Hell Divers

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Weaver brushed off the layer of snow that had stuck to his visor. Jones was right. They were damn close to the supply box.

  “Let’s move,” Weaver said. He scrambled to his feet and took off in a rolling trot toward the sinkhole. His eyes darted from the nav marker on his HUD to the cavernous pit in front of him. He panted as he worked his way through the thick snow, every stride more exhausting than the last.

  “Wait up!” Jones called after him.

  “Keep up!” Weaver shouted back. He clambered over hunks of icy metal and courses of brick protruding from the ground. Reaching the edge, he dug his boots into the snow and pivoted to brace against the gusting wind. The crate’s beacon blinked on his HUD. They were right on top of it. Their supplies, weapons, and extra boosters—it all was supposed to be right there. A blast of ice and grit whistled past him, nudging him closer to the edge.

  Jones arrived a second later, gasping for air, his hands on his armor-plated knees. “It’s got … It’s got to be down there.”

  “Hold my armor,” Weaver said.

  Jones slipped his fingers under Weaver’s back plate, and Weaver leaned closer to the side for a better look. The pit was too dark for his night-vision optics to penetrate, so he snatched a flare from his vest, tore off the end, and rubbed it against the coarse striking surface. Red flame shot out the end. He held the crackling flare over the edge, and fuzzy outlines of rubble came into view. And there in the center of it all, canted at a steep angle on a pile of concrete and rebar, was the supply crate.

  Weaver cursed the technicians. They never managed to drop the crates close to the DZ, and this time, they had dropped it straight into the only sinkhole within a mile of the target zone.

  “It’s here,” Weaver said. “We’ve gotta find a way down.”

  He waved the flare left and then right. The red glow spread across the bottom of the hole. There was something else down there. Where there should be only snow, he could see a half-dozen lumps the size of massive pumpkins, covered in some sort of spikes or thorns. Jones held on tighter as another gust of wind slammed into them. Scrambling to keep his balance, Weaver dropped the flare and watched it tumble lazily to the bottom. It hissed, and a halo of red blossomed out to light the enclosed space.

  “Shit,” Weaver said. He was reaching for his binos, when the floor of the pit came strangely alive. A tremor rippled across the snow, and the thorny bulges dotting the ground began to move.

  Weaver stared, dumbfounded. It had to be some sort of illusion.

  “Jones, I … I see something,” he whispered.

  To his astonishment, one of the lumps shook itself and slowly rose up on what looked like two long, gangly legs.

  “There’s something else down there?” Jones asked.

  Weaver took a full step back and tried to say something, but a croak was all he could muster. He didn’t need his binos to see that the thing was some sort of humanoid creature. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if it was a Hell Diver who had somehow managed to survive.

  He leaned back for a better look, flinching when the beast dropped to all fours and shambled toward the flare. It crouched next to it, tilting a face Weaver couldn’t see, and pawed at the fire streaking across the snow. With a shriek of agony, it snapped its hand away from the brilliant glowing heat and darted away, still yowling. In a matter of seconds, similar creatures had arisen from the other strange lumps on the sinkhole floor, and they, too, were shrieking. The wails reverberated out of the hole and morphed into a high-pitched noise that hurt his ears.

  Questions, too crazy even to give voice to, bounced and tumbled in his mind.

  “What in the hell is that!” Jones shouted.

  Weaver felt Jones’ grip on his armor loosen. “Don’t let go!” he snapped. He looked through his binos. The creatures seemed to distort and shift in the glow, but he could see the bizarre wrinkled skin and the jagged vertebrae as they gathered around the flare. The frailest of the group crouched next to another thorny blob in the snow and clawed at it.

  Weaver zoomed in and the creature’s head came into focus. A bony crest jutted up from its skull.

  “What do you see?” Jones asked, his voice trembling over the comm.

  The creature suddenly tilted its face in Weaver’s direction and stared directly at him. But it wasn’t looking at him; it couldn’t. The thing had no eyes.

