Hell divers x fallout, p.16
Hell Divers X: Fallout, page 16
Again she looked back at the tower.
Searchlights speared over the water to her left, but none were angled her way. The only thing up here besides her was the airship Vanguard.
Floating off to the east, it looked like a beetle in the moonlight.
She steered toward it, hoping the boat Imulah had arranged would be there. If not, she was going to have one long swim.
Her heart thumped at the thought of this being a trap. She was glad for the knife tucked away in her vest—not much, but it was something.
The canopy sailed over the water, slowly descending. Searching the whitecaps in the weak moonlight, she finally spotted a small boat in the water—probably a fishing vessel. She steered toward it using the toggles.
As she flew closer, she could see poles on the back with lines out. Smart.
Pedro had thought ahead.
She prepared to flare onto the aft weather deck and noticed someone down there, watching the fishing poles.
What a surprise it was going to be if this turned out to be just a random fishing boat!
“Heads up!” she called.
Six feet from the deck, Layla pulled on her toggles and flared. It was a short space, only about fifteen feet, and the person there darted out of the way.
She stepped out of the sky.
“Layla,” said a familiar voice.
She paused from gathering her chute and looked up at the face of not Pedro but Cecilia. The woman helped get Layla free of the chute and lines. A second figure approached, wearing a dark hooded cloak.
The hooded figure said, “I was no expecting that.” Pedro gave his usual wide grin, then reached out to hug Layla.
She embraced him tightly. Having an ally made the impossible seem less daunting.
“We don’t have much time,” he said. “Come, let us talk.”
He motioned toward the open cabin door. Cecilia followed them down a ladder into the cabin of the small boat. It rocked in light chop as they took seats around a wood table with rusted trim. Cecilia lit a candle and stuck it on the tabletop.
Layla pulled back a shade to look outside at the water.
“You no followed?” Pedro asked.
“No chance.”
“Good. We are all at great risk coming out here.”
“I know, and I thank you,” Layla said. “Both of you.”
Cecilia, who didn’t speak much English, seemed to understand and nodded.
“We owe you and your husband,” Pedro said.
“He didn’t do what they said.” Layla took in a deep breath. “Michael would never hurt a kid.”
“We know, but the question is, how can we prove that? How can we help him?” Pedro pulled the hood away from his head. “The king is dead, and he is the only one who could have spared Michael.”
Layla lowered her gaze, feeling the absence of everyone they had lost. “And the Hell Divers . . .”
“Our people are strong, but the Wave Runners have sided with Charmer,” Pedro said. “Word of what they did to Ton, Steve, and Michael has everyone nervous.”
He translated to Cecilia, who nodded.
“If we try and take out Charmer, it will start a war we can’t win,” Pedro said. “And there is no guaranteeing we could free Michael and Steve.”
“Victor will fight. I will fight,” Layla said.
“You are two people,” Pedro replied.
“Yes, but we only need to kill Charmer.”
Pedro and Cecilia exchanged a glance as he translated again. The flicker of candlelight gave away her feelings. It was evident in her frightened features that she wasn’t behind what Layla had suggested.
Neither of these people was.
Waves lapped at the sides of the boat while Layla considered what to say next. She had come here wanting to feel these two out, and now that she had, it was obvious they didn’t share her fighting spirit.
Not that she blamed them.
“After everything your people have been through, I understand not wanting to start a war for Michael,” she said. “I won’t ask you to fight. It’s wrong; I’m sorry. There might be another way, one that Imulah told me about.”
Layla told them about Jacquelyn, Charmer’s lover, who might know something about what had really happened to Oliver and his son. It was a long shot, and Layla wasn’t counting on it.
Pedro relayed this to Cecilia. When she finished replying, she reached across the table and put her hand on Layla’s.
“She says you have been through much, too, and we want to help, but fighting a war is not the answer,” Pedro explained. “I agree with her. We no ask that of my people, but I am ready to give my life for Chief Michael.”
Layla stared at the man who, to protect his people in the launch bay after they were rescued from Rio, had single-handedly killed a Siren using the leg of a cot. There was strength in his eyes now, and the same fighting spirit she had hoped to see.
“If we can’t free him through other means, then I will help break him out of prison,” Pedro said.
Cecilia waited for the translation. When Pedro gave it, her eyes got wide. She spoke rapidly.
“What?” Layla asked.
“She says what then?” Pedro said. “If we free him, do we hide him?”
Layla had considered this very thing and realized that living with her husband and son was all that mattered. It didn’t matter where, even if it meant they had to flee into the wastes. At least then they would be together.
“We will leave the islands,” she said. “I’m willing to do that if it means he is spared.”
“And go where?” Pedro asked.
“Anywhere—back to your bunker if we have to.”
Pedro seemed to consider this, then nodded. “You will find a way, but first we have to figure out where they are keeping him, and come up with a plan.”
“We won’t have much time,” Layla said. “His trial starts soon, and I doubt it will take long to convict him.”
“Leave that to me,” said Pedro. “I will find him. You work on this amor of Charmer to help prove Michael’s innocence.”
An engine suddenly rumbled. Pedro swiftly leaned forward and blew out the candle, plunging the cabin in darkness.
