Hell Divers

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  “You hang in there,” Travis said. “You’re gonna be fine. I’ll see you in a few months.”

  Raphael mouthed something that Travis couldn’t make out. At first, he thought it was “Help,” but no, that was wrong. Before he could say anything else, the guard hoisted Raphael to his feet.

  “Time to go,” the guard said.

  Raphael looked back at Travis once more and said, “Goodbye, Trav.”

  “Goodbye, Raphael,” he whispered. He put a hand on the glass and watched through a blur of tears as the guard whisked his brother away. It would have taken three guards to haul away the Raphael he remembered, but that man was gone now. It was up to Travis to fight and to prove that their mother had been wrong about humanity.

  * * * * *

  A Hell Diver hovered in the upward blast of air in one of the wind tunnels. X shut the door to the training facility and watched from the entrance. He could tell by the diver’s graceful movements that it was Katrina DaVita. Arms and legs spread and head tilted upward, she rode the column of wind effortlessly. Ripples rolled across the slack in her suit as she moved precisely backward, forward, and sideways.

  “Perfect,” X whispered.

  Katrina’s moves prompted a few whistles and cheers from the other divers. X put a stop to that with a clap of his hands.

  “Listen up!” he said, crossing the room in a hurry.

  Tony gave a thumbs-up to Katrina. She flipped into a cross-legged sitting position, and he deactivated the wind tunnel with the flip of a switch. Settling gently to the floor, she flipped her visor and smiled at X. The joy in her grin told him Cruise and Tony hadn’t disobeyed the order to keep quiet. The other teams still didn’t know about Ares.

  The divers circled around X, Tony, and Cruise. Katrina shucked off her helmet and brushed her cropped brown hair from her face. Her lips slowly relaxed into a thin line.

  X waited till he had everyone’s attention. When all eyes were on him, he said, “A few minutes ago, I was informed that we have arrived over the eastern outskirts of Hades.”

  At the news, all trace of civility disappeared in an instant, and the room erupted into chaos. Magnolia shouted the loudest.

  “What the hell are we doing there?”

  This got X a smirk from Cruise.

  “Calm down,” X said. “Everyone just calm the fuck down.” The shouts dwindled into chatter and, eventually, silence.

  “Captain Ash received an SOS from Ares. Details are still sketchy, but what we do know is, their ship was damaged in an electrical storm. Captain Willis came here to attempt a salvage op. He deployed a team to the surface—”

  “They sent a team down there?” Murph gasped.

  Several other divers shouted more questions while Katrina just bowed her head at the news. Murph scratched at his cheek, and even Sam couldn’t hide the fear behind his stoic silence. Magnolia gaped, but when she saw X looking at her, she closed her mouth and started picking at a black-lacquered fingernail.

  X unfolded his arms and rubbed his eyelids as the divers continued their rapid-fire shouting. He was tired and would rather be doing just about anything than field questions he didn’t know the answers to.

  “So what’s this mean for us?” a diver from Team Angel said.

  “Are we diving, too?” someone else asked.

  “Let Commander Rodriguez finish,” Tony said.

  “There is no reason to believe we are going to dive,” X added. “Captain Ash has only ordered us to prepare for a possible rescue operation. That’s all.”

  “Wow, what a relief,” Magnolia muttered. “Can’t tell you how much better that makes me feel.”

  “A rescue op?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah,” X replied. “If we can locate their ship, then a team of divers will link up with Ares and provide whatever support they need. Could be parts, could be cells, or it could be something else. I simply don’t know at this point.”

  Cruise shook his head. “We haven’t done one of those for years. Half of us aren’t even trained for it.”

  “All the more reason to stop talking and start prepping,” X said.

  “You heard him,” Tony said. “Let’s start the rescue-op drills.”

  “You’re not going to tell everyone about the Sirens?” Cruise said. “About what you saw on your last dive?”

  “Sirens?” Magnolia asked.

