4 Steam and Iron tombs.

  Mandla lay on his stomach in the shadows of the elevated scaffolding, his weapon’s sights trained on the raiders as they forced a line of locals to their knees. The rotary emergency lights washed the streets below in nauseating waves of harsh red.

  "Identification cards, now!" a raider barked, and petrified civilians whimpered as they fumbled for credentials. A mother struggled to soothe a screaming baby while she fished out her I.D. with one hand.

  Manlda’s hands tensed on his Retriever Fang harpoon gun. He had no right to be so agitated at the raiders' violence. He had done worse in another life. Even now, most of the locals considered him as little more than a gangster, but they were wrong. This was his city now, and he would protect it.

  "Let's go!" a raider with an eyepatch barked, apparently their team leader.

  Besides Mandla, Junior shifted in his prone supported position, causing the steel platform to groan under his weight.

  “Easy,” Mandla muttered, not just to Junior but the half dozen other shadows with scarves pulled over their faces. They had stenciled a shark grin into each of their masks, a uniform of sorts to mark the city’s unofficial defenders.

  The enemy commander accepted a stack of ID cards before cross-referencing them with a file on his tablet. He tossed the card to the ground and searched for the next one before singling a white woman out of the lineup. With short hair and sunken eyes, the woman trembled visibly from Mandla’s vantage point on the metal scaffolding.

  One of the enforcers looked up at his commander, who nodded in affirmation. The raider drew his pistol, and the woman shivered as she looked up at him, red lightly flashing in her pale face.

  "Please," she choked, correctly assuming what he wanted from her.

  The raider raised his pistol and shot her between the eyes.

  Mandla blinked in surprise. The raider had acted without hesitation much as Mandla had in the past. But these were his people, for the first time, he had a home.

  Mandla snatched a wrench from a discarded tool belt and slammed it against the support pole twice. The sharp pair of clangs rang through the air, causing the raider to spin.

  “Stomp on thorns!” Mandla barked, ducking further behind their preinstalled cover.

  “Fear no pain!” his team roared beside him.

  On that cue, the red emergency lights flicked off, and contingency generators whined as they powered down, plunging the road into darkness.

  Raiders cursed below in the darkness, clicking on powerful white-beamed flashlights and sweeping up into the scaffolding, casting layered shadows. With the steel shielding and debris breaking up the light, spotting anything would be nearly impossible.

  "Hello?" a raider called. “Whoever's hiding, show yourself. I promise things will be a lot worse for you if we have to drag you out.”

  Mandla breathed out, lining his sights. Now that he had drawn the raiders’ attention, he hoped Liela and Jabulani’s teams stuck to their training. He squeezed the trigger.

  His dark harpoon hissed as it sailed through the darkness trailing a thin cable and striking a raider. Around him, a series of pressurized hisses spat through the air, and four more shadowy quarrels darted down from different points on the scaffolding. Vortex Rider crewmen cried out as harpoons lodged in their armor or found soft flesh in a gap.

  Mandla flicked a lever and cursed when his harpoon gun almost wrenched itself from his grip. Cables whined, ripping his target from his feet into the shadow. Mandla cut the line and rolled it behind a steel sheet. “Cover,” he barked.

  "Fire!" the raider commander cried. Firelight illuminated the scaffolding as rounds screeched against steel.

  Junior grinned beside Mandla as he covered his head with his hands.

  Below, the sound of hatches opening and harpoon guns firing announced Leila and Jabulani’s fire teams as they caught the raiders in a crossfire.

  The concentrated fire died down, and Mandla popped up in a squat. “Move!” he barked.

  Mandla swung out into the darkness, beams of flashlight mixing with the spurt of gunfire illuminating the battlefield. Mandla slid down a pole, his feet thumping against the grate street, and he sprinted into the chaos.

  A harpoon took the corsair to Mandla's right and whisked him into a darkened doorway, where he screamed but was quickly silenced.

  Mandla drew two knives and cut down a raider with his back turned.

  Another hiss, scream, and zip, and a corsair was dragged away from the group.

  Mandla sprinted up behind their commander, the man with an eyepatch.

