Not great news, but apparently, Katrina was continuing the mission despite the storm barreling in on their location. Les watched the seconds tick down on his mission clock. His senses were on full alert, every muscle in his body preparing for the extreme forces that were about to pummel him.
He could hear his heart hammering in his ears and felt the pulse in his carotid arteries. A breath of filtered air filled his lungs and seemed to mix with the flow of adrenaline already coursing through him.
Ten minutes to drop.
This was only his sixth dive, and one of them wasn’t even technically a dive, since he had done it in a metal pod. He tried to push statistics out of his mind. He wasn’t even close to fifteen—the average number of dives that marked a diver’s life span. Those were the old days of diving, back when they had to take more risks.
Today was risky enough, though. There was a storm over the DZ.
Les brought up his wrist monitor, checked that it was working, and moved on to his HUD. Three other dots blinked on the minimap.
The other divers were all performing their last-minute checks beside him. Layla flexed her hands, making fists and then shaking them out.
“You ready?” Michael asked her.
She nodded, and their helmets came together with a soft clack.
Les turned again to look at the portholes behind him, where Trey stood watching intently.
“That was me fifteen years ago,” Michael said, slapping Les on the back. “I watched my dad leave many, many times.”
“As long as we’re in the air, more children will watch their fathers and mothers jump into hell,” Les said.
Michael dipped his helmet and moved over to Erin. She had a shotgun slung over her shoulder, and an Uzi holstered where her blaster would otherwise be.
A nod confirmed she was ready to go.
Les checked the strap over his blaster, then the sling of the rifle over his back. Magazines protruded from his vest, and two nickel-plated M1911-style pistols were holstered on his long legs.
Michael did a final scan of his team. “Radio check.”
“Raptor Two, online,” Layla confirmed.
“Raptor Three, good to go,” Erin said.
“Raptor Four, ready,” said Les.
Michael raised his wrist monitor and touched the screen. “Systems check.”
Les confirmed that his battery was at 98 percent. His suit integrity was 100 percent. He bumped his chin pad to turn on his NVGs, then bumped them off.
“Lights check,” Michael said.
Reaching up, Les turned on his helmet-mounted beams.
“Raptor is good to go,” Michael said. He opened a line to Command. “All set to dive, Captain.”
“Roger that. We’re still moving into position,” she replied. “Starting mission clock in five.”
A moment later, the mission clock updated on their HUDs.
Two minutes to drop.
Deliverance dipped at a thirty-degree angle, just enough that Les had to plant his boots to keep from sliding. Lightning slashed the black outside the porthole windows, and a boom of thunder rattled a bar in the corner of the room.
“You thinking a suicide dive right out the gate?” Layla asked.
The Raptor symbol on Michael’s helmet dipped in confirmation. “The faster the better,” he said, “but don’t forget, this DZ’s a lot smaller than anything we’ve tried before. You overshoot it and you’ll be swimming to Red Sphere—attached to a giant octopus trying to wrap you up and pull you into the depths.”
Three blinks on the HUD display confirmed that the team understood.
“Okay, Team Raptor, let’s get this done,” Michael said, walking toward the doors. A red light swirled around the long space, spreading a glow across the suited and armored divers. The hydraulics that operated the bay door clicked and parted in the middle, letting a horizontal line of blue from a lightning flash into the room. It vanished a beat later, leaving the divers in the red glow of the warning light.
“Almost there,” Katrina said, her calm voice betraying no emotion. “Currently at twenty-two thousand feet.”
Les cinched down the magazines on his vest with another strap as the ship lowered.
The red transitioned into a cool blue, and Les took in a long breath. The bay doors were completely open now. Another bolt of lightning lit the clouds outside.
“Thirty seconds,” Katrina said, starting the countdown.
This was it. They were about to jump back into the abyss. Les looked over his shoulder one last time at the ten-second mark. The other divers were already moving toward the open door, their boots clicking on the aluminum deck.
Three… two… one…
“We dive so humanity survives!” Michael yelled. He was first off the platform, launching his body into the air and then angling down like a swimmer diving into water. Layla and Erin jumped just after him.
Les hesitated when his boots hit the liftgate. He turned and raised a hand to Trey as a terrifying possibility entered his mind.
What if this is the last time you see your boy?
Les blinked and then leaped into the darkness. For the first few seconds of free fall, he felt weightless, his body shattering the invisible clouds. But a beat later, the rush of wind took him.
He brought his hands close to his body, forming a human arrow, trying to outfall his worries and focus on getting through this alive.
The storm appeared worse to the east, but the DZ didn’t look too scary—just a few random forks of lightning. It was the pockets of turbulence that had him worried. A single blast could send him way off course—maybe into the sea.
He kept his eye on the glow from two blue battery packs and one red. The other divers were already a good five hundred feet below him. Had he really hesitated that long before jumping?
It wouldn’t matter as long as he stayed on course.
“Raptor One…” Michael’s voice came through a flurry of static noise. “Looks like we might have a surprise between ten and fifteen thousand feet. I’m getting a lot of disturbance. Gonna spear right—”
White noise cut his voice off, the connection already severed.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Les cursed. The words echoed in his helmet. He bit down on his mouth guard, trying to keep his heart rate and breathing under control.
Another transmission came over the link from Command, but Les made out only two words.
“Possible hidden…”
Dazzling swirls of lightning flashed below, foreshadowing what lay beneath the dark clouds. The weather sensors on Deliverance were more advanced than those on the Hive, but apparently, even they hadn’t been able to detect what was down there. Ensign Connor was also one of the best meteorologists in the history of the Hive, but these storms were unpredictable.
Les shifted his gaze back to his HUD. He was already down to sixteen thousand feet, and at his current speed, he would be on the ground in four to seven minutes, depending on when he pulled his chute.
Very long minutes.
And he was still picking up speed. The wind rushed over his suit and armor, whistling, screaming like a wild animal.
Les straightened his long body the best he could, his muscles tense and his spine straight. The rifle strapped over his back made it difficult, but he managed to hold his head-down vertical position all the way down to twelve thousand feet.
His eyes went from his HUD, which now began to crackle, to the divers below. The red of Michael’s battery pack, at around ten thousand feet, looked like a flame in the darkness.
An arc of lightning streaked between the two blue units, but according to his HUD, both Layla and Erin made it through. Their beacons beeped for several more seconds until the minimap fizzled out. He was deaf and blind now, with only his instincts and brain to keep him alive.