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  Books by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Blackstone Publishing

  The Sons of War Series

  Sons of War

  Sons of War 2: Saints (coming fall 2020)

  The Hell Divers Series

  Hell Divers

  Hell Divers II: Ghosts

  Hell Divers III: Deliverance

  Hell Divers IV: Wolves

  Hell Divers V: Captives

  Hell Divers VI: Allegiance

  Hell Divers VII

  Orbit

  The Extinction Cycle Series (Season One)

  Extinction Horizon

  Extinction Edge

  Extinction Age

  Extinction Evolution

  Extinction End

  Extinction Aftermath

  Extinction Lost (A Team Ghost short story)

  Extinction War

  Great Wave Ink Publishing

  The Extinction Cycle:

  Dark Age Series (Season Two)

  Extinction Shadow

  Extinction Inferno

  Extinction Ashes

  The Trackers Series

  Trackers

  Trackers 2: The Hunted

  Trackers 3: The Storm

  Trackers 4: The Damned

  The Orbs Series

  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

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  Copyright © 20 by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  E-book published in 2020 by Blackstone Publishing

  Cover illustration by K. Jones

  Series 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.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental

  and not intended by the author.

  Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-5385-5712-9

  Library e-book ISBN 978-1-5385-5711-2

  Fiction / Science Fiction / Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic

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

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  To my editor, Michael Carr. An adventurer, scholar, and globe-trotter

  —a real-life Xavier Rodriguez.

  “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

  —G. K. Chesterton

  PROLOGUE

  Ada Winslow knew she would likely die soon, but human nature and a strong will to survive kept her aching hands on the oars. The ocean had calmed through the day, but now the swells were growing in size, beating the hull of her boat.

  She leaned back, putting her weight into the oar stroke, but the twenty-foot aluminum fishing boat seemed to be getting no closer to her destination.

  Blood from the repetitive friction made her uncalloused hands slick inside the gloves. Almost in a trance, she continued the motion: pulling, grunting, pulling, grunting.

  It took every atom of her will not to rest. Climbing back into the narrow compartment designed for supplies and sleeping sounded like heaven. She could strip off the gloves, clean her hands, and bandage them up.

  She stopped only to straighten her sore back. Both arms throbbed, near cramping. Her body wasn’t used to this type of exercise. Life in the sky hadn’t required anything like it. She had mostly sat in front of a monitor, crunching numbers about storms or the amount of recycled water lost each month. Monotonous stuff that required using her brain more than her body.

  In her first days working on the bridge of the Hive, Ada had helped map out dive zones, using actuarial science to calculate risk to the divers. She wasn’t used to labor that didn’t tax her brain.

  But there was an easier way to get to where she was going . . .

  She eyed the small vessel’s steering wheel and controls. Switching to the ancient four-horsepower motor would give her a reprieve, but her supply of gasoline was too precious to use now.

  Ada had set a goal of rowing a hundred miles before she switched to the motor. Since her youth, she had always been a goal setter. Goals had helped her rise from the filthy lower decks to second in command of an airship.

  And she had wiped away all her hard work with a simple press of a button, dropping a container full of Cazador warriors into the ocean. This was her punishment.

  Rowing into the darkness, toward a destination in the wastes that she would probably never see. The journey to Florida was over a thousand miles, and the thought of rowing over half that distance filled her with anxiety.

  King Xavier Rodriguez had given her just enough gasoline to get halfway there, which felt like a second punishment, or perhaps a lesson.

  She glanced at the steering wheel again but didn’t take the bait.

  Don’t give up. Keep rowing, she repeated.

  Even now, while she was on her own, X was teaching her a lesson on survival. She pulled the oars through the water for the three-thousandth time since leaving the Vanguard Islands. Maybe the ten-thousandth.

  You didn’t leave.

  She had been exiled into the wastes. It was a surprise when King Xavier showed up at her cell with a key and not a sword. But not long into her journey, she had realized that it was no act of mercy.

  How could she possibly survive this?

  If she did somehow survive, the trip from the Vanguard Islands to the ruined city on X’s map would leave her exhausted and broken. At this rate, even with the fuel he had given her for the small engine, it would take her months just to get there.

  A sword would have been quicker and more merciful.

  Out here all alone, she’d had plenty of time to think about all the ways death could come: from capsizing, sea monsters, radiation poisoning, or simple infection of her blistered, bleeding hands.

  Keep calm. Keep steady. Stay alive. This was her new mantra.

