Michael took another moment to think. Then he stood and said, “I call my wife, Layla Everhart.”

  SIXTEEN

  The old Sea King sat in the pounding rain on a rusted platform between two stone walls at the Sunshine Castle. Kade sat in the troop hold as Bulldozer worked outside, securing the fuel tank that had leaked most of their reserves during takeoff.

  General Jack and Nobu guarded their mechanic and only pilot. Zen had climbed with his sniper rifle up into a turret overlooking the fortress—the same spot where X had stood a week ago. Or was it longer?

  Kade had lost track of time. But he hadn’t forgotten what had happened directly beneath them. The Barracudas had been attacked by the spiderlike humanoids that dwelled within those walls. Kade had already warned the knights, but they knew all about the monsters. These were the same creatures that had forced their troops to abandon the old base years ago. Fortunately, they still had fuel here—and it was treated with a hybrid stabilizer that Bulldozer claimed would work.

  The cockpit radio crackled. Lucky grabbed it. “Copy that,” he said.

  Then he returned to the troop hold, where the other knights waited.

  “They’ve finished sealing the tank and are adding petrol now,” Lucky said. “We’ll be out of here shortly.”

  Kade checked his HUD—his battery was at 30 percent. Plenty of time left to get back to the Coral Castle. That was a relief. In this storm, he’d be dead without his filtration system.

  He watched out the starboard side as Bulldozer uncoiled a long black hose. Lucky watched the rest of the knights.

  “So this was a bastion?” Kade asked.

  At first, Lucky seemed reluctant to talk, but then he opened up.

  “It was many years ago,” he said, still looking outside. “My father was stationed here. He trained many warriors inside these walls. Held off the monsters for many battles. Long before the Forerunner sent him to Panama.” He looked over to Kade briefly. “Where’d you learn to fight?”

  “I was a teenager,” Kade replied. “There were two types of fighters on an airship: militia, to keep the passengers in check, and Hell Divers. I started in the militia, but I didn’t like beating starving people. So I decided to beat starving monsters instead.”

  Lucky chuckled.

  “Hell Divers are trained on the ships but also on the surface,” Kade explained. “It’s the best training, because it’s realistic. Problem is, most don’t survive it. They threw me out of the airship at twenty thousand feet and gave me a beacon locator for a supply crate that landed in a crater with—”

  A distant shriek made him pause.

  Heart pounding, he moved closer to the window.

  “Hear that?” Lucky asked.

  “Yeah,” Kade said. “One of those spider things.”

  Lucky unslung his rifle and went to the cargo door. Outside, Nobu and the general had their weapons trained on the eastern wall. Kade squinted but didn’t see anything moving along the parapet.

  Another shriek sounded over the howl of the storm. But this one came from a different direction. Kade went to the cockpit and scanned the walls. He squinted at movement on the exterior of a tower.

  “Oh, son of a bloody . . .” he whispered.

  Lucky saw it, too: a pair of hairy, human-size spiders scaled the exterior of the tower next to the one Zen was sniping from.

  “Zen, watch out!” Lucky shouted.

  A muzzle flashed from the lookout Zen perched inside. Once, then twice. Both monsters lost their grip and tumbled back to the ground.

  Shrieking came from somewhere behind the chopper.

  “Give me that rifle back,” Kade said.

  Lucky hesitated.

  “Come on, you need my help,” Kade argued.

  “Fine. Grab one.”

  Kade pulled from the rack the same rifle he had used on the runway. By the time he grabbed two magazines, Lucky had the troop hold door open. Another spider was climbing the tower Zen remained inside.

  Raising his rifle, Kade scoped the beast, which was bleeding from multiple bullet holes. This was one of the two they had already shot off the walls. It seemed determined to get Zen.

  “Get out of there!” Kade yelled.

  Nobu and Lucky took calculated shots. Bullets slammed into the scuttling arachnid limbs and the all-too-human head. Then, as it neared the top, Kade fired a bullet that hit it in the head, just behind two of its eight eyes. The beast reared and reached back with two of its limbs to paw at the wound.

