The Swede looked grim. “And what if everything goes wrong?”
“You mean we start to sink? We rally up in the ship’s galley. That’ll be our Alamo. They won’t be taking prisoners.” Smokey gave him a thumbs-up. “Stay in touch by radio, Captain.” Smokey pounded the roof, and the BMW took off down the ramp, screeching through the garage levels.
Mooch, Ripper, and Smokey then stood side by side at the ship’s railing watching the dark, writhing cloud coming toward them from the south, like bad weather.
Ripper checked the action on her pistol. “I don’t know about you guys, but I am really starting to hate these fucking drones.”
Smokey headed back toward the Bentley. “Best we can do is keep them too busy chasing us to cut up the ship. Deck three is the least crowded, so use that for speed. And for godsakes, Ripper, don’t run that shovel into the hull walls below the waterline.”
They ran for their vehicles even as the black cloud grew.
Smokey revved the Bentley. With tires screeching, he fishtailed down the loading ramp into the depths of the ship as the howling of a thousand small jet- and two-stroke engines became a deafening clamor-and the bodies of the drones blotted out the sun.
E vans sat unsteadily on a desk chair in front of several computer monitors in the spotless engine control room. He’d expected a dark and noisy place, but there were several sections to the ship’s engine room-the engine itself was the size of a semitruck and occupied a cavernous three-story-tall space crisscrossed by piping, but there were also several smaller auxiliary engines that were idle, banks of large generators, cooling water and fuel pumps, fuel filtration systems, oil and fuel ports. The place was massive.
The captain and Ritter came back into the control room. “You shouldn’t have drank so much. You’re going to be useless.”
Suddenly there was an explosion somewhere, and the deck vibrated.
Evans sat up straight as alarms went off on the control board. “What the hell was that?”
A klaxon sounded and red fire strobes started flashing.
The captain shoved the wheeled chair aside and starting clicking through screens. In a moment he brought up a surveillance camera on one of the monitors. It showed a downward view of the starboard hull near the bow of the ship. As they watched, several small aircraft raced into the frame and “landed” on the hull near the waterline in a shower of sparks, leaving long scars in the orange paint. Even as the first ones came to a stop, a dozen more were already screeching to land next to them-like leeches.
The captain watched, utterly confused.
Evans searched fruitlessly for cigarettes. “They’ve got electromagnetic landing gear, Captain. They’ll stick to your hull like fucking barnacles. And that’s when the fun really begins.”
“Madness. Absolute madness!”
Ritter watched, shaking his head.
On-screen the first arrivals were already sending a shower of sparks into the passing waves as their steel- cutting torches kicked in. Their wing acted as a cowling to cover them as they worked, and they began cutting downward below the waves.
“My God! They’ll gut us like a fish.”
“That’s the general idea.” Evans was still patting his empty pockets for cigarettes.
Suddenly all three men looked up to trace a scraping sound as it passed fast along the hull wall opposite them. It was quickly followed by several more beyond the steel.
The captain clicked through still more control screens. “We have a double hull. It will take them some time to cut through.” He grabbed the radio. “There are numerous drones cutting into the hull below the waterline, and there’s a fire on deck one. Port side, compartment three.”
The sound of gunfire and screeching rubber came in over the radio, along with Smokey’s voice. “We’ve got our hands full at the moment, Captain!”
M cKinney stepped carefully around scurrying wire-cutter drones, and then leapt the eight feet over a ten- story chasm to the last container block separating them from the control tower, which now loomed right above them. She landed next to Odin and Foxy, who caught hold of her to prevent her from tripping on still more winged drones and the hovering, lawn mower-sized quadracopter drones roving about.
They could barely hear each other above the mind-numbing noise of thousands of small engines. She watched as several of the quadracopter drones rubbed past each other, their sensilla antennas brushing together-an exchange of information.
Odin sprayed her and Foxy with more pheromone and leaned in to her ear, shouting, “These quadracopter drones seem to be more aggressive. Unless we keep spraying, they start following us.”
McKinney watched one doing just that. “Those look like larger versions of the human-hunters we faced in Colorado.” She noticed the twin gun barrels bolted into the frame. “These gas masks might not be helping us much. We’re still exhaling. It probably requires a lot of pheromone to overcome the aggression score we’re receiving from our other chemical signatures.”
Odin motioned for them to keep moving. “Then let’s speed up.”
McKinney and Foxy followed toward the edge of the container field over the backs of winged drones.
Odin keyed his radio and shouted, “TOC, this is Safari-One-Six actual. What’s your status?”
There was a pause, and then the sound of engines roaring and staccato gunfire came in over the radio. “Our status is that they’re cutting up the ship like we’re not even on it. We’re too busy dealing with the hunter-killers to do anything about the hull-cutters. Fire suppression systems kicked in, and the hull’s penetrated in two places. So far the pumps are keeping up.” More gunfire. “How about you? Over.”
Odin looked out to the horizon at the indistinct outline of a ship in the distance. “We need ten more minutes. What’s your current position?”
“About sixteen miles north-northwest of you.”
“If you think the ship can’t make the distance to the Maersk, abort and head out of the colony’s territory.”
“So far we’re holding up. But I copy that. Out.”
They reached the end of the container field and looked at the bridge tower across a thirty-foot-wide chasm. McKinney peered over the edge at an eight-story drop to the ship’s deck and a tangle of machinery.
Odin pointed and shouted over the din of the drone engines, “Crew didn’t get a chance to abandon ship.”
McKinney followed his gaze toward the ship’s bright orange free-fall escape boat. It was suspended, angled downward in its launch chute on the starboard side. The boat was easily forty feet long and fully enclosed.
Foxy nodded. “Bad for them, good for us. But we’re going to have to climb down. This gap is too big to jump, and we don’t have ropes.”
Odin started lowering himself over the side. “The containers have enough cross-braces and handholds for a free climb.” He looked up. “You okay with this, Professor?”
McKinney was already lowering herself down, searching for a leg hold. “I’ve done my share of rock climbing in the field. Let’s do it.”
All three of them started the long climb down, keeping close together and receiving frequent sprays from the pheromone canister. It was already more than two-thirds empty. It took them a good five minutes to descend to deck level.
When they hopped onto the deck, Odin led them toward a watertight door at the base of the massive white- painted steel bridge tower.
Foxy grabbed his arm and pointed to the escape boat a hundred feet to their right. “I’ll get it ready for launch while you redirect the ship.”
“What about the pheromone?”
“That escape boat should be nearly airtight. I’ll probably be safe in there. Just give me another dose for the run over to it.”
Odin glanced at McKinney. “Is he making sense?”
She nodded. “We’ll go through less pheromone, and if the boat’s watertight and he’s quiet, he should be
