Hell Divers

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  “Don’t do this, Trav,” Alex said, his voice low and stern. “Don’t let the kid go.”

  “It’s over, man,” Travis said. “It’s fucking over.”

  Alex gripped the handle of his knife, hesitated, then drew it from its sheath. “Like hell it is. We’re still in control.”

  “Have you not been paying attention to anything?” Travis said, eyeing the blade. “The ship is coming apart. If Tin hadn’t patched that bladder, we would have already crashed to the surface.”

  “Bullshit. I don’t believe a damn word Ash or anyone on her crew says.” Alex tucked his scarf into the top of his shirt and flipped the knife end-over-end in the air.

  Brad and Ren took half a step closer, their eyes roving uneasily back and forth between Travis and Alex.

  “I knew I never should have followed your plan,” Alex said. “I knew this would never work. You’re weak, Travis. You always were—just like your brother.”

  Travis lunged forward and tackled Alex so quickly that Tin flinched. They crashed to the dirt in a heap. Ren and Brad, their backs to the clean room, followed the brawl anxiously, neither one interfering.

  “You son of a … !” Travis yelled. He climbed on top of Alex and started punching. The blows were audible even above the emergency sirens and the excited barks from Silver and Lilly.

  “I told you not to shoot anyone!” Travis yelled, swinging again. “We were never … never supposed to hurt anyone!”

  Alex kicked under the weight of Travis’ body, struggling to knock him off, holding up his arms in an effort to deflect the blows, but Travis continued the barrage.

  Two sharp whistles cut through the other sounds, and Tin saw the silver flash of the arrows streaking through the air. They caught Brad and Ren, one each in the back. The two men slumped to the ground holding the arrow tips protruding through their hearts.

  Behind the livestock fence, a fuss erupted among the hens as Militia soldiers aimed their crossbows. The armored men and women hurdled the fence one by one.

  “Secure the hostages!” a guard shouted.

  By the time Tin looked back to the fight, it was already over. Travis remained on top, looking in Tin’s direction and grasping the slimy red shaft of a knife sticking through his side.

  “I’m sorry,” Travis mouthed. Blood trickled from his mouth, and his eyes had that resigned gaze Tin remembered seeing on so many lower-deckers.

  “I never meant for this to …”

  Alex pushed the body off him and staggered to his feet, blinking rapidly as if trying to comprehend the reality of Brad’s and Ren’s corpses.

  “No!” Alex shouted. He pulled his blade from Travis’ side and spun toward the squad of Militia soldiers still rushing across the farm with the weapon out front.

  “Drop the knife!” one of the soldiers yelled.

  Alex raised it in the air, shouting, “You fucking assholes!”

  Those were the last words that left his mouth before two arrows ripped into his chest. Looking astonished, he staggered a couple of feet before toppling face-first into the dirt. The sharp steel arrowheads sticking out of his back glistened under the bright LEDs.

  The stress of the past few days finally hit Tin. Shivering, he sank onto his back, staring at the ceiling, blinking slowly, his mind drifting. A helmet swam into view, then another, as Militia surrounded him. A soldier knelt by his side and put a hand on his arm.

  “You okay, kid?” the man asked.

  Tin could hold on to only one thought. “Is X back yet?”

  The man shook his head. “I don’t know, son. Just hold on. We’re going to get you help.”

  Tin ran a hand through his hair. “Do you see my hat anywhere?”

  “Don’t worry, kid, I’ll find it.”

  Tin closed his eyes, smiling. He couldn’t wait to tell X how he’d patched the bladder and helped save the ship.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The domed concrete warehouses were different from those X had raided on other dives. From a distance, they looked like clutches of giant eggs surrounding the ITC towers. Weaver pointed to the building in the center.

  “That’s it,” he said. “According to your map, the cells and valves should be inside.”

  The tower, larger than the others, loomed above them. The divers huddled in the mouth of the access tunnel, waiting there as a flight of Sirens sailed overhead and disappeared beyond the skyline.