  Weaver almost dropped his binos when he saw a meaty red cord hanging from the thing’s thin lips. The beast tilted its head back and swallowed it whole. Then it bent down to pluck another piece from the crimson snow and scrambled away, the rope swinging from its mouth. That was when Weaver saw the armored body of a diver in the center of the pit. Jay or Sarah, but the corpse was so mangled, he couldn’t tell from here.

  Amazement turned to raw fear. “Pull me back!” Weaver said. “Pull me the fuck back and run!”

  “Why? What’d you see?”

  “Do it!”

  Jones yanked him back to safety and took off, his labored breath crackling over the channel as Weaver took another cautious step backward. His slight movements provoked the monsters into a frenzy of motion, and they let out a chorus of whines that intensified until Weaver couldn’t stand it anymore. He froze, as if paralyzed by the sounds.

  Sirens—they sounded just like emergency sirens.

  Motion in the center of the pit snapped him out of his shocked reverie. The creatures scattered in all directions and leaped onto the walls. Some clambered up the near-vertical surface; others, missing a hand- or foothold, slid back down, their claws scrabbling over the rock.

  Weaver still wasn’t sure whether it was Jay or Sarah down there, but it didn’t matter—there was nothing he could do to help them. He eyed the crate one last time and then turned to run.

  * * * * *

  Chief Engineer Samson opened the door to Captain Ash’s office, stepped inside, and slammed it shut behind him. His cheeks were so covered with grime and sweat, Ash couldn’t tell whether he was grinning or grimacing.

  She gestured to the chair in front of her desk. “Have a seat.”

  “I’ll stand,” he replied, wiping a filthy sleeve across his forehead. “I need to get back to engineering as soon as possible.”

  Ash grabbed the glass of water she had poured for herself, and handed it to him. He gulped it down.

  “I hope you have something good to tell me.”

  Samson gently placed the empty glass on her desk and said, “I’ve managed to get seven of the eight reactors back online. My crews have also patched four of the internal gas bladders. We’re operating at eighty percent power—best we’ve had in years.”

  Ash smiled—an expression so unfamiliar, it made her cheeks ache. “Excellent news, and right in the nick of time. We received a distress beacon from Ares.” The smile disappeared as she remembered the message.

  “An SOS?” Samson blurted.

  “They lost several generators in a storm and were forced to shut down their reactors. They’re running on backup power. Captain Willis sent a team to the surface to retrieve nuclear fuel cells and parts, but they’ve requested our help.”

  “And?”

  “I was waiting for you to fix the Hive before I made a decision.”

  “It’s not exactly fixed.” Samson ran a hand back and forth over his smooth scalp. “What kind of help did Captain Willis request?”

  “He didn’t specify. The transmission cut out. All I know right now is that Ares is in trouble and they need our help.”

  Samson crinkled his nostrils. “We’re in the best shape we’ve been in years. We shouldn’t risk—”

  “Which is exactly why we’re in a position to help,” Ash said, cutting him off. She didn’t have time to argue with the engineer or anyone else. Besides, she had called him to her office for a report on the Hive, not for his opinion on helping Ares.

 
; “Anything else?” she asked.

  He shook his head and left her office without another word.

  A moment later, Jordan entered. “X is on his way,” he said. “Should be here in fifteen minutes.”

  Ash paced behind her desk as they waited. The dull, tarnished plaque on the wall caught her eye: Commissioned in 2029. US Army. Model #43.

  “Hard to believe there are only two left,” Jordan said.

  “Might be only one left if we don’t answer Captain Willis’ call.”

  He waited for her orders. She wasn’t ready to give them—not until she talked to the most experienced Hell Diver on the ship.

  A knock sounded on the other side of the door, and Jordan opened it. X stood outside, with his back turned to them.

  “Come in, Commander,” Ash said.

  X turned away from the bridge and walked into the room. He cracked his neck, on one side and then the other. Unlike Samson, X wasn’t covered in workplace grime, but he looked just as bad. His features were hardened into a mask of anger, and even from here she could smell the ’shine on his breath.

