The camouflaged beast bounded out and bolted for X, who still hadn’t seen it. There was no time to shout a warning—only enough time to get off a three-round burst.
The charging monster, dead on its feet, slammed into X and Miles, knocking them down like skittles.
Magnolia was running as soon as she finished firing. Her eyes swept the skyline for vultures and the field for more terrestrial predators, then back to X and Miles. When she got there, X was groaning under the weight of the dead hog. Miles was already up, tail wagging beneath the suit, which had bloody talon marks on the side.
“Nice shot, Mags,” X growled.
“No ‘thanks, kid’?” she asked.
Reaching down, she grabbed X and helped hoist him to his feet.
“Now, come on, old man. Let’s see if we can still chase down our boat and get off this nasty island.”
EIGHT
The clank of lockers and rustling of gear filled the launch bay on the Hive. Les nodded at the two guards standing sentry outside. Both were in their early fifties—on the Hive, a ripe old age.
“Good luck, Giraffe,” one of them said.
“Looks like you’re going to need it with them new young divers,” said the other. “I’d volunteer, but I don’t move as fast as I used to.”
When Les had gone to Sergeant Sloan, he requested older militia soldiers like these guys—the best she had, just as Katrina had instructed. His goal was to fill some of the launch tubes with people who could fight but who had already lived a good deal of their lives.
But once again the volunteers and recruits were mostly young people.
The old guys were standing guard outside the launch bay.
Les sighed and stepped inside the room where the new recruits and volunteers were suiting up. They’d been given some older gear that hadn’t been used in ages but was still in good condition.
Les was pretty sure it had once belonged to Michael, Layla, Erin, and Andrew, but they’d upgraded their armor and suits over the years.
Sandy gave him a little wave, which he returned with the nod of his head. Jed stood stock-still next to her, half suited up, looking at something in his hand. The young diver’s mouth was hanging partway open as he stared at a small sliver of paper. His lips moved, and then he stowed the object in his pocket and resumed the task of getting into his gear with his fellow recruits.
Les crossed the room, his mind racing. He still hadn’t seen the data Magnolia uploaded and sent them, and he was anxious to get back to Deliverance for a full report, but his first job was to start the new Hell Divers training with Erin.
He joined her at the wind tunnels, where she cupped her helmet under one arm, looking out over the youthful faces in front of them as they suited up and put on their armor.
“Finish armoring up,” Erin said. “We’ll begin in a few minutes.”
Trey nodded at Les from the front of the crowd. He had a freshly shaved head and about the same complement of pimples as the other teenagers in the group. Seeing his son standing there, shoulders straight, chin up, and talking with Jed Snow about their upcoming first dive gave Les a flash of anxiety.
First dive…
He was still catching up to the reality that his son had volunteered. But what could he do besides help train him to survive?
Les stood at a distance, watching and listening to their conversation.
“Why did you guys join up?” Jed asked.
Vish and Jaideep, still finishing up with their gear, exchanged a glance.
“There aren’t many job opportunities left,” Jaideep said.
Vish laughed. “More like no one would hire us.”
“I know the feeling,” Trey said.
Sandy and Jed smiled uneasily.
“How about you?” Vish asked.
Jed scratched at the stubble on his chin, and then pointed at the Raptor logo hanging from the bulkhead. “Commander Everhart and Layla Brower are my inspiration. They taught me what kindness and courage are, and now that I’ve recovered from the cough, it’s time to join them as a Hell Diver.”
“I’m here because I want to see the surface and help my family,” Sandy said. She batted long eyelashes and her light blue eyes met Jed’s, whose lips curled up slightly at the edges. Les could see a spark of passion there. Perhaps there was another reason Jed had volunteered. It wouldn’t be the first time a person volunteered to help protect those they cared about.
Les moved over to the other new recruits who were still working on their gear. Edgar Cervantes and his cousin, Ramon Ochoa, nodded at Les. Both men had fashionably long dreadlocks and close-trimmed dark beards. As members of the militia, they had spent the past few years working the night shift on the lower decks, where they saw suffering and despair daily. Their toughened sensibilities and dedication to the ship would speed their transition into the role of diving.
At least, this was what Les hoped would happen.
To the right stood Eevi Corey, a woman with bright blond curly hair and blue eyes. Her husband, Alexander, had matching eyes and long wavy brown hair. They were a good-looking pair, but had suffered greatly with the loss of their daughter to cancer several years earlier.
Eevi was an investigator with the militia, and Alexander was an enforcer. Sloan had described them as smart, willing, and aggressive, with little to lose besides each other. The couple, along with Edgar and his cousin, would be a great addition to the Hell Divers.
“Thank you for being here,” Les said to the four new militia recruits.
Erin put a hand on the glass of a wind tunnel, leaning on it and looking relaxed. “All right, listen up, everyone. We’re going to jump right into training today, and I’ll be first in the wind tunnels. Probably don’t have to tell you this, but these tunnels will be the closest simulation you’ll get to diving.”
She put her helmet on, flattening her Mohawk. Her voice broke over the speakers as she opened the door and stepped into the wind tunnel.
Les fired up the propeller, and the air draft pushed Erin up. She spread her arms and legs and let the wind take her, suit rippling in the current.
“Pretty cool,” Trey said. “Looks kinda easy.”
She hovered in the constant updraft for several seconds, hardly moving at all.
“Okay, this is what we call stable position,” she said. “This is how you will dive most of the time, unless you encounter a storm.”
Les took over. “Thanks to Commander Everhart and the other brave divers who found Deliverance, we won’t be making any risky jumps in the near future. For the first time in my entire life, we have the necessary fuel cells, supplies, and food to sustain our current population.”
Erin continued in the same stable position, her body relaxed, legs and arms bent, helmet slightly downward.
“When I first started diving, about five years ago on Team Wolf, I was always instructed to get through a storm as fast as possible,” Erin said over the speaker system.
“Commander Xavier Rodriguez taught his divers to do this by means of a full-on bullet dive. The survival rate of Team Raptor was higher than that of most other teams, partly for this reason.”
Erin gracefully maneuvered so her feet and helmet were straight as an arrow, carving through the wind like a missile toward the ground. The air current flowed like water around her.
“You can reach far greater speeds in a bullet dive, or what I call a suicide dive,” Les said after speeding up the propeller to compensate for Erin’s increased rate of fall in the nosedive. “If you’re ever in a situation where there’s lightning, this is the best way to survive.”