“Adrenaline,” she said. “Come on, Tin. We’ve got to get to that ship.”
He looked at Layla and Les in turn, then at his arm for a second, as if to make sure it wasn’t just all a bad dream.
“You’re okay,” Les said. “Let’s go, Commander.”
Michael didn’t need to be told twice. He jumped out onto the concrete as Les ran back to the door.
“Where are you going?” Layla shouted.
He fired a bolt at the open elevator shaft, showering sparks down on the machines climbing the vertical walls.
Then he grabbed the gun the terminated machine had dropped, and fired off two more blasts at three approaching robots on his right. They returned fire, blowing smoldering holes into the floor.
He slammed the door and locked it before taking off after Layla and Michael. Lightning flashed overhead, and the boom of thunder shook the piers.
“Layla!” Les shouted when he got outside.
She was just around the corner of the garage.
“I’ll meet you at the ship,” he said, tossing the second laser weapon to her. “See if you can get it up and running with your computer and extra battery.”
Layla nodded. “Good luck.”
“Good luck.”
She kept moving around the curved structure. Michael managed to say between groans of pain, “Help… Erin.” For a moment, he seemed to be trying to pull away from Layla and go with Les, but she put his remaining arm over her shoulder.
The hallway door inside the garage creaked, and electronic wails projected out of the room. Three of the machines on the pier stopped and turned in Les’ direction while the other three kept shooting at Erin.
The robots looking at Les were wearing bone armor, too, and one even had a human jaw attached to its face. The jaw moved, and the same electronic noise burst from the mechanical mouth. It was as if…
They’re talking to one another, Les realized.
Erin continued raining bullets down on the pack. Not bothering to move for cover, they stood their ground and returned fire. Blue laser bolts punched through the ship’s rusted hull as if it were cardboard.
Keep your head down, Erin…
Les dropped to one knee, aimed the weapon with both hands, and squeezed off a single bolt. The laser zipped through the air, just over the head of a machine that had dropped to all fours.
The other two machines, both without laser weapons, ran toward him. Lightning forked through the sky, hitting the ocean.
Les aimed again, holding the trigger down to fire a longer bolt that took off the top of a metal skull. His next shot went through the chest of the machine with the human jaw, sending it crashing to the ground. It quickly pushed itself back up.
He centered the barrel at the head to finish it off, but the trigger pull ended with an empty click. Smoke rose off the glowing barrel. The third machine suddenly stopped running toward Les and stood on both feet.
The downed robot directed an orange visor toward the sky. The other three robots all stopped firing at Erin and also looked toward the storm clouds.
Les aimed his weapon, waiting for the gun to cool.
A message crackled from the speakers, but he didn’t understand Layla’s transmission. It sounded like the Hell Divers motto.
“We dive so humanity survives.”
But why the hell would Layla be saying it right now?
Thunder grumbled overhead.
He pulled the trigger again, but still it wouldn’t fire.
The sky suddenly rained blue orbs.
Five of them.
“Pull your chutes!” yelled a voice over the comms.
Les stared in awe at the sky, where a parachute suddenly bloomed out under the cloud cover. Then another, and another. All but one of the chutes fired and spread black canopies.
“Katrina came for us,” he whispered.
His speakers crackled with the deep voice that had to be Edgar Cervantes.
“Ramon!” he yelled.
Les watched a body tumbling through the air. It smacked into the ocean several hundred yards out from the piers.
The machines with weapons raised them toward the sky and fired off bolt after bolt. Several of them tore through chutes, sending the novice divers careening through the air.
Les aimed his weapon at the robots.
“Over here, assholes!” he yelled. This time, the trigger pull fired a bolt. The laser traveled through the central chest slot of the machine and the battery exploded in a fiery blast, all but tearing the robot in half.
The other machines all looked in Les’ direction.
He swallowed.
At least he had distracted them from the other divers. Erin stood above the rail, which was sliced through and glowing from laser hits. He hit the deck, rolled, and returned fire.
A diver was already coming in hot over the pier, performing a two-stage flare with such grace, it had to be Katrina.
She ran out the momentum, passing Les as he kept firing bolts. Timing his shots, he tried to keep the gun from overheating again.
Erin stuck her rifle over the side of the ship, screaming as she fired. “Eat this, you walkin’ shit cans!” She squeezed off three-round bursts from side to side. “You want some? Come on! Swallow this!”
Gunfire erupted behind Les, and Katrina ran up beside him with her rifle shouldered.
“Good to see you’re still alive!” she yelled.
Les said the first thing that came to mind. “Where’s Trey?”
“Not sure, but his beacon’s still active.”
The reassuring words energized Les. He came up on one knee and took down another machine on the pier with a shot to the neck. The partially severed head craned to the side, sparks shooting from the wound.
“Focus your fire on their heads!” Les yelled.
Erin and Katrina slowed their rate of fire, the sporadic cracks echoing amid the boom of thunder and cries of the machines.
The two remaining enemies both went down, their skull armor broken to pieces. They squirmed as Les finished them off with laser bolts. The final AI twitched on the ground before going limp, the orange lights fizzling out like coals in the rain.
Les stood and scanned the sky above the ITC ship where Erin was busy changing a magazine. Three more divers were still in the air, but the wind, damaged canopies, and inexperience had taken them all off course. Two floated overhead toward Red Sphere. The third was coming down near the destroyed robots.
“Trey, where are you!” Les shouted.
“Dad! I’m over the ship, but I can’t slow down.”
Les turned to see his son sail right over the ITC ship, about two hundred feet above Erin. She, too, looked up as he passed overhead.
“Do the two-stage flare like we trained you,” Les said. “Wait till you’re about eight feet off the deck; then pull both toggles down hard but not all the way, to slow your descent. Then, when you level out, pull the toggles slow the rest of the way down to stop your forward motion.”
Movement on the deck pulled Les’ eyes off Trey.
“Behind you!” Erin yelled.
Bolts hit the deck just right of Les and Katrina. She rolled away from the laser fire, but Les stayed put. One of the machines he had knocked down was getting back up with a weapon raised. A bolt sizzled past Les’ head as he pulled the trigger—the same moment the machine fired a bolt into the sky.
“No!” Les shouted.
He lowered his gun as the robot dropped, smoldering. Les’ eyes jerked upward, searching the sky for his son. But the AI’s laser bolt had not been meant for Trey. An object the size of a melon dropped over the side of the ship, near the stern. It took Les a moment to register what he was seeing.
Erin’s headless corpse, still standing on the deck, slumped against the rail, then toppled over. Her helmet, with her head inside, clattered onto the concrete and rolled a few feet.