Layla tensed as she pulled back the shade to see lights flitting over the water.
“I thought you no followed,” Pedro said.
“I didn’t think I was,” Layla said.
She looked around but didn’t see anywhere to hide.
“My parachute,” she blurted.
Pedro ran up the ladder and pulled it down into the cabin while Cecilia opened a trunk that was buried under life jackets and rope.
“¡Para dentro!” she said, waving. “You get in!”
Layla climbed inside the trunk as Pedro returned with the chute and lines. He stuffed them into her arms. Crouching down, Layla tried to flatten her body.
The engines rumbled closer. Lights flashed through the window.
Voices called out over the water.
“I will buy time,” Pedro said.
Cecilia dragged the table over in front of the chest, then repositioned the chairs. She tried to close the lid, but it hit Layla’s head. No matter how hard she tried to reposition, Layla couldn’t get down any farther.
The sound of voices came on the deck above her. Pedro, then someone else.
Cecilia went to the ladder and climbed up.
Layla listened to the indistinct chatter and caught snippets of the conversation in Spanish. Something about fishing and how late it was.
Footsteps sounded overhead, clanking back and forth.
She eased the knife out of her vest pocket, peeking out the gap in the trunk lid. She could see the ladder, faintly distinguishable in the moonlight.
Boots hit the first rung, then brown fatigues, then a duty belt with a hatchet, knife, and pistol. The Cazador jumped down to the deck with a thud.
Layla readied her knife, listening to his grunting and sniffing.
As the boots clomped closer to her hiding spot, she saw a piece of the suspension line sticking out. No wonder the trunk wouldn’t close.
There was no time to pull it back inside.
The Cazador shined his light over the floor, hitting the table and then the trunk. She closed her eyes, praying her pounding heart didn’t give her away.
When she opened them, the man pulled back the table and tossed it aside. He leaned down and flipped open the trunk lid.
The man’s eyes widened as the knife entered under his chin. With an audible crunch, it punched through palate and sinuses and up into the brain. His surprised eyes blinked once before he collapsed, pinning her on top of the trunk.
Footsteps sounded above, and the other soldier jumped down, brandishing a speargun. He looked down at his dead comrade, then aimed his bolt at her face. Unable to move, she waited for the fish spear to nail her to the cabin wall.
Another body leaped down, crashing onto the Cazador’s back. He fired the spear into the deck in front of her chin.
The man hit the table and crashed into a wall. Pedro grabbed a handful of the squirming soldier’s hair and then slammed his head into the deck once, then twice. Teeth flew on the third hit, brain tissue on the sixth.
Pedro stood over the limp corpse, chest heaving. Then he staggered over to Layla and helped pull the other Cazador off her.
Reaching down, Pedro helped her to her feet just as Cecilia climbed down the ladder. As she looked around in horror, Pedro said, “We have to get rid of bodies. And sink the Jet Skis.”
Layla, still in shock, managed to nod.
Cecilia spoke in Portuguese with Pedro. He snapped back at her, clearly angry. For a moment, Cecilia stared at him, then shook her head in dismay. When she looked to Layla, resentment sparked in her eyes.
“I’m sorry; I had no choice,” Layla said.
“No one can ever know about this, or we will have no choice but to fight a war,” Pedro said. He spoke to Cecilia again.
Cecilia spoke rapidly, words laced with anger.
“What?” Layla asked.
“She says it’s too late for that; we have blood on our hands,” Pedro said.
Layla looked down at her black uniform, which was covered in blood.
Maybe Cecilia was right, but this was the blood of the enemy. The Cazadores had taken the side of Charmer, and she would kill every single one of those enemies if it meant saving Michael. Because saving Michael was also saving her people.
Reaching down, she dragged the dead body away from the trunk.
“Help me find my husband,” Layla said. “I’ll figure out the rest.”
TWELVE
The distant trumpeting of a cyclops resonated through the ship. Magnolia froze, trying to determine whether the sound was real or if she was dreaming it. The distant clatter of claws on metal confirmed that this was no dream.
The monsters were inside the Frog.
A comm speaker crackled nearby, and she heard the familiar voice of Captain Two Skulls. “Hostiles on decks two, three, and four . . .” Something about soldiers needed, then a statement she couldn’t make out.
She lingered on the threshold of consciousness, blinking at the blurred shapes of the other injured people inside the medical bay. There were two soldiers from the salvaging mission, but only one was in bed. The other man had joined Lieutenant Slayer and Sergeant Blackburn at the hatch, which they had managed to seal off. There were also two nurses and the ship’s only doctor, Ray Keller.
Magnolia had heard that Keller came from the same bunker where Cazador forces had kidnapped Rhino many years ago. But unlike the late general, Keller was a small man and seemed terrified.
Slayer hit the comm button, transmitting to Captain Two Skulls in Spanish that Magnolia couldn’t understand.
Shivering there on the bed, she curled back into a fetal position. Even with the two blankets, she couldn’t get warm on the outside. On the inside, however, the radiation poisoning seemed to be slowly cooking her.
