sky, was aimed at Deliverance. Bright orange flames bloomed by the airship’s starboard hull.
Michael bumped on his comm channel. “Layla, get out of there!”
“What the hell was that?” she replied.
Another shot whistled past the divers, this one cutting right between Trey and Alexander. They rolled out of their nosedive, losing their angle and spinning away.
Michael flinched as Deliverance vanished in a blast of orange.
“NO-O-O-O-O-O-O!” he shouted.
He stared into the sky, not daring to blink.
“Layla!” he yelled. “Layla!”
The explosion faded away, and the shape of Deliverance returned. He remembered to breathe.
“Get out of there!” he yelled.
And the airship did appear to be moving.
“We’ve taken damage,” Layla said. “Turbofans one and two are out.”
“Use the thrusters!”
Static crackled over the channel, drowning out her response.
Michael’s altitude was down to fifty-five hundred feet, with the top of the tower a few hundred feet closer. The fear of losing the airship and everyone on it terrified him.
He looked away from the altimeter reading, to something else that made his stomach knot. The saucerlike roof of the capitol tower wasn’t just any curved plate of metal. It was the remains of an airship.
He was wrong earlier. An airship had indeed come here, and if Layla didn’t get Deliverance out of here, the Cazadores were going to have a second trophy to add to their collection.
Now he knew why Magnolia sent the message. Katrina had underestimated their enemy. He had underestimated them.
Michael shook off the tentacles of fear. The only way to survive was to fight. He scanned the forty-story capitol tower for the weapon that had fired on Deliverance.
“Does anyone have eyes on that cannon?” he yelled.
“Negative,” Les replied.
So far, he didn’t think Team Raptor had been spotted, but the moment they opened their chutes, they were going to be targets for small-arms fire. The tower had plenty of places to hide weapons, and hundreds of windows to shoot from. On the airship rooftop, a forest of trees surrounded a central amphitheater or stadium, but he didn’t see any threats. He glanced back up at the sky.
Alexander and Trey had both managed to move back into stable position. Far above them, the airship was gaining altitude, using its thrusters to put some distance between it and the cannon below.
“I think I saw one of the shots come from the top of that tower!” Vish shouted over the comms.
At three thousand feet, he could see individual trees growing around the perimeter of some sort of arena or ball field, but no weapons.
There was only one way to locate the cannon: watch the next shot. It came a beat later as a third shell streaked away. He had it.
The cannon was hidden by the tree cover. An explosion flashed overhead, but Deliverance was now safely out of range.
Michael bit down on his mouth guard, feeling the most dangerous emotion of alclass="underline" hope.
All right, you sons of bitches. Team Raptor is coming for you.
A second ticked by as he prepared for the most important fight of his life. Now he saw that it was also going to be the most difficult fight of his life.
A small army crouched in the cover of the trees, waiting for the small fire team of Hell Divers. Michael was close enough that he could see them aiming rifles and pistols into the sky.
“Hostiles in the trees!” he barked over the comms.
“Copy that,” Les replied.
The other beacons on Michael’s HUD winked in acknowledgment. Flashes suddenly flickered across the canopy of trees.
Tracer rounds cut through the air, lighting the predawn skies up with the glow of war. Gunfire from a hidden .50-cal machine gun swept the air. Michael was close enough to hear the sharp cracking sound, and then a scream in his ear.
“Watch out!”
It was Les. He maneuvered right next to Michael, tilting his visor to look back at Trey. The green flashes raked back and forth.
“Fan out, fan out!” Michael yelled.
They were falling in stable position at two thousand feet now, slowing down before pulling their pilot chutes. As he checked his HUD, a beacon winked out above him.
Michael shot a glance back to see Vish spinning away, an arm and a leg blown off by the rounds.
Higher in the sky, Deliverance was crossing over the stars, like a black beetle walking over shiny bits of broken glass. A red spark streaked away from the belly of Deliverance.
Michael blinked, thinking at first that the ship had caught fire. But the spark turned into a projectile zipping toward him. A present for Team Raptor.
The missile cut through the sky, screaming past the divers and detonating in the middle of the forest, in the most beautiful explosion Michael had ever seen. The blast erased the gunfire and sent burning human shapes in all directions—some flying through the air, others running, others crawling.
Michael pulled his chute and ordered his team to do the same. The suspension lines drew taut, jerking him back into the sky, or so it always felt. Before grabbing the toggles, he pulled out a smoke grenade and dropped it in the dirt surrounding a sports arena like the one they had landed on in Florida.
“DZ is the smoke!” Michael said over the comms.
Cazador soldiers ran from the burning forest, several of them collapsing and rolling in the dirt. A husky man on fire jumped off the side of the tower—a big, slow meteor plummeting to the sea.