Hell Divers

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  They were within a hundred yards of the nearest structure when a panel of corrugated sheet metal whistled past Jones’ head and buried itself edgewise in a snowbank. Weaver ran hunched over, bracing himself as gravel and shrapnel hissed and whined through the air all around them.

  In a sudden whiteout, he lost sight of Jones, who then reemerged a moment later at the entrance to a two-story building. The exterior appeared to be metal, not concrete. Jones pulled open the door and waved him forward.

  “Come on!” Jones shouted.

  Weaver began to yell back when a blast of wind picked him up and cartwheeled him over the snow. The drift broke his fall, but the impact knocked the air out of his lungs.

  “Grab my hand, Commander!” Jones shouted from the doorway.

  Weaver fought for breath and reached up as waves of red swam across his eyes. A strong grip took his hand and pulled him through the open door.

  The steel door banged shut as the screaming storm hit the building. The structure groaned in protest, and the metal walls seemed to sway. A heavy cable detached from the ceiling and whipped the floor next to where Weaver stood. He rolled to his side, shielding his visor, as the warehouse shook violently.

  He was going to die. They both were. The storm was going to rip the building from the ground and grind them to paste.

  Weaver curled up into a ball, trembling not from fear, but from cold, as the relentless wind pummeled the building. He fought his pounding headache, blinking away the stars, trying to focus.

  “Sir! Are you okay?” Jones said. He was shouting, but the words sounded dull in the roar of the storm. There was something else, too: an electronic hum that didn’t belong. Jones was dragging him toward a concrete staircase. The noise faded away as the heart of the storm engulfed the building.

  * * * * *

  The warehouse trading post was the largest and most frequented room on the Hive. X could always hear the chatter of bartering patrons and smell the black-market foods before he rounded the corner and saw the open double doors that led to the dim, cavernous space.

  X stepped through the doors, his thoughts as unorganized and chaotic as the flow of commerce going on around him. Days had passed since the dive that he swore would be his last, yet his muscles were still tense, his skin still burned, and his nerves were on edge.

  He pushed his way through the throng of haggard faces: a blur of buyers, sellers, and hustlers. Some loitered, hoping to scrounge out a handout from him. He tried his best to ignore the murmured pleas and resentful glares as he walked through the close, sultry air. None of them seemed to care that he had saved their lives countless times. They only saw a member of the privileged elite in front of them, not the parts that X had risked his life scavenging to keep the ship in the air.

  Not that he could blame them. Their focus was on one thing: survival. Most of them had never seen the inside of one of the ship’s classrooms. Education was reserved for the children of engineers and farmers—people who would grow up to play a vital role in keeping the Hive in the air.

  X focused on the faded signs and dead lightbulbs that hung from makeshift huts and carts where merchants sold and bartered their wares.

  Shouts of vendors echoed through the room. “Moonshine that’ll numb your senses!” a man yelled at a group of water technicians passing his booth. One of the men stopped and exchanged a few credits for a bottle of the potent hooch.

  An elderly woman with waist-length gray hair waved X toward her stand. She wore a coat stitched together from colorful rags. He recognized her as the woman who had sold them a “cure” for Rhonda’s cancer. All Rhonda had gotten from it was a rash. Resisting the urge to rake the bottles of green liquid onto the floor and stomp on them, he contented himself with waving his middle finger at the snake-oil seller.

  She turned away without a response. He filed his anger away and walked quickly through the next aisle of merchants, passing tables piled high with soap, candles, and other items that made life belowdecks a little more bearable.

  Reaching the end of the bazaar, he paused at the cages of guinea pigs, rabbits, and chickens. He could empathize with them. The thing he loved most about diving was slipping out of his own cage for a few hours—something these creatures would never do except at the end, when bound for the stew pot.

  “Only two hundred credits!” a child shouted, his hands cupped around his mouth so the words would carry farther.

