“We lost another two,” said Samson. “Down to sixteen of twenty-four. I was able to revert the helium back through the network, and we’ve diverted energy from all nonessential sources, but I’m running out of options. Pretty soon, we’re going to have to start shutting off lights.”
Jordan shook his head. “If you do that, we’re going to have to worry about more than just riots. We’ll be dealing with pure chaos and anarchy from the lower-deckers.”
“Would you rather crash?” Samson glared at them from the screen. “I don’t know if you realize this, Lieutenant, but the Hive is dying. If we go down, there’s only Ares left—and frankly, that bucket of rust is in worse shape than we are.”
Maria held up a hand. “I’m painfully aware of this, Samson.”
The fat engineer wiped his forehead and said, “Sorry, Captain. It’s just …” He paused and locked eyes with her. “Unless you find us a magical place to put down, we’re going to have to start making some very unpopular choices if we want to stay in the air.”
She exchanged a glance with Jordan. His features remained unchanged, unemotional. He would tell her his opinion in confidence, away from the ears of the other officers. Talk spread quickly through the Hive, and she didn’t want to feed the rumor mill with a note of raw panic.
“Keep this quiet,” Maria said. “That’s an order, Samson.”
“Understood.”
The feed sizzled to darkness. She had a sour burn in her throat. She could almost feel the cancer cells, chomping away at her insides. The Hive had a sort of cancer too: a shortage of power. Samson was right. The ship was dying, and if X didn’t return with more cells, it would be a matter of when, not if, they crashed to the ruined surface like all the other airships before them.
* * * * *
Two hours of trekking through the dead city gave X ample time to think. He carried more than the assault rifle he had retrieved from the supply crate. As he trudged through the wastelands and climbed to the top of an overlook, he felt the weight of every diver’s death over the past twenty years. Will, Rodney, and Aaron were just three more bodies on the pile.
He could almost make himself believe that it was an accident, but the combined gut punch of anger and grief still made his insides roil. What the hell had Command been thinking? Dropping a team through an electrical storm was a disastrous mistake—one that his team had paid for with their lives. And now, on top of that, he was trudging over radioactive dirt in what was supposed to be a green zone.
Humanity was three deaths closer to extinction, and if he didn’t get those power cells, half the rest would die. Twenty thousand feet overhead, 546 men, women, and children were counting on him.
But if he made it back to the Hive, he would find the people who had made his best friend’s son an orphan. If he needed it, that gave him one more reason to survive this.
The distant boom of thunder pulled him back to the present. He raised his binos and glassed the ruined city. Sporadic flashes of lightning backlit the husks of towers with a pulsating glow.
He clicked off his night-vision optics and saw the world for what it was: gray and brown and dead. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t imagine the thrum and bustle of this metropolis before the bombs dropped.
The boneyard of ruins stretched as far as he could see. Even in this vast openness, he suddenly felt trapped, suffocated by his suit and the narrow view through his visor. Ironic for someone who had lived most of his life in the cramped confines of the Hive. Usually, diving allowed him an escape from the controlled, regimented, stifling environment. But now he just felt isolated and lonely, like a fish in a small bowl.
He swept the binos over block after city block of rubble until he found a cluster of four buildings still standing amid the destruction. Checking his minimap, he confirmed his location. He was at the target.
The aboveground vaults were warehouses of Industrial Tech Corporation, the same company that had built the Hive and her sister ships. The engineers had designed the floating warships to last ten, perhaps twenty years. No one had ever imagined they would end up becoming humanity’s home for almost two and a half centuries. The ships should have fallen to pieces long ago, and they would have if not for the Hell Divers.
X took his duty seriously. Sure, the little perks like extra rations and private quarters were nice, but those weren’t why he dived. He dived to keep humanity in the sky. Every decision he made on the surface affected whether they lived or died. And right now he was wasting time.
