Nicholas Smith - Warriors

“Commander Everhart,” Alton said politely. “Where are you going?”

Michael nodded at Edgar to keep going with the others. Then he crouched in front of Alton.

“I have to go to an important meeting,” he said.

“Can I come?”

“No, I’m sorry, bud, but this is about our future—grown-ups only.”

The boy’s brown eyes swept the high ceilings and then the rooms across the chamber.

“Are we going to live down here forever?” Alton asked.

“No,” Michael said. “I’m going to take you someplace where you will see something you’ve never seen before.”

“The sun?”

“And the ocean.”

The kid’s eyebrows rose. “Promise?”

“I promise.”

Alton smiled and ran off toward his smiling mother. Michael waved at her, feeling a sense of dread. He was a long way from the Vanguard Islands, and he had promised Layla that he would someday hold their son just as Alton’s mother held him now.

Michael went through the chamber and took a stairwell two levels down. Another hallway led him to a room that had been designed as a command center. There was radio equipment, computers—everything that generals and high officials needed to monitor a war.

Alfred and his team were working on several of the computers, but they hadn’t been able to get any of the comms to work.

Michael went to a conference room and opened the door. Edgar, Arlo, Sofia, Pedro, and Eevi were already seated at an oval table with Kade, Captain Rolo, and several leaders from the other two airships. This was their second planning meeting, and Michael hoped it would go better than the first.

Across the table sat Captain Linda Fina of the ITC Requiem. The old woman’s wispy hair and wrinkled face reminded Michael of Janga. Fina was the descendent of French ITC soldiers, and she spoke several languages.

“Commander Everhart,” she said in a croaking voice. “Please have a seat.”

Anderson Links, a bald man with dark skin and a long beard, had served as a lieutenant under Captain Rolo.

The other two attendees, a man named Dmitri Vasilev and a woman named Olga Novak, were the only remaining officers of a third airship, the ITC Malenkov. The Russian ship was the third lured here with the promise of the bunker.

“Let’s get started,” Rolo said. “Commander Everhart, you and your divers have the floor first.”

Instead of sitting, Michael moved over to a wall of maps. They all had seen them. Everyone in the room knew how far they were from the Vanguard Islands. That was why half the group had argued to stay here.

After all, this was better than their former living conditions, and they had supplies to last for years.

But the other half of the group, Michael included, wanted to leave. The question was, would they be allowed to leave with supplies that his opponents thought would be wasted on a doomed endeavor?

“I know it sounds impossible to reach the Vanguard Islands on foot,” Michael said. “But even if it takes years, I’m willing to take the risk out there in the wastes.”

Edgar chimed in. “For me, seeing the sun and living somewhere on the surface, the way it used to be, was worth diving for. It was worth dying for, and many of us did die to make it here.”

“This place isn’t exactly safe,” Arlo said. “And I, for one, would rather spend a few years trying to get home and see the ocean again, than stay in this rabbit hole.”

Everyone listened while an interpreter explained what the divers were saying. When they finished making their case, Captain Fina spoke.

“We are grateful you and your team came here to destroy the machines and, ultimately, to save us,” she croaked. “But traveling to the Vanguard Islands on foot is a death sentence.”

“A poor deployment of resources,” said Lieutenant Links.

Olga Novak spoke through a translator. “If we believed we could make it to the Vanguard Islands, or knew of places to find vehicles and then boats, we would try, but until then, we agree that staying here is the best course of action.”

Michael was beginning to lose patience with these people.

“I say if they want to go, we give them supplies to go,” Kade said. “Also, they have their own from their airship, which was destroyed, mind you, while saving us.”

The others hashed it out while Michael stood with Sofia, Arlo, and Edgar.

A rap came on the door, and Alfred stepped inside.

“Commander, we’re picking something up on the radar,” he said. “You’d better come out here.”

Michael joined Alfred and his technicians around a radar screen in the adjoining room. A dot pulsed on the green screen, inching closer to the mountain.

“What is it?” Michael asked.

“No idea, sir, but it’s definitely heading for the base.”

“Keep me updated on the internal comms,” Michael said, referring to their headsets that still worked. He motioned for Pedro, Kade, Sofia, Arlo, and Edgar to follow him.

They met back in the main chamber, trying to avoid scaring any of the people still eating their meal. Several looked up as they passed.

Michael couldn’t help rushing across the room. This could be some machine that they hadn’t been able to shut down—an aircraft come from across the globe to exterminate them, or a swarm of drones moving as one. If so, they were already dead.

Thirty minutes later, the team arrived at the blast doors. A thin guard with a buzzed head snored in a chair.

“Don, wake up!” Kade said.

The man nearly shot out of his seat. “What?”

Michael secured his helmet. “Open it,” he said. “I’m going to check this out.”

Kade gave the guard the order, and the man pushed a lever. The doors screeched open, and sand blew in.

Michael told Pedro and Arlo to stay behind while Sofia, Kade, and Edgar followed him into the storm. He set off down the road, NVGs on to guide him in the darkness.

“Alfred, do you copy?” Michael said.

Static hissed in his helmet.

“Copy, sir.”

“You got a location on this aircraft?”

“Currently at two thousand feet and lowering,” Alfred said. “Looks like it’s about a mile outside the main gates. I’m uploading the coordinates to your HUD.”

Michael held up a hand, trying to see through the swirling grit that pecked his visor.

“Come with me,” Kade said.

Michael and Edgar followed the diver deeper into the base, carefully maneuvering around the debris from Discovery and the demolished tower that had housed the machines’ mainframe.

Michael looked away from the rubble pile. Les had given his life to stop the machines. But now Michael had a gut feeling this was some sort of machine they didn’t know about.

The team stopped at a three-story building with a ladder on the backside. Kade went up first, Michael next. The top gave a better view of the skyline above the dust storm.

Michael finally saw a dot emerge on the minimap in the corner of his HUD subscreen. The aircraft was half a mile away, at a thousand feet.

The divers crouched and raised their laser rifles, scanning the dark clouds. Whatever was out there was lowering slowly.

A shape emerged in the cloud cover, then vanished. Michael moved his finger to the trigger.

Lights suddenly blazed through the darkness. Michael raised his hand to hold fire. That whir sounded familiar.

Rising from his hunched position, he stared in disbelief at the beetle shape descending over the base. It couldn’t be …

There in the whipping grit, spinning up whirlwinds with its turbofans, hovered the airship he had spent most of his life on. The hull was patched, and fresh paint marked the bow.

Vanguard.

The turbofans slowed and shut off as legs extended downward and connected with the dirt.