  "Look out!" A raider cried as Mandla materialized behind the team leader, and the enemy spun, turning his rifle on Mandla.

  Mandla slapped the enemy comander’s weapon down and slashed a matte grey knife across his throat. The raider dropped, trying to staunch the blood spraying from his neck, and Mandla snatched the corsair’s pistol from its holster before he hit the ground and sunk two rounds into him.

  "No!" the raider that had spotted Mandla shouted, leveling his weapon at him. Mandla gasped, spinning and weaving as the raider unloaded.

  Junior appeared behind the raider and smashed the weapon’s barrel up with a pipe, ramming the raider’s iron sight into his eye. The man staggered back.

  Mandla’s men spilled onto the road, all with scarves painted with shark teeth. They swarmed the scene, mostly fighting with knives and blunt instruments. One raider dropped four of Mandla’s men in a single spray from his RV5, but the shark grins quickly overran the corsairs.

  Junior bearhugged his raider and slammed him to the ground as Mandla scanned the scene for unanticipated threats.

  Silence fell as quickly as it started. The red rotary lights whined back to life, illuminating the carnage. Mandla’s men snatched carbines and pistols from the fallen corsairs, arming themselves properly.

  The raider at Junior’s feet stirred with a groan as he reached for his receiver. Junior, almost twice the man’s size, dragged him to his feet.

  Mandla panted as he approached Junior’s prisoner.

  "Who—" The raider choked, but Mandla cut him off.

  "Are you an Eel Fang or a Vortex Rider?'

  The raider blinked stars, straining to hear Mandla’s soft words. "Vortex," He stammered, his shock of capture making him forget counter-interrogation protocol.

  "What's your radio call sign?"

  "It's fossil tide." The raider’s brain caught up to his adrenaline. "How do you know our vessel's names?"

  Mandla's eyes hardened, and he lifted his knife to the prisoner’s throat. He stopped. He couldn’t execute a prisoner—not anymore. But they couldn’t leave survivors—

  Seeing Mandla’s hesitation, Junior wrenched the prisoner's neck to the side and dropped the limp body.

  Mandla swallowed, nodding to Junior gratefully. He looked down at the woman they had executed, a flame kindling within him.

  “I know her,” Fin said, looking down at her. ”That’s Susara, she’s unemployed and hooked on brine lock.”

  Mandla nodded and glanced at the other cowering civilians, who contemplated Mandla’s men as if they were the enemy. “We’re not here to hurt you,” Mandla informed them. “We’re here to protect you. The police have abandoned you. We have not. Find a hatch and seal yourselves in.”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The civilians scattered, fleeing to whatever shelter they could find.

  “Suit up!” Mandla ordered, and his men started stripping the Raider’s uniforms. “Let’s steal a war sub.”

  ********

  "Move, Domcop!" Johan barked as he pulled Thulani around the corner in a narrow corridor. A bullet deflected off wall plating, and a hot fragment clipped Thulani's forehead. Thulani flinched and touched the spot, his fingers coming back only slightly slick.

  "We need to find a place to hide," Thulani said.

  "Hide?" Johan snapped, "Are you dumb? I'm going to kill them all." He hoisted his wrench. Thulani wasn't sure if the wadded paper in both nostrils made him look absurd or terrifying.

  "You see when that other team split off? They're flanking us. This corridor circles back to the bay." Thulani flicked the safety lever on his new pistol, this time exposing a red dot. The gun wasn't the original one he had failed to fire but the one discarded in Johan's brawl. He hooked his arm around the corner and pulled the trigger, illuminating the hall with flashes until the pistol stopped firing. He didn't try to hit anyone, just make them think twice about advancing. He pulled the weapon back with its slide-locked to the rear. The chances that he struck an enemy were dismally small, but the returning hail of gunfire indicated their pursuers had stopped.

  "There's no way they're surrounding us; they don't know our territory," Johan insisted.

  "I don't know; they seem to know much more than they should. I wouldn't be surprised if they have maps." Thulani should have grabbed an extra magazine.

  "Let's go, pod boy," Johand stomped down the hall.

  "Wait! We should find an escape route. If we keep going that way, we'll just run into that other group."

  Johan swung his wrench, breaking the valve on a power generation heat duct.