Peering down the long incline of brick and metal, he found himself weighing another decision. He could climb down and risk a tear to his suit, or find a way around. The radiation readings made the decision simple: a tear would result in a lingering, painful death.
He stepped closer to the edge to look for a way down. The darkness hid all sorts of traps that had claimed the lives of countless divers. He had watched teammates swallowed by sinkholes, crushed inside unstable buildings, shredded in dust storms that stretched for miles. Hell, he had even seen them torn apart by mutant things that had adapted to live in the radiation zones—zones like this one.
He reactivated his night vision and searched for signs of life. No motion and no heat signature—nothing to suggest that anything had crossed through here lately.
A strong gust pushed him back, and he stumbled to the side. He planted his boots, but the slight movement changed his view. A hundred feet to the west, a path that he had missed earlier curved to the bottom.
He worked his way over to the trail and picked his way down to the cracked street. There wasn’t much cover between him and the buildings. Although he didn’t see any movement, that didn’t mean he was alone.
After making a final sweep of the area, he took off at a dead sprint across the open stretch. A blast of wind laced with dirt hit him a few feet from the building. He fought it, head tucked to his chest, and propped his back against the wall.
Hot breath fogged the inside of his visor as he rested for a few moments, eyes roving for threats, ears searching the whistling wind for anything out of the ordinary.
A brilliant delta of lightning streaked overhead, the thunderclap barely half a second behind. He waited for the noise to pass, then stepped away from the building to look at the double doors looming above him. They were sealed—a good sign that the building hadn’t been raided yet.
Hugging the wall in a low crouch, he slunk to the alleyway separating the cluster of warehouses. Another flurry of wind slammed into his suit as he stepped out into the narrow passage. He took a cautious step across to where the alley grew darker. Dust eddied and swirled through the narrow defile as he slowly worked toward a steel door pocked with rust.
X quickly brushed off the security panel, pulled a small cord from his vest pocket, and patched the cord into his minicomputer. Numbers flickered across the display, freezing in place a digit at a time. The access codes downloaded, and the security panel chirped. A series of hollow clicks sounded as the locking mechanisms worked for the first time in over two centuries.
He slowly pushed the door open with one hand, keeping the rifle leveled in the other. The metal creaked open to reveal a space about the size of the Hell Diver launch bay. He stood in the stillness, playing his weapon over the space and listening.
Row after row of shelves, stacked with boxes and metal crates, rose to the ceiling. A staircase to his right led to two mezzanine levels that extended over the aisles of storage. The ceiling sagged and bulged in one corner. He paused to examine the hole. It looked large enough for a man to crawl through, but he spied no sign of life.
The darkness always hid something, but he didn’t have time for a full search. He grabbed the railing and took the stairs two at a time to the first landing. A catwalk stretched down the first aisle: shelves stacked with electrical cables. He continued up the stairs to the second platform. The shelves here were piled
with what looked like computer parts and monitors.
He loped up the final stairs to the third platform. His heart leaped at the sight of stacked metal cases bearing the international radiation symbol.
Jackpot.
He hurried over, pulled a case from a shelf, and flipped the latches. The lid clicked open, and he felt his lips twist into a half grin. Five cylindrical power cells. He lost the smile, though—it didn’t feel right. Three of his men had died for these. The cells would power the ship for years, but no matter how he looked at it, X couldn’t see it as anywhere near an even trade.
Closing the lid, he grabbed the handle and traversed the catwalk. The cases were heavy, at least forty pounds. He would have to come back for more after he dropped the first at the supply crate.
X hurried across the mezzanine, footsteps clanking over nonskid metal, but beneath the echoey sound was another: a buzzing, almost electronic whine. He slid to a stop, ears on full alert, wondering whether he had tripped some sort of alarm.
The noise stopped abruptly, but the sudden silence only put him more on edge. He waited a beat, then walked on. His ears had played tricks on him in the past, picking up phantom sounds in a world of darkness. That was probably the case now. Too keyed up, that’s all. He picked up the pace.