  X raised an eyebrow at the ridiculous price and walked on, to a stand filled with fresh produce. The potatoes and lemons looked small and shriveled compared to those that the farmers grew on the level above. These were the products grown in the two communal living spaces belowdecks, where there was never enough water or light.

  Year by year, these small luxuries continued to dwindle. Soon, the last doe rabbit would die, or the grow lights would blink out and not come back on. With the rising prices and disappearing goods, people were growing more desperate. There would be more riots, more bloodshed. In the hallways, he had heard the whispered rumors of rebellion. X had ignored them. He had enough to worry about just keeping the Hive in the sky. If the people aboard chose to tear it apart, there was nothing he could do about it.

  A cough rang out, and immediately a space cleared in the middle of the crowd as shoppers and browsers backed away in fear. Cancer wasn’t the only thing rampant on the ship. A flu could be just as deadly. Several passengers bumped into X while frantically pulling on their white masks.

  X just pushed ahead through the crowd, toward his favorite merchant. A sign that read “Dragon” came into view. The lightbulb behind the “N” had burned out since the last time X visited. Looking at it, he ran smack into another passenger.

  “Watch it!” the man growled.

  X turned to find Ty staring back at him.

  “Shit. Sorry, Ty.”

  The technician flicked the herb stick in his mouth from the left side to the right. “No problem.”

  X took a step back to let a shopper by, then closed the gap, but couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Ty broke the awkward silence. Taking the stick out of his mouth, he said, “I didn’t have a chance to tell you at the funeral, but I’m real sorry. Shit luck, them sendin’ you guys down there in an electrical storm. You doing okay?”

  X just nodded. Ty and everyone else wanted to know what had happened down there, what he had seen.

  “How’s the kid doing?”

  “Hasn’t said a word since he found out his dad died. He blames me. I can see it in his eyes.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Ty said. “My boy didn’t talk for two weeks after his aunt died of cancer. But he came around.” He continued to ramble on, but X was barely listening. He wasn’t sure Tin would recover. The kid had lost the sparkle in his eyes; his stare was cold and brittle. He was damaged, like everything and everyone aboard this squalid excuse for a home.

  “I’d better get going,” X said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Ty jammed the herb stick back in his mouth. “Oh, right, I almost forgot: tomorrow you get your new team.”

  “Can’t wait,” X said, turning to leave. He wasn’t sure who the new divers would be. Angel and Apollo both had extra members, but he didn’t know who they’d be willing to give up. He also didn’t know where Jordan would find new recruits to replace them. Not many promising candidates remained.

  X stopped at the Dragon’s stall and sat down on one of the four bar stools at the counter. He rang the little bell.

  He heard some clanking behind a partition wall, and a middle-aged man with curly red hair emerged a moment later. Stepping into the dim light, he cracked a toothless grin. “Ah, Xavier! Haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “Hey, Dom, how you doin’?”

  Dom looked X up and down, his eyes stopping on the white arrow pattern embroidered on his red uniform. “Today’s not so bad
. I always like feeding a Hell Diver.”

  X gave a tired grin. “Good, because I want an order of noodles to go.”

  “Give me a couple of minutes,” Dom said, disappearing back into the booth.

  X relaxed, enjoying the moment of solitude. Dom had owned the place for as long as he could remember. As with so many others on the ship, the traditions of his family had been handed down from generation to generation. There was no concept of race on the ship. All were citizens of the Hive. But this didn’t mean everyone was treated equally. In some ways, it was even worse now than it had been in the Old World. The caste division of lower-deckers and upper-deckers was painfully apparent everywhere.

  Dom returned a few minutes later with a steaming carton of the best noodles that remained in the world. The intoxicating scent pulled X back from his thoughts, and for the moment, he forgot about the ship’s societal problems.

  “How much I owe you?” he asked.

  Dom looked up at the broken sign dangling off the canopy. “You get me a new lightbulb, you get free noodles.”