  After their cries had faded away, Weaver said, “Now’s our chance. Follow me.”

  X went back to Murph, who was slumped against the wall, hands pressed against his stomach. He pulled away fingertips stained with blood. There was fear in his eyes. And exhaustion.

  “You good to go?” X asked.

  Murph managed a nod but waved X away when he tried to help. “I’ll be okay,” he said unconvincingly.

  “I’ll take rear guard,” X said. “Katrina, cover our nine o’clock. Magnolia, you got three o’clock. Weaver, stay on point. Murph, you just stay alive.”

  The engineer coughed wetly, and X saw, behind the visor, the rash forming on his face. It was an early sign of radiation poisoning. The gash in his suit had allowed the invisible poison inside. Murph didn’t have much time, and by the look on his face, he knew it.

  “You guys coming, or what?” Weaver said.

  The four divers pushed out into the snow and followed Weaver in a wedge formation across the field. They were in the open now and exposed to the elements. Lightning streaked through the muddy clouds, spreading a fleeting curtain of blue over the industrial zone. The entire place gave X the creeps.

  The relentless sound of thunder echoed overhead as they moved. Weaver set a quick pace, and X worked hard to keep up. He walked backward, his rifle trained on the access tunnel. The storm had covered the area beyond the embankment with a fresh layer of snow.

  He took a pull from the straw in his helmet. The chems from the drink flooded his system, and his body accepted the energy greedily. He could almost feel his pupils dilating.

  “Almost there,” Magnolia said.

  X sneaked a glance over his shoulder. The central ITC building’s shell had been stripped of paint, exposing the windowless metal surface. It rose ten floors and ended in a curl of twisted metal that looked a bit like Tin’s hat. The sight filled X with dread. The kid was waiting for him to come back, just as he had waited so many times for his father. And the deeper X trekked into this frozen wasteland, the less likely he was to return home.

  It wasn’t fair, but X had a mission to complete.

  “Over here,” Weaver said, waving them toward a set of rusted steel doors at the base of the central building.

  “Where’s the security panel?” Murph asked, clutching his gut.

  “You okay?” X asked. It was a useless question, of course. Murph was far from okay. But he nodded and trudged over to the box that Weaver was busy wiping off.

  “I doubt this is the kind you guys have seen on other dives,” Weaver said. “Never seen anything like it myself.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Magnolia said. “I’ve seen it before. On the Hive. There’s a security panel just like this outside the armory.”

  Murph nodded. “Very hard to hack into.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Magnolia said.

  “Well, can you do it?” X asked. Sirens were nowhere in sight, but they were out there somewhere. Every second that passed increased their odds of being discovered.

  Murph opened up a pocket on his tactical vest and pulled out a second minicomputer. Reaching for another pocket, he doubled over in pain, coughing.

  “Let me take a look,” Magnolia said.

  “No,” Murph said. “I can do this.” Uncoiling the cable with great care, he plugged one end into the security panel, and the other into his computer.

  X gazed out at the stark landscape. Gusting
wind kicked up fresh powder in the distance. Behind the embankment, the snow rippled like waves. A few miles away, a pair of whirlwinds scudded toward the city. He watched them dissipate as they moved into the heart of Hades.

  “How you coming along with that, Murph?” X asked.

  “Just need a couple of minutes.”

  X pulled out his binos and studied the gated access tunnel they had come from. He half expected to see Sirens pouring out of the passage, but he saw only the two divers’ corpses they had passed on their way out.

  The snow above the embankment continued to drift in the wind. X zoomed in for a better look, and his breath caught at the sight of bony fins slicing through the powder. The spikes were moving fast, kicking up snow into the air. Beneath the surface, an army of Sirens was racing toward them.

  “Murph,” X said. “You—”

  “Still working.”

  “You better do it fast,” X said. “We’re about to have company!”

