Nicholas Smith - Hell Divers

His suit quickly powered down, and the HUD flickered off. He tried the headlamp, but it, too, was dead.

He was blind and surrounded by predators.

A lump of terror congealed in the pit of his stomach. As a Hell Diver, he had given a lot of thought to how he would die. He had always assumed it would be out in the open air, falling through an electrical storm or cratering into the cold, hard ground. Never had he expected to be trapped in darkness, surrounded by sightless monsters.

Straining to see in the pitch blackness, he pointed the pistol toward the sounds of claws skittering on ice. The creatures were searching for him, too, but their eerie screeching had stopped abruptly the moment his HUD deactivated.

Their claws scraped through the snow. Closer now. He heard a clatter of plastic and metal. They had found his battery unit. But why would flesh-eating monsters be interested in that ?

Weaver resisted the urge to blindly fire off shots in the direction of popping joints and skittering claws. Not daring to move, he listened to the noise of talons fumbling with his battery unit. There was a sudden grunt that sounded like the snort of a frustrated animal.

The scratching ceased a moment later, replaced by the sound of the creatures retreating back to their lair.

Weaver stood there for perhaps fifteen minutes, shaking in his suit, still not budging for fear the monsters would return. He couldn’t see his visor fogging up, but he knew his cold breath was clouding the plate. Without the battery, it wouldn’t take long for the frigid cold to work through the layers of his suit. The battery didn’t power just the HUD; it also powered the tiny heat pads inside his suit.

Finding it was his only hope. Like a blind dog in unfamiliar surroundings, he moved tentatively across the ground on all fours. After a few moments of searching, he bumped something with his knee, and it rattled over the ice. He fumbled about some more and finally wrapped a finger around the familiar toroidal shape. Feeling a wash of relief, he carefully inserted it back into his armor.

His HUD activated with a warm glow.

He had never in his life been so happy to see the artificial green of the NVG optics.

The sight sparked an epiphany, a theory forming in his mind. Energy. They’re drawn to energy.

He had always assumed that the Sirens were drawn to movement, but now he finally understood. The beasts must be attracted to the energy that his battery unit produced. Perhaps they could see after all, with some sort of infrared vision that homed in on his suit.

The display suddenly flickered. He checked the stream of data in the subscreen. It flashed a second time, then a third.

“No,” he muttered. “Useless piece of crap.” He tapped the side of his helmet.

The Sirens must have damaged the unit. He raised his wrist and cleared the screen on his minicomputer. Then he deactivated the heaters inside his suit and rerouted all power to his HUD. That would buy him some time to survive long enough to find the wreckage of Ares. He wouldn’t let the monsters feed on the corpses of his family and friends.

Glancing up from his wrist computer, he scanned the darkness. The tunnel was still clear. The creatures had returned to their lair. He pulled his knife and studied the collapsed road for footholds. Grabbing a jutting piece of rebar with one hand, he jammed his blade into the ice with the other hand, then looked for any rough, ice-free surface that his boot would stick on.

As he climbed up the slope, he concentrated on a new mission—one he had to complete before returning to Ares: find one of his dead divers and salvage their battery unit. If he was really lucky, maybe he would even get a blaster and some water, too.

Tin found Layla waiting for him in the hallway, chewing on a fingernail.

“Looks like we have some time before the lights go out,” she said. “Let’s stop by the trading post. My mom gave me a few credits to buy a cookie. I’ll split it with you.” She seemed to scan his face for a reaction.

“Aren’t you scared?” Tin asked.

Layla’s eyebrows scrunched together. “About what?”

“The ship’s in trouble.”

“Wake up, Tin. The ship’s always in trouble.”

Looking up and down the hallway, he saw life going on as it always did. People ambled to their workstations or apartments at the same casual speed. He caught snippets of conversations about a dive and Ares, but for the most part, people went about their day as if shutting off the lights were just another inconvenience to take in stride. And indeed, Tin couldn’t remember a time when the Hive hadn’t been in some sort of danger. Most of the other passengers probably weren’t any more frightened now than they had been a month ago, during the last electrical storm.

But Tin knew better. This time, the threat to the ship scared him more than it ever had before. And with Ares gone, he felt an emptiness that he didn’t quite understand.

They walked along in silence until Tin saw Andrew in the crowd ahead.

“Don’t worry,” Layla said. “I think he’s going to leave you alone now.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because of X. They know he was the reason we got to see the farms, and…”

He halted in the middle of the corridor. “And what?”

“I kinda kicked Andrew in the marbles the other day. The other boys saw him cry.”

Tin laughed. The sound was so unfamiliar to his ears, it almost made him stop.

Layla’s smile broadened. “Yeah, I don’t think he’s going to be bothering anyone for a while.”

Tin’s amusement turned to confusion. He scratched his forehead and squinted. “Layla?”

“Yes,” she replied as they started walking ahead.

“Why are you my friend?”

She smiled and shrugged. “Because you’re my person. You’re smart. Funny, too—when you actually talk, that is. And… I don’t know, I always wanted a little brother.”

Tin chuckled again. “Thanks. I guess I always wanted a sister, too.”

“Cool. Then I guess that makes us stepbrother and stepsister by default. Now, come on,” she said. “I want one of those cookies before they flip the switches.”

They stopped in the middle of the hallway. The corridor was a tide of variously colored coveralls. Layla slipped ahead in the crowd, and Tin tried his best to keep up. She was slender and fast. She would make a great Hell Diver.

“Look at that,” Layla said. She stopped in a three-way intersection and pointed to the citizens waiting for their food rations. Four Militia soldiers in gray riot gear hovered around the crowd. Their faces were hidden behind mirrored visors, and they gripped the handles of their batons and waved them whenever one of the lower-deckers got too rowdy.

“I’m lucky my mom works in engineering,” she whispered. “I’d hate to wait like those people.”

A woman in faded brown coveralls at the front of the crowd caught Tin’s attention. She clutched an empty bag under her arm. The duty officer handing out rations eyed her and the two girls she had in tow. Both looked like four or five years old. The younger one scratched at her nose. Tin’s heart sank when he saw the cherry-size red lump that hung over her right eyelid. Deformities were common in children belowdecks, but every time he saw them his heart ached.

The duty officer looked at his clipboard and marked it with his pen. Then he turned to a second worker at the bins of fresh produce and said, “Two potatoes, three tomatoes, and three measures of spinach.”

“That’s it?” the woman protested. She held out her bag. “That won’t last us a day!”

The young girl caught Tin staring, and he turned away. He was ashamed. Like Layla, he had grown up privileged. Neither of them knew what it was like to be truly hungry or to live with deformities or pain. He always went to bed with a full stomach. These people fought over scraps, and scraps couldn’t keep them alive forever. Everywhere he looked, he saw sunken faces and desperate eyes. It wasn’t right.