Hell divers x fallout, p.39
Hell Divers X: Fallout, page 39
Then he was moving with Slayer and Blackburn up the stairs. On the way, he bumped on the command channel to the Frog.
“Two Skulls, give me a sitrep,” X said over the radio.
No response.
He tried again, then again.
Either they had lost comms with the ship, or the ship was in major trouble.
“Someone get eyes on the Frog,” he called out. “I want to know what the hell is going on out there!”
“Aye, aye, sir,” came a reply.
X pressed on, his mind racing. Michael was alive, and they were winning the fight for the tower. But the Wave Runners seemed to have damaged the Frog at the very least, and they had the means to ravage it beyond all hope of repair.
No, the Frog is still in this fight. And Miles is fine!
Still, X feared the worst, especially with the Osprey so far away and unable to help. He bumped on the channel to the ensign in charge.
“Tiger, what’s your status?”
“Rig fifteen is secure, sir.”
“Good work. Proceed to capitol tower to provide backup.”
Filled with new confidence, X moved up the rest of the stairs like a teenage boy who thought he was invincible.
Each landing was clear. It seemed Rolo and everyone else had fled.
By the time they reached the last few flights, X was feeling it. He slowed to catch his breath, wanting to be fresh for what could be an ambush. The door at the top was open and bathed in soft moonlight.
A blast sounded in the distance. A truly massive explosion, and it wasn’t coming from the rooftop.
X signaled to advance.
Slayer and Blackburn started up the stairs and vanished through the door. X was right behind them with more Cazador soldiers, and General Forge following. They filed out into the night at the edge of a scene of devastation.
Smoke plumed away from craters in the rooftop where shells had burst. Trees burned along the eastern edge of the roof. In the center, at the end of a long gouge carved in the dirt, lay the wreckage of what appeared to be a helicopter.
“Where in hell did that come from?” X said. Something clicked in his mind. Was this the craft that had been following them, showing up on the radar?
He moved out with the soldiers, searching for Rolo and his guards.
“The Frog!” someone shouted.
X ran to the eastern edge of the roof. The sight took his breath away. The ship was venting smoke and surrounded by small watercraft. X counted eight Jet Skis and two war boats. Soldiers on boats loosed shoulder-fired missiles at the Frog while their mounted Miniguns dumped a hundred rounds per second onto its weather deck and superstructure. Sparks danced across the hull and the command tower. At the top, smoke plumed into the sky.
X had his answer why Two Skulls wasn’t answering on the comms.
A single cannon was trying to engage the two war boats while Cazador soldiers on the bow and stern fired small arms and two mounted .50-caliber machine guns. One of those gunners went down, his legs blown off by an enemy rocket-propelled grenade.
They wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer.
X said to Forge, “General, take half the soldiers and head back to the docks. Get up there and take command. I want those Wave Runners dead on the water.”
“Understood.”
Forge took off with three men, leaving X with ten, led by Slayer and Blackburn. They advanced across the roof, through the smoky darkness, and into a forest, their weapons sweeping the shadows.
Slayer came out of the forest and stood in a field of peas. “Over there!” he shouted.
The soldiers cleared the area, moving past the wreckage of the helicopter. X saw the pilot still inside, blood smeared against the cracked windshield.
He moved around it and saw five or six people just past the Sky Arena. They seemed to be trying to find a way off the rooftop.
Slayer led the Cazador soldiers toward them, with X running to keep up. On approach, he saw the white hair of the man he had been hunting since Brisbane.
Rolo stood with his hands up, a pistol muzzle at his head. Five of his guards were pointing their rifles at the man holding that pistol. That man was a Hell Diver.
“Drop your weapons!” Slayer shouted.
The guards with Rolo turned their barrels on the approaching Cazadores. They needed only a moment to see they were outnumbered.
They lowered their weapons as Slayer and Blackburn moved in with shields and spears. X switched to his axe as he stared at the Hell Diver, who kept his pistol to Rolo’s face.
