Layla joined him here from time to time, but she didn’t love it the way he did. She preferred to be in the new library aboard Deliverance, combing the archives and learning about the history of a destroyed world.
Michael got out of his work clothes, cleaned off, and then threw on his red coveralls. Walking through the corridors, he drew looks from nearly everyone he passed. There weren’t many Hell Divers left, and even though Michael was helping in the effort to recruit new ones, the divers would never reach the numbers they had during his father’s tenure under X.
The real legends were almost all dead now.
Two workers painting a bulkhead outside the farm stopped to salute Michael. He simply nodded and continued on his way. After Captain Jordan’s death, both ships had returned to the roots of the Hive. The artwork was being restored, and destroyed and deleted archives were slowly being recovered, but there was still much work to be done.
Michael turned down a passage still being retrofitted into new quarters. More workers in yellow uniforms were carrying equipment into the small rooms, preparing them for their new tenants.
A third of the Hive’s population had already moved into quarters on Deliverance. There were still issues to deal with, primarily involving lower-deckers who felt that they got the short end of the stick in reassignment. But the committee formed to deal with such issues was working every day to make sure food, medical care, and shelter were being distributed equitably.
For the first time in recent memory, the passengers of the two airships were experiencing something that approached an egalitarian society.
Now that they had a second ship, there were more jobs. More jobs meant more food. More food meant a healthier population. A healthier population meant that Michael had a stronger pool of possible recruits for the next Hell Divers team.
Some days, he was really starting to feel that there was still hope for the human race, especially now that X and Magnolia were on the surface, looking for a permanent home.
He pulled his long hair back into a ponytail before approaching the hatch to the bridge. Only one militia soldier stood guard—another sign of change. With Jordan’s henchmen either in the brig or dead on the surface in Florida, there was no reason to have a bulky security force. The executive team had reassigned most of the militia to other jobs, such as farming.
The hatch opened, and Michael walked out onto the clean bridge, blinking in the dim light.
Layla stood at the helm beside their new captain, Katrina.
“Commander Everhart on deck,” said one of the officers.
Katrina and Layla both turned to face him, and both smiled, though the smiles seemed fraught, almost forced. In an instant, the optimism he had felt rising inside him drained away.
“Captain,” Michael said.
“Follow me, Commander,” Katrina said.
Layla remained at the command center while Michael followed the captain into the small conference room off the bridge, not bothering to ask why she wanted to meet with him personally. It could be any of a hundred things, since the ships were always one step away from disaster. But this time, it wasn’t an engineering problem, or a new strain of flu afflicting the passengers, or a lower-decker resentful about reassignment.
“We just received a distress signal from the Sea Wolf,” Katrina said. “Something happened to them, Michael.”
His heart sank at the news. Everything had been going so well. But Michael had learned long ago that life was seldom fair.
“We tried to hail them,” Katrina said, “but their radio is either damaged or offline. Right now, we have no way of knowing what happened.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “I wanted you to know. I loved X once, too.” Her eyes flitted to the deck. “A part of me will always love him.”
Michael blinked back a tear. He stiffened, trying his best to stay strong, because that was exactly what X would want him to do.
“Try not to worry,” Katrina said. “If anyone can survive out there, it’s Commander Rodriguez.”
TWO
A violent shaking startled Magnolia awake. She coughed up a mouthful of salt water, gagged, coughed again. A curtain of short-cropped blue hair hung over her face, blocking her view. She pulled it back and looked up at the blinking emergency light spreading its pulsing red glow over the room.
Between blinks, she spotted the wet, furry heap that was Miles. The dog lay a few feet away, curled up, unmoving.
“Miles,” she whispered. Reaching out, she nudged him, and he let out a whimper and moved a leg.
That was good. At least, he was still alive and could move.
But where was X?
Magnolia touched the goose egg on the back of her head and winced. She pulled away fingers slick with blood. She had taken a beating and had no idea how long she was out.
“Timothy, do you copy?” Magnolia said.
There was no answer but the creaking of bulkheads.
At first, she couldn’t remember why she was inside her quarters with Miles, but an otherworldly call reminded her.
The screeches of the giant octopus carried through the small vessel. But something about this melancholy sound was different from the one she had heard in the command center.
The scent of smoke drifted belowdecks. That got her attention.
She pushed herself up in the puddle of cold water, cursing a blue streak that would have made X proud.
X… Where the hell are you?
Miles tried to get up, too, but slipped and fell in the water, splashing it over Magnolia’s black fatigues. She helped him up onto a bunk and told him to stay put.
Then she fumbled her way over to the hatch and opened it to a passageway that was ankle-deep in seawater. Another emergency light winked outside the command center.
The hatch was ajar, providing a view inside the room. The red swirl from the light fell over standing water and a shattered windshield. A failsafe mechanism had activated, covering the broken glass with a metal hatch to keep the water out and at the same time blocking her view of the dark sea.
“Timothy?” she said.
The AI did not respond.
She closed the hatch and sealed it to keep the rest of the boat from flooding, then began her search for X.
The ladder to the upper deck was slick, and a quick glance revealed that it wasn’t just water.
Blood coated the rungs.
She climbed to the staging area and stepped cautiously into the dark space. There were no emergency lights up here, and all the porthole windows were sealed off with metal hatches.
“X,” she said quietly but firmly.
There was no response.
She reached into her cargo pocket and pulled out a small flashlight, which she pointed at the floor. A trail of blood led to the hatch.
“X, you son of a…”
She hurried over to a gun rack, freed her carbine, and slapped a full magazine into it. The gun felt good in her hands, but she wasn’t sure the rounds were going to do much against such a massive beast.
The hatch opened to darkness and a spray of cold water that hit her face. Howling wind greeted her as she stepped onto the deck with her rifle shouldered and the flashlight clamped against the stock.
The trail of blood ended on the deck, where the ocean water had washed away any further evidence. She played the beam back and forth, but X was nowhere to be seen.