Hell divers x fallout, p.40
Hell Divers X: Fallout, page 40
“Fuck, we’re . . .” Magnolia started to say before she heard footfalls behind her.
By the time she turned, it was too late. Wind ruffled the charred jacket of an injured Wave Runner. Not just any. This was their leader.
Jamal, the short, muscular Cazador general, approached with a submachine gun. Blistered arms raised the weapon, aiming at her, then swung it over to Edgar.
“no!” she shouted.
Jamal fired a burst through Edgar’s head. Some of it spattered on Magnolia.
She turned to look in horror upon the man she had spent years diving and fighting with. He was gone in the blink of an eye.
The Cazador turned the weapon to her but held his fire for some reason.
“Jorge!” he shouted.
There was a pause; then Jamal yelled in Spanish—something about a puta.
Magnolia stared at Edgar’s ruined helmet. The visor had shattered, and smoke curled out of three holes.
“No. Edgar . . .” she mumbled. “Oh God . . .”
In a fit of rage, she jumped up and reached over her shoulder for a blade, only to find a Cazador cutlass at her throat. Jamal whirled her around, keeping the blade against her neck. She could smell his burned flesh.
“Jorge!” he shouted again.
Through the smoke, a huge figure emerged, holding an axe in one hand, a spear in the other.
An arrow stuck out of his shoulder plate, and blood dripped down his arm. He favored his right leg.
Magnolia looked over to Forge, still crawling away on the dock. The other Vanguard soldiers nearby were all injured or dead.
With X pinned down, no one was coming to save her.
Shouting rose over the crackling of flames. Magnolia followed it out over the water to the Frog, where the Wave Runners were trying to board by firing grappling hooks up to the deck rail. From her vantage, she could see they were climbing up in unguarded sections of the ship. There simply weren’t enough sailors under Captain Two Skulls’ command to hold back the Wave Runners.
If the enemy took the ship, the battle for the islands would be lost.
Magnolia thought of all the people they had already lost, from Rodger to Edgar. Her heart thumped with despair and, beneath that, rage.
She couldn’t give up. She had to keep fighting.
She squirmed, and the blade cut into her neck, drawing blood.
“No te muevas, puta,” Jamal said. “No move.”
She pressed her chin down, trying to make it more difficult to cut her. This angle allowed her to see something she hadn’t noticed before.
Jamal seemed to be wearing metal armor over his right arm. The armor looked a lot like Michael’s prosthetic arm.
It all came clear to her in an instant. This was who had killed Oliver and Nez. Charmer had hired this scum to frame Michael.
Magnolia squirmed again, only to feel the blade bite into the skin of her neck.
Gran Jefe kept coming toward them. When he was ten feet away, he stopped and spoke in Spanish—something about letting her go and how this was between them.
She picked up more pieces of the conversation. Gran Jefe saying how Rolo had nuked the supercarrier and killed countless of their friends.
“No,” Jamal said. “¡Mentira!”
It seemed he didn’t believe Gran Jefe. Magnolia could understand his skepticism, since the true king was back from the wastes.
Gran Jefe dropped the spear to the ground, then pointed his hatchet at Jamal.
“Let her go, and fight me!” he said in English.
Jamal responded with a name Magnolia wasn’t expecting. “Ada.” Something about how Gran Jefe had . . .
Magnolia narrowed her eyes with realization. Both these men had the blood of innocent people on their hands.
“You killed Ada?” she sputtered.
Gran Jefe took a step forward.
“Did you do it?” Magnolia asked.
“Sí,” Gran Jefe replied.
“How could you?”
“For what she did to container with my cousin. I’m sorry. I . . . lo siento.”
Jamal laughed. “Now you die, bitch.”
“Stop!” Gran Jefe howled. He cocked the hatchet back and threw it.
Magnolia had barely half a second to move slightly. She felt the cutlass edge sting the side of her neck as the hatchet hit Jamal with a thud.