  “How’s Michael?” Ash asked.

  “Still an orphan. But with all due respect, Captain, you didn’t invite me here to discuss Tin.”

  Ash sat back down and folded her hands primly on the desktop. “You’re right, I didn’t. Have a seat, Commander.”

  X glanced at Jordan, then reluctantly sat.

  “Ares is in trouble,” Ash said. She repeated the same thing she had told Samson a few minutes earlier, then waited, searching X’s face for a reaction.

  He scratched the stubble on his chin for a few seconds. “I’m assuming there’s something else you haven’t told me yet.”

  X wasn’t just a good diver. He was smart. Ash had always appreciated that about him. She told him what she had kept from Samson.

  “Ares is hovering above Hades. Captain Willis has already dropped a team down there.”

  X tilted his head, as if he hadn’t heard correctly. “Hades? What the fuck are they doing there?”

  “Good question,” Jordan said.

  Ash shot her XO a look, then brought her gaze back to X. “We’re not exactly sure how they got there, or why, but at this point it doesn’t matter. I asked you here for your counsel—to see what you would do if you were in my shoes.”

  X picked with his thumbnail at something stuck between his front teeth. He had an unusually white smile—a rare feature on the ship. But during Ash’s long history with him, he was usually too hungover or angry to crack a grin.

  He pulled his thumb away from his teeth and, inspecting the nail, said, “So you’re asking if I think we should attempt a rescue?”

  “You’re the best diver on either ship,” Ash said. “You know the skies and the surface better than anyone.”

  X scowled. “I know as much about Hades as you do. The electrical storms there are the worst on the continent. Even if Captain Willis’ divers make it to the surface, they’re going to have to deal with off-the-chart radiation, and if they survive the storms and the rads, they still have to survive whatever monsters are down there.”

  Ash leaned back in her chair, and X fidgeted in his.

  “Monsters like the ones you saw on your last dive?”

  “Yeah … maybe something even worse.” He wrinkled his forehead and squinted as if he had a pounding headache—which, she reflected, he likely did.

  “I know it’s painful, X, but think back. We need to know what you saw, so we can prepare the other divers before the next jump.”

  X chuckled. “Prepare them?” Tracing phantom quotation marks in the air, he said, “Nothing’s going to ‘prepare’ them for what I saw.”

  “And what, exactly, was it that you saw, Commander?” Jordan asked.

  X didn’t turn to Jordan, but met Ash’s stare instead. “Some sort of creature unlike anything I’ve seen on other dives. They were humanoid, with long arms and legs—bipedal, but to move fast, they went on all fours—like the baboons on the old nature vids. And …” X looked away.

  Ash waited patiently.

  “And they had no face. No eyes or nose—just a big-ass mouth full of shark’s teeth. Their skulls were coated with some scabby-looking shit and bristles. And their backs were covered in spikes, kind of like a dorsal fin or something. Some of them had scrapes on their wrinkled skin. It was leathery and tough, though. Reminded me of dried cowhide. I suspect it protects them from the radiation. I don’t know. Shit, it’s not like I had time to do a detailed examination. They weren’t holding still, and I wasn’t waiting for ’em to.”

  Ash ran a finger over her lips. She had heard all the stories of the creatures the divers encountered on the surface, and she had combed the ships’ archives during nights she couldn’t sleep. But this? Nothing in the ships’ logs was even remotely close to what X described. No one had encountered anything with humanoid anatomy.

  “What else can you tell me?” Ash asked.

  X straightened in his chair. “I left out the worst part. They make these high-pitched noises like an emergency alarm—a sort of whine so loud it was paralyzing.”

  “Are you saying these things could be part organic and part technological?”

  “No,” X replied. “There wasn’t anything robotic about ’em.”

  “You sure the radiation wasn’t screwing with your senses?” Jordan asked. “Organic or mechanical—it all sounds pretty far-fetched to me.”

  X twisted in his chair. “So which is it you’re suggesting, sir: that I’m lying, or delusional?”

