“Be careful, kid,” X said loudly enough for everyone to hear. “We don’t know if there are more threats out there.”
“I will.”
Michael made his way up to the bow, next to one of the mounted machine guns. On the other boats, Hell Divers had already punched their boosters and were ballooning skyward.
Reaching over his back, Michael fired his canister, and a balloon shot out, filling with helium that swung him up off the armored deck. He watched the sparkling water below, and the war boat bobbing on light chop.
X raised his left hand, and Michael waved back.
Then he turned his attention to the other rigs, scanning the devastation. Smoke rose off the Hive, but the fires appeared to be out. Many boats that had helped fight the flames were now on their way to the rig where the remaining oil tanker had exploded.
Thick plumes of smoke followed the Hell Divers. Michael steadied his breathing. The slow ascent made him and the other divers easy targets for any skinwalker waiting to strike.
Even with the militia, Colonel Forge’s troops, and the Barracudas holding security, it would take a single shot to deflate the balloon of a helpless diver. At a thousand feet, they would have little time to pull their chutes.
Michael looked up at the clouds, trying not to think about the threats that could still be on the surface. All around him, the other divers rose toward the ceiling of bulging cottony clouds.
The cover had likely saved Discovery from destruction. On a clear day, the skinwalkers would have had an easy target.
Arlo and Edgar were almost to the cloud cover. If someone was going to shoot them, they would have done so already, and chances were good they all were out of range by now.
One by one, the clouds absorbed the other divers. Michael was the last to enter the translucent haze. The higher he rose, the thicker it became, until he couldn’t see anything.
He kept his body relaxed in the harness connected to the helium balloon. The minutes ticked by with the altitude. The divers were safe from enemy bullets and rockets, but it was still an agonizingly slow climb. On the way back to the airship, it always was.
Normally, Michael used the downtime to calm his mind after an adrenaline-fueled dive and surface run. Today was no different.
The rush of adrenaline had slowed to a trickle, but he still didn’t know who had perished in the ambush—only that several important people were missing, including Lieutenant Sloan.
He had a bad feeling that she had died in the initial explosions and fallen into the ocean. If that were the case, they would never find her body.
And he still didn’t know whether Layla and Bray had been harmed when she fell. He wanted to be down there with them now, but duty called.
He cursed the gnawing guilt. Layla deserved so much more than this. She deserved a husband, and Bray deserved a good father.
Michael wanted more than anything to be both. But how could he do that when a war was coming? The war that X had warned him of before he even left for Rio de Janeiro.
He had promised Layla that he would back off after saving the people from the bunker there. But the attack by the skinwalkers, and unknown location of the defectors reminded him they would never be safe until both threats were destroyed.
Captain Mitchells was correct. Until the islands were safe, they couldn’t rest.
Fighting and diving were in his blood, right down to the marrow of his bones. Michael was a Hell Diver, and he wouldn’t stop jumping until his family could live in peace.
At eight thousand feet, the cloud cover began to lighten. When he finally broke through, the sun’s glare dazzled him.
Using his wrist computer, Michael brought up the sunshield on his visor. The tint eased the glare, but it took several moments for his eyes to adjust. Even then the green halo made it difficult to see.
He twisted in his harness for a view to the west. He spotted the balloon carrying Edgar, but no Discovery.
He turned to the south. Nothing there but Sofia and Hector.
Smoke drifted east of him—the same direction as the destroyed oil tanker and the rig the fire had consumed. But they were at almost fifteen thousand feet now. The smoke from a surface fire couldn’t be that thick, not even from a burning tanker. Then he saw the source of the smoke.
A horizontal trail curved to the northeast—a dark plume in Discovery’s wake. It reminded him of the dark, greasy exhaust from the motorcycle he had ridden in Florida.
Arlo was the closest diver. He fired a flare that burst into a dazzling display of red sparks. The airship moved slowly, using only turbofans, no thrusters.
Michael had a feeling the newly repaired thrusters had been destroyed, but he couldn’t see through the billowing smoke from the stern.
The balloon pulled him higher, and to avoid climbing too high, he let some of the helium escape. The other divers would be doing the same thing, waiting for Les to spot them and scoop them up.
The wait was even more agonizing than the climb, and Michael feared that Les had been injured or killed in the explosion.
It would take time for all the divers to get aboard. Judging from the sheer volume of smoke, he marveled that Discovery was still in the sky.
Arlo fired a second flare, and this time someone on the airship saw it.
A bank of thrusters fired, booming in the distance.
Relief washed over Michael. It lasted for a second or two—until he realized that it wasn’t the stern that had been hit.
The snaking trail of smoke dissipated as the airship maneuvered toward Arlo. The new angle provided a different view.
Michael saw then why no one on the bridge had seen them right away. An entire section of the bow was gone, exposing the bridge, or what remained of it. Michael pulled out the binoculars and hesitated an instant, afraid to look.
Smoke wafted from a gaping hole on the bow. Twisted metal and jagged Plexiglas were all that remained in the main impact area that had punched through the outer and inner hull.
White ash coated the aluminum framework, making it look like mangled bones. One light still shone on the bridge, spreading a white glow over the shambles.
The interior deck and several of the stations had survived the blast, but the captain’s chair was empty.
Michael zoomed in with the binos but didn’t see Les, Eevi, or any of the crew who had boarded. But then something moved with the white light.
It was Timothy. The AI walked in front of the vacant captain’s chair, hands clasped behind him, looking out through the new window in the hull. He stood there stoically, watching the divers as the ship lowered to pick them up.
Moonlight streamed through the open hatches of the council chamber. X sat on his throne, looking down at Miles, who had a fresh bandage on his back. Like his dog, X also had a new bandage, covering where a Siren had raked his chest.
The nanotech gel had helped his arm heal, and pain medicine was keeping him functioning, but he was starting to feel the effects of fatigue and his injuries.
Ton and Victor stood at the bottom of the stairs, spears in hand. They, too, had bandages over fresh wounds, but that didn’t hinder them from standing straight and guarding their king.
Rhino would have done the same thing. X missed the big man now more than ever. Seeing the boat with the burning corpse had probably fueled him in the fight against the Sirens. They had won the day, but it sure didn’t feel like a victory.
Guilt gnawed at his stomach while he sat waiting to learn whether the Vanguard Islands were secure. For now, it seemed the battle was over, but he wanted confirmation. It was too dangerous to send messages over the radio, but according to his scouts, Discovery had landed at the secret location—a place that no skinwalker would think to go.