Nicholas Smith - Allegiance

Michael froze, knowing just what she was about to do. He felt the pressure lighten on his natural arm as she used one of her two crescent blades to cut through the flesh of several bats.

The hissing made him flinch.

“Don’t move!” she shouted again.

Cricket hovered over their heads, using a blowtorch to burn the bats off Michael’s armor.

The screeching rose into a strident cacophony around him as she went to work with her blades, hacking the beasts from the air and off his body.

“Run!” she yelled.

Michael didn’t miss a beat. As soon as he had his bearings, he took off for the wall, where Trey opened fire. Rounds cut the air.

“Hold your fire!” Michael shouted.

But Trey kept shooting burst after burst.

Michael glanced over his shoulder at the same entrance he had hidden inside earlier. Orange eyes glowed from the open doorway, and a figure covered in bones and hide stepped outside.

“Get down!” Magnolia shouted.

Michael hit the dirt as a flurry of bolts singed the air.

Cricket chirped and moved for cover as bullets and laser bolts lanced through the air all around it.

Over the crack of gunfire came the shrieks of the bats and rats. Even the rodents were abandoning their meal to escape the killer machines. Not one but three defectors emerged from the interior of the prison, the skins of their recent kills still dripping blood.

“Run!” Michael shouted.

A flurry of laser bolts shot outward. Magnolia helped Michael up, firing her rifle at the same time. He turned and got off several bolts. Return fire hit Cricket, blowing off a mechanical arm at the joint.

Michael tapped his wrist monitor, ordering the drone to retreat as he ran for the exit. Trey had already escaped behind the wall, providing an opening that Magnolia leaped through.

Bolts pounded the concrete as Michael followed. Some broke through, streaking into the ground. He hit the dirt and Cricket sailed overhead, another arm hanging loosely from its socket.

Getting to his knees, Michael turned over to see Trey lying prone.

“Get up!” he shouted. “We’ve got to get into the sky!”

Michael grabbed the young diver and pulled. Trey rolled over, revealing a simmering hole in the center of his visor and his crushed booster pack, hissing out pressurized helium.

“No…” Michael choked. He pulled on Trey again. “Get up!”

The limp body didn’t respond to his screams.

Michael stared for a moment, barely able to move. Trey wasn’t getting up now or ever. Nothing they could do would change that.

A hand grabbed Michael and yanked him down as more bolts sizzled through the concrete wall, streaking away into the desert.

“He’s gone!” Magnolia shouted. “We have to move!”

She pulled an EMP grenade from her vest and lobbed it over the wall. Grabbing Michael, she leaned her face shield against his until they clacked together.

“We have to get in the air as soon as those machines are down,” she yelled. “You got that, Commander?”

He fought free of her grip, bending back down to Trey. They couldn’t leave him for the machines to parade around wearing his bones and skin.

“No, we take him with us!”

Cricket hovered over Trey and tried to lift the body with his remaining arm, but the weight just snapped it out of socket. Then the robot crashed to the ground, red hover nodes suddenly winking off. It took Michael a moment for the realization to set in.

The EMP grenade had fried the damn systems.

Before Michael could react, Magnolia punched the booster in his pack, and the balloon exploded out of the canister, filling with helium and hauling him skyward.

“no-o-o!” Michael wailed, reaching down.

He kicked his feet to no avail, looking down at Trey’s limp body and the machines that had killed him. They jerked in the prison yard and then lay still, their systems fried just like Cricket’s.

Magnolia bent down beside the drone and punched the booster they had mounted to it. The balloon pulled the limp machine into the sky, and she followed right behind.

Clenching his jaw, Michael held back tears as he was pulled higher. Their maiden dive from Discovery had dropped Team Raptor into a trap, right into the hands of the defectors.

But the machines didn’t have a ship to escape on, and as soon as Michael got back to Discovery , he would urge Les to drop a bomb directly on the prison. It would mean obliterating his son’s body, but it had to be done. They couldn’t risk leaving the machines behind to repair one another and return to their mission of exterminating humanity.

Xavier Rodriguez clove-hitched the fishing boat to a pier piling and pulled the rope tight. He felt refreshed this morning, and strong. Over the past few months, he had recovered from his injuries and put on muscle mass by taking long daily swims and working in the sun.

Nearing a half century of age, he found it ironic that he should be in the best shape of his adult life. But he wasn’t complaining. Age, after all, was just a number.

With the rope secure, he reached back into the boat for his backpack and motioned for Miles to hop out. The dog hesitated at the gap between the gunwale and the pier. He was wary of the depths ever since a snake pulled him under back in Florida.

“It’s okay, boy,” X said. “Come on.”

Miles backed up, then ran and leaped onto the pier. He slid a foot before turning and wagging his tail.

X took an apple out of the bag and bit into it as he slung the pack over his shoulders. The fruit here was unlike anything they ever had on the Hive , and with fish added to his diet, X had added twenty pounds of lean muscle to his scarred frame. But he still wasn’t used to the sun and had to protect his skin with lotion he bought from an old woman on the trading-post rig.

He bit off another chunk of apple and tossed it to Miles, and they set off down the long pier, past other boats bobbing gently in the afternoon sun. A light breeze ruffled his button-down shirt and shorts. He had traded in his Hell Diver gear for the loose-fitting clothing and sandals.

It sure beat the leather outfit Imulah had given him to wear.

“You are a king now,” the scribe had said. “You must dress like one.”

“You want me to dress like a court jester,” X had replied. “Fuck that.”

If it were up to him, he would have worn what was left of his old Hell Diver armor, but he had stowed it away in a locker, where it waited should he ever need it again.

Gazing out at the balmy skies, it was hard to imagine, but he knew there would always be a need for Hell Divers—and, more specifically, him.

He finished the apple and rested his hand on the pommel of the captain’s sword from the Hive. He thought of all those who had carried the iconic sword before him. Their sacrifices had allowed him and so many others to experience life as it was meant to be lived.

But before he could truly enjoy the sunshine today, he had to get something out of the way that he hated: talking.

Today, it wasn’t just a talk. He was practically giving a speech, and the gathering of boats told him a lot of people had come to hear him. If that weren’t bad enough, he had a council meeting later in the afternoon.

X halted at the sight of dark canopies sailing across the western sky.

The new Hell Divers deployed their chutes as they broke through the cloud cover on their training runs. Normally, they jumped at night to better approximate conditions in the wastes, but today the rookies were doing it in the sunlight.