Hell Divers II: Ghosts

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  “Commander, you think we should check that out?” Rodger asked. “What if it’s some kind of settlement?”

  “Aw, hell no, man,” Andrew said. “That scraper may be a settlement, but it sure as shit ain’t humans.”

  “Sir?” Rodger repeated.

  “Negative. We proceed to the coordinates.”

  The three divers came together in a V formation as they sailed over the ruined city. Weaver finally pulled his gaze away from the tower and did what he had promised he would do. Bumping his chin pad, he selected the open frequency. If Magnolia was out there, she would have her set tuned to the channel.

  “Raptor 3, this is Angel One. Do you copy?”

  Weaver raised his wrist-mounted monitor to check the coordinates again as a wave of static crackled inside his helmet. The noise didn’t surprise him. He had already resigned himself to the idea that Magnolia was dead. It was easier that way. Hope hurt.

  “Princess, you out there?” he said, trying one last time.

  White noise was the only reply.

  “Magnolia,” Rodger said over the comms. “Please.”

  They sailed over girders and piles of debris. Vehicles littered the streets below like the carapaces of dead insects. It was a sight all too familiar to Weaver. There was no way humans could have survived down there for centuries among the monsters and bombarded by all those rads.

  There was no one to rescue down here. If they were lucky, they might find some salvage or a couple of fuel cells, but Weaver had already written this dive off as a waste of resources.

  A wave of static broke, and a voice rang out over the channel.

  “I’m here!”

  Heavy breathing sounds filled the speakers, as if the person on the other side of the comms was running.

  Weaver’s heart skipped.

  “Princess, that you?”

  “My name,” the voice panted, “is Magnolia Katib.”

  There was a pause, and before Weaver could reply, she said, “I hope you brought me my two hundred credits, Angel One.”

  He felt the smile crack below his mustache. “You’ll get a chance to win ’em back,” he said. “Relay your coordinates, and we’ll rendezvous.”

  Several agonizing seconds passed before she replied, her words garbled by static.

  “Vines are everywhere … I can’t get away …”

  “Magnolia!” Rodger shouted. “We’re coming. Just hang on!”

  Weaver snapped out of his trance. They were halfway to the coordinates of the Hilltop Bastion. He could see the raised earth in the distance, but Magnolia’s beacon wasn’t showing up on his minimap.

  Weaver dipped his finger and thumb into his vest pocket and rubbed the old-world coin. He couldn’t very well flip it in the air right now, and it wasn’t going to help him decide what came next, but he found massaging the smooth surface with a gloved finger and thumb calming.

  “Magnolia, relay your position,” Weaver said.

  “I’m in a tower, but my monitor isn’t working!”

  “What do you see? Give us something.”

  “Vines. All I see are vines … and … the ocean. I can see the waves.”

  Weaver’s eyes flitted from his HUD to the ground. Forced to make a decision, he said, “Pipe, you and Rodger head to the target. I’ll go find her.”

  “Yes sir,” Andrew replied.

  Another silent pause over the comms.

  Rodger spoke next. “Bring her back, Commander, or I’m coming for you!”

  Weaver pulled his right toggle and turned east toward the glowing tower. Magnolia didn’t need to respond with her coordinates. He had a feeling he was already looking at her position.

  TEN

  Michael and Layla walked through the hallways of the Hive in silence. She didn’t ask where they were going, and he didn’t tell her. They passed through the wing where most of the upper-deckers lived. Intricate drawings marked the floor and the bulkheads, providing a glimpse into the lives of those who had lived here over the centuries.

  Utility pipes snaked along the ceiling, carrying helium, water, and sewage. Ahead, an engineer stood on a ladder, working to seal a leaking joint in a red helium pipe. Michael nodded at him as they passed underneath.

  Open hatches allowed a glimpse into life on the Hive. Inside the first quarters, a stained couch missing all but one of its pillows was nestled against a wall. Deborah, a staffer who worked on the bridge, sat on it reading a book with no front cover. She looked up and smiled at them. Layla waved back.

  Next was the room where Michael had spent many of his younger years. Layla picked up her pace as they neared the hatch marked with a drawing of the sun.

  “You don’t want to stop?” Michael asked.

  “For what?”

  He shrugged even though he wanted to encourage her to stop. Ever since her parents died, she had avoided this place. She didn’t even look at the smiling yellow sun that she had drawn when she was a little girl.

  They had reached an understanding that certain areas of the ship were no-go zones. For Michael, it was the farm. That place triggered too many painful memories. The sight of the room Layla had grown up in was her trigger. She dropped Michael’s hand and hurried down the hall, clearly unhappy that he had brought her this way.

  Ahead, a sign for the water treatment plant hung from the bulkhead. Layla waited for him at the junction. He jerked his chin to the right, and they continued past two militia soldiers guarding the upper-decker wing. Two more stood outside the entrance to the plant.

  Michael kept moving. They were almost there. He felt for the sealed envelope in his pocket and tried not to think about anything but what he needed to do.