  Ash glared again at her XO. Sometimes, she wondered if he had something against Hell Divers. This wasn’t the first time he’d questioned their acuity or their truthfulness.

  “I think Jordan meant you were down there for a while and that maybe your eyes and ears were playing tricks on you,” Ash said in her calmest tone. “High doses of radiation can do that.”

  “Was supposed to be a green dive,” X said. “There wasn’t supposed to be significant radiation, remember? Just something else you guys fucked up. Not giving either Ash or Jordan a chance to respond, he turned back to her and said, “I know what I saw.”

  “I believe you,” she replied. “But right now we need to talk about Ares.”

  A moment of quiet fell over the room. X stood and shoved his hands into his pockets. “We’re talking about the only other ship in the world, Captain. No one else is going to help them. We’re it.”

  Ash nodded and opened her mouth to speak, but X beat her to it.

  “If I were in your shoes, like you said: I’d plot a course and get there as fast as possible. You can reevaluate the situation when we arrive.”

  “He has a point,” Jordan said.

  “Indeed, he does,” Ash replied. “And I agree with the commander. I won’t abandon Ares. I won’t risk the extinction of the human race if there is something we can do.”

  “Unfortunately, Captain Willis already put us all at risk when he decided to fly to Hades,” X said.

  The words lingered as the PA system crackled and played an automated message. Ash used the stolen moment to check the clock. When the static cleared, she stood up. She had made her decision. “Jordan, plot us a course,” she ordered.

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Ash looked to X. “Get some sleep tonight, and lay off the ’shine. Tomorrow you start training your new team.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him off. “I know, you said you were done. But Ares needs you. An endangered species—yours—needs you. Are you really going to say no?”

  He glowered for a moment, then shook his head. “No.” He stiffened. “No, Captain. We dive so humanity survives.”

  FIVE

  Commander Weaver ran like a man possessed, his lungs burning with every breath. No matter how fast he sucked in air, he coul
dn’t get enough.

  He wasn’t running from the monsters in the pit. The beasts had retreated soon after they climbed out of their lair. Something had scared them off. He could still hear their faint wailing in the distance, but now there were other, equally disturbing sounds. A low rumble broke over the horizon, drowning out the cries of the monsters.

  Weaver leaped over a rusted tangle of rebar jutting from a piece of broken foundation. A tremor rumbled beneath him, causing the snow on the surface to shimmer.

  A dozen yards ahead of him, Jones fell. Scrambling back to his feet, he yelled, “What the hell is happening?”

  Weaver turned, shielding his visor from the gusting snow, and scanned the city. Beyond the bare girders of high-rises, he could see only a solid wall of darkness.

  “What is that?” Jones asked.

  Weaver didn’t reply. He was frozen in place, staring in awe at the biggest, most powerful storm he had ever seen or even imagined. Half as tall as the highest skyscraper, the wall of snow stretched for miles across, and it was barreling toward the city at an astounding speed.

  “Holy shit,” he breathed. Never in his life had he seen such a force of nature.

  “Run!” Jones yelled, yanking on Weaver’s arm. “Come on, we have to get out of here!”

  Weaver ran sideways for a few strides, watching lightning flash over the storm. The eastern edge glowed blue for several seconds before it reached the city and flooded the streets. In minutes, it would be on them. The sounds of cracking ice and groaning metal jolted Weaver to action, and he turned and sprinted after Jones.

  The two divers were on the western edge of Hades now, almost to the industrial zone. Weaver could see the ITC warehouses spread out across the landscape. Their concrete walls were built to withstand storms. But this? How could anything in Hades still be standing? It was a true testament to human engineering.

  Fighting the urge to look over his shoulder, he concentrated on his breathing instead. Deep and steady, in and out … Little dots like swarming bees caromed about at the edges of his vision. He wasn’t getting enough oxygen, and his body was paying the price. Every pounding step forward came with a sharp jolt of pain. His calves and quads, at their functioning limit, burned with lactic acid buildup.