X calmly looked to Imulah.
“He said that you are not worthy of the crown, and that’s why all your people will die by the metal gods.”
Moreto mumbled something next.
“She said you may have defeated them here, but the sky people and the traitorous Cazadores will all die soon…” Imulah paused.
“What?” X asked.
“She said the islands are burning.”
“What does that mean?” X asked.
He had a feeling that it meant what it sounded like. That the defectors had reached their home. And X was helpless to stop it now—with Shadow and Renegade sunk, they had no way to make it home.
Moreto spoke again but was silenced by a crack that made X flinch. The flare from Rodger’s blaster burst against the side of Moreto’s head, setting her hair on fire.
Horn let out a scream of agony as his mother wailed. He yanked up on the blades pinning his hands down.
X pulled the spear, freeing one hand.
Swiveling his head, Horn focused a soulless gaze of rage at X.
His mouth opened to let out a scream, but X cut it short with a stroke of the blade across his throat. Horn reached up to stanch the blood as pink bubbles burst from his lips.
Moreto, still burning, writhed in agony.
Aiming the blaster, Rodger pulled the trigger. A dozen double-aught pellets hit her in the chest, silencing her. Rodger dropped the weapon to the ground and leaned on Magnolia, sobbing.
X watched as Horn kicked at the ground, still fighting for life. He bent down over him with the spear still in his grip.
“For Rhino,” he said, and staked Horn through his icy heart.
Leaving the blade in his chest, X walked away, only to flinch as a voice shouted in the distance.
“Boats on the beach!”
X turned away from Horn and Moreto. “Who?” he shouted.
“I don’t know,” the militia scout yelled back. “But Raven’s Claw is still out there.”
“Get ready,” X said. “This ain’t over!”
The soldiers trained their weapons on the boatyard. Ton stuck by Victor, their backs against a brick wall. Both men held pistols.
Brett handed X a blaster.
“Thanks for coming back for me,” X said. He took the weapon and stood next to the militia soldier, with Miles by his side.
“It’s okay, boy,” he said. “Stay close.”
The dog’s tail whipped inside its hazard suit.
Flashlight beams hit the scrapyard. X scanned the shadows for the enemy forces coming to avenge their leader.
The wait wasn’t long. Faint silhouettes moved in the scrapyard. Someone launched a flare.
“Hold your fire!” Magnolia yelled.
In the flare’s glow, a group of Cazador soldiers strode out. One wore a burned and frayed orange cape.
General Forge led a group of twenty men, some holding spears, others down to knives. All the blades were bloody. They ran up, then slowed to take in the battlefield.
Magnolia breathed a sigh of relief and turned to X, smiling.
But she knew this wasn’t over, and so did X.
“We have to get back to the Vanguard Islands,” X said. “The killing won’t stop until all the machines are destroyed.”
FORTY-ONE
“We found survivors…”
Michael’s radio message was garbled and staticky. Les heard most of it. He also heard the panicked screams in the background.
It lasted only a few seconds, but those seconds changed everything.
Fear took his fatigued body hostage as he tried to think what to do. Breaking radio silence could give away his and Sofia’s position behind some metal platforms in a supply yard.
Since landing on the roof of a low warehouse, they had climbed down but were forced to hide in the maze of construction equipment.
At either end of the supply yard, a defector stood inside a small metal kiosk that had shielded them from view earlier. Their visors were dark. Normally, they glowed.
Something was different about their arms, too. Instead of hands, they had sharp blades.
“Defectors are surrounding… can’t escape,” Michael said over the comms. “Must get to the tower.”
Les tried to make sense of the second part, resisting the urge to ask. But he couldn’t just crouch here and listen.
He had to do something.
He hand-signaled his plan to Sofia. She would neutralize the defector at the north entrance of the supply yard, and he would take out the one to the east. They parted, heading opposite directions. He crept between the rows, laser rifle forward, until he got about ten feet from the machine. A pulsing light glowed around the final row of stacked metal platforms.
Les readied his rifle and moved around the other side to fire a bolt into the machine, which must have heard him coming—it had left the kiosk.
Hearing a clank behind him, he ducked just as the robot jabbed a blade down at him from atop a stack of metal platforms. The sharp point of the second blade glowed red hot as it grew like an extendable baton.
Les tried to fire his laser rifle, but the machine jumped down behind him. He dived to avoid the blade, but it punched into his booster. Helium hissed out of the cannister.
He rolled to his back and fired a bolt, but the defector lay slumped to the side, the skull sizzling with an orange hole through the temple.
Sofia lowered her laser rifle and reached down to Les.
“Thanks,” he said. “I owe you one.”
She followed him out of the supply yard, passing the other defector, which she had fried with a bolt to the battery unit. Les slowed as he walked through a gate that opened to a street. It was the main artery through the base, but there wasn’t much concealment here besides a few trees and clumps of weeds growing in the alleys between buildings.
The patrols he had seen earlier were gone—it wasn’t hard to guess where to. He tried to get a view of the warehouse where Michael and Arlo had landed. Just as he rounded the corner of a building for a look, the comms hissed again.
“Factories… mainframe… You have to get to… They have…”
Les retreated behind a fence of weeds growing outside the supply yard. He and Sofia looked out at the egg-colored silos rising over the next block. Their smoke plumes had ceased.
“The factories house the mainframe?” he whispered.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Les slipped deeper into the weeds, using them to get to the side of a building. Stopping at the corner, he sneaked a look down the street to the western edge of the base.
At the far end of the complex, drones hovered over the multilevel warehouses. Those had to be where Michael and Arlo had discovered the human prisoners.
“What do we do?” Sofia asked.
At the creak of robotic joints, he motioned her down. The ground trembled. It wasn’t just drones that Michael and Arlo had drawn to their location.
Two tanks with segmented legs came from the direction of the factories. Les and Sofia froze as they charged past the weeds.
After they passed, he raised his head to check them out.
The weapons turret was built on a central core unit. An orange glow came from small windows in the side that must house the battery unit powering the tank.
Over the crunching of the massive feet came another mechanical noise.
Les went down again as four defector units strode after the tanks. Sofia kept her helmet tilted toward him. He couldn’t see her eyes, but they had to be as wide as his.
He moved his finger to the trigger of his laser rifle, ready to open fire. But they kept marching, the orange glow of their visors receding through the weeds.
Les watched them head for the warehouse, where another patrol joined them.
Then another.