  Raised voices echoed down the hall as they approached the trading post. Several civilians loitered in the open space outside. A thin man with a sharp jawline and a shaved head approached Layla. He wore a brown coat, and black trousers that were two sizes too big.

  “Not interested,” she said.

  He looked to Michael, but then scurried away when two militia soldiers approached.

  “You at it again, Jake?” one of the guards said. “I told you, you can’t loiter here.”

  The man held up his hands and grinned. “What? I didn’t do nothin’.”

  Michael kept walking, through the throng of people filing out of a hatch at the end of the hall.

  “When are you planning to tell me where we’re headed?” Layla asked.

  He glanced toward the entrance to the lower decks. She reared back.

  “What the hell are we going down there for?”

  A woman holding a basket of potatoes stopped beside them.

  “Would either of you like to—”

  “No,” Layla snapped.

  She grabbed Michael’s arm and dragged him to the edge of the corridor.

  “Tin, what’s going on with you? Why won’t you tell me anything?”

  He ran his hand through his hair to comb it back out of his eyes. “Because I know you wouldn’t come if I told you.”

  She traced a finger across his arm—a gentle movement. “You can always talk to me.”

  “You said you trusted me.”

  A nod. “I do, but we should really be with the other divers, monitoring the mission below.”

  Michael pulled an envelope out of his pocket. She tilted her head to one side.

  “Is that why we stopped in our room?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, what is it?”

  “Something Captain Ash gave me before she died.” Michael felt the smooth paper. He had spent hundreds of hours staring at the envelope when Layla was sleeping, wondering what it contained. But he had kept his promise to the captain and never opened it.

  Until now.

  “Captain Ash said not to open it unless we heard a le
gitimate radio transmission from the surface.”

  Layla’s forehead creased. “You’ve got me intrigued, but why are we going to the lower decks?”

  “You keep saying you trust me, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Then follow me.”

  * * * * *

  It could have been a minute or an hour. All Magnolia knew was that she felt as if she had been hiding forever. She held her battery unit in her gloved hand. The warmth bled through the worn fabric. Her comms, night vision, and life-support systems were all down.

  The other divers had come for her. She couldn’t believe that Captain Jordan would risk lives to save her sorry ass. She wasn’t going to make him regret that decision. It still didn’t explain who was trying to kill her, but it did seem to rule him out as a suspect.

  She heard scuffling sounds. The vines were searching for her again.

  Red lights throbbed around the entrance to her hiding spot. The light blossomed over the room like an expanding puddle of water. She squirmed farther under the concrete platform where she had taken shelter, careful to avoid the raw end of rebar sticking out from the edge of the slab.

  The sound grew louder. There were two vines inside now. The shadow of a third wiggled across a concrete pillar.

  A barbed end suddenly darted forward. Watching it move, she held the knife a little tighter. Pale red sap trailed from the thick vine, and gashes marked the stem where something had fed on it. Directly in front of her visor, the barb split open into four small mandibles.

  Instinct took over. She snapped her battery pack back into its slot in her armor and jammed the knife into the open maw. The jaws clamped shut around the hilt, and she yanked her hand out just in time. The vine twisted away, the knife still stuck inside its mouth.

  Magnolia left it behind and ran for the staircase. She halted when she saw the dozens of vines creeping blindly up the steps. The only other escape route was to jump, but she had tried that already. She would never clear the gap to the next tower, and the four-story drop would telescope her legs.

  What the hell. She decided to take her chances with another leap of faith.

  Her battery glowed a cool blue amid all that flashing red. Dozens of stems snaked into the room, surrounding her. She turned toward the open area where windows had once been, and for the first time, she could see more trees growing through the floors of the adjacent tower.

  This was it: the moment when she must make a decision that would probably kill her anyway. A flashback to the cyclops beast convinced her there was only one option.

  Magnolia crossed the room at a sprint, weaving around the stems that whipped through the air. One of them wrapped around her arm, jerking her to a halt. The mandibles clamped down on her wrist monitor. Glass crunched. The screen was destroyed, and her hand was about to be next. She used her other hand to pry the thing off, ripping the plant’s jaws away from the monitor and freeing herself.

  In seconds, she was running again.

  She bumped her chin comm. It didn’t matter if these things heard her now, assuming they could even hear at all.

  “Weaver, do you copy? I’m at the glowing scrapers just west of the ocean. Trust me, you can’t miss ’em!”

  Magnolia could see the inside of the next building clearly. The vegetation there was flashing pink. Pink seemed a slightly less dangerous shade than red. She slowed as she approached the edge. The vines writhed across the dusty floor.

  She turned to face them and backed down the sloping floor until she was at the edge.

  “Weaver,” she said. “I could use some help!”

  “I’m on my way,” he said. “Just hold on.”

  Magnolia took another step back and looked over her shoulder. It was too far to jump. She raised her arms and shielded her body as the vines whipped toward her.

  A sparkle came from the west—a battery unit in the clouds. Then a canopy flying toward her at a low angle. And with that sight, an idea emerged in Magnolia’s mind.