“Why?” asked the diver. “Why did you do it?”
That voice. That accent.
Could it really be . . .
“Kade,” X whispered.
He looked back to the helicopter. Kade had somehow taken the bird and returned from the dead.
“You!” Rolo shrieked, spittle forming at the corners of his lips. He raised a shaking finger at X. “You, you are a demon!”
“You’re the demon!” Kade said. He pushed the rusted barrel of the revolver between Rolo’s wild eyes.
“Look what he’s done to your home!” Rolo roared. “It burns because of him, and it has burned before because of him. I am the only one who can save you all! You must slay this evil beast of a man!”
Rolo pointed at X, ranting to the men surrounding him.
“If it weren’t for me, he would have destroyed this place, destroyed everyone! Destroyed humanity!”
“You dropped an atom bomb on the Vanguard army, you crazy old bat,” Kade said. “You killed hundreds of innocent people and poisoned the land—”
“That land was already poisoned, and those innocent people would have killed us all if they had the chance,” Rolo snapped back. “You must kill him! You must kill X before he dooms us all! Charmer was right. He has to be removed to save us all!”
Charmer, of course. So the cunning bastard was behind this all along. Rolo was just a puppet, and Charmer was the one pulling his strings.
Now that puppet ranted on, trying to justify his actions. His panicked eyes flitted about. He was like a trapped beast with nowhere to flee.
“Kade, you know me. You know that everything I’ve done is for our people,” he stammered.
“Maybe that was true once,” Kade said. “But after we got rescued and brought here, everything you’ve done has been for you and that simpering turd you listen to. You lost your way, Captain. You lost sight of your humanity.”
Rolo turned to his guards, but they all backed away. They knew that it was over. That their “king” had never been anything but a hollow imitation of a man.
“I gave everything for you; I dived into hell,” Kade said. “These people saved us, pulled us from that hell, and this is what you do to repay them? By murdering them, jailing them, and taking their home? You have no honor and don’t deserve to draw breath.”
“You’re blind, Kade,” Rolo said. “X has corrupted your mind.”
Kade slapped the insolent face with a resounding smack, turning the pudgy man ninety degrees. When Rolo looked at him again, he seemed to be in shock, reaching up to hold his cheek with one hand. Kade pulled the hammer back on the pistol.
“My mind’s pretty clear,” Kade said. “I see you for who you are with my own eyes.”
“Put the gun down, Kade,” X said. “This walking shit heap is mine.”
Kade looked over his shoulder at X. In that instant, a snarling Rolo lunged and grabbed Kade by the wrist in an attempt to snatch the gun.
A shot cracked. Rolo staggered back, his crazed eyes locked on Kade. He stumbled away as a cherry-size hole blossomed in the center of his chest.
The former airship captain took another step back, then another, right into the railing, where his momentum carried him over the side.
X ran over with everyone else as Rolo hit the water twenty stories below.
It was the most anticlimactic way X could have envisioned to kill the bastard, though he did get the desired outcome. And X was still standing.
“The reign of Rolo is over,” someone said. “All hail King Kade Long.”
X turned toward Kade, who held the pistol in his shaking hand. Of course! A memory flashed from the day he’d killed el Pulpo, inheriting the crown. It was Cazador custom. But there hadn’t been two kings back then.
A few of the soldiers looked confused.
Gunfire cracked in the distance, and not just sporadic shots. The battle wasn’t over yet. Any questions of royal succession would have to be dealt with later.
“Come on,” X said. “It’s time to find Charmer.”
THIRTY-ONE
“Where’s my son?” Sofia yelled in English and then Spanish as she rushed down the hallway, frantically banging on doors. Magnolia was just behind her with Edgar, Tia, and the two Cazador allies assigned to help them.
They had searched an entire floor already, but the only information they had was from Imulah, and no one else was talking.
