And here it comes. The reason why we’re here, and why only one of us is supposed to leave.
“As you’ve no doubt already discerned, we have your friends. Whichever one of you walks out of Nan Madol will have their friend returned and be welcomed as a Prince of Peace. The other will meet the same fate as their fallen hero. And no, I don’t expect you to fight each other. I’m many things, but cliché is not one of them.”
“Says the man giving a monologue.” King grins and it takes a concerted effort to not laugh.
“And if the survivor refuses membership?” I ask.
“There is no refusing. You are a member whether you accept it or not. Votes will be cast via text. Refusing to vote simply allows members you might disagree with to direct our course. Participation is the only way to influence the outcome.”
“We could always stand directly in your way,” King says.
“One of you,” homunculus-bird says, “is welcome to try. The other will be buried alongside Pohnpei’s ancients. Now then, the rules are simple. You—”
King lunges to the side, hammer raised. There’s a shout, a thunk, and a splash.
“Stop!” homunculus shouts. “The rules!”
When King is thrown back into the small courtyard, rolling back to his feet, knife and hammer at the ready, I head for the men entering to my left.
“You can’t start yet! I haven’t—”
There’s a thunk of metal on plastic, followed by a grinding. I glance up to see the drone wobbling, canting off to the side, two of its propellers shattered. King’s hammer clangs on the stone floor between us. He’s impulsive, but I think I like it.
The sound of wet feet focuses my attention on the entryway through which I came just minutes ago, unaware that I was being watched, not by sharks but by evil men with evil intentions. The first man, dressed in a black wet suit and holding a hatchet, all but walks into the machete’s blade. The second man sees it happen and waits for a third man to join him. None of the men carry firearms, but they look comfortable with the assortment of blades. When one of them double-takes the machete now dripping with his comrade’s blood, I realize they expected us to be unarmed. And while a machete, hammer, and short knife don’t an arsenal make, they help even the odds a little.
Though his face is mostly concealed by the wet suit’s hood, I see a surge of desperate confidence fill the man’s eyes. I’m not sure if these men are here willingly, or somehow being cajoled, but as the first of them swings a sword toward my neck, I decide it doesn’t matter. The sword comes to a stop when his wrist slaps into my raised machete hand. Gripping his shoulder with my free hand, I pull him in close and drive my forehead into his nose. Crunching bone is followed by a wet howl. There’s almost no resistance when I shove the man back, toppling him into his partner and sending them both sprawling into the sea. These men might be killers, but they’re also amateurs.
King handles his attackers with the same lethal force, but employs a series of knife cuts, jabs, and pressure-point strikes that appear chaotic at first, but are actually a fluid use of multiple martial arts and more modern fighting techniques. King has been fighting for a long time.
Who the hell is this guy?
When the last of his assailants hits the stone floor, I say, “The drones have a limited range. Two thousand feet, tops, if they have an extender on one of the islets. We’ll find them on the mainland. And not far.”
King gives a nod and steps toward the exit on his side, about to dive in and start swimming.
“I came in a kayak,” I tell him.
He pauses, looks back, and says, “Behind you.”
I sidestep the man I heard coming before King’s warning and give his back a shove. He stumbles forward into King’s fist and drops. He’s alive, but he won’t be moving anytime soon. When King doesn’t put the knife in the man’s back, I know I’m dealing with someone whose sense of honor resembles my own. He has no trouble killing, but only when it’s necessary.
King steps over the unconscious man and pauses as orange light fills the sky above us. A softball-sized orb of fire plummets from one of the drones.
“Looks like Greek fire,” I observe.
The comment snaps King’s eyes wide. “Down!” he shouts, sounding worried for the first time.
The fiery sphere strikes an outcrop of angled stone and bounces like a kid’s rubber ball — if kids’ toys left explosive mountains of flame in their wake. The fireball ricochets off a wall, the tree, and the courtyard floor, each strike setting more foliage and vines ablaze, before zipping out the entrance beside me. There’s a thud and then a high-pitched wail. The man whose face I caved in took the projectile in the chest, and he’s now a walking inferno. He throws himself into the ocean, but the flames continue to eat him up as he thrashes. When his body falls still, floating out to sea, he looks like a Viking funeral pyre. The ball strikes the water and floats, flames spreading out from its core.
“They’re kinetic fireball incendiaries,” King says. “They’re filled with jet fuel.”
Before I can ask how he knows that, the night lights up around us. Ten more fiery spheres drop from the night sky. In their initial burst of orange light, I catch sight of the drones dropping them. Fucking drones. And then I don’t have time to think. Most of the KFIs strike islets around us, setting fire to the ancient ruins and the surrounding water. But three plummet toward the already burning courtyard.
As fast as I am, and King appears to be, neither of us will be able to avoid being struck if one of the balls ricochets in our direction. And taking cover is a no-go. Our little fortress is about to be transformed into a volcano.
“Water!” I shout, and dive out over the stone staircase I crawled up just minutes ago. I arc out over a blazing trail of jet fuel still leaking from the first fireball and plunge into the depths.
I spin around underwater, watching through the waves, as orange trails of fire bounce around the ruins and through the water. The result is a fiery maze stretching farther than I can see, much of it between me and the mainland shoreline.
I see no sign of the mysterious King.
A twenty-foot gap between fiery streaks burning atop the water provides plenty of space for me to surface. I rise slowly, letting my face break the water just enough to take a breath and check things out. The air stings my nose and throat. It’s choked with chemical smoke. The fire burns hot, steaming the moisture from my skin. All around, ancient ruins burn. The stone structures will survive, just as they did the city’s sinking, but the vegetation will be scorched clean, along with any animal life on the islets — including myself and King if we linger much longer.
There’s still no sign of the man, but my kayak floats free, overturned, but still buoyant. I can turn it back over, but will it carry me safely through the fires? I flinch back when the side of the kayak tips up and a face peers out at me and a deep voice says, “Under.”
“Shit. King.” I dip under the water and come up inside the kayak, treading water, just a few feet away from King.
“If you don’t want rules,” our adversary says, voice booming from another drone above, but muffled by the kayak’s shell, “that’s fine. We were going to do this in stages, but I think we’ll all just embrace the chaos you two seem to prefer.” A series of loud clunks sounds out. I have no idea what they could be, but I’m sure they’re not good.
“Did you know that while uncommon, the occasional saltwater crocodile finds its way to Pohnpei? It’s a surprise every time, but it happens. A half dozen is far less likely, but we’re not making a National Geographic documentary, now, are we? And do you know the one thing every crocodile has in common when it reaches Pohnpei, after swimming through hundreds of miles of open ocean?”