  As Kade was lining up another shot on the head, Zen hung out the side and blasted the creature in the face. It plummeted to the bottom and smashed on the pavement.

  “Get back here, Zen!” Lucky shouted.

  “Bulldozer, how much longer!” the general yelled.

  “Dunno!” yelled the mechanic, crouching with the hose nozzle by the fuel tank.

  “We just need enough to get back to the Coral Castle! Lucky, Kade, stay here. Nobu, with me!”

  They trotted off across the parapet as Zen climbed down from his turret.

  Kade and Lucky retreated back to Bulldozer, who was still gassing up the bird.

  “Get back to the cockpit, Dozer,” Lucky said. “I’ll finish.”

  The mechanic didn’t need to be told twice. He went back to the cargo hold door and climbed in. Kade shouldered his rifle as Jack and Nobu reached Zen two hundred feet away. They started running back through the rain.

  Kade heard a strange animal hissing. He checked the walls and parapets. Bending down, he looked through the platform grate, finally seeing motion in the courtyard right below.

  “Guys!” Kade said. “You better take a look at this.”

  Lucky turned in time to see three of the spider-hybrid creatures darting through the weedy courtyard. The leader leaped onto the side of the wall. It clawed up the sides, preparing to cut off the general and his two knights running across the walkway above.

  Kade fired a heads-up, drawing the general’s attention a second too late. The first monster hopped down from the stone parapet behind Nobu, who held rear guard.

  “Watch out!” Kade yelled.

  “Enough fuel!” Bulldozer shouted over the comms. “Let’s get out of here!”

  Kade centered his sights where the eight bristly black legs joined at the strangely human torso, but knights were in the way. Two more of the nightmarish creatures jumped over the broken stone trim of the roof’s barrier, flanking the men.

  Nobu shot two legs off the first creature. It flopped on the stone pathway as the other two scampered around it.

  General Jack leveled his shotgun and blasted off a face, pumped in another shell, and blew off a front leg. “Don’t bloody mess with Sally!” he shouted. “She’s beautiful, but she will blow off your knickers!”

  The chopper lifted a few feet off the ground, and Kade heard Bulldozer screaming from inside. Nobu and Zen retreated while the general’s shotgun blasted away at more of the hideous creatures coming over the wall.

  Kade aimed at a beast perched on the wall that seemed to be scanning for new prey. He squeezed the trigger, erasing the bulging eyes. The creature flipped over the wall and landed in the courtyard.

  Lucky waved Nobu and Zen into the troop hold, then joined Kade to cover the general.

  “Let’s go!” Lucky shouted.

  Seeing no hostiles on the walls behind them, Kade swung up into the cargo hold. Then Lucky climbed up, and General Jack arrived a minute later. He went to grab a handhold, but just as he did, a longish white glob hit his extended arm. It pulled, yanking him backward and away from the chopper.

  Bulldozer pulled up as more webs shot out from the walls, sticking to the hull along the left side. Four creatures stood on the wall to the east, their limbs extended with the thick, sticky string.

  One of them had General Jack lassoed and was dragging him across the platform. Kade was already moving after him, grasping at the big man’s kicking legs. The beast that had him was pulling him toward the edge of the metal landing pad. If the general went over the side, the fall might not kill him, but the monsters certainly would.

  Gunshots cracked from the chopper, where Nobu and Zen fired from the open troop hold. Kade glimpsed the target on the wall. The beast that had the general darted across the stone, mostly avoiding the gunshots.

  Kade finally caught up and grabbed the general by a boot. Lucky crouched down with a knife and sawed at the sticky, elastic rope that held the general. When the serrated knife got through the web, he yelled, “Get ’im up!”

  Kade set his rifle down and hauled the general to his feet. He leaned on Kade on the short trek back under the chopper. Nobu swung his sword at more sticky rope that thwacked into the hull as Bulldozer lowered toward the three men.