Magnolia passed a door that was slightly open. A young woman looked out through the gap.
“Hey,” Magnolia said.
She went over to the door, but the woman closed it right into Magnolia’s boot. With a kick, she launched it back open. The young woman staggered back, wearing an expensive low-cut dress and turquoise jewelry.
To Magnolia’s surprise, it was Charmer’s lover, Jacquelyn. She had seen them together a few times before leaving for Panama months ago.
“Hands up,” Magnolia said. She had her laser rifle up, just in case Charmer was around.
But if she had to guess, the sneaky shit was long gone.
After a quick search, Magnolia lowered the barrel.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said. “We’re looking for a baby named Rhino Jr.”
Jacquelyn turned slightly to the window. “Why?” she said. “Why are you killing us?”
Magnolia thought about the quickest way to explain what was happening. “Ask your boyfriend,” she said. “He started this war together with Rolo. It is a war that my people will win. You should consider which side you’re on, and tell me where the baby is.”
Jacquelyn hesitated again.
“Charmer left you,” Magnolia said. “Why would he? Because he knows it’s over. Now, tell me where the baby is.”
Heaving a sigh, Jacquelyn looked down. “I saw him with the Cazador soldiers a floor below us. I heard he was being kept there.”
“Which room?”
“I don’t know.”
An explosion outside drew Magnolia to the window. It wasn’t the best angle, but she could see the naval battle between the Wave Runners and the Frog.
The ship continued to put up a fight despite two fires burning on its weather deck. Muzzle flashes came from the last defenders in both the stern and the bow.
The Wave Runner soldiers circled the beleaguered vessel, firing small arms from Jet Skis to keep the gunners on the Frog busy. A well-aimed rocket streaked away from one of the war boats and slammed into the command tower, which was already spewing flames.
The last cannon on the deck swung around toward the two war boats. The barrel blazed, firing a shell that burst in front of the boat. Water geysered up.
Footsteps approached.
“Mags, come on,” Edgar said.
She left with him and joined the others in the hallway. Sofia searched for her child while Tia held security with two Cazador soldiers.
“I think I know where he is,” Magnolia called out to her friend.
Sofia whirled about. “Where?”
“Maybe one floor below us.”
“Let’s go!” Edgar said.
Magnolia rushed back to the stairwell and loped down the stairs with the other Hell Divers and Cazadores right behind. She yanked the door open to a dark corridor that seemed abandoned.
Sofia moved out in front of her, and Magnolia yelled, “Be careful!”
Just as Magnolia had ignored her friends’ cautionary words in Panama, Sofia ignored hers now. “Where’s my son!” she shouted.
Magnolia and Edgar ran to keep up with her while Tia hung back with the two guards to hold rear security.
Sofia pounded on doors. None opened.
“Open up!” she shouted. “Open or I’ll blast my way in!”
Magnolia ran to catch up, then skidded to a halt at the sound of gunfire ahead. Bullets ripped through the door across the hall from where Sofia was busy knocking. She cried out and fell on her back.
“Sofia!” Magnolia shouted.
She raised her laser rifle and flashed a bolt through the door to the room where the shots had originated. The gunfire stopped.
“Cover me!” she shouted to Edgar.
He moved over with her as Magnolia went to Sofia. She was on her side, reaching down to her legs. Blood ran from bullet wounds to both calves.
Magnolia immediately put pressure on the wounds. She could tell by the steady blood flow that no artery had been nicked, but that didn’t guarantee survival.
Edgar kicked the door off its hinges and went inside to the sound of a baby crying. Sofia tried to sit up.
“No, don’t move,” Magnolia said.
“I have to get to my son. I have to . . .”
Magnolia looked over her shoulder to a body sprawled behind the broken-down door. Edgar moved inside, sweeping with his rifle for contacts.
“Clear!” he shouted.
The crying grew louder and closer.
