It was a victory, but short-lived.
The swarm came together into a tight V formation six strong. Bolts punched into the Hive, blowing another hole in the side.
The Cazador pilot steered them in a wide arc around the flotsam of sunken boats.
Fires burned on three levels of the rig, but the drones had stopped their assault to concentrate their fire on Elysium.
Antiaircraft weapons on the warship pounded the sky, and two drones exploded. The other ten fanned out, then came back together into a chevron formation.
Bolts pierced the bow and slammed into the command tower. Soldiers on deck ran for cover as the squadron wheeled around for another run.
Ada looked around for the other warships. Where were they?
And where was X? The legendary Hell Diver would be out here, not hiding in the capitol tower.
She wondered again at the damage to the Hive. Something had happened when she was gone.
Darkness carpeted the ocean as the last drip of sun was swallowed by the outer edges of the Vanguard Islands. Flames from burning rigs reflected off the attacking drones.
It was easy to picture how they could have destroyed Discovery in a single pass if it were here. She prayed that Les had flown it somewhere safe. But that wasn’t in the captain and Hell Diver’s nature. Like X, he would be here in the thick of it, fighting to save their home.
She looked on as the soldiers on Elysium put up a last-ditch fight. The machine guns, cannons, and antiaircraft artillery blazed away as a new pack of drones left an adjacent rig to join the fight.
Together, the two aerial formations came in from starboard and port. Lasers pounded both sides at the same time.
A third formation had approached low over the water to avoid the ship’s defenses. They surged up into the sky, then made a strafing run over the deck. Soldiers dived overboard to avoid the brilliant wave of fire that erased the command tower.
The formations broke back into individual flight, and dozens of thrusters jetted purple flame as they moved on to new targets.
Then all at once, they took to the sky, vanishing into the clouds.
Jo-Jo clutched Ada’s leg as she looked out on the devastation. The injured Cazador and the fisherman wept beside her.
Plumes of smoke trailed away from the rigs, and a thick layer drifted over the water. Ada coughed as they motored through it.
Water sloshed nearly ankle deep in the boat. But they were almost to the capitol tower—close enough that they weren’t going to sink.
The boat emerged from the pall of smoke, and the airship rooftop came into view under the glow of a rising almost full moon.
Not a single Cazador or militia soldier stood on the docks of the capitol tower.
Boats rocked in the water, still moored where they had been left.
She jumped out when they pulled up, wincing as she landed on her injured foot. After getting Jo-Jo onto the dock, she helped the injured Cazador soldier. The fisherman who had piloted them here tied up the boat, then grabbed a rifle.
Ada wanted to scream for X, but she walked in silence. Her gut told her the king wasn’t here and neither were the Hell Divers.
Helping the injured Cazador with one arm and holding Jo-Jo in the other, she slogged toward the elevator cage. The fisherman went first, with his rifle shouldered. Looking skyward every few seconds, he slung his rifle and opened the elevator cage. Ada and the wounded soldier piled in, but Jo-Jo balked.
“It’s okay,” Ada said, stroking its bristly hair. The monkey trembled against her, letting out a whimper as the cage jolted and jerked upward.
The apocalyptic view took Ada’s breath away. She had been right about returning home to a war—just not the war she had expected.
As the cage rose higher, the fisherman pointed at the eastern horizon. A large vessel had broken through the outer barriers and stood bathed in moonlight.
She recognized the elongated warship. The aircraft carrier had arrived with its defector cargo to finish the job.
FORTY
X was tied to steel pipes that the skinwalkers had pounded into the ground. The irony wasn’t lost on him as they splayed his body out and tied him up in the shape of his nickname.
He raised his head, his vision swarming with fireflies.
Twin suns resolved themselves into torches that a pair of skinwalkers held. It wasn’t just the bone beast they were going to feed him to. Horn and his men planned to feast on the king’s flesh.
The former prince of the Metal Islands sat on a throne of dead bodies that the skinwalkers had piled up over the past hour. Orange gauze plugged the hole in his armor where X had plunged Rhino’s spear.
It had taken three skinwalkers to hold Horn down while a medic pulled the spear from below his collarbone. He had nearly strangled the medic before passing out. That had delayed the execution for a short time. Now he was awake again, and he seemed to like Moreto’s plan to barbecue X a piece at a time, forcing him to look on as he was being consumed. Horn sat there watching X and grinning while the fighting continued on Shadow and Raven’s Claw.
The skinwalker leader didn’t seem worried about the battle. He wasn’t even watching. X was, though not by choice. Hanging from the poles, he had a decent view of the ocean and the smoke drifting away from Shadow. The skinwalkers’ last submarine had pounded it with rockets a few minutes earlier, then vanished under the surface.
It would all be over soon, and X could do nothing to stop it.
He turned his head toward the surviving Barracudas. There were only two, one of them Willis, the English-speaker. Both were tied up next to Magnolia and Victor.
She lay in the dirt, hardly moving. Victor hadn’t moved for several minutes. He had taken two bullets, and X feared he had died of his injuries. Seeing his loyal guard gunned down like a beast when he had tried to help X was the breaking point.
X looped his fingers through the rope tying him to the pole and tried to move a foot, but they were too tight to budge. Both guards with torches walked closer. One thrust the torch toward his face. The intense heat warmed his flesh. He turned his head to the side for some relief, this time in the other direction.
The bone beast, still on its knees, chewed on the arm of a Barracuda soldier while awaiting the main course—X.
He drew in a rattling breath. For most of his adult life, his body had been pushed from one extreme to another. He had always defied the odds, survived when others died, and fought his way through what seemed impossible situations. A high pain tolerance and sheer stubbornness had helped. But it was over for him, and he knew it.
He had failed his people. Worst of all, he had doomed them by spreading them too thin. A good general would have dealt with one threat at a time. But all the good generals were dead—or about to be.
X looked at the bloody spearheads that had belonged to Rhino. He had come so close to killing Horn with them.
Magnolia squirmed in her restraints. Good, she still had fight left in her. And Victor moved again—another small cause for relief. The two warriors had journeyed far to fight with X, but they hadn’t been able to stop the evil.
A bright light flickered on the horizon. X tried to make it out. It wasn’t coming from Shadow or Raven’s Claw.
General Forge had destroyed the final submarine, leaving just the two warships. X held back a grin. Maybe there was a chance…
Another explosion blossomed in the distance. The skinwalkers on patrol all stopped to look. A man standing on a silo called out in Spanish, and the men all cheered.