Hell Divers II: Ghosts

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Michael remained in the shadows, away from the warmth of the sunlight—not because he liked the darkness, but because it hid the worry on his face. His Hell Diver team needed a heroic leader. Someone like X. Michael hadn’t always liked or respected X growing up, but during the short time the man was his guardian following his father’s death, he had learned some important lessons about honor, sacrifice, and courage.

  Now, ten years later, a lot had changed. Michael had traded in his tinfoil hat for a Hell Diver’s helmet, and the skinny kid was now muscular from countless hours working in engineering and training as a Hell Diver. With thirty successful jumps under his belt, he had quickly risen through the ranks to lead Team Raptor. His father had been a Raptor, and so had X. Could he live up to their legacy? At times like this, when the ship seemed to be hanging on by a thread, he wasn’t sure.

  The screech of metal doors pulled him back from the darkness, and a woman’s voice reminded him that there was still light in the world.

  “Sorry I’m late, Tin.”

  Michael turned to face the one person he truly trusted on this godforsaken ship.

  “I told you not to call me that anymore,” he said, grinning.

  Across the room, past the rows of plastic domes covering the drop tubes, stood Layla Brower. She heaved the strap of a duffel bag higher on her shoulder and then closed the double doors to the hallway. They squeaked shut, sealing the room in shadows once again.

  “The name’s endearing,” she said, dropping her bag and striding over to him. “As your girlfriend, I’m allowed to call you what I want, right?”

  “Right,” Michael said. “Except ‘Tin.’ You can’t call me that.” He stepped away from the wall and met Layla in the center of the vaulted launch bay. They stood under a small pool of red light from the emergency bulb overhead. He held her gaze, staring into her curious brown eyes. He had fallen in love with those eyes when he was just a kid, and sometimes he still couldn’t believe that she felt the same about him. He never forgot how lucky he was, even when she was teasing him. Especially when she was teasing him.

  “Fine, Michael,” Layla said. She wrapped her arms around him and pecked his cheek.

  “That’s my good-morning kiss?” he asked. He leaned in and pressed his lips against hers. When he pulled away, her smile broadened and her cheeks glowed. She reached out to touch his shoulder-length blond hair.

  “You really need a haircut, Tin,” she said.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Michael rolled his eyes. No matter what he did, she was never going to stop calling him that stupid nickname. But that was okay, as long as the other divers kept calling him “Commander.”

  They walked together to the drop tubes. Layla stubbed her toe on the lip of a tube hidden in the dim light, and began muttering.

  “I really wish they would extend the working hours,” she said. “Can’t get anything done with this stupid energy curtailment. I was hoping to cook us dinner tonight. I used our rations on some really nice squash, and now we probably won’t even get to eat it before it goes bad.”

  “I’m not going to be home until late anyway,” Michael said.

  Layla halted and let out an exasperated sigh. “Why not?”

  “Samson wants me to pull another shift.”

  “Again?”

  “I’m sorry. You know how much I look forward to our dinners.”

  “We only get one night a week together, Michael. Just one.”

  He looked at his boots. He hated letting her down, but they both had duties they couldn’t neglect. He wasn’t the only one with two jobs. Layla doubled as an engineer in the water treatment plant when they weren’t diving to the surface.

  Glancing up, he met her eyes. “Don’t worry, I’ll find a way to sneak away for dinner. Things will calm down soon.”

  “Maybe, but before they do, we’re going back down there.” She stalked over to her launch tube and looked through the plastic dome. Clouds hid the surface, but they both knew the dangers awaiting them below.

  They stood for a few moments in silence, both of them likely thinking the same thing. The ship was running low on fuel cells again. There were never enough. For over a year now, Michael and the other Hell Diver teams had been scouring every known green-zone location for the ITC-manufactured cells, but they had come back empty-handed more often than not—those who had come back at all.

  Something had to give. There weren’t many green-zone locations left, and Jordan was going to have to start making some tough choices.

