Nicholas Smith - Deliverance

After letting Miles down, he reached over to take Magnolia’s bag.

“What the hell do you have in here?” he asked, grunting as he lugged it onto the deck.

“Oh, stuff,” she replied.

Chirping sounded throughout the cargo hold, and a vibration rippled through the bulkheads as Timothy lowered Deliverance toward the ocean twenty thousand feet below. Standing on the deck of the boat, X caught a glimpse of the Hive through the starboard windows.

“Goodbye, my old friend,” Magnolia said.

Once the beetle-like hull had vanished from sight, they moved belowdecks and explored the quarters. Magnolia claimed one of the small cabins, and X put his bag down in the other. Every storage locker was packed full of gear, clothes, and weapons. After they had finished getting settled, they made their way to the bridge. They were greeted in the command center by a warm orange light gleaming over panels of instruments and monitors.

“Greetings,” said a familiar voice. “Welcome to the Sea Wolf. ”

It was Timothy. Part of his consciousness had been downloaded to the boat, and while his main program would stay on Deliverance , they would also be taking the AI with them on their journey.

Magnolia took a seat in one of two leather chairs. X sat next to her and motioned for Miles to sit on the small bed to his right. The dog curled up, already content with his new home.

Beyond the windows, all the divers waved goodbye. X felt a tear tickling his eye, but he didn’t bother wiping it away. Instead, he brought up a hand, a final farewell to the boy he had thought he would never see again, and to his old friends who had believed him to be a ghost.

The divers cleared the room as a red warning light spread over the cargo bay. Deliverance lowered through the skies, bringing them just over the ocean.

“All systems online,” Timothy said. “We’re ready to launch.”

The cargo bay door creaked open, revealing nothing but darkness outside.

“Lights,” X said.

The powerful front beams blazed out of the bow, carving through the darkness. X checked their altitude. They were almost to the surface, and a few seconds later he saw the first sign of the ocean swells below.

“You’re sure about this, kid?”

“I told you not to call me kid,” Magnolia replied. “I’m forty-three years old. And I’m more than sure.”

X put his hand on the throttle. The tracks beneath the vessel clicked on, jolting them closer to the open door.

“Ready to launch when you are,” Timothy said.

X studied the whitecaps and wondered what beasts hunted beneath the inky surface. He had conquered the skies and he had conquered the surface. Now it was time to conquer the seas and find a place where humanity might be able to start over, before it was too late.

Pushing down on the throttle, he launched the boat out of the cargo hold and into the water, ready for wherever the waves took him.

“We sail so humanity survives,” X said.

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Nicholas Sansbury Smith is the USA Today bestselling author of the Hell Divers series, the Orbs series, the Trackers series, and the Extinction Cycle series. He worked for Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management in disaster mitigation before switching careers to focus on his one true passion—writing. When he isn’t writing or daydreaming about the apocalypse, he enjoys running, biking, spending time with his family, and traveling the world. He is an Ironman triathlete and lives in Iowa with his wife, their dogs, and a house full of books.

Hell Divers

Hell Divers II: Ghosts

Hell Divers III: Deliverance

Hell Divers IV: Wolves (coming fall 2018)

Extinction Horizon

Extinction Edge

Extinction Age

Extinction Evolution

Extinction End

Extinction Aftermath

Extinction Lost (A Team Ghost short story)

Extinction War

Trackers

Trackers 2: The Hunted

Trackers 3: The Storm

Trackers 4: The Damned

Solar Storms (An Orbs Prequel)

White Sands (An Orbs Prequel)

Red Sands (An Orbs Prequel)

Orbs

Orbs II: Stranded

Orbs III: Redemption

Orbs IV: Exodus

Copyright © 2018 by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

E-book published in 2018 by Blackstone Publishing

Cover design by Kathryn Galloway English

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-5384-4078-0

Library e-book ISBN 978-1-5384-4077-3

Fiction / Science Fiction / Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic

CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress

Blackstone Publishing

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Ashland, OR 97520

www.BlackstonePublishing.com