  X examined the sign. His brow furrowed. “Not many of those left on the surface, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  Dom slid the bag to X, his gummy grin growing even wider.

  X took the warm carton, eyed the sign one more time, and left. “See ya, Dom,” he shouted over his shoulder.

  X walked back to his apartment, wondering what he could say to Tin. He knocked. Twice. It felt odd to be knocking on his own door, but he didn’t want to alarm the boy. X wanted him to feel at home.

  After two raps, X grabbed the handle and pulled it open. It creaked, revealing the cramped living room. He hated everything about his apartment, from the rattle of the air-handler unit to the cracks in the fake leather couch where his wife used to wait for him every day. He could still picture Rhonda sitting there, legs crossed, judging brown eyes looking him up and down to see if he was drunk.

  Tin sat curled up in her spot, tablet in hand, the glow illuminating the innocent face of a ten-year-old boy.

  “I got you some noodles,” X said, shaking the bag.

  Tin didn’t even look up.

  Crossing the room in three strides, X carried the bag into the kitchen. Two backless stools were pushed underneath the simple oval table. Only a dash of the original yellow paint remained.

  X put the bag down on the countertop and checked on the tomato plant under the flickering grow bulb. The stem drooped. He scooped up a fallen leaf and put it back into the pot.

  Sighing, he squeezed into the bathroom and closed the door. The toilet, or “shit can,” as most passengers called them, smelled faintly of something rotten. He held his breath as he relieved himself, then closed the door.

  Tin had moved to the floor in the living room. He sat cross-legged on the floor, fumbling through the tool pouch on his belt as he worked on repairing the vacuum cleaner. Unscrewing the front bolts, Tin slid off the cover to expose a skein of wires. He took a small pair of tweezers from his pouch.

  “You hungry?” X said from the kitchen.

  The boy shook his head.

  “Come on, you have to eat. Besides, I got noodles. No one turns down the Dragon’s noodles. I figure it’s the least I can do to repay you for fixing that vacuum. Also”—he pointed at the sink—“the grow lamp isn’t working very well. I’ll owe you for fixing that, too, right?”

  The savory smell filled the room. Tin’s eyes searched the dimly lit space and fell on X for a blink. Leaving the dismantled vacuum cleaner on the floor, he hopped to his feet and went to the kitchen. He checked the lamp, then sat down at the table.

  They ate together in silence, X having run out of things to say and Tin doing his best to avoid eye contact.

  X had watched Tin grow up, had seen his love for engineering even before he learned to talk. Now the boy spent more time working on projects than playing with kids his own age.

  Aaron, Tin, Rhonda, and X had been a family once. X would do anything to have those days back. For the past five years, he had been motivated only by his duty to the Hive. With Rhonda gone, his responsibility to the human race had kept him diving. But now he had a new responsibility.

  He looked at the boy. “Did you learn anything at school today?”

  Tin hesitated before slurping down his next noodle, but said nothing.

  X took a different approach. “I spoke with your teacher this morning. She said you guys are going to see the water reclamation plant soon.”

  The boy pulled his foil hat lower over his ears and continued eating.

  “Listen, Tin,” X said, his voice deepening. “You’ve got to help me out here. You have to talk to me eventually. I mean, you’re all I got now, and I’m all you got. Like it or not, that’s how it is.”

  This time, Tin looked up, his eyes locking with X’s. Swallowing, he jumped off the stool, pushed it neatly under the table, and was gone. A moment later, the door to the bedroom slammed shut.

  “Damn,” X muttered. He contemplated the full plate of his favorite meal, then pushed it aside. He wasn’t hungry; he was thirsty. What he needed right now was a stiff drink.

  SIX

  Commander Weaver watched the walls around him with a sense of horrified awe. They shook and rattled as if some giant outside were swinging a wrecking ball against them. Bits of acoustic paneling and dust rained down from the ceiling, covering him in white flakes.

