Nicholas Smith - Hell Divers

A few minutes later, Alex strode out of the crowd with his right hand pressed against the side of his long coat. He hurried out of the trading post and joined Travis at the wall. Ren and Brad hung back, ready to provide a distraction if any Militia gave them trouble.

“You got it?” Travis asked.

Alex nodded, patting the side of his coat.

Travis exchanged a look with Ren and Brad, and the four men walked together toward their assigned shelter.

X climbed to the top of the ship and grabbed a rope attached to the roof. He steadied himself against the crosswind. He planted his boots and battled the gust until it passed. Then he bent down and helped the other divers onto the shell.

“Hold on to the rope until we dive!” X shouted. Even with the helmets’ comm system, it was hard to hear over the buffeting wind.

He allowed them a few moments to take in their surroundings. The clouds up here were thin and translucent, unlike the dense cover a couple of miles below. X raised a hand, and his fingers slashed through the haze, which bent around his body like water flowing.

“Is it safe up here?” Magnolia shouted over the comm.

“As long as you don’t let go of that rope,” X yelled back.

“It’s so dark,” she said, her voice melting into a whisper over the channel.

X tilted his helmet and scanned the sky again for any sign of the sun. Being out here, beyond the confines of the Hive, made him tingle all over. It was wild and dangerous and free, and X loved every second of it. Even now, with the sun shrouded by clouds, it was still breathtaking.

He turned to check on his team and saw something that dialed his enthusiasm down a notch. The sky to the west looked like a mountain range with jagged peaks reaching toward the heavens. Lightning flashed through the towering cumulus, illuminating the darkness with shades of sapphire and purple.

“It’s beautiful,” Murph said.

Sam grunted. “Wait till you get to the surface. ‘Beautiful’ won’t even be in your vocabulary.”

“That’s Hades?” Magnolia asked.

X nodded and waved everyone forward. Every second they wasted was one less they had to complete the mission. He led the team down the back of the ship. The wind whipped over his suit, pushing and tugging him by turns. He worked his way forward, holding the rope. They were far enough from the sides that the wind wasn’t a serious problem, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. What concerned him more was the monster storm. He couldn’t keep his eyes off it.

Three minutes later, they were standing on the stern of the ship, peering over the side. X faced his team and said, “I’ll lead the formation. Stay three hundred feet apart. Keep your eyes on your HUDs, and follow me. Got it?”

Everyone nodded.

“Then let’s move.” X took three steps backward, let go of the rope, and broke into a run. Reaching the edge of the ship, he took a final bound, leaped, and was gone. In an eyeblink, the void had swallowed him.

The wind took him, and he embraced it. After he had maneuvered into stable position, he glanced around to check on his team. Sam’s and Murph’s blue battery units pulsated to the right, but Magnolia was nowhere in sight.

His eyes flitted to his HUD. Her beacon was still idle. She hadn’t jumped off the ship yet.

“Magnolia, what the hell are you doing?” he yelled.

It was hard to hear anything over the roaring wind, but her faint response came through the comm.

“Don’t get all worked up. Just admiring the view.”

A second later, her beacon was moving.

“You stay with the team,” X growled. “That’s how this works.”

He relaxed on the mattress of air and watched his HUD. Magnolia’s beacon was moving fast, gaining speed, closing in on the others. Was she in a nosedive?

X risked a backward glance. Sure enough, she was blasting through the sky like a falling arrow. When she was a few hundred feet away, she maneuvered into stable position, arms and legs spread out gracefully with her back to the Hive.

Relieved, he checked his HUD again. Ice crystals grew around the edge of his visor. At fifteen thousand feet, it was negative forty degrees Fahrenheit.

X was first to sail through the ten thousand mark. The scalloped black floor of the clouds was rising fast toward them. They were halfway down. He could see the slight change in the darkness where the clouds began to thin.

When he craned his neck to check on the others, a crosswind sent him tumbling out of control. Experience took over, and he threw his limbs out straight and went into a hard arch, which set him belly down again. From there, he pulled arms and legs loosely in and was back in stable position.

“Crosswinds coming!” he shouted.

A sidelong glance gave him a view of the other three divers just as they hit the turbulence. Sam and Magnolia held steady, but Murph tumbled like a leaf in a whirlwind.

“Shit,” X muttered. “Murph, hard arch!”

“I can’t!” Murph shouted. “Can’t get control…” His voice was lost in the crackle of static.

X looked up to see him spinning like a boomerang.

“Stretch your arms and legs out!” Magnolia said. “Arch your back as far as you can!”

With the surface racing up toward them, Murph needed to stabilize. He tumbled through the darkness, his screams muffled by the wind. X cursed and watched helplessly. Losing their engineer now wouldn’t be just bad luck; it could doom their mission before it really started.

Come on damn it, Murph…

At five thousand feet, Murph finally stopped screaming. He flipped several more times before leveling out. Arching his back and spreading his arms and legs, he did another lazy somersault before settling back into a stable position. His labored breathing swelled over the channel.

X thanked all the gods he didn’t believe in. He just might get his team safely to the ground.

“Prepare to activate your night vision and pull your pilot chutes,” he said. “The moment we’re through the cloud cover, do it.”

The clouds vanished at four thousand feet, and the ground rushed into view. He bumped on his optics and scanned for a landing zone. The surface came into focus, but the ground wasn’t exactly level. They were falling over the biggest sinkhole he had ever seen.

At first, he had figured it was just another place where the earth had eroded from below and caved in on itself, but this was different. This wasn’t the work of nature; this was man’s doing. They were falling toward a crater produced by one of the mega bombs dropped hundreds of years ago.

X pulled his pilot chute, held it a moment, and let it go. Feeling the rig inflate, he reached up and grabbed the toggles and steered away from the hole, gliding west toward whatever was left of the city.

The frozen landscape was flattened for miles around the blast zone. Nothing but rubble with a crust of snow. At least, he didn’t have to worry about crashing into a tower.

“What the hell is that?” Magnolia asked.

“What it looks like,” X replied. “A big-ass hole in the ground. Follow me to a new DZ.”

Murph’s voice crackled over the comm. “Sir!”

“Hold on, I’m looking for a place to put down.”

“But, sir!” Murph insisted.

“What? What’s wrong?” X asked.

When he checked his subscreen for his altitude, he saw the radiation level. The readings were off the charts. The entire drop zone was one massive radioactive night-light.

X looked up just in time to see Murph ghosting toward him.

“Watch out!” X shouted, toggling hard way from the encroaching canopy.

“Sorry, sir!” Murph yelled back.

X swooped toward the drop zone, his heart pounding. A collision with another diver, collapsing both their chutes, was a nightmare he could do without.