A second buzzing screech sounded when he was halfway along the platform. Not his imagination. Not an alarm, either. This was a cold, shrill noise. And it was organic, not digital or electronic. In all his dives, he had never heard anything like it.
X bolted for the staircase. He grabbed the railing and swung down, two rungs at a time. He hit the second landing hard, stumbling and nearly toppling down the bottom flight.
Movement below pulled his gaze toward the floor. There was a wide crevice in the ground at the far end of the room—an entire missing floor section he hadn’t seen earlier. A rookie mistake that could cost him his life—could cost everybody’s life. He scanned the room more carefully now, looking for anything else he might have missed.
And he had.
He wasn’t even sure what that something was. A trio of bulblike cocoons, covered in thick bristles and scabby tissue, like half-molted snakeskin, hung from the upper left corner of the ceiling, over the exit door. The shadows had disguised them when he entered the warehouse, but he could see them well enough from the stairs.
X took a step closer. Not cocoons, but nests, with openings at the crest and center. An outer rim of the coarse skin, like hardened lips, surrounded the ridges of the holes.
He took another step, accidentally banging the fuel-cell case against the guardrail with a loud clang.
A shrill screech sounded in response. He cursed in his mind, eyes flitting to the wall in the darkest part of the room, where a blob of flesh fell from one of the nests and dropped to the ground.
What in the hell … ?
X ducked down and held his breath. Through the gap in the railing, he could see something moving down there. It pushed at the floor with two hands and rose into a bipedal crouch. He stared, unbelieving, at the green-hued NVG image of what looked like a human physical structure. The creature let out another screech, which grew into a bellowing roar. Then it clambered out of view before he could get a better look.
Whatever it was, it had looked unsettlingly human. But that was impossible. They hadn’t found a survivor on the surface in over a century. Nothing could survive the rads, especially here.
X duckwalked to the other side of the platform and scanned the warehouse. He caught a glimpse of the thing darting down one of the aisles. The screeching waned as it vanished with a yowl that sounded like the trailing end of an emergency siren.
Turning back to the exit, he found that he wasn’t alone. On the floor beneath the nests, shrouded in darkness, perched a second figure.
Curiosity tugged at X, but he dare not move. He squeezed the rifle stock and the case of cells, afraid that his trembling hands might lose the precious cargo.
The creature dropped onto all fours and skittered to the open doorway. Each flash of lightning outside gave X a fleeting glimpse.
He clicked off his night vision with a bump of his chin and waited for the next strike. A second later, he gasped. Leathery, wrinkled skin the color of eggshells tightened as the creature stretched long limbs laced with ropy lean muscle. Its sinewy body was covered in long scars and bore several glistening abrasions.
Darkness enveloped the room again. When the next strike of lightning lit up the warehouse, the creature was arching its back.
Not a person, not an animal … a monster.
Spiked vertebrae protruded like bony fins from its back. They stopped at its thin neck, where they bottlenecked into scabrous flesh that crested a misshapen head. Thick bristles formed a sort of Mohawk, like the ridge of a feral hog’s back, rising over the top of its skull.
X had to consciously slow his shallow, rapid breathing, which had begun to cloud his visor.
Keep it together, X. You have to keep it—
A piercing whine snapped him from his thoughts. He whirled and aimed his rifle at the shelves where the other creature had disappeared. The room was pitch black now. He clicked on his night vision, then clicked it back off when lightning flooded the warehouse through the open door.
Another screech followed, and he spun back to face the monster under the nests. It jerked its head toward him as if sensing his movement. But instead of seeing eyes or a nose, X saw only a wide gash of lips stretching from one side of its face to the other. The lips parted, widening to form a black hole rimmed with gleaming needle-pointed teeth.
“Holy Mother of God,” X whispered.