She drifted back into a dream—some real events from her life, some nightmares. All of them seemed to feature Rodger in some way.
The wail of a monster pulled her back into the medical bay. It sounded closer this time. Teeth chattering, Magnolia tightened her arms across her chest.
In between the eerie hooting calls, she heard intermittent shouts from sailors and soldiers in other rooms of the sickbay. Magnolia wanted to help, but she could hardly move. And with her head pounding so, she could hardly think either.
“Lieutenant,” she mumbled.
Slayer limped over to her with a pistol in hand. “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “Those things won’t get to us here. A team is on its way to clear this deck too. They shouldn’t be far now.”
She gripped her stomach and leaned off the bed to vomit into a bucket.
“Ugh, Octopus Lords, I’m sorry,” Slayer said, leaning down to put a hand on her back. “Can I get you something? Water, pain meds—”
“A weapon,” Magnolia croaked.
He pulled a knife from his duty belt and placed it on the bed.
“Thank . . . thank you,” she said.
“Good news is, we’re moving again. You feel that?”
Feeling the motion, Magnolia resisted the urge to vomit again.
“We’re going home, Commander,” Slayer said.
“Home . . .” Magnolia tried to focus on that word. She pictured the Vanguard Islands, the trees and flowers growing on the rigs under the brilliant sun, the clear blue ocean, the pods of cavorting dolphins.
It seemed so far away.
The images vanished and she saw Rodger again, his body ripped apart by the vines in her nightmare.
Magnolia groaned again.
Another message in Spanish crackled over the comms.
“Oh no,” Slayer said.
“What?” she asked. “What are they saying?”
“The team heading here was ambu—”
Distant screams cut him off, followed by a roar that resonated into the sickbay. Something big thudded against a bulkhead nearby.
Slayer limped back to the closed hatch with his pistol. Blackburn stepped back and raised his shotgun while the medical staff retreated over to Magnolia. She gripped the knife, wishing she had her curved blades.
A guttural scream sounded from the next room, but Magnolia couldn’t tell whether the source was monster or human.
Clatter and breaking glass followed the noise. Then came what sounded like a body being torn apart.
Magnolia recognized that noise.
A cyclops had found prey and was removing the spine from the body.
“We have to do something,” Slayer said.
“Don’t open the hatch,” said the nurse.
Blackburn raised his shotgun, ignoring the woman.
Shivering, Magnolia sat up, one hand on her stomach, the other holding Slayer’s knife, as the sergeant opened the hatch. Slayer went inside the next room. Gunshots cracked out immediately, along with a boom from a shotgun.
A shriek rang out as an unseen monster took fire.
Magnolia tried to swing her feet over the bed and nearly fell out. She glimpsed Slayer firing with his pistol in one hand and raising his cutlass in the other.
The nurse and assistant backed up to Magnolia’s bed. Not far away, the bedridden Cazador soldier also tried to sit up. He winced in pain from moving his broken leg and broken arm. This guy wasn’t going to be any use in a fight if Blackburn and Slayer failed to kill the monster.
The fighting continued in the next room—more gunshots ringing out, the crunch of claws on armor, and armor hitting the deck.
Blackburn flew across the open hatch with a tail whipping past a moment later.
“AHHHHHH!”
The war cry that followed was from Slayer. Then the crack of a pistol.
The racket made Magnolia’s pounding headache worse, and she felt her eyelids growing heavier. Would she be forced back into an unconscious state?
The comms crackled again with another indistinct message. She fought the red encroaching on her vision.
The nurse by her bed screamed. Magnolia raised her knife just as the cyclops squeezed through the hatch, snarling. That bulging eye blinked as it searched the room for more prey.
Blood flowed from multiple gunshot wounds. A blade stuck out of its back as it ducked under the hatch frame.
Magnolia raised her knife as the medical staff scrambled away. The injured soldier with the cutlass moved in front of them, hunched over, clearly in pain. He held his ground and slashed at the giant one-eyed freak of nature. It towered a good three feet above the man, raising muscular arms with gushing wounds. Snarling, it strode forward, blocking the blade with a scaly wrist. Then it whipped its tail, knocking the man down and into the side of a bed. Again the eyeball flitted back and forth, settling on Magnolia.
A glistening black forked tongue shot out.
As the thing clambered forward, Slayer leaped onto its back. Grabbing the handle of the weapon lodged in its furry back, he pushed deeper and twisted. The beast wailed and tried to buck him off. He yanked the sword out, sending up a geyser of blood.
Slayer tried to bring the blade down on the back of the neck, but the monster swung an elbow and bashed him in the side.
He fell to the deck and rolled onto his back. The cyclops charged, slapping its tail against the hull and anything in its path. Stands of medical equipment toppled, and monitors shattered.
Slayer tried to crawl under the bed next to Magnolia as the creature swung at her with a clawed hand. She parried the blow with her knife but lost her grip. The weapon sailed away, clanking on the floor.
The beast grabbed her around the neck while simultaneously slapping the bed away from Slayer with its tail. Magnolia felt the cool tendrils of adrenaline as the abomination raised her into the air. She gripped its scaly wrist with both hands, choking as it tightened its death grip.