Magnolia sank to the deck and looked up. The axe’s handle was cocked up in front of Jamal’s face, its blade buried deep in his chest. Dropping to his knees, he reached up and grasped the handle.
Gran Jefe grabbed it, too, then pressed a boot against his cousin’s chest and wrested the blade free.
Jamal fell back to the dock, hissing like a leaky air bladder as he tried to speak.
“Vete a la mierda,” he wheezed.
Gran Jefe hawked and spat in the dying man’s face. “No eres mi primo . . . No my cousin.”
Magnolia kept her hand on her neck, which felt greasy with blood. Too much blood.
Her vision began to blur. She could see just enough to make out Gran Jefe finishing off Jamal by bringing the hatchet down on the top of his helmet, splitting it with another sickening crunch.
Then Gran Jefe bent down to her and put a hand on her neck.
“Tranquila,” he said. “You don’t die today.”
* * * * *
When Kade got to the marina, X raised his damaged prosthetic arm, signaling a halt. The squad of six soldiers joined him. Slayer and Blackburn moved out in front with their shot-up shields.
Kade raised the assault rifle he had liberated from a dead enemy soldier. He trained the iron sights on the burning docks. Bodies were sprawled everywhere, even in boats. Vanguard soldiers. Charmer’s militia. Wave Runners. The death and destruction were almost too much to comprehend. What the hell were they doing? With humans all but extinct, why were they fighting each other?
Maybe they were barbarians and savages as the Forerunner and Lucky had said.
Kade drew in a breath and let it out.
One of the two main instigators was dead, and Kade had been the one to kill him. He wasn’t even sure that was what he had planned, but Rolo had forced his hand by lunging at him. Now it seemed that people thought Kade was king of the Vanguard Islands. That couldn’t be the case, though—the true king was right in front of him.
X waved for the fighters to push down the docks. Kade followed him into the smoke, through the death. But there was also life to celebrate. He felt relief knowing Tia was still alive. Last he’d heard, she was on the third floor of the tower with Sofia, who had been shot in the legs. They were safer inside than out here.
Lucky was also safer where he was right now.
Kade had left the knight inside the helicopter, pinned under the crates, for his own good. If the Vanguard military won this battle, Kade would see that Lucky was taken care of. First, though, they had to pull off a victory—an outcome that was far from certain.
Smoke drifted across the path ahead. When he pushed through it, he saw the ongoing battle for the Frog. Kade couldn’t see much, but someone else could.
“They’re being boarded,” Slayer said.
X brought up his scope to his visor. “Shit. Get going and spread out.”
The fighters surged ahead, running across the adjacent docks. Kade was almost to the end of the dock when he heard a soldier calling out.
“Help!”
He recognized that gravelly voice.
“¡Auxilio! Someone, help!”
Kade followed the noise through another curtain of smoke. On the other side, he saw Gran Jefe on his knees beside a fallen Hell Diver.
“General!” Slayer shouted from the dock parallel to theirs, advancing toward the still form of Forge. The lieutenant bent down to check him, then yelled, “He’s alive! We need a medic!”
X ran up with Kade all the way to Magnolia and Gran Jefe, who had a hand on her neck.
“Mags!” X cried.
Even from ten feet away, Kade could see the blood. It was everywhere: her hands, arms, legs. Less clear was whether all the blood was hers. If it was, then she would soon be dead.
Gran Jefe spoke to X in fast broken English mixed with Spanish. Something about how she’d had her neck cut.
As Kade arrived, he saw it wasn’t just her. A Cazador with a hatchet in his head lay dead by her side. Behind them, Edgar lay slumped against crates, with half his head gone.
Two more Vanguard soldiers arrived. One had a medical pack.
“Help her!” X shouted.
Kade saw Magnolia’s hand move. She was alive still, but it didn’t look good for her.
“We have to get to the Frog!” someone yelled. “Charmer is out there!”
X looked out over the water, growling under his breath like a wild animal. He turned away and crouched to the medic.
