Hell Divers (4 page)

X closed his eyes and braced himself, but instead of crashing to the ground under a flurry of claws and teeth, he was yanked off his feet and into the air. His eyes snapped open as the beasts collided into one another where he had stood only a moment before. Long limbs reached up, claws slashing at his ankles. Then, as he watched in horror, the pack of five converged on Aaron's body and began to feed. They tore him limb from limb, fighting greedily over his remains and shrieking in their high-pitched wails.

X closed his eyes and forced himself to think of happier times—all the way back to when he and Aaron had been young men, long before Tin was born and long before their wives had died. He wanted to scream, wanted to punch something. But all he could do was hold the precious case to his chest and trust the lighter-than-air buoyancy hauling him upward.

When he opened his eyes again, he was in darkness. The city was gone, lost below the clouds, and he could no longer hear the shrieks of the creatures. Lightning bloomed in the towering clouds, and thunder answered, close enough to rattle his body. He watched the static arc spiderweb across the sky, and hoped for a moment that it would strike him.

But he survived. For some reason, Xavier Rodriguez survived yet again while better men died.

A brilliant strike of lightning sizzled through the clouds, exposing the oval outline of the
Hive
far above. The ship was already maneuvering into position, the turbofans whirring. Captain Ash had detected his beacon and was adjusting to pick him up. Circular metal doors, looking no larger than his thumb, opened in the bottom of the ship.

X cradled the case in his right arm and reached for a toggle with his left hand. He pulled down on the handle gently, just so, guiding his helium-filled canopy toward the reentry bay. His body swayed as the harnesses redirected the balloon.

A moment later, the ship swallowed him, and the top of his balloon hit the plastic dome of the recovery bay. With nowhere to go, he hung in the air, watching the black clouds churn beneath his feet, and waited for the techs to reseal the bay.

The doors clamped shut, and he reached over his shoulder to punch the button on his booster. The balloon slowly deflated, the helium escaping as he was lowered to the deck.

A cloud of antiseptic mist blasted him as the room repressurized. When it cleared, he saw a team of technicians in yellow suits surrounding the plastic dome. He shuddered at the sight, remembering the monsters twenty thousand feet below. But instead of teeth and talons, only gentle hands awaited him.

Call it luck, mojo, or divine intervention, but X had successfully completed his ninety-sixth jump.

Captain Ash, with two Militia soldiers flanking her, rushed to the drop bay. Despite her condition, she was still outrunning them both.

“Only one diver made it back?” she asked.

Neither man responded. They were too busy keeping the shouting passengers on both sides of the hallway from getting too close. The corridors were unusually crowded at this late hour. There was only one explanation: someone on her staff had leaked information about the dive.

She would have Jordan deal with that later.

“Move it,” the soldier on her left said. He strode ahead and pushed through a knot of teenagers loitering in Ash's path. They were pointing and staring at fresh red paint on the wall that read “
Equal rights for lower-deckers.
”

She didn't slow at the increasingly familiar sight. There was no time right now to deal with the threat of civil unrest from those who lived belowdecks. Her focus was on keeping the damn ship in the air.

With the kids out of the way, Ash picked up speed. It was a five-minute walk or a two-minute run. She ran. The heavy footfalls of boots followed her as the soldiers tried their best to keep up.

The sea of passengers funneling through the hallways reminded her how the
Hive
got its name. Long ago, the ship had been commissioned as the
Persephone,
but as the years passed and the hallways and compartments grew darker, the passengers had started calling it the
“Hive.” The name had stuck. Most of these people didn't even know the ship's original name.

The launch bay was bustling with activity when she arrived. A medic rushed through the doors just in front of her, and she followed him into the vaulted facility toward a yellow-suited mob. The plastic dome over the reentry bay was surrounded by technicians, watching as the diver inside went through the cleansing process. A grappling hook pulled the dome away a moment later, and violet mist spilled from the sides. Vents sucked it away.

“Out of the way!” came a muffled shout.

The yellow suits parted, and the black matte armor of a diver emerged. The man staggered from the crowd with a case in his hands. He set it on the ground, and his visor homed in on Ash.

“Thank, God,” one of the technicians said, bending down to scoop up the case.

God?
Ash thought.
God's got fuck-all to do with what happens up here.
Then again, God may have had
everything
to do with what was happening up here. Who could say?

“Captain!” the diver shouted.

Ash froze in her tracks. It was X.

He shoved a technician out of the way and removed his helmet. His forehead glistened with sweat. Those brown eyes that Ash knew all too well narrowed in on her.

“What the fuck happened!” X yelled.