  Thulani hurried after him. Voices around the corner called for caution as the enemy pressed on.

  Johan shattered a second valve halfway down.

  "Let's go!" Thulani urged.

  Johan continued several paces, snapped a third valve, and stopped at a maintenance hatch.

  Thulani shook his head. "No good. There's no room to hide, and it's a dead end.

  Johan rolled his eyes, grabbed Thulani's jumpsuit in a meaty hand, and pulled him into the closet.

  "Johan, this is a death trap!" Thulani hissed in a whisper.

  Juhan grunted with a glare and held a finger to his lips.

  A mess of mops and buckets adorned one corner of the closet. Pressure wheels and pipes elbowed from the floor and disappeared into the back wall.

  Thulani's fingers drifted to close the door, but Johan checked him with the wrench and shook his head. Great, Thulani would die in a mop closet with an actual ape.

  A flashlight beam shined down the hall. "Clear!" a voice called, and boots clinked against the extended metal grating. The walls closed in around Thulani. He glanced at the mops, a base instinct driving him to burrow into them and bury himself even though he knew he couldn't adequately obscure himself.

  The boots drew closer.

  "Open door left!"

  "Covering."

  Johans grinned wickedly and hoisted the wheel to his side. The duct opened, and pressurized steam hissed out the ruptured valves. Their pursuers screamed as superheated vapors blasted the hallway.

  Johan took a deep breath and threw himself into the scolding haze.

  Thulani stagged back to the mop corner. Crazy—Johan was actually insane. Thulani grabbed a flimsy hollow aluminum mop pole and brandished it like a sword.

  Johan snarled; someone screamed, and then automatic rifle fire flashed, defused by the swirling steam in the doorway.

  Thulani settled into his makeshift stance, preparing to charge. Who was he kidding? Him fighting trained gunmen with a mop? He thought back to Olivia. He'd never see her again or meet their child—even the idea of never seeing Nandi as ridiculous as his sister could be tore at him.

  He bounced on his toes as more gunfire flashed in the steam. An impact and a grunt sounded, followed by slow, heavy footsteps. A figure darkened the hatchway.

  Thulany fixed Olivia's face in his mind, reared his mop, and screamed defiantly.

  Johan stepped into the closet, his white skin now pink and his eyes bloodshot from the heat.

  Thulani lowered his mop wide-eyed, then recoiled as a stream of blood squirted from a hole in the mechanic's kneck.

  "You're shot!" Thulani cried.

  "Hmm?" Johan reached up and found the hole, fountaining blood in spurts. "Oh, yeah." He shoved a thumb into the wound, stemming the flow.

  Thulani watched, jaw dropped, then spun and threw up.

  Johan hooked his wrench into his tool belt and cranked the wheel, suppressing the hiss from the hallway. His thumb remained lodged in the hole in his neck. He spat bloody saliva. "Need to go back the way we came." His voice tore, strained, and raspy. "If they're surrounding us, they'll hope to run into us on this side."

  "We need to find you a WAFAK," Thulani coughed and spat bile-laden saliva.

  "Later," Johan rasped. "Let's kill more of them."

  Thulani gave the mechanic a wide berth and stepped into the hallway. Two marauders lay motionless on the ground, the third impaled on one of the broken gaskets in the wall. Thulani held his breath and grabbed his mouth and his stomach as his body itched to retch.

  They hurried down the hall, though Johan staggered a few times. Thulani scanned every wall they passed, looking for a WAFAK, but found none.

  He ticked a dile on the communications box he took from the leader, combing from channels. He picked up on two raider frequencies, but the group in pursuit hopped channels once they realized Thulani had an earpiece. Thulani didn't know how these devices worked but determined they didn't connect to the hard line. Did the attackers have a hard line of their own?

  They returned to the bay; Thulani glanced up at the breach hole but saw no sign of the marksman from before.

  "Get the doors open," a voice barked.

  Four raiders stood at the system pannel Thulani had initially used to bypass the security protocol. Not far from the panel, Thshepo's body lay where Thulani had left it, but the bandits had cut down the man Johan hung from the crane.

  Thulani ducked and pulled Johan down behind a forklift. The mechanic wheezed and squinted to see the raiders bent on their task.