  A sharp jolt rocked the Hive, throwing both of them against the side of Layla’s drop tube. He steadied himself and helped her back to her feet.

  “What the hell was that?” Layla huffed.

  The room lit up with a cool blue radiance that answered her question. Outside the porthole windows, lightning jagged across the sky. A massive storm was brewing.

  “At least we can see now,” Michael said.

  An emergency alarm barked from the public-address speakers in the corner of the room. The recorded female voice Michael had listened to his entire life repeated a message he had heard a thousand times.

  He turned to watch the portholes.

  “It never lasts, does it?” Layla whispered, leaning against him.

  He didn’t ask her what she meant. He already knew. The silence, the sense of peace—they never lasted long. On the Hive, calm was an illusion.

  TWO

  Magnolia Katib twirled her favorite knife, ignoring the annoying message on the public-address system as she watched the cards being dealt across the table. The game, a version of old-world poker, had evolved over the years. It was cutthroat and fast paced, much like diving. The only noticeable difference was that the high-stakes game couldn’t kill her—unless one of the other players got mad …

  The first dog-eared card glided over to Rick Weaver, commander of Team Angel. The second went to the commander of Team Apollo, Andrew “Pipe” Bolden. The third went to Raptor Diver Rodger “Dodger” Mintel, and the fourth came to her.

  Despite the size of the blade, the knife spun effortlessly in her hand. Then the ship lurched, and she almost lost a finger. The metal bulkheads groaned as the Hive changed course, but none of her opponents seemed to notice. Storms were part of everyday life on the ship.

  Magnolia sank her blade into the head of the Raptor logo someone had engraved long ago onto the faded wooden table. She formed a fort around her cards with her hands. Her mind was only halfway on the game.

  “Yo, Mags,” the dealer said. “You with us? The bet’s twenty.”

  She shook away her troubling thoughts and focused on the dealer, a longtime dive technician named Ty. He looked at the knife and raised an eyebrow as if to say, Don’t mess with my table. He was chewing vigorously on a calorie-infused stick—a habit he had picked up years ago and had never been able to break.

  “Anyone ever tell you that you look like a horse eating straw?” Magnolia quipped.

  That got a laugh from Andrew, but Ty just kept chewing.

  Magnolia’s eyes flitted to the other players, hunting for tells as they looked at their three cards. Andrew peeled the edge of his card up with a grimy fingernail. He wrinkled his beak of a nose and hunched his wide shoulders so that he loomed over the table. Magnolia considered cracking a joke about his thinning hair, but she would leave the snide humor up to Rodger.

  Her eyes flitted to the skinny bearded man with black-rimmed glasses taped together in the middle. The frames accentuated his unusually large brown eyes. He was the newest addition to Team Raptor, chosen not for his fighting skills but for his keen intelligence and ability to cobble together useful tech from bits of scrap. Magnolia suspected that he was smarter than anyone else on the ship.

  “Andrew, you look at me like you look at your food,” Rodger said. “Please, don’t eat me. I’d give you really bad gas, and these people h
ave suffered enough.”

  “Whatever, man,” Andrew said, scowling. “I heard you shat yourself in the launch tube on your first dive.”

  Ty chuckled, and Commander Weaver almost choked on a gulp of shine.

  Rodger glanced at her, his cheeks reddening, then looked down at the table. Magnolia glared at Andrew.

  “Shut it, Pipe,” she said. She really hated that nickname. Layla had been the one to assign it to Andrew, because of his muscles. Tacky, to Magnolia’s thinking. “Neanderthal” would have fit much better.

  Her eyes flitted to Rodger. He gave her a brief smile that revealed a missing front tooth. He had lost it on their last dive, when he tripped after wasting half an hour loading pieces of wood into the supply crate. He was smart, but he was clumsy. She also suspected he was nursing a crush on her, but she didn’t have time for a boyfriend, and he didn’t seem like the one-night-stand type. If she wasn’t training or diving, she was in her quarters, going through the archives. Her main relationship was with history.