“Don’t let her die,” X grumbled.
Then he got up and stumbled over to Kade and said, “I don’t know how the fuck you’re standing next to me, but I need you now, Cowboy.”
“I’m with you, King Xavier,” Kade replied.
“Let’s get our raggedy asses to the Frog!”
The remaining soldiers boarded one of the surviving assault rafts that had brought them here. As the boat thumped away from the burning docks, Kade pulled out the magazine—ten rounds left. And his pistol was empty, its last round now inside Rolo’s body, drifting toward the ocean floor.
Kade looked back at the rooftop of the tower he had crashed onto not an hour ago. Smoke tendriled into the air, and flames licked out from many windows.
The assault boat thumped over the waves. Kade checked his rifle and studied the ship in the green hue of his night-vision goggles.
Shots were coming from the Frog, but Kade didn’t see any of the fighting.
The raft closed in on the stern of the ship.
“This is it,” X said. “We secure the ship, and we will have our home back. Fail, and we lose everything!”
“So we don’t fail,” Slayer said.
The engines burbled as the boat slowed on approach. It bumped against a hull pockmarked with bullet scars. Slayer grabbed a dangling rope and started shinnying up the side.
The second the Cazador was up, he wiggled the rope, signaling X, who went next, followed by Kade.
By the time Kade was up, most of the gunshots had ceased. Shouting, most of it in Spanish, replaced the noise. That didn’t tell him much.
He followed X over the rail and onto the deck, to a scene of carnage. Vanguard soldiers lay scattered everywhere he looked. He saw a few Wave Runners among the corpses, but not many.
Slayer flashed hand signals to the team. Fanning out into combat intervals, they began the search for Charmer.
It didn’t take long.
His smooth voice called out from a platform two levels above them, where he stood illuminated in soft moonlight.
“Don’t shoot!” X shouted.
A moment later, Kade saw why. Charmer stood with his boot on Miles’s back, and he held a chain that was wrapped so tightly around the dog’s neck, it could hardly snarl.
In his other hand, Charmer held an Uzi, which he pointed down at X.
Three sky people and two Wave Runners moved out from the two hatches at the bottom of the tower, their rifles pointed at Kade and the others.
“It’s over—put your weapons down!” Charmer called down. “Do it, or I’ll kill your dog.”
“Carl,” Kade said.
Charmer looked down to him.
“Rolo is dead,” Kade said. “You’ve lost. It’s time to end this bloody madness!”
“You can end it by putting down your weapons!”
“Let go of my dog!” X snarled.
“I don’t know how you did it, X. Maybe you are immortal.”
Miles bared his teeth as Charmer pulled tighter up on the chain.
“All I know is, you aren’t some guardian angel,” he said. “Death follows you wherever you go.”
“They saved you, Carl,” Kade said. “Brought us out of hell and gave us life and hope.”
“Which is all the more reason I had to do what I did. How do you not see that, Kade? They were trying to keep food from us, and they would have conscripted us all into a war that would take us back to the wastes!”
“I did what I did to keep our people alive!” X thundered. “We can’t stay here forever, you simpering fool. Storms, famines, violence!”
“Rolo,” Charmer started to say, but Kade interrupted him.
“Rolo nuked the supercarrier! He murdered hundreds, then tried to kill me and the Hell Divers he left behind,” Kade said. “We all know the truth of what happened. I’m the truth. King X is the truth.”
“He isn’t king anymore,” Charmer said. “And he never will be again.”
“I don’t need to be king to finish you,” X said. “Fight me like a man. Hand to hand. No weapons.”
Charmer turned his monocular gaze from Kade to X. “Me fight the great Immortal? Why, when I have your beloved pet? You have one choice: surrender, or your dog becomes fish food.”
“You got four seconds to let go of him, shithead. Then the pain begins,” X snapped back.
Somewhere above Charmer, Kade heard a faint, almost subliminal chittering sound. Above Charmer, a shadow seemed to float down the exterior of the superstructure.
