Nicholas Smith - Captives

Michael was waiting for his gun to cool when a strange light hit the platform. He turned to the horizon, which had turned pale apricot.

The first sunrise he had ever seen spread its weak glow over Deliverance as self-inflating rafts exploded out of the side, keeping the airship afloat.

He had to get down there before it was too late. He had to save Layla.

Michael swung his legs over the side of the railing, clipped the rope through his two carabiners, and looked at his friends for what could be the last time. Les and Trey, though wounded, were holding steady.

Good luck , Michael thought as he kicked off from the platform and started rappelling. His mind kept coming back to X. Where the hell was he?

I could really use your help right now, old man.

When X and Rhino finally made it back to the Metal Islands, the sun had risen over a scene of destruction. They motored through the field of floating debris. Patches of fuel burned on the surface. A neck and torso in a life vest floated amid the wreckage.

“Take over for me,” X said. Ceding the pilot’s seat to Rhino, he stood for a better view of the warship his people had commandeered.

Smaller Cazador vessels surrounded the ship like ants around a beetle. Soldiers climbed net ladders, and others moved freely across the deck. The Hell Divers had lost the ship.

“Shit,” X muttered. Squinting into the sun, he could make out what looked like a massive shell floating in the water, surrounded by inflated red rafts.

It wasn’t here before.

“Is that a sky ship?” Rhino asked.

X slumped against the windscreen. His heart sank at the thought that this was the Hive , but as they drew closer, he saw that it was Deliverance.

“Hurry this tin pot up!” X shouted.

Was he already too late to help his friends?

His heart thumped at the prospect that his friends and his dog were already dead. He twisted to look at the Cazador lieutenant.

“We gotta move!”

Rhino pushed the throttle lever, nearly making X take a pratfall. He moved back to the bow, trying to get a sense of what the hell was happening.

Deliverance and the warship had caused plenty of damage before they were disabled. Smoke billowed from the top of the capitol tower, and the walls and dwellings on one of the oil rigs burned. Boats moved away from the structure, some of them carrying construction equipment, including a small crane.

It looked like the rig he blew up when he first arrived here. Then he remembered that the Cazadores were working to restore it, which explained the cranes, but he didn’t recall seeing the prisonlike cages.

The breeze whipped his hair as he turned away and scanned the water. Most of the fighting seemed to have died down, but he could still hear sporadic gunfire. The action seemed to be moving to Deliverance as more boats sped away from the capitol tower, toward the downed airship.

“Where is el Pulpo?” he yelled to Rhino.

“Look for the shiniest speedboat with twin exhaust stacks! Two skulls on the windshield.”

X scanned the vessels. His eyes burned, his stomach growled, and his whole body hurt, but he was used to fighting under these conditions. It just made him a meaner foe.

Rhino steered the craft toward the naval warship and the Cazador boats.

“What are you doing?” X yelled back.

“Getting us some weapons.

X settled back down in the bow. They were hurting and half naked and had nothing but a broken oar to use in a fight.

Not in the best position to fight an army of barbarians.

Rhino steered them toward a speedboat bobbing in the water on the margins of the battle. X reached out and grabbed the side and then climbed up onto the vessel. His boots slopped into pooled blood and crunched down on spent brass.

Three Cazadores lay sprawled on the deck and across one of the seats. Another man was slumped over the wheel, the windshield shattered by the same bullets that went through his chest.

X pushed him out of the way.

Rhino climbed into the better, faster boat and began scavenging for weapons and gear. In a few minutes, they had full Cazador armor, two rifles, two pistols, and three cutlasses.

“Get back,” X said.

Rhino moved away, and X used a cutlass to break out the remaining shards of the windshield. Then he started the engine, grabbed the wheel, and pushed the throttle down.

The boat sped away from the battle scene. If any of X’s people were still alive on the warship, they were in enemy hands now. The only way to end this was to kill el Pulpo.

Only then would this war end.

And X had a feeling he knew where the octopus king was heading.

He gunned the engine toward the downed airship. The bow thumped over waves as it picked up speed.

“Hand me those binos,” X said.

He trained the glasses on the docks at the capitol tower. One was burned down to the pilings, but the others had survived, and people were moving out along them, boarding boats unscathed by the fires.

He zoomed in on what looked like militia soldiers.

How was that possible?

And then it hit him: Katrina had deployed the militia.

A few of the figures—maybe three among a group of twenty—wore Hell Diver armor. The Cazadores weren’t far behind. Some rappelled off the side of the building; others were on the docks, firing guns and throwing spears at the departing boats.

“There!” Rhino shouted. He pointed at a long, sleek boat with shiny black paint, and the image of a purple octopus painted on the hull. Amidships, a glass windshield surrounded the single cabin and several seats. It bobbed in the water next to the airship, its stacks belching smoke into the air, and ropes hanging loose off the chromed windshield posts capped with human skulls.

X zoomed in on passengers climbing out of broken portholes to the flat top of the airship. A group huddled at the top, but Cazadores were also climbing up the ship’s hull.

He wasn’t sure what they would do to his people, but it couldn’t be good.

He gave the boat more throttle, and it accelerated, thumping over sheets of burned plastic in the sheen of oil covering the surface. He checked his weapons: a rifle with a full magazine, a revolver with four bullets, and the sword.

“Remember our deal!” Rhino shouted.

“Don’t worry, I remember!”

They were closing the gap between the airship and their bow when X saw dorsal fins cutting through the water on the port side. Rhino raised his rifle to fire, but X put his hand on the barrel.

“Those are not sharks,” X said.

Rhino stared at gray creatures looping through the surface. A dozen dolphins were swimming next to the boat. One of them jumped out of the water and splashed back down.

They weren’t the only spectators. A barge and several boats moved away from the oil rigs, carrying Cazador civilians wanting to see the battle firsthand now that both the airship and the warship were dead in the water.

“The sky people!” Rhino said, pointing to the flat rooftop. Several officers in white were on their knees, and a group of engineers in red suits and other civilians were clustered in groups.

Armored Cazador soldiers surrounded them, pointing spears at their backs. El Pulpo was also there, standing with a double-bitted axe in his hand. He pointed at the boats from the capitol tower that were starting to arrive. Militia soldiers, Hell Divers, and civilians jumped down onto the rafts.

This was it, the final battle for the Metal Islands, and the Hell Divers were outnumbered a hundred to one.