  Numbers rolled across the engineer’s computer. A five and a six had solidified, but three more digits still had to line up.

  X looked back at the hill just as the first Sirens climbed over the wall of snow. They tumbled down the side and streamed onto the field, some of them breaking into a gallop, others taking to the sky.

  “Murph, you got thirty seconds, tops!”

  The third and fourth numbers were in place.

  “Oh, my God, oh, my God!” Magnolia grabbed the door handle and rattled it. “Open it, Murph!”

  X felt a stab of fear as he raised his rifle and picked a target. But there were too many, and he had only one magazine left. The only hope for survival was inside the building.

  “Got it!” Murph finally yelled.

  Magnolia yanked the door open and burst through, with Weaver and Katrina on her heels.

  “Go!” X yelled, shoving Murph through the door. X grabbed the handle, then hesitated. The sight took his breath away. Sirens stampeded toward the building, kicking up snow behind them, as others formed up in a large flying V. X slammed the door and threw his weight against it. He couldn’t hold the monsters back now, but somehow, leaning against it made him feel better. Their only hope was to power down and pray the Sirens would move on.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that the other divers had already removed their battery units. Their helmets were angled up to where the roof should be.

  But his team wasn’t looking at the sky. They were looking at the bulblike nests lining the walls of each floor. Hundreds of them.

  X took a hand off the door and pulled his battery from its slot. They had made a strategic error in assuming that the Sirens wouldn’t be inside. The building housed not only the cells and valves the Hive needed—it was also home to the Sirens.

  * * * * *

  Tin took his foil hat from the soldier who had carried him from the farm.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “You bet, kid,” the soldier said, grinning. He patted Tin on the shoulder and hurried off to join the growing crowd of gray uniforms outside the farm entrance.

  Tin carefully folded the hat and tucked it into his pocket. He was surprised at how different he felt without it now. When he was inside the gas bladder, he hadn’t thought about the hat. For a few moments, he felt odd, but he quickly realized it was a good “odd,” a good “different.”

  He held the pack of ice from the medic against his head and closed his eyes. It brought some relief to the throbbing of his swollen forehead.

  “Tin? Is that you?”

  Tin pulled the ice away and saw the stern, youthful face of Lieutenant Jordan. The officer scanned him with a flashlight beam.

  “Looks like you got dinged pretty good there.”

  “I’m okay,” Tin replied in his most confident voice.

  “Good,” Jordan said. He gestured with his hand. “Follow me. Captain Ash is waiting for us on the bridge.”

  Tin hurried after Jordan, through the dark passageways. The emergency message continued to crackle from the ancient speakers overhead, and the splash of red from the emergency lights told him the divers weren’t back yet. The Hive was still on lockdown.

  Thinking about Travis, he remembered something his father had said after the food riots two years ago. There’s a difference between fighting for what you believe in and killing for what you believe in. Violence is never the answer.

  Tin smiled, finally understanding what his dad had meant.

  Jordan stopped when they got to the doors outside the command center. He spoke quietly with two soldiers standing guard. Both men acknowledged Tin with a respectful nod. He heard a chirp, and the doors whispered apart.

  “Those guys heard you patched a gas bladder by yourself,” Jordan said.

  Tin felt his heart pound with excitement as he walked into the busy command center. He laid his bandaged hands on the metal rail overlooking the levels, taking it all in. He had been here only a couple of times. This time was different from the others. The space was alive with movement, electronic chirps, and raised voices. On the bottom deck, Captain Ash held the oak wheel, her gaze locked on the main display. He felt a thrill at being in the middle of it all.

  Jordan motioned for Tin to follow him down the ramp. A skinny officer with black-rimmed glasses looked in Tin’s direction for a brief moment, and Tin thought he saw the man nod.

  Approaching Captain Ash, Tin stood as straight as he could. When they were a few feet away, she regarded them with a smile, one eye still on the display.