He tossed his helmet and powered through a few outliers who had stopped to gawk. The helmet clanked on the deck and rolled to a stop a few feet from Ash.

“Why the hell didn't you delay the launch!”

“Commander, you're hurt,” a medic began to say. “Let me check you for—”

“I'm fine,” X growled, waving him away.

“I'm sorry,” Ash said, holding up a hand but standing her ground. She felt someone step up on her left. She didn't have to look to know it was Jordan. “There was a faulty sensor,” she continued. “We didn't know we were dropping you into a storm until it was too late. You know how fast the weather can blow up. It's unpredictable.”

X stopped a few feet away from them, so close she could smell his breath. His chest heaved in and out, and his fierce eyes roved from Jordan to Ash.

“
Unpredictable?
” he snorted. “That's horseshit and you know it. Your ops team should have seen it.”

“You think I would send you into a storm on purpose?” Ash said. “You think I would intentionally try to kill my best divers?” She didn't think she sounded condescending, but X continued to glare at her.

“Well you did pretty well—killed all of 'em but one. Will. Rodney. Aaron. Dead. And you expect me to believe it's because of a faulty
sensor
? How about you tell
Tin
that. Tell him his dad died because of cheap electronics that your people were too goddamn lazy to troubleshoot.”

Ash looked at the floor and then back at X. “I'll tell him his dad died for
those.
” She pointed at the metal case at X's feet. “He died to keep us in the air.”

X shook his head and stalked off, muttering an oath.

Ignoring Jordan's whispered plea to let the diver go on his way, Ash followed him into the hall.

“Commander!” Ash barked.

X paused, chest still heaving, but kept his back to her.

“I'm sorry, Xavier. Truly sorry. We lost good men today. But they didn't die in vain. Those cells will keep our reactors running for years.”

X bowed his head and shoved his hands into his pockets, his face half turned in her direction.

“Aaron told me long ago that if anything should happen to him on a dive, he wanted you to take care of Tin,” Ash said.

“I know. Those were his last words. I'm done, Captain. You got that? No more fucking jumps. After what I saw today, I'm through. Between the pointless deaths of my team, and the creatures I saw down there …” His volume lowered as his words trailed off.

Ash considered letting it go, but if there was another threat on the surface, she needed to know about it. She kept her voice cool and calm. “What did you see down there, X?”

“Done,” he said, barely above a whisper.

“Xavier, I need to know what you saw.”

“I don't
know
what I saw,” he snapped. “But I never want to see it again.” He took a step down the hall and stopped. Glancing back at her, he said, “They were monsters. Something I've never seen before.” Then he was gone, off to find a bottle of 'shine or maybe something even stronger.

Although she would be well within her rights, Ash wasn't going to reprimand him for insubordination or recall him to his duty, either. Her heart ached for X. Ached for Tin. Ached for everyone on the ship who had lost a loved one. But her rational, efficient mind also knew that X had spoken out of anger. He was addicted to diving as much as he was to the booze. He wasn't going to give either of them up anytime soon.

Ash tugged on the sides of her uniform to straighten it. They had succeeded in their mission today, but the ship was running out of Hell Divers. She couldn't afford to lose X. One way or another, he would be back in the drop tubes the next time the
Hive
needed him.

* * * * *

It was morning, not that you could tell by the blackness outside the portholes. The airship drifted through the clouds above the eastern edge of the continent once known as North America.

On a normal day, X would have ignored the slight rocking motion and the clank of footsteps from the sea of passengers hurrying through the dimly lit hallways, off to start their shifts at whatever job or task was theirs to do, each of them weighed down with the worries and frustrations and minor indignities that went with life aboard the stifling environment of a broken airship.

On a normal day, X would have just rolled over to sleep off his hangover. Aaron had always said he could sleep through a level-five alarm, but this morning he was awake and dressed before nine, because today wasn't a normal day. Today they would honor the members of Team Raptor who had made the ultimate sacrifice to prolong the miserable lives of those aboard the
Hive
. It was purely ceremonial, of course. When they lost a diver, there was never a body to burn.

X walked to Aaron's apartment to pick up Tin. Snaking along the corridor ceiling were the red pipes carrying helium, and next to them the narrower-gauge white pipes for water and yellow for natural gas, and the wider black sewage lines. He heard the twang of lower-deckers as they complained about tight rations, and the more refined accent of the upper-deckers moaning about the same thing.

The walls, ceiling, and bulkheads had all been covered in murals and graffiti. Some of the artists had a sense of irony, painting fluffy white clouds over the hatches that covered the ship's windows to hide what clouds really looked like. The rusted steel curtains were centuries old. No one but Captain Ash seemed to care anymore what was on the other side.