  The words hung in the air for an uncomfortable moment. He shot Cruise a glare, holding back the dressing-down he wanted so badly to give.

  “Well?” Magnolia said. “You gonna talk, or what?”

  X hesitated, his gaze still burning into Cruise. They needed to train, not discuss man-eating monsters, but there was no way he could let this go now. He had to address it before fearful speculation spiraled out of control.

  He turned to Magnolia and said, “I saw several creatures on my last dive. Some sort of mutants. Apparently, the divers from Ares saw them, too.” He waited for the inevitable barrage of questions, but no one spoke—not even Magnolia, who stood twisting a strand of blue hair around her finger.

  “I’m not sure what they are—or were—but they communicate in …” X grimaced at the memory of those paralyzing sounds. “They communicate through these high-pitched shrieks that sound exactly like an emergency siren.”

  “That’s what killed your team?” Magnolia prodded in a voice just above a whisper.

  “No,” X said. “I told you. The storms killed them. But those things did try to hunt me. The Sirens, or whatever the hell you want to call them, must use some sort of sonar, because they don’t have eyes.”

  His words met with silence, which only added to the tension he could feel swelling in the room. He thought of Aaron and the swarm of monsters that had torn him apart after the balloon yanked X out of their reach.

  Tony clapped his hands. “Okay, people. Enough questions for now. Time to get started on the rescue drills.”

  Several divers groaned and started toward the operations room. Tony stopped to pat X on the shoulder, then followed the others. Katrina was the only one to stay behind. She walked over to X and stood by his side.

  He gave her a sidelong glance. She was beautiful, but it wasn’t just her looks. She was as strong as any of the men, both physically and mentally. She held her own in training and on dives, and every diver respected her.

  Katrina smiled, seeing she had caught his attention.

  X looked away. He had carried on an affair with Katrina behind his wife’s back for almost six months, but then Rhonda got sick, and the day she was diagnosed with cancer, he broke things off with Katrina. He had stood by his wife in those agonizing last months, but even now, over a year later, just looking at Katrina felt like an insult to Rhonda’s memory.

  “You think this is a good idea?” Katrina asked.

  It took a second for X to realize she was talking about Ares. “Hard to say,” he replied. “Guess we will find out soon.”

  “Guess so,” Katrina said. She brushed against him as she left.

  Magnolia was waiting for her halfway across the room. They spoke in whispers, but X still heard every word Magnolia said.

  “Hades is cursed after all … I’ve got a feeling we’re about to find out why.”

  NINE

  Weaver exploded out of the open warehouse doorway with such force that he tripped and crashed to the ground. He landed helmet first in the snow and bit his tongue. Ignoring the pain, he pushed himself back up and spun around to see shadowed shapes darting like lizards across the interior walls of the building.

  Pounding through calf-deep snow, he reached into his vest pocket, fingering through the extra bullets until he had one between gloved fingers. A loud thunderclap overhead startled him, and he dropped the bullet in the snow.

  Lighting rippled across the skyline—a brief display of blue against a bleak, dar
k horizon. The cries of the creatures followed Weaver through the maze of buildings. He had to find a place to hide before they found him.

  He tried the door of the closest warehouse. Locked. The next was the same. As he bolted from building to building, the shrieks of the Sirens grew steadily louder behind him. The final structure had caved in like a crushed can. It was the same one he and Jones had escaped from earlier.

  With nowhere to go, Weaver dashed out into the open industrial zone, searching frantically for shelter. In the distance, he could see a snow-covered road and the rounded bulky shapes of vehicles buried by the snow. Not the ideal place to hide, but he was out of options.

  Panting hard, he pushed on, the coppery-salty taste of blood on his tongue. Every dozen yards, he would turn and scan for his pursuers which hadn’t yet come into view, then pound ahead toward the oblique white mounds that hid Old World cars beneath them. Tripping over some hidden obstacle beneath the snow, he lost his balance and tumbled. He leaped back up to his feet and made a final dash toward the vehicles and away from the horrifying shrieks.