  “Hurry this shit up,” she said. She was anxious to get back to her latest find, an article about the farms that humans once cultivated on the surface. Maybe she could figure out a way to save the next corn harvest before they all starved.

  Andrew checked his cards again, as if they were somehow going to change, and Magnolia used the moment to scratch at the newest tattoo on her forearm. For a while now, she had been working on a full sleeve of the extinct animals that fascinated her.

  “What’s a girl like you want with all that ink?” Andrew asked. “What is that gray thing, anyway?

  She pulled her shirtsleeve down to cover her tattoos. “Something you’d never be able to recognize.”

  Rodger leaned forward. “That’s a baby elephant, right?”

  Magnolia tilted her head slightly, amused that Rodger could identify the image on her arm. Maybe he was more interesting than she gave him credit for. He was certainly more interesting than the Neanderthal sitting next to him.

  “How’d you know?” she asked.

  “My dad made an elephant clock once. It was beautiful.”

  Magnolia was intrigued. “Where is it now?”

  “Are we going to play or talk about furry creatures all night?” Andrew asked.

  “They aren’t furry,” Rodger and Magnolia both said at the same time. She chuckled at that.

  “You kids are somethin’ else,” Weaver said. He shook his head and glanced at his cards. His hair and handlebar mustache seemed more salt than pepper these days, and his forehead was a maze of wrinkles. After losing his family a decade ago during the crash of the Hive’s sister ship, Ares, Weaver had dedicated himself to diving—and cards. He had mastered the game, but luckily, Magnolia had discovered the aging commander’s tell. He lifted the edges of each card, one by one, and then squinted with his right eye when he looked at the final card.

  Shit, he has a hand. She needed to shut her mouth and pay attention. She checked her credits to make sure she hadn’t miscounted. Two hundred left. The blinds were chipping away at her stack. If she didn’t make something happen, she was going to be begging Ty for some of those calorie sticks until her next payday.

  Andrew folded, but Rodger ran a hand over his beard and said, “Ten credits.”

  Another rattle shook the aluminum bones of the Hive.

  “Sounds like we’re hitting some bad weather,” Ty said. “Maybe we should—”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Weaver said. “I call your ten credits and raise you ten.”

  Magnolia finally looked down at her cards and tried not to react when she saw they were all suited connectors: seven, eight, and nine of hearts.

  She was on her way to a straight flush. Only one hand could beat that, but the odds against securing a ten and six of hearts were astronomical. Worse, if she wanted to play the hand, she would have to commit twenty chips just to see another card. She looked down at the faded, cracked chips in front of her. That was an entire week’s pay on the line.

  It was a risk, but it was only credits. The real risk was diving into the black abyss through an electrical storm, which Magnolia hadn’t done for months. She missed the thrill of the dive. But for now, poker would have to do.

  “I call Commander Weaver’s bet,” Magnolia said. She could make her decision after she saw her next card.

  “You’re not afraid of anything, are you, princess?” Weaver said. “The great Magnolia Katib. Fearless, fast, and—”

  “Freaky!” Rodger said with a chuckle, his bushy brows raised over his glasses.

  The smile on his face slowly turned to a frown.

  “Can’t do it,” he finally said, tossing his cards into the muck pile with Andrew’s.

  Weaver eyed Magnolia. “Just you and me now.”

  She brushed a lock of electric blue hair back over her ear, trying not to let him get under her skin. It was part of the game. Everyone was a prick when playing cards, even nice guys like Weaver.

  “Let’s see another card,” she said.

  Ty peeled one from the deck and slid it to Weaver. Then he sent the next to Magnolia. She waited to check her card, focusing first on Weaver’s face. There was no squint this time—only the hard eyes of a man who had lost everything in life except his honor. For the commander, the game wasn’t just about credits. It was about being the best. After X sacrificed himself back in Hades, Weaver had taken his place as the top Hell Diver on the Hive. He didn’t lose easily.