Edgar emerged with Rhino Jr. in his arms. He cradled the child and bent down to Sofia, who reached out as Magnolia kept pressure on the wounds.
“Tia! Med kit!” she said.
Tia got down on one knee and started pulling out supplies.
“My baby, my baby,” Sofia kept saying. She hugged her crying child as Magnolia and Tia applied tourniquets.
“You’re going to be okay,” Magnolia said. “This is gonna hurt, though . . .”
Sofia cried out as Magnolia tightened the tourniquet just below the left kneecap.
“I’m sorry,” Magnolia said. “One more, okay?”
Sofia managed a nod while squeezing her wailing baby even tighter to her chest.
Magnolia tightened the second tourniquet to another grunt of pain. Then she pulled back to check her work. Her friend had lost blood, but she would survive.
Bumping on the comms, Magnolia called for a medic. A response fired back.
“We need all teams to the marina,” Forge said. “Taking heavy casualties!”
“We’re pinned down on floor eighteen,” X replied. “Civilians are blocking our way, and several of them have weapons. Magnolia, report position, over.”
“On floor three,” she replied. “Sofia’s been wounded, but we found her baby and he seems fine.”
“Copy that. Stay put,” X replied. “General, I’ll be there as soon as I can!”
Things weren’t sounding good, and with so much going on, Magnolia could hardly concentrate.
“Mags,” Sofia whispered.
“I’m right here. Everything’s going to be okay.”
“Go help the others. We have to win this fight. We can’t—”
“We aren’t going to lose.” Magnolia stood up, bloody to her elbows. “Tia, you stay here with her and the guards. Edgar, with me.”
They raced back down to the marina two floors below. At the blown-out doors to the dock, smoke was still thick.
More gunfire and explosions rang out across the piers. In the respite, she could hear the clang of weapons and armor.
Wounded soldiers called out for help; others moaned their last.
Magnolia shouldered her laser rifle and stared out in the darkness, using the moonlight and flickering fires to guide her aim. Along the dock to her right, an entire row of small fishing boats burned. One was in the process of sinking.
A midsize trawler blazed at the end of the dock, its glow backlighting the figures of soldiers fighting. These men were down to swords and spears, fighting hand to hand.
“Stay close,” Magnolia said to Edgar.
They started the trek back the way they had come, moving in a crouch with rifles up. Cazador soldiers with the Vanguard logo on their armor lay sprawled along the dock. Most were dead from gunshots, but a few had arrows sticking out of their armor. One man had a broken spear in his back.
As they got closer to the remaining fighters, Magnolia made out the red-plumed helmet of General Forge at the end of the dock on her left. He fought with two swords against a pair of Wave Runner soldiers. Another Vanguard soldier fought an enemy spearman. Several other pairs were dueling on other piers, but in the glow of the fires, it was hard to make out who was who.
Out on the water, the enemy continued to pound the Frog with gunfire and rockets. They seemed close to taking the ship.
Magnolia couldn’t let that happen.
She ran the rest of the way to the skirmish at the end of her dock, where she recognized another soldier by his hulking form. It was Gran Jefe, fighting the Wave Runners.
A message came over the comms from X. They were still pinned down by civilians who had taken up arms. It would be a few more minutes before he could get to the marina.
Forge and Gran Jefe didn’t have another minute.
Magnolia aimed her rifle to help General Forge as he ran an enemy warrior through with his spear. But the other soldier smashed a hatchet against his back, knocking him to the deck with the skewered Wave Runner.
The man with the hatchet strode over to finish off the general.
“Over here, dickhead!” Magnolia shouted. She sighted him up and squeezed the trigger, firing a bolt that cleanly took off the top of his head.
Gunfire forced her and Edgar behind a stack of scavenged wood planks.
She looked through a gap between the stacked boards to see the last of the soldiers allied with Forge go down. The general was wounded and trying to crawl away. Only Gran Jefe remained on his feet and fighting.