He had seen enough. Cradling the case under one arm, he raised the rifle with the other and bumped his NVG back on. He would need the optics when he got back outside—if he got back outside.
That thought prompted a surge of energy. Squeezing the trigger, he charged down the stairs toward the exit. His aim was erratic, and most of the shots pinged off the metal wall behind the monster. Only one of the rounds found a target. The result was an impossibly loud screech of agony. It grew into a whine that seemed to cut right through him, and he had to resist the pointless urge to cup his hands over his helmet.
The other beast, which he still couldn’t see, answered with a shriek of its own. The screeching morphed into what sounded almost like the emergency alarm before a dive. X slowed and searched the aisles of shelves to his right for the first monster but saw nothing.
Don’t stop. Keep moving …
He pushed forward, through the open door and into the alleyway. The metal case clanked against his armor as he ran.
The high-pitched calls of other monsters he couldn’t see joined the chorus. Together, they sounded so like an emergency siren, he had to wonder whether he was dreaming.
He glanced over his shoulder to see two silhouettes skulking in the doorway. One of them burst through the shadows, dropped to all fours, and galloped after him.
Move, X. MOVE!
He had no doubt that these things would tear him apart if they caught up with him. He had to get to the crate and deploy it back to the Hive.
He checked his HUD. The beacon was too far away. These things moved fast—he would never make it. That left him with only one option: abandon the crate and get the cells back to the Hive on his own. But before he could activate his booster and ride his balloon back to the ship, he needed to find an opening in the clouds. The storm had weakened, but sporadic flashes still lit up the skyline. He pulled his gaze from the sky to glance over his shoulder. Both creatures were trailing him now, and they were gaining. The ganglier of the two broke out in front, using its hind legs to spring forward in great bounds.
X almost dropped the case when he tore around the corner of a tumbledown building. He focused on his breathing and keeping his footing in the darkness. When he was halfway down the next street,
he turned to fire, hoping the rounds might at least deter the beasts.
The lead creature leaped through the air. X did his best to steady his aim and squeezed off a burst. The bullets lanced through the humanoid torso, and one clipped the top of its skull. It crashed to the asphalt, shrieking and pawing at multiple wounds that gushed scarlet. The other thing jumped onto a building and clambered up the stone-clad wall. Pulling itself through a broken window, it vanished inside.
The shots had bought X a few precious moments. He clutched the case under his right arm and fumbled for a new magazine, but his hand came up empty. He must have dropped them during his escape from the warehouse.
Muttering a curse, he tossed the now useless assault rifle to the ground and pulled the blaster from his hip holster. He glanced skyward to examine the storm. The optics turned the sky into a swirling sea of green, sparkling with emerald flashes of lightning. He couldn’t deploy here. He had to keep running.
A flurry of screeches followed him as he rounded the corner of another building. The gunshots may have bought him time, but it must have attracted more of the monsters.
He caught a flicker of movement across the end of the street. It looked like a tarp or sheet—something very much out of place in the scrap heap of metal, concrete, and glass. The material was wrapped around a light pole and blowing in the wind.
Nausea sank into his gut.
It wasn’t a tarp. It was a seven-cell parachute.
“Aaron,” he choked.
He sprinted to the lamppost and slumped to his knees, forcing himself to look at his best friend’s broken body.
Aaron was lying on his back, his arms and legs telescoped by the fall. Only tiny shards of the mirror-plated visor remained in his helmet. One of his eyes was open, but the other was gone, mashed along with the right side of his face.
A whining shriek sounded in the distance. A second and a third quickly followed. X set the crate and his blaster on the ground and grabbed Aaron’s hand. He squeezed it before placing it neatly next to his broken body. X didn’t whisper any goodbyes or say any last words to his dead friend. He just closed Aaron’s remaining eyelid and stood up to stare at the storm. It was weakening, the flashes much less frequent now. Meanwhile, the electronic-sounding whines grew closer.
Hell Divers Page 3