There wasn’t much out here now that they had left the ITC Requiem behind. Michael had plenty of questions about the airship. He still hadn’t found Captain Rolo’s ITC Victory, but he was starting to put the pieces together.
It was a hell of a coincidence for the Victory to show up where humanity had made a final stand against the machines during World War III. But two warships was beyond any possible coincidence. They had come here for a reason that Captain Maria Ash and Captain Jordan either had hidden or never knew.
If he survived, Michael would very soon find out what that reason was.
Grit swirled across the plains, making it difficult to see, but Michael spotted cover at a dry riverbed snaking across the cracked ground. A fence of spindly trees grew on the banks, their branches dangling like Cazador fishing poles.
He directed the team toward the watercourse. To his surprise, a weak trickle flowed through the channel below, but the creature drinking there surprised him even more.
A four-legged beast that looked like a cross between and a cat and a dog looked up at Michael with eyes that glowed green in his NVGs. Long, rigid bristles rose up across its neck and along its back.
Michael froze.
The animal seemed to do the same. The tail dropped between its hind legs. Opening a mouth full of sharp teeth, it let out an almost human-sounding laugh.
Then it turned and took off running. Rising on its hind legs, the beast jumped to the opposite bank and bounded up and over the top. A cackle filled the night as the creature retreated across the fields.
“What the hell was that thing?” Arlo asked.
Lena limped over. “It looked like a hyena but with a few adaptations, like those spines.”
“At least there is life out here,” Sofia said. “That means the machines don’t kill everything.”
“Just humans now,” Edgar said. Leading the way with his sniper rifle, he set off down into the riverbed. Using the watercourse for cover, the divers followed its snaking path upstream, toward the snowcapped volcano in the distance.
A drone flew low over the foothills, searching the canopy of trees growing along the base of the mountain. It circled several times, then shot back over the jungle, in the direction of the smokestacks.
Michael could see the smoke streaming out into the sky but still couldn’t see the silos. He could see radio towers, and a satellite dish protruding from a cliffside like a mechanical ear.
Flat, dry terrain stretched from the divers’ position to the scree slopes around the base of the mountain.
“We have to cross that?” Arlo whispered. “We should have just dropped on the mountain and rappelled down.”
“Quiet,” Les snapped.
Michael took a sip of water through his straw and tried to calm his nerves. He had tried his best to bury all thoughts of what was happening both on Aruba and in the Vanguard Islands, but downtime like this gave his mind time to stir up worries, like a gust of wind stirring up grit.
A sonic boom snapped him right out of it. The divers all hunched down as a drone rocketed across the sky. It stopped over the mountain and then lowered. Another drone rose into the air over the cliffs and climbed into the clouds. Thrusters pulsated, and it blasted away across the skyline.
Edgar panned his spotting scope over the flat, sere terrain, then looked over. Lightning reflected in his mirrored visor.
“We got a window, Commander,” he said.
“This is our chance,” Les said. “Move fast and stay low.”
Michael got up and started off across the plains. The team ran in a crouch. Lena was still limping but keeping up.
A half mile into the trek, they paused to rest at an outcropping of boulders. The wind had died down enough that Michael could see the hills. He sheltered behind a rock and gestured for Edgar.
“Find us a path,” Michael said.
“Northeast looks clear with several more outcroppings if we have to hide,” Edgar said, handing Michael his spotting scope.
There were several clusters of buildings across the plateau. But it was the jungle at the base of the foothills that most interested him. If they could reach it, they could sneak to the foothills and then into the rocks surrounding the fortress at the foot of the mountain.
He rotated the scope to look at the smokestacks and the fortress walls. They had to get inside there somehow.
“We make a run for the jungle,” Michael said, “then work our way up to the rocks to look for a way in. Everyone on me, fast and tight.”
He took off running. The trees were a mile and a half away—normally about a thirteen-minute run in armor, but he had to go slower for Lena.
Minutes into the trek, he spotted the mounds of earth they had seen from Cricket’s camera. And while he couldn’t see cannons or turrets, he knew they were there, hiding.
A branch snapped under Michael’s boot. He kept going, ignoring it. After another snap, he realized that they weren’t sticks. Bones littered the dirt ahead.
He slowed his pace. They were in the graveyard they had seen from the sky. The round rocks he had spotted at their last position weren’t rocks, either.
Shells of vehicles littered the ground. The nose of a helicopter and a wing of a fighter jet stuck out of the ground to his right. And bones were everywhere. Armor, too—all of it scoured by the wind over the centuries since the human army lost the battle to stop the machines.
Michael kept walking, then broke into a trot. Every bone that snapped under his heavy boots made him think of the dead. These people couldn’t all have been soldiers. Like the Hell Divers, they had probably come from all walks of life. Teachers, engineers, chefs—people trying to save what was left of their world.
And they had failed.
Michael kept running, trying to put them out of his mind and focus on the mission. But every step was a challenge. He felt that he was in a graveyard possessed by the ghosts of fallen warriors, all of them counting on the Hell Divers to finish what they themselves had failed to do.
His thoughts returned to Layla and Bray. He was trying to save his family, just as these people had tried to save theirs.
Thinking of X enabled him to refocus. The king was off fighting the skinwalkers, to save not only his family but the Vanguard Islands, too. And if X and General Forge ran into defectors there, it could be a slaughter.
Michael narrowed in on the trees, running faster, rifle cradled and eyes forward.
To defeat the machines, he must become one.
He was a quarter mile from the tree line when another drone rose into the sky. He didn’t see it at first—only the sound of thrusters. But then it burst through the smoke wafting away from the factory stacks.
Michael kept running, close enough to the fortress now to see a dirt road leading away from two massive steel doors that must be an entrance. Both were sealed shut.
He glanced over his shoulder. The divers were keeping up with him, even Lena. They bolted for the acres of trees and red sage-like bushes—ample concealment for scouting out the base.
Somewhere behind them, another drone thruster roared. Everyone hit the ground, praying that their suits would mask their heat signatures.
He stared ahead, not daring to move, staring into the empty orbits of a cracked and wind-polished skull. A rib cage stuck out of the ground nearby, and beside it a skeletal hand, a wedding ring still on the third finger.
Michael again thought of Layla and Bray.
You’re going to see them. You’re going to get out of this.
As the machine closed in, that little promise to himself seemed hard to believe.