“Three . . .” X said.
The shadow separated from the superstructure and dropped onto Charmer, knocking him over the rail. He fell the twenty feet to the weather deck, landing with his arm under him. X was on him before his first howl of pain.
“Fire!” Slayer shouted.
Gunshots rang out all around Kade. He blasted a Wave Runner with two to the head, then moved to the next target.
It was over in a few seconds. Somehow, Kade was still standing and unscathed. In front of him, the enemy troops were all down, two still whimpering in pain, the others dead.
Kade looked behind him. Slayer was also still on his feet. Blackburn and another loyalist soldier were on the deck, moaning in pain.
As Slayer went to finish off the wounded rebel fighters, Kade ran over to X, who slapped Charmer hard on the ear.
“Where did Michael go!” X shouted. He punched Charmer in the nose, breaking it, then slapped the other ear.
“Where did he take the airship!” X yelled.
“He . . .” Charmer tried to say. Then he grinned—a mistake.
A gloved hand slapped the grin away, along with a couple of teeth. X hit him again, then grabbed him by the throat and squeezed.
“Wait!” Kade yelled. “We need him alive to explain what happened. To admit to the truth. Not just about Oliver and Nez but also what really happened to the supercarrier.”
X wasn’t letting up, and Charmer’s face turned a deep red.
“King Xavier, stop!” Kade shouted. “Slayer, help me!”
They grabbed X, but he had an iron grip. Charmer’s eye bulged.
The two men finally yanked X away from his gasping, coughing victim.
“No!” X shouted.
He fought free and scrambled back to finish the job. Luckily for Charmer, Kade and Slayer managed to once again stop the enraged king from killing him.
Loud barking erupted from Miles, then excited utterances from Jo-Jo. The two animals made their way over to X as several figures emerged around the bottom of the command tower. Kade picked up his rifle and aimed at them.
“Hold your fire,” Slayer said.
Kade lowered the weapon when he saw it was Valeria and a few sailors, including Tiger.
“Where’s Captain Two Skulls?” Slayer called out.
“He didn’t make it. Rocket hit the CIC, killed most everyone inside, and took out the comms,” Tiger said.
“Damn,” X said and heaved a great sigh. “He was one of the best of us.”
A team of four Cazadores moved out to secure the ship. It took a few minutes before someone yelled, “All decks clear!”
Tiger walked over to X. “The Osprey is on the way here with reinforcements,” he said.
“You did it, sir,” Slayer said. “The islands are back under our control.”
There was scattered applause across the deck. X didn’t chime in, and neither did Kade, for different reasons. The king was likely considering the losses they had taken in the short battle. Kade was worried about a possible war on the horizon with the Knights of the Coral Castle. He had yet to explain everything he had learned while in their captivity, but he would soon. Now was the time to celebrate the victory and minister to the wounded.
Blackburn groaned as Valeria tended to his injuries.
“We have to put out those fires, or we’re going to lose the ship,” Tiger said.
“Same for the capitol tower,” Slayer said.
“Over there!” someone shouted.
Kade looked to the horizon, where he saw the container ship Osprey sailing toward them. But the shouting Cazador was pointing at the top of the capitol tower.
Black smoke billowed up from the rooftop, snaking around a beam of blue light that shot straight up into the sky.
“What is that?” X asked.
Perplexed sailors and soldiers crowded around for a better view.
Kade stared with realization.
“The Trident,” he whispered.
“The what?” X turned toward Kade.
Everyone did. All staring at him. It was time to start talking. To tell what he knew about the Coral Castle.
“We must prepare,” Kade said. He studied the beam of light.
“For what, exactly?” X asked.
Kade swallowed hard. “For a new enemy.”
EPILOGUE
The Vanguard flag, frayed at the ends, flapped in the breeze atop the capitol tower. A full day had passed since the battle for the Vanguard Islands, and X was preparing to speak to his remaining confidants about the future—not just theirs but his own as well.