  His only wisp of a chance was to lure the Sirens away from the buildings, find a vehicle to hide in, and then double back to grab some heavy weapons. That would give him a chance to fight his way into the warehouses and get the cells and pressure valves. If he survived that, he could deploy them—and himself—back to Ares in the crate.

  It was a plan—admittedly, a crazy one, but it was the best he could come up with. A half-baked plan, adrenaline, and the desperation of a father trying to get home to his family were all he had, in this moment, to keep him moving.

  Hazy lightning bloomed through the clouds, and the roar of thunder gave a brief reprieve from the shrieks behind him. He darted another glance over his shoulder, and this time he saw them. They came bounding over the snow on all fours, heads tucked down between bony shoulders, dorsal fins waving back and forth as they hurtled forward.

  They were fast, and they were gaining. He had to get away from those awful teeth and talons.

  Swiping away the grit that had collected on his visor, he pounded toward the snow-covered vehicles. Most of them were completely buried, but the wind had eaten away the drifts on a few, exposing doors and broken windows.

  In the fifty yards, the boom of thunder seemed to come from all directions, as if the storm itself, swirling above Hades, were alive. He flinched at the raucous boom and the horrible squalls that followed.

  Reaching the road, he found firmer footing, then slid on both knees to a half-buried vehicle. He pawed through an open window framed with crusted snow, climbed inside, and flattened out on the seat.

  A barrage of thunder rang out over Hades. The reverberations shook the rusted vehicle, and flakes of snow rained down from the roof. But meanwhile, the sounds of the monsters grew strangely fainter. At first, Weaver thought it was the storm masking their cries, but when he slowly raised his helmet to peek out the window, he saw them galloping away from the road, kicking up a plume of snow in their wake.

  Another thunderbolt cracked overhead, drawing Weaver’s attention to the sky. A brilliant web of lightning, with a dozen arms, flashed across the horizon. Two blue tendrils licked the top of the highest tower in the distance, and sparks showered down on the frozen streets. The storm was intensifying. The Sirens, as if sensing it, vanished in the maze of domed ITC buildings a moment later.

  Weaver lowered his helmet, breathing a sigh of relief. He could deal with the storm now that he was safe from the Sirens.

  A sudden tremor shook the ground, causing the rusted metal to rattle around him. He poked his head back up and checked again to make sure the creatures were really gone. Seeing no sign of them, he climbed through the window and dropped to the snow. He had been given a reprieve, and he wasn’t going to waste it hiding.

  As soon as he pushed himself to his feet, another explosion shook him. He surveyed the storm clouds roiling above the abandoned city to the east. It was hard to believe that this had once been a thriving metropolis, with more people than Weaver had ever seen in one place. Now only Sirens occupied this cursed ground.

  Another resounding crash of thunder exploded somewhere deep in the clouds. The roar rattled his senses, forcing every thought from his mind but one: he couldn’t stay here any longer. If he did, he risked being hit by lightning. And so he ran until he thought he would vomit.

  The compact snow shook under his feet as the thunder amplified, but something didn’t add up: the sky was dark. There was no lightning.

  He was halfway back to the ITC warehouses when he finally stopped and stared up into the storm. Explosions continued to boom, but without one trace of lightning.

  Weaver’s chest thumped with the concussion of each blast. The sky suddenly blossomed with a blast of red so bright, he had to shut off his night vision. As he blinked away the light blindness, a deafening whistle shrilled louder and louder.

  Up in the clouds, a glowing shape split through the storm. Weaver froze and watched as red tendrils streaked away from the flaming hulk that arced toward Hades at a forty-five-degree angle.

  “No,” he whispered. “Please, God, no.”

  Part of him still didn’t believe it was possible, until he saw the curved outline of Ares break through the clouds. Flames trailed the airship as it screamed toward the city. The sound morphed into a screech louder than all the Sirens combined. Weaver watched in shock.