  She took in a deep breath of filtered air from the flimsy plastic helmet she had found in the crates. It wasn’t one of the advanced Hell Diver helmets, with armor and a plastic face shield, but it made her feel better. Wearing the mask was an important lesson from growing up on the lower decks. Always protect your body from the rads.

  The survival instincts ingrained in her and every other soul from the sky had given her a mental edge, and she had plenty of f
ood and supplies, as well as the gear to survive. What she didn’t have was the training or knowledge of how to survive.

  She didn’t know much about how to sail a boat, or fight, or hunt, or avoid the beasts and the poisonous plants and the storms. She wasn’t much better off than a child tossed into the postapocalyptic remains of the Old World.

  But just because she didn’t know how to fight didn’t mean she wouldn’t fight when the time came.

  She dug the oars deep, inching her way closer to Florida or wherever she could find to stop and rest on the way.

  For the next few hours, she lost herself in the monotonous motions, her anger sinking into despair as she thought about everything she had left behind at the Vanguard Islands.

  The sunny paradise was the place she had always dreamed of while growing up—the place all sky people dreamed of finding.

  Except for one thing: the Cazador warriors who lived there.

  Dropping the container full of sailors and soldiers into the water had been her way of avenging Captain Katrina DaVita, who had taught Ada never to stop fighting for their people, never to give up.

  Despite the repercussions, she still did not regret pushing that button. The only thing she regretted was not trying harder to persuade X to kill the warriors after the battle for the Metal Islands ended with the sky people’s victory.

  Instead, he had signed a peace treaty allowing the warriors who swore loyalty to stay in the Cazador army.

  “We need this peace,” X had said. “The real enemy is the defectors.”

  Maybe Ada could have bought that if she didn’t know what the cannibalistic barbarians had done to Katrina after killing her.

  She dug the oars harder into the water. Sweat poured down her forehead.

  X had told her she could come back home in five years, but she had a feeling that if she lived that long and managed to return, her people would be dead at the hands of the Cazadores.

  Killing the crew of the Lion had helped even the playing field, but it would take a lot more dead Cazador warriors before her people were truly safe.

  But looking out over the whitecaps, she knew they would never be safe. It wasn’t just the cannibalistic society that threatened them. The defectors were still out here, hunting down the survivors. The machines would never stop until every human was dead.

  A hot breath clouded the inside of her visor. It cleared a moment later to reveal a glowing dark sky that seemed alive from the constant flash of lightning.

  A wave hit the port side and knocked the oar out of her throbbing hand.

  Taking it as an omen, she decided to rest for a while.

  After shipping the oars inside the hull, she climbed into the enclosed cabin in the stern. Crates of gear and supplies were stowed neatly and secured to the bulkheads.

  Ada had made a bunk of the metal seat, laying a couple of blankets down for padding. The gasoline supply was stored underneath, along with the motor.

  She shut the hatch, blocking out the wind and salt spray and nearly all the light. But it wasn’t completely dark as blue lightning flickered in through cracks and holes where the metal had rusted through.

  If she hit a radioactive zone, the enclosure wouldn’t protect her unless she sealed off every inch with caulking and tape.

  For now, this was home. Sitting on the bunk, she took off her helmet and, wincing in pain, peeled off the gloves. Her palms were blistered, and the blisters had broken. Blood wept from the open cracks.

  She searched for the first-aid kit and remembered it was in the second crate. It took her a moment to rearrange things, but she eventually pulled it out.

  Gritting her teeth, she dripped antibacterial liquid onto the wounds, cleaned them, and wrapped both hands. The burn lasted several minutes, but the bandages helped relieve the pain.

  Her growling stomach reminded her that she hadn’t had a bite all day. She fished out an apple and some fresh bread from her pack of perishables. The small pleasures made the rowing and darkness more bearable, but she was already lonely.

  If X can survive out here, you can too.

  She knew how crazy that sounded. Xavier Rodriguez was a Hell Diver, and not just any Hell Diver. He had survived more dives and missions than any in history.

  Ada had a lot to learn if she was to survive even a fraction of the time he had spent out here.

  She ate slowly, savoring each bite, knowing that soon the fresh fruit and vegetables would be gone and she would have to switch to fish jerky and, eventually, the packaged goods.

  She decided to rest for a few hours before heading back out to paddle. The first few days at sea, she hadn’t been able to sleep in the constantly rocking boat. It was far different from sleeping on the Hive, where she rarely felt any sense of motion unless the airship hit a storm.