  “Tin …” The captain paused, her lips pursing as if she was unsure what to say. “Thank you. Thank you for being so brave. If it weren’t for you, the ship would already have crashed.”

  Tin swelled with pride.

  “You’re welcome, Captain.”

  “When this is all over—”

  The ship lurched before Ash could finish her sentence. She put her other hand on the wheel and shifted her gaze back to the monitor. Tin, still a little woozy, lost his balance, but Jordan caught him by the elbow.

  “What was that, Ryan!” Ash shouted.

  “Pocket of turbulence,” the skinny officer with glasses shouted from the second deck. “The storm’s gaining on us!”

  “What’s our altitude?” Ash shouted back.

  “Twenty-four thousand feet and climbing.”

  Ash wiped a bead of sweat from her brow and said something Tin couldn’t quite make out. She cocked her chin at the captain’s chair. “Get Tin buckled in. Things are going to get bumpy again.”

  Jordan motioned for Tin to sit, but he stood his ground. “Is X back yet?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” Ash said. She turned for a split second to look at Tin. “But he will be. If anyone can make it back, it’s X.”

  Tin saw the confidence in her eyes and knew that she wasn’t lying. He took a seat in her chair and reached in his pocket for his hat as Jordan buckled him in. On the main display, the mud-colored clouds churned like dark cake batter. The sight terrified him, but he had to be strong now. For the first time since his dad had given him the hat, he didn’t feel the need for it.

  * * * * *

  The divers were frozen in place inside the ITC building. The crack of thunder overhead provided a reprieve from the wailing of the Sirens searching for them outside. Lightning cracked above the roofless tower, and in its glow, X saw the creatures flapping away.

  His gaze shifted to the nests hanging from the walls. So far, he hadn’t seen any movement inside the egg-shaped cocoons. If Sirens were inside, they were likely sleeping.

  Seconds ticked by and became minutes. After a while, X wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Without his HUD online, he couldn’t see the mission clock. Murph trembled a few feet away, his hand pressed against his belly.

  X wished he could take away Murph’s pain. Something about seeing another
diver suffer made him want to shoulder the burden. These were his brothers, his sisters. Their pain had become his.

  At last, the shrieks died away, and X let out an icy breath of relief. The Sirens, it seemed, had given up their search.

  He waited a few more minutes, just to be sure. When he couldn’t hear anything but the wind, he flashed a hand signal toward a set of doors across the atrium. Using the intermittent flashes of lightning to guide them, the divers crossed the space. They fell into a simple routine: Scan the walls and ceilings. Take a step. Freeze for a minute. Repeat.

  Every motion was strenuous. The lack of movement made their body temperatures drop even further, and without the battery units on, they would soon be hypothermic. Murph wouldn’t last much longer. He was dying. There was no time to rest.

  They had to keep moving.

  A flash from the storm illuminated the layer of ice that had formed over their black matte armor, so that the divers looked like the statues X had seen in pictures of Old World parks.

  He checked the doors ahead. Something had forced them apart. Drawing nearer, he saw where claws had raked across their surface. Four agonizing steps later, he reached the opening. The weak light in the lobby obscured the hallway beyond.

  X waited. Listening, probing. He could make out the dim outlines of a few doors along the right wall. There was no trace of motion or any sounds to indicate that the Sirens were inside.

  A tremor rippled through his chilled body. He flexed his forearms in an effort to keep his blood flowing. The shadows in the hallway suddenly shifted. Or was it just his eyes playing tricks on him?

  Get with the fucking program, X.

  He wedged his way through the opening in the door and shuffled forward on feet that felt as if they were someone else’s. Reaching the wall, he shouldered his rifle and swept it from side to side. He could see only vague shapes in the blackness: door frames and windows, maybe a chair—he wasn’t sure. Without his optics, he was all but blind.

  He shuffled back to the doors and waved his team inside the passage. They huddled around him and he pointed to his chest, signaling for them to reinsert their batteries. His teeth chattered as he locked his unit into place.