  Zen reached down and hauled the general up into the troop hold. Lucky went next, with Kade right behind him. Kade swung up just as a sticky white rope smacked him on the shoulder. A slash from Nobu’s sword severed it before the monster could yank Kade back outside.

  Lucky grabbed Kade and pulled him to the rain-slick deck. The door closed, sealing out the wind and rain but not the noise.

  The storm battered the rusted helicopter as Bulldozer struggled to pull up. Another howl sounded, drawing Kade’s attention to General Jack. The other knights crowded around him as he squirmed on the deck. Lucky was already removing a plate of armor from the general’s arm while Zen fished through a medical pack.

  The general howled in agony. “I’m cactus,” he said. “I’m cactus!”

  Kade had heard that word used before. It was another way of saying dead, or fucked. From what he could see, the general was in major pain but not mortally wounded. Maybe he had a broken arm or something unseen to Kade.

  Nobu tried to hold him down, but Lucky had to pile on to keep the big man still. Smoke whisked away from the removed wrist gauntlet that clanked on the deck next to Kade. He moved for a better view, finally seeing the general’s arm. The sticky webbing had melted not only through the armor but into a line deep across his flesh.

  Kade looked down at his shoulder plate, where a web had hit him, but saw only slight charred remains. Not enough to burn through. Hopefully that was the case with the hull of the aircraft, which had taken multiple hits before they’d cut off the strands.

  The chopper jolted hard, and General Jack gave a high-pitched yelp as his arm bone snapped along the line of weakness. It didn’t take long for the webbing to burn through the rest of it.

  Another roar filled the chopper as the general’s arm split off above his wrist.

  “Bloody shit!” Zen shouted.

  The screaming distracted Bulldozer, who looked over his shoulder. “Someone do something!” he yelled. “You can’t let him die!”

  Kade hung back, watching as the knights worked to save their leader. They stuffed pads of gauze against the gushing stump. But it wasn’t just the loss of blood killing the man. It was clear he had toxins in his system.

  By the time Bulldozer called out the approach to the Coral Castle, the general was gasping for air.

  “Take . . . take off my helmet,” he mumbled.

  Lucky eased the helmet away from the swollen face. Purple blood vessels bulged across his cheeks and forehead. He turned his bloodshot eyes to Kade.

  The other knights looked over as the general grabbed his wrist.

  “You . . . are a good man,” he said. “I’m sorry . . . for—”

  The Sea King set down with a hard jolt. Kade looked up to see they had landed on a large platform somewhere in the ocean. When he glanced back down, the general had stopped breathing.

  Lucky checked his pulse, then shook his head.

  “I’m sorry,” Kade whispered.

  Zen opened the troop hold door, letting in a wet blast. A fire team of six knights strode through the storm and led the survivors to an elevator that took them below the surface.

  Kade was still reeling from the trauma of the attack and watching Jack die when the elevator came to a stop. Lucky grabbed him by the arm and helped him out. They were entering in a different location from when he’d first been brought to the Coral Castle. Still shaking, he was led through another area of the underground facility—a lab of some sort. The new soldiers took them into a large shower area, where they were hosed down.

  After the chemical bath, Kade was taken into a smaller chamber that contained a single seven-foot-tall upright pod with a glass lid.

  “Strip down and get in,” said a guard.

  The lid opened as Kade shucked off his armor and suit. He cautiously climbed inside, and straps automatically buckled over his wrists and ankles. Another stretched over his chest. The lid closed, and a cold, gelatinous fluid hissed out of jets in the tub, slowly filling the capsule and submerging his naked body.

  Something curious was going on. Tiny black beads oozed through the thick fluid. Blinking, he tried to study them. A dozen of them found his flesh and clung on. He could feel their cool, metallic touch.

  The black beads spread over his body, some migrating up to his head. He clamped his lips shut, but the beads just moved on until they found his nose.

  The tiny legs tickled as they crawled up his nostrils. More went for his eyes, one even squeezing under the lid.