  Reaching behind her back, she hit her booster, hoping it hadn’t also been sabotaged. The balloon exploded out of its canister, and as it filled with helium, she turned and jumped into the air.

  The booster pulled her into the sky just as the barbed mandibles reached up for her boots.

  She glanced up to see Weaver threading between the two towers. He steered toward her and reached out.

  “Grab on to me!” he yelled.

  Magnolia opened her arms wide. She was above the ninth floor now and climbing slowly toward the storm clouds. Weaver swooped in, and she wrapped her legs around his waist.

  “Hold tight, princess.”

  “Don’t think that saving my life will get you out of paying me,” she said, her voice ragged as she tried to catch her breath.

  “Still on the straight flush, are we?” Weaver let out a chuckle that was almost lost in the noise of the wind. He looked toward the buildings below. “You wanna tell me what happened in there?”

  Magnolia shook her head. “Freaky-ass shit is what,” was all she said.

  This time Weaver didn’t respond. He reached up with a blade toward the lines connected to her helium balloon.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. “Why aren’t you punching your booster, too?”

  A voice crackled over the comm before Weaver could reply to Magnolia.

  “Angel One, this is Apollo One. Do you copy?”

  “Roger that, Apollo One,” Weaver said. “I’ve got Magnolia, and we’re en route.”

  “En route?” Magnolia said. She tightened her grip around Weaver.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “We haven’t met our mission objectives yet.”

  “You didn’t come down here to save me, did you?” she asked.

  In answer, he sliced through her booster lines. The balloon soared away into the sky while his chute carried them gently back toward the surface.

  * * * * *

  Secrets ran deep on the Hive, and the officers who kept those secrets did so with a sense of honor and duty. And yet, the burden ate at Jordan’s mind as he sat alone in his quarters, watching a classified video from the restricted archives.

  He could picture Captain Ash vividly, her eyes glued to the screen, mesmerized by videos just like this one even as her own body was wasting away.

  Jordan slipped on his headset and hit play. The deep, resonant voice of the narrator filled his earpiece.

  “Industrial Tech Corporation, leading humanity into a bright future,” the voiceover said as an image of a bustling city appeared on-screen.

  Scrapers with glass walls filled the skyline. Vehicles of all shapes and colors buzzed around the streets, and the sidewalks thronged with thousands of people dressed in the fashions of 260 years ago. Most of these people seemed to be speaking not to one another, but to small handheld devices. Jordan had seen one of these “smart phones” years ago. Captain Ash had kept it in her desk, but Jordan had given it, along with various other relics the captains before him had kept in the office, to Samson, to cannibalize for parts.

  “The future has never been more exciting,” the narrator continued. “Advances in medicine and technology have allowed humans to live longer and better lives than ever before.”

  The video feed was now of the countryside. A clear stream meandered through a thick forest. The collage of colors filled the screen. It seemed unreal that the world had ever been so vibrant and beautiful. A man and a woman strolled with their daughter on a stone path around a lake. Leaves drifted to the ground around them.

  “Industrial Tech Corporation believes in a better future for all,” the narrator said. “We also believe in safeguarding your future in this time of unprecedented growth. That’s why we are taking steps to protect what we value most.”

  The next section of the video was shot inside a huge warehouse. The Hive and seve
ral of her sister ships filled the space, resting on platforms that stood five stories high. Ladders and scaffolding surrounded the airships, and hundreds of workers in gray uniforms worked on the black, beetle-shaped exteriors.

  “We are investing in new technology to protect against ever-evolving threats. These airships, when complete, will be the most advanced in the world, with electromagnetic pulse-resistant technology and the ability to sustain flight far longer than conventional aircraft.”

  Jordan almost smiled at that. He wondered if the engineers ever planned on a flight that would last over two and a half centuries.

  The screen switched to a time-lapse video of a construction site. An extensive area was being excavated. Next came the concrete, but instead of going up, the workers were building their structure belowground.

  “Cities like this one could someday house the human race in the event of an unprecedented natural disaster or global war.”

  The footage switched to images of vaults filled with seeds, and vast underground farms that put the one aboard the Hive to shame. Warehouses contained stockpiles of every supply imaginable, from computer parts to preserved rations. Next came the cryogenic chambers housing thousands of different species, including humans.

  Few knew about the cryogenic silos or what ITC had been doing there. Jordan had kept it a secret ever since Captain Ash learned the truth about genetic engineering and shared it with him. Now that Ash was dead and the Hive was the only ship in the sky, he might well be the only person alive who knew the truth.

  That would soon change. For his plan to succeed, he needed Rodger and the other divers to discover the truth for themselves.

  The feed changed to a strange room that seemed to be underwater. Fish of all sizes swam past large windows. The narrator called it an “aquarium.” What ITC had done was remarkable, but in the end, it hadn’t been enough to save humanity. Humans had been driven from the surface into the great airships until, one by one, those fell from the sky.

  “We have gone to great lengths to ensure the future of the human race,” the narrator said. “That future is bright, and we hope you will join us there.”