  Sailing out here was like being in a never-ending storm, and she hadn’t even hit the big waves. Her gut told her that sea and storm would kill her before any mutant beasts got the chance.

  The idea of drowning had never crossed her mind, but it would be karma after what she did to the crew of the Lion.

  Everyone on the airships had pictured their death at one point or another. Living in the sky was like holding a stick of dynamite with the fuse just below a flame. Death was always there, hovering in the darkness.

  Most people thought the end would come from crashing down on the surface or dying from the cough or from radiation-caused cancer. But drowning beat most of the other ways this could end.

  She sighed and tried to get comfortable on her bunk. Memories of her family replaced the morbid ruminations. It wasn’t often that she thought of her parents, but recently she had found herself thinking of them more and more.

  They had been gone so long, she had trouble remembering their voices. The cough had taken them fifteen years ago, when the flu swept through the lower decks of the Hive.

  Somehow, Ada had never caught it. She had stayed in school, entered the academy, and graduated as an ensign. Years of working on the bridge had given her the experience to climb through the ranks to the second-­highest position on the airships.

  All the training had taught her to put her people first. To make sure whatever decision she made was in the best interests of the passengers and the airship.

  Captain Katrina DaVita had gone beyond that training by teaching her what sacrifice was. Serving under Katrina was an honor that Ada had felt compelled to pay back.

  That was why she killed those Cazadores.

  Not just to avenge her friend and captain, but to protect her people from the barbarians who had mutilated Katrina’s corpse and displayed it like a trophy.

  Ada jerked with the flash of anger. She closed her eyes, took in a deep breath, and exhaled.

  You have to rest. You can’t dwell on the past anymore.

  Another swell broadsided the boat, nearly knocking her onto the floor. She rolled back onto her side and clutched a rolled-up blanket, then closed her eyes and battled her demons.

  A beeping sound jolted her awake.

  She shot up on her narrow bunk, groggy and sick to her stomach. The beeping continued. It wasn’t part of the dream after all.

  She searched for the source and finally found it in her backpack. Reaching inside, she retrieved the wrist computer the Hell Divers used to detect radiation, map their locations, and hack into ITC facilities.

  X had uploaded a digital map for her to find his former home in Florida, but a message had replaced the screen she pulled up.

  Radiation spike. Seek shelter.

  Heart thumping, Ada slipped the gloves over her bandaged hands and placed her helmet over her short-cropped hair. She wasn’t sure why she grabbed her rifle, but touching the stock made her feel safe.

  Taking in a breath of filtered air, she steeled herself before opening the hatch. Lightning speared the horizon, forking
toward the water.

  She searched the whitecaps but didn’t see anything in the glow.

  A few moments passed before she finally saw something out there. Another flurry of lightning illuminated the ocean, and in the blue glow she spotted the first landmass since leaving the Vanguard Islands.

  But that didn’t make any sense.

  According to the map, there wasn’t supposed to be anything out here.

  She raised her wrist computer to make sure she hadn’t veered off course. Tapping the screen, she pulled up her location.

  Sure enough, she was still hovering around the red line she was supposed to be following, and there was no island in her path.

  So what the hell was she looking at?

  She raised the rifle scope to her plastic visor, but without night-vision goggles, she had to wait for another strike of lightning to see the shore.

  The flashes came a moment later, capturing the object in the glow.

  This wasn’t a landmass with rocky shores, mutated trees, and beasts prowling for prey. Zooming in, Ada saw a massive ship that seemed to be the source of the radiation spike.

  And it was sailing right toward her.

  Panicked, she hurried over to the controls and steering wheel. As she pulled out the key from her pocket, a dozen questions swam through her mind.

  Were they Cazadores? Defectors? Something else?

  She inserted the key and turned it, but the motor whined in protest. She tried twice more, cursing each time. The engine wouldn’t turn over.

  “Come on!” she yelled.

  The ship in the distance seemed to grow in size, dwarfing her vessel.

  On the fifth try, the motor coughed to life.

  She turned the wheel, pushed down on the throttle, and sped away from the huge radioactive ship, wondering.

  ONE

  Reinforced glass windows separated Michael Everhart, Layla Brower, and Les Mitchells from the thirty-one survivors they had rescued at the bunker in Rio de Janeiro. The group had spent the past twenty-four hours in quarantine inside Discovery’s launch bay.