  Thulani switched the dile on the enemy com box and finally found this group's new channel.

  "What's the progress on the payment?" The female leader's familiar voice demanded?

  One of the bandits—no, soldiers; after watching them, Thulani could no longer consider them mere pirates—grabbed his receiver.

  "This system is ancient and confusing,"

  Thulani heard the man’s voice twice: once, it echoed across the bay, and again, it mixed with static in his ear.

  "Can't we just bring in new techs to do it for us?"

  "Good Idea. Remember. How well did that go last time?" The commander snapped. "Did anyone flush those two who got away?"

  Johan grabbed Thulani's arm, not privy to the conversation, and Thulani waved him away.

  "Ah Shit," a new voice crackled over static. "Commander Parker, They got team two."

  The corridor they abandoned, leaving corpses, flashed in Thulani's mind. The flanking team must have caught up.

  "Who the hell are these people?" Commander Parker demanded, her voice sharp. "Find them and ice them, Alex!"

  "Good copy, ma’am."

  Tired of being ignored, Johan pulled the helmet from Thulani's head, painfully ejecting the earpiece.

  "Hey," Thulani hissed.

  "This is what you're going to do, pod boy," he rasped, his eyes glazed and a slow trickle of blood running down his thumb lodged in his kneck. "You're going to power up every crane, every lift, every saw, and any piece of heavy machinery you can find in this dock," he rasped. "And you've got to do it without being seen."

  Thulani stared. "We've already gotten around our pursuers. We can lose them in the metropolis. You need medical!"

  "Nah," Johan drolled, bloody drool dripping from his mouth. "You're going to make as much noise as possible."

  "Why?" Thulani whispered, tempted to abandon his mysterious companion. "What will you do?" If Johan was difficult as a coworker, he was a nightmare when burned, broken, and bleeding out.

  Johan grinned, exposing blood-caked teeth. "I'm going fishing."

  ********

  Frans pushed his round spectacles up his nose. What was he doing? How had he gotten roped into working with Cornelius Vermeulen, not to mention at a time of crisis? Gunfire echoed down the corridor, and Frans flinched.

  "Relax!" the skinny man croaked, simultaneously looking childlike and ancient. "We're not going to let anything happen to you." Two of the man's teeth crossed, and one was missing, making his smile feel unhygienic.

  Bodyguards? They were more like captors. Frans wired the second port Mr. Vermeulen had given him to the pod's control panel, the wires spilling and exposed. Mr. Vermeulen had hired some second-rate wanna-be systems tech to build the ports, and the software was sloppy at best, but its function wasn't exactly complex.

  He glanced nervously at the piled canisters that occupied most of the space in the small sub. Frans was no demolitions tech, but he noticed several labels with O2. Flame needed fuel, and this work-pod-converted bomb had plenty.

  "Okay, it's ready!" Frans muttered and eased his way back out the man hatch as the skinny man dropped six or several slow burn flares on the ground.

  Frans was a systems tech, so how did he find himself making weapons? Mr. Vermeulen was slimy and no doubt planning behind the council's backs. This was treason. Sweat drenched Frans' armpits and sides.

  The skinny man ignited the engine, and the sub lurched in its clamp as the port tried to cruise toward a specific radar signature.

  Frans was tempted to throw the hatch, sealing his criminal babysitter inside the iron tomb. His hand itched to do it, but he restrained himself. He had already committed his sins and would condemn himself if he tried to move against Mr. Vermeulen.

  The skinny man climbed the reclined steps to the hall, and his counterpart exited the first pod.

  This second "bodyguard" stood a foot taller than Frans. Her dark skin absorbed the red emergency light, and she glared at him over a shark grin scarf mask. Her long, ropy extensions swayed as she sealed the hatch. The skinny man slammed his hatch, rolling the wheel, and the three left the decompression chamber to the lower control doc, where Frans looked at the control panel, a warning flashing that the subs strained against the docking clamps.

  "I'll not do it," Frans whispered. "One of you —"

  The woman slammed her fist on the yellow-striped release button, and Frans looked out the porthole window as the submarines launched away from Joeburg.

  What had he done?