  “No! Stop!” Kade whimpered. “What are you doing to me!”

  His heart pounded with the memory of a similar event in his life. He was transported back to the machine camp, when he had found himself strapped down and moving toward a fiery oven.

  But unlike then, Kade didn’t want to die.

  For the first time since his family had died, he wanted to live.

  * * * * *

  X had spent hours hunting the beast that lurked somewhere on the orlop deck. He had long since shut off his comms, ignoring the incessant requests from General Forge to report in. The creature had X’s full attention.

  He heard it skittering about on its hard insectile claws. Although he wasn’t completely familiar with this deck, X vaguely remembered seeing a blueprint. Most of the six compartments were for storage.

  He was in a long space filled with coiled electrical conduits that resembled metal snakes. Most of the lights down here didn’t work, but there were enough that X didn’t need his night-vision goggles. He moved quietly through the maze of flex tubing and skidded on something wet.

  From experience, X knew better than to look down for more than a beat. But when he did, he found what he was looking for.

  Just like the other two bodies he had found, this corpse lay flat on the deck, like a deflated balloon, draped over a coiled chain.

  Spear in hand, X crept closer while listening to the not-so-distant skittering and rustling.

  He approached the body—if it could be called that. It looked as if someone had made an inflatable life-size figure of a Cazador and then let all the air out. The helmet visor was cracked open, the shrunken face frozen in a mask of horror with an open mouth and wide eyes.

  X kept going, still trying to process what he had seen.

  A sharp, crackling sizzle came from behind him, the way he had come. Son of a bitch, he thought. Someone was trying to cut into the hatch and save him!

  He kept moving, around more stacks of cables. With his prosthetic arm out in front and his spear in hand, he stalked between the piles of metal conduits until he heard a hiss.

  Claws scrabbled somewhere in the dark space. X turned around, unable to tell which way it was coming from. He couldn’t just stand out in the open and wait for the attack. He looked up at the closest stack of coils and started climbing.

  At the top of the pile, he crouched and looked around the dimly lit room. And there it was.

  The dome-shaped carapace came scuttling out of the shadows at the other end of the compartment on four jointed legs, brandishing a pair of foreclaws like hay hooks. The thing was three times his height, maybe even larger.

  X raised his spear while studying the beast for a chink in its armor. The back had a black-and-yellow chevron pattern on the rigid shell. The triangular head was covered with the same chitinous shell.

  He watched it move, exposing patches of orange flesh along the neck as the head rose and lowered. It scrambled toward his location, chittering and hissing.

  “Come on, you ugly mother . . .” X whispered.

  The bug scrambled down the rows of flex coil. The red compound eyes and the short antennae didn’t seem to detect him perched above. For a moment, he watched it as those long antennae flicked back and forth. Perhaps it knew he was here, could sense him, but couldn’t find him.

  Finally, it turned and went back the way it had come, toward a hatch leading out of the compartment.

  Surely, it couldn’t get through, could it?

  Armored wing covers suddenly lifted off the shell, revealing more bright-orange flesh below. It was trying to squeeze through, X realized.

  The sizzling noise behind him grew louder.

  After seeing the mammoth creature, part of him wanted to sit tight and wait for reinforcements. But he couldn’t let it escape to another area of the ship. They had to kill the thing, secure the orlop deck, and get the engines running at full throttle.

  X jumped off the cable and ran toward the hatch, spear in hand. This was his chance.

  The monster began to squeeze through the opening.

  “No, you don’t!” X yelled.

  The creature turned to have a look, exposing the soft flesh of the neck. X hurled the spear, and it hit with a satisfying thunk. Orange liquid bled out as the creature hissed and kicked with its jointed legs. Claws scrabbled against the metal deck.

  X pulled his blaster, aimed at the neck wound, and fired, creating another explosion of juices. The beast squirmed, kicked, and tried to pull itself through with its front claws. X fired again, breaking the rib of a wing while most of the projectiles bounced off the hard carapace.

 

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