“Hey, X,” said a familiar voice from the crowd. He nodded at Tony, the lead Hell Diver from Team Angel, who quickly vanished in the sea of passengers. Pausing, X held his ground in the surging mass of people to study the image of an ocean wave painted around one of the red helium pipes. Large gray fins protruded from the faded blue.

The picture brought to mind the creatures he had seen on the surface. He still had no idea what the hell they were, or how he would describe them to Captain Ash and the other Hell Diver teams.

As a boy, he had longed to see what was on the surface. He had heard the stories about a green world with growing things, and a blue sky, and he believed them. Then he had seen what the world was really like. Humans could never return to that poisoned desolate surface. They could never risk landing the airship. It wouldn't last a day in the radioactive wasteland, or survive the monsters lurking there.

X walked on, studying his surroundings as if for the last time. He did the same thing before a jump. His mind, by force of habit, wanted to experience everything it could just in case he didn't make it back. Usually, this involved booze. Today, it meant taking in the sights, sounds, and smells of the
Hive
in all its battered glory.

Pushing through the next corridor intersection, X thought of all the Hell Divers who had been sacrificed to keep the airship in the sky. What bothered him even more than the lingering burn on his skin was his inability to remember their faces. His first diving mentor had warned him that the first thing you forgot about someone was the sound of their voice. That had certainly proved true with Rhonda. He couldn't quite recall the lilt of his wife's voice, but he would never forget the dying screams of his comrades over the years.

At the next junction, he saw something that stopped him again. The single LED overhead illuminated a snaking line of men, women, and children of all races and ages, mostly dressed in rumpled rags, waiting for their daily food ration.

These were the lower-deckers, who did the important but dirty jobs that kept the ship running. Frail and hollow eyed, they were easy to spot. Many of them had cancer—only one floor of shielding separated their two communal living spaces from the nuclear reactors. No matter what engineering did, the radiation seemed to get through to the lower decks.

The sight was never easy to stomach, but it was reality. And it wasn't going to get better anytime soon.

He eyed the Christian crosses some of them wore around their necks. Their belief in God and the hope of something better after death seemed to help them come to terms with their squalid lives. Like a lot of others, X followed no religious doctrine. Pascal's wager posited that a rational person should live as though God existed, and seek to believe in God, but then, X wasn't an entirely rational person. He was a Hell Diver. If God did exist, he had better things to bother with than the fate of the human race. The closest he got to God was at the end of a bottle of 'shine.

The lower-deckers made up the majority of the
Hive
's population. They were the citizens he had spent his life trying to save even as he watched their quality of life deteriorate every day. In moments such as this, he wondered what he was saving them
from.
Maybe there really was a heaven after death, and all his efforts did was prolong their suffering and delay their passage to a blissful paradise.

“Hurry up!” a woman at the end of the line yelled, pulling X back to reality. “My son hasn't eaten in two days!” A pale, hairless boy stood next to her, his hand clasped in hers. She saw X staring and glared at him with contempt. “What you looking at, mista?”

X wanted to say something, give some bland and useless words of comfort and hope, but it seemed pointless. He shied away from her gaze as the line surged forward. Two gray-uniformed Militia soldiers stepped closer to the crowd. That small motion quieted all but one of the restless lower-deckers.

A man in a black trench coat emerged from the crowd. He swept a stringy black dreadlock from his face and pointed to the floor. “Do you assholes even know what it's like to live down there?” He shook his head at the ringing silence that followed. A second man, with a scarf pulled up to his nose, joined him. They stood their ground, staring at the sentries, who reached for their batons.

X considered stepping in to help the soldiers, even though it wasn't his duty, but the moment the Militia guards moved forward, the two lower-deckers melted back into the crowd—stupid enough to mouth off, but not stupid enough to get thrown in the brig.

X continued through the next hall, where another sentry stood guard outside a steel door. It led to the farms, one of the most heavily guarded areas on the ship. The crops grown beyond that door were barely enough to keep starvation at bay for the
Hive,
and sometimes a desperate citizen or small group would try to break in and steal food.

Taking a left, X veered off the main corridor. A short, bald man in a maroon robe brushed into him. Their eyes met, and seeing the red coveralls with the white arrow HD insignia, the man threw up his grimy hands.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, and hurried away, his sandals squeaking with every step.

X fished into his pocket at once, checking his key card. Feeling it, he relaxed and brushed a grubby handprint off his shoulder. The guy was one of a few Buddhist monks on the ship. That didn't make him a pickpocket, but thieves lurked all over the
Hive
. Normally, they didn't mess with a Hell Diver. After all, without X, the crooks would have nothing to steal.