  But neither did Magnolia.

  The memories of that last dive with X were still raw. She had grown up without a dad, and ten years ago she had lost two of the men she respected most: first her own commander, Cruise, and then X. Their sacrifice was something she could never repay.

  Keep your head in the game, Magnolia.

  Another tremor shook the ship, and the unmistakable boom of thunder reverberated through the Hive. Magnolia lifted the edge of her fourth card, her breath catching when she saw it was a heart. Not the six or ten she was looking for, but she was still just one away from a flush. A ten would give her a straight. Either would be a difficult hand to beat.

  “You’re first,” Ty said to Weaver.

  Weaver got out his old-world coin and flipped it while holding Magnolia’s gaze. It was a trick, a ploy to make her think he was gambling. He brought the coin on missions with him, too, and used it when forced to make a decision with only lousy options.

  He caught it in his palm, looked down, and said, “Twenty credits.”

  Now she had a decision to make.

  She could raise his bet and hope she was wrong about him having a good hand. He might fold. Or, if she was right and he did have a made hand—say, two pair or trips—he would call and she would still have a good chance of beating him with the last two cards.

  Ty looked up at the lightbulb hanging from a cord over the table. It winked on and off as it swayed.

  “Your move, princess,” Weaver said.

  Magnolia didn’t twitch as her sweep of blue hair fell over her right eye. She kept her gaze on the commander. She was really starting to hate it when he called her that.

  “Call your twenty, raise you sixty more.”

  Rodger clapped his hands together. “This is getting good. I need more shine!” He took a long swig from his mug. After dragging a sleeve across his lips, he sat up straighter, opened his mouth, and let out a long belch that filled the room.

  Andrew chuckled, Ty covered his nose, and Magnolia’s eyes widened as the belch, reeking of cheap liquor and fried potatoes, continued with no sign of abating.

  There was no reaction in Weaver’s features. He looked at his stack of chips, then back at Magnolia. Without taking his eyes off her, he grabbed three columns of twenty chips and pushed them into the pot.

  Shit, he’s on a draw, too, Magnolia thought. Her eyes moved to Ty as he dea
lt their fifth and final card. Then he put a single card facedown in the center of the table. It was the community card, the one that Weaver and Magnolia would share to make or break their hands.

  This time, she looked at her card first, allowing Weaver to study her.

  Two of clubs. Damn.

  She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks. If Weaver’s tell was his squint, hers was a flushed face. She should have put on more fake rouge to hide her real blush. If she lost this hand, she wasn’t going to be able to afford any more black-market makeup for a very long time.

  Weaver glanced down at his card, then looked to Ty, who flipped the final card.

  She saw the ten first, then the heart.

  There was no way she could lose this hand. She would be drinking shine and eating chicken tonight! Her mouth watered at the thought.

  Weaver reached out and plucked the stick from Ty’s mouth and tossed it on the ground.

  “You have no idea how annoying that is!” Weaver said.

  Magnolia almost smiled. The commander was losing his cool.

  “How much you got left over there?” Weaver asked.

  She bit the inside of her lip and frowned, trying to play the part of a loser. “A hundred credits.”

  She felt Rodger’s gaze across the table, and she automatically raised her hand to give him the bird. But when she saw the puppy-dog look on his face, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The guy was practically drooling. It was actually endearing, in a way.

  “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Catwoman?” he asked.

  “Who the hell’s that?” Andrew said. He hit Rodger’s arm out from under him, making his head fall toward the table.

  “Hey!” Rodger protested, wiping his mouth off. “She’s this total badass character from a comic I found in the archives.” When Andrew’s blank look continued, Rodger explained, “A comic book. You know, like Superman?”

  “If you’re looking for a super man, he’s right over here,” Andrew said, laughing.