  He was too late. He had failed his family—failed every soul aboard Ares. For one deluded moment, he held on to the hope that Captain Willis could land her still—that maybe they could salvage the ship and find a way to launch her back into the air.

  Then the ship smashed into one of the skyscrapers, shearing off the spire with a hollow crack. It hit another and another, taking the tops off cleanly.

  Fire exploded out of the sides of the damaged craft as it came crashing to earth. The shattered bow of Ares collided with the ground, sending up a cloud of dirt and dust into the sky. A crimson bubble expanded and popped, bathing the dead city in fire. The explosion engulfed the entire ship, leaving no question that every soul on board had perished.

  With a whimper, Weaver fell to both knees and watched as a thousand-foot fireball consumed his family and the only home he had ever known.

  * * * * *

  Tin studied the flickering bank of LEDs, rocking gently with the motion of the ship, above Professor Lana’s desk. He counted the seconds between blinks: three this time. Something was wrong. Last time, they had flickered for two seconds.

  He leaned over to Layla and tapped her desk. Her elbow slipped, and the palm holding up her head up fell away.

  “Hey!” she whispered. “I was trying to work.” Her sleepy eyes said otherwise.

  “Right,” Tin whispered, grinning as he settled back in his seat. He concentrated on the lights again. The panel hanging in the front of the room was no more interesting than Professor Lana’s lecture on how the Hive’s massive internal gas bladders worked, but he had already finished reading the training manual. He knew how to patch one if it failed.

  “Why do you think we changed course?” Layla whispered.

  He shrugged. “Probably to avoid an electrical storm.”

  “Aren’t the engineers still fixing the wires that got fried in the last power surge?”

  “Yup. They’re probably in the crawl space below us right now. That’ll be me someday, you know.”

  “The gas bladders are the most fragile part of the Hive,” Professor Lana said. “Like a living creature losing too much blood, if the ship loses too much helium, it will die.” She looked at the red oval clock behind her desk and stood. “Looks like it’s time for our next class, everyone. Finish your lessons and pack up. Oh, and don’t forget to read lesson three-point-one tonight on helium and how we keep a steady supply. It’s very important.”

  Tin shot out of his chair. His next class
wasn’t a class. It was a field trip! He stuffed his books into his bag and followed the other kids into the hallway, where two senior engineers in light-blue coveralls were waiting.

  Professor Lana approached them and murmured softly, “Is it safe to leave the classroom right now? The ship’s been rocking a lot lately.”

  The older of the two said, “Safe as safe can be. I’ll keep ’em close. Nothing to worry about, I’m sure.” He was probably too thick in the middle to maneuver in the crawl spaces anymore.

  The other engineer was short and wiry—the ideal body type for someone who had to spend most of his time in cramped spaces. He had a thick silver beard with a mustache that curled at the ends. The bent bill of a ball cap covered his eyes.

  Professor Lana smiled and said, “Kids, this is Eli, and this is …” She looked to the larger engineer.

  “Ned.” He grinned and took it from there. “So you kids want to be engineers?”

  “That is why we’re here,” Andrew quipped.

  Lana shot him a disapproving look. “Yes, everyone here has enrolled in the engineering program. I was teaching them how to fix the internal gas bladders just today.”

  “Is that right?” Eli said, scratching at his beard. “Gas bladders are very important, but today, we’re showing you something else. Who’s ready to see the water treatment plant? Some of you might end up working there someday.”

  Tin raised his hand. He looked around him. It appeared that the others kids didn’t seem to share his enthusiasm for water reclamation technology. They all wore the same bored look. For them, this was just an opportunity to get out of class, nothing more. Andrew smirked at Tin’s obvious eagerness and whispered something. Several of the other boys chuckled.

  But Tin wasn’t going to let them ruin his mood. Not today. He snugged the tinfoil hat down on his head as the two engineers led the class through the passages, to a three-way intersection. A sentry holding a big rifle stood at a door across the hallway. It led to the second and third floors—off limits to most residents, except today. Touring the water reclamation plant was a rite of passage for students in the engineering program.