  He sat on the stairs to the second floor, his head bowed between his legs as if he were praying. Not that he was—he could probably count on one hand the times in his life he had actually prayed. It did seem a miracle, though, that he and Jones had survived the storm even this long.

  “Sir, top floor is clear,” Jones said from the landing above. “There’s nothing here. No sign of life, no cells, and no pressure valves. Nothing.”

  “I could have sworn I heard something,” Weaver said. He shook his head, his senses still rattled from the fall he took before Jones yanked him inside the building.

  Jones continued down the stairs and sat down beside Weaver on the step. They sat in silence for several moments, listening to the howl of the storm outside. Jones whispered something that Weaver caught only a piece of.

  “What’d you say?”

  “A prayer,” Jones replied. “A Christian prayer.”

  “You really believe in that stuff?”

  Jones pointed to the cross on his helmet. “If we make it back to Ares, I’ll tell you about it sometime.” He twisted around to face Weaver. “You sure you’re okay, sir?” he asked, his dark eyes searching Weaver’s in the blue glow of their battery units.

  “I’m fine,” Weaver lied. He took a sip from the hydration straw in his helmet. The sterilized water tasted like halide tablets, but it would have to do. Half their supplies were sitting in a crate at the bottom of a pit full of monsters.

  He hoped the other crate had made it to the surface safely. It was their only chance to save Ares and get back home. Without it, they would have no way to get enough power cells or the pressure valves back up to the ship. There was simply no way he and Jones could carry everything on the return trip—their personal helium ascenders would never lift it all. The valves for the eighty-megawatt reactors weighed forty pounds each, and Weaver still had to find another booster. Otherwise, he would be stranded down here forever. Captain Willis could never risk landing to scoop him back up.

  Weaver grunted, his stomach churning from the pills he had ingested. They were supposed to turn radioactive snow into safe drinking water, but he had his doubts. His insides were already starting to ache.

  “What do you think those things were back there?” Jones asked. He pulled the blaster from the holster on his leg and brushed off a layer of ice.

  “No idea,” Weaver said. “But I’m calling them Sirens.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Ye
ah,” Weaver replied. “Those noises they made were a dead ringer for a level-five emergency siren on the ship.”

  Jones looked up at the ceiling, then back to Weaver. “How does anything survive down here in this radiation?”

  Weaver shook his head. “I don’t know. But they obviously did, okay? Now, stop asking me questions. We need to focus on getting the hell out of here and getting back to Ares.” He rose to his feet and paced up and down the steps.

  “We wouldn’t last a minute in that storm,” Jones called after him. “We have to wait it out.”

  “The ship won’t wait for us forever,” Weaver grumbled.

  Jones was staring at the steel door at the bottom of the stairs. “I know, sir. But with all due respect, if we die in that storm, Ares is doomed anyway.”

  “The moment it lets up, we move.”

  “Understood,” Jones replied with a sigh. He unfastened his belt with a click and pulled his waste bags from a pouch in his pants. “Thank God for our helmets,” he said as he tossed the bags onto the landing above. “I’d hate to get a whiff of one of those.”

  On any other mission, the comment would have gotten a laugh from Weaver, but it didn’t penetrate the cloud of worry.

  “You hear that?” Jones said.

  “What?” Weaver jolted alert, half expecting to hear the eerie wailing he had heard before the storm hit. He put a hand against the vibrating wall. The wind had risen to a steady roar.

  Weaver took a step backward as a crack spider-webbed up the concrete stairwell. The violent rattle of metal siding pulled his gaze to the ceiling on the second floor. He heard Jones shouting, but his voice was muffled by the sounds of the building coming apart. The concrete stairwell walls around Weaver and Jones were fracturing under the onslaught of tornadic wind.

  Weaver nearly stumbled down the steps to avoid a falling chunk of concrete. He braced himself against the opposite wall and watched in horror as a wide crack zigzagged up the stairs, breaking them in half.