Michael flitted his eyes to see the drone up close for the first time. This model was much more advanced than Cricket. It had no limbs and a curved shell. Spikes jutted from the armor, and an antenna tested the air.
The thrusters in back turned off as the underbelly opened. It switched to hover mode, and all those spikes extended into what were surely weapons.
Heart thumping, he resisted the urge to raise his laser rifle and blast the damn thing out of the sky. If he did, they were so close to the base that the machines would send everything down on them.
The drone lowered until it was ten feet above him, close enough that the hover nodes kicked up a rooster tail of dust. The force of the draft exposed a skull still wearing a helmet that didn’t look much different from his own.
Michael tried to calm his pounding heart as the drone flew over him. He waited for a flurry of bolts that never came. The draft of air passed right over him as it flew over the other divers.
He remained frozen, and the noise moved farther away. He swallowed hard and then flinched at another noise—a beeping sound.
Michael’s gut clenched when he realized what was causing it: his wrist monitor.
He brought it under his body and shut it off, but too late. The humming returned, drawing closer.
He prepared to roll away and fire his laser rifle, waiting for just the right moment. But just when he flipped onto his back, the thrusters on the drone fired. Blue flames scorched the air as it zipped away.
He didn’t waste a second getting up. The team followed him toward the trees while the drone flew away to the eastern edge of the battlefield.
Michael recognized the location. Cricket had somehow come back online—not to warn Michael, but to provide a distraction. He looked over his shoulder just as the enemy drone located Cricket’s broken body. A flurry of red lasers pounded the ground, finishing off the mechanical Hell Diver that had saved countless human lives, including Michael’s.
Anger flared, and he halted, but Les pulled on his robotic arm. He chambered the anger for later and ran to the jungle on the captain’s heels.
When they got there, Edgar was aiming his rifle toward the fortress walls.
“Guys, we have a major fucking problem,” he said quietly.
The gate Michael had seen earlier widened, giving them the first look inside the base. Marching forward were three DEF-Nine units, followed by another three.
Within seconds, a small army had left the base, marching down a sloped road.
“Holy shit,” Edgar said. “Take a look at this.”
He handed Michael the spotting scope, and Michael zoomed in, expecting to see even more machines inside the base. But he saw other figures—not machines at all.
These were humans, all of them shackled and chained.
A drone hovered over the group, and a defector led them across an open area, toward the factory smokestacks. The gates slowly closed, again blocking the view.
Mechanical joints clanked in the distance as the defectors marched down the road and spread out.
“What do we do?” Arlo asked.
Les looked toward Michael.
They both answered at the same time.
“We hide.”
THIRTY-SIX
Magnolia climbed the interior stairwell in what appeared to be an abandoned building. X and Victor followed her, their helmet beams raking back and forth, illuminating a reddish crust that covered the stained walls like warts.
Head pounding from her injuries, she felt like an insect stuck in a web, being pulled in all directions by a family of hungry spiders. Using her body, she burst through a web covering the stairwell.
She hoped that Lieutenant Wynn would be able to protect their home until the Hell Divers could shut down the machines. Not knowing how Les and Michael were doing made her feel helpless. But that wasn’t her only worry. Leaving Miles and a gravely wounded Rodger on the beach tugged on her heart.
At the top floor of the building, she entered a hallway with cracked walls. Switching off her helmet lamp, she used her night-vision optics to scan the passage. The doors were gone, allowing a view into each room.
X and Victor followed her, clearing the spaces one by one. At the final room, Magnolia went inside, sweeping her rifle barrel over the rotted desks and rusted chairs. Broken windows looked over the refinery.
Keeping low, she spotted a figure on a silo.
The skinwalkers weren’t hiding anymore. Several walked on the round rooftops, watching the ground and the air for hostiles. She counted five of them, and on the ground another two patrols of four men each inside the fenced-off compound.
X and Victor took up position along the wall, sneaking glances out the missing windows. Magnolia checked out the compound.
Two fences sealed off the main buildings inside. A third barrier, of brick and mortar, surrounded the buildings. Weeds and bushes with stubby branches grew inside the fenced zone.
Something moved in the purple foliage, parting it like a dorsal fin cutting through the water. An eyeless head emerged, and a spiked back. A prowling Siren—another layer of security around the outpost.
And not just one Siren. She spotted several of the creatures. All were males, their wings sheared off, leaving jagged stubs protruding from their bony backs.
X saw them, too, then raised his binoculars to the ocean. Magnolia aimed her night-vision monocular in that direction, looking for Shadow. The remaining Cazador warship was nowhere in sight, but she could see another vessel.
Zooming in, she confirmed that it was Raven’s Claw, sailing about a mile out to sea. This warship was different from the ones she had seen in the Cazador fleet. Several modifications had been made over the years, but it was the ribs of some gigantic sea beast mounted along the gunwales that caught her attention.
On the bow, the skull of the largest shark she had ever seen bared its teeth at the darkness. Raking the scope over the deck, she spotted several sailors, though not as many as she would have expected.
X stood beside her, scanning with his binoculars while Victor stood guard.
“I don’t see Shadow,” he said.
They turned back to the view of the outpost buildings. The skinwalkers were hunkered down, and Magnolia had a feeling she was seeing only a small portion of their fighting force. They also had the people they had woken from ITC’s cryo chambers, not to mention the Sirens.
Horn and his men weren’t just evil. They had to be insane.
“How are we going to get inside?” she asked X.
He kept his binos on the industrial buildings inside the fences. The structures were mostly metal warehouses built on concrete foundations. Like the Raven’s Claw, they had been reinforced with plate steel. Bars covered the shaded windows.
Train cars, no longer on tracks, served as barracks. Rusted containers also stood inside the compound, probably containing more horrors.
“Three against thirteen men,” X finally said. “I’ve faced worse numbers.”
Victor didn’t seem to understand.
“Plus the Sirens,” Magnolia said.
“Exactly,” X said.
Magnolia gave him a puzzled look.
X flipped up his face shield and spat on the ground.
“You take out the guards on the rooftops, and Victor and I will take the patrols outside the outpost,” X said.
“You want me to sit here and snipe?”
“Victor’s injured, and as you know, I can’t shoot for Siren shit with this damn toothpick arm.”
X was right, but she wanted in on the action when they found Moreto. She had a feeling the woman was hiding in the buildings directly in front of them.
“Once shit hits, meet on the west side of the outpost,” X said. He pointed to the boatyard with its motley fleet in various states of decay, then to a cargo ship laden with containers.