Nicholas Smith - Hell Divers

An alarm chirped on the top floor of the bridge. She craned her neck up to see Ryan rush to his station. “What you got, Ensign?”

Ryan stared at his monitor, then swiveled his chair to a second display. “I’m… not really sure, Captain.”

Ash jumped up from her chair and rushed to the second floor. “Jordan, get over here.”

Moments later, she and her XO were crowded around Ryan’s monitors.

“Captain, the storm appears to be growing again,” Ryan said. “It’s moving. Fast.”

“Bring it onscreen,” Ash replied.

The main display on the floor of the room activated. The edges of the electrical storm were surging outward like a loaf of bread expanding in an oven. And the Hive was right in its path.

The lesion in Ash’s throat burned at the sight. She turned away from the view toward her XO. “Do we know where Raptor is?”

“No. We haven’t had any sign of their beacons for an hour now.”

“Ensign, how much time do we have before the storm hits us?” Ash asked.

Ryan shook his head and typed several commands. Lines of text scrolled across the screen.

“This can’t be right,” he said, looking up. “According to the data, if the storm continues moving at its current rate, we have about forty-five minutes. And that’s just an estimate. It could be here faster.”

“Jordan, direct power to the rudders and hold position for further orders. I want to be ready to move the moment they get back.”

“But, Captain, that’s going to drain the backup power.”

“Jordan!” Ash barked.

He snapped to attention. “Yes, Captain.”

“See if you can get X online. Tell him to get his ass back here,” she said. “A private comm link, Jordan. I don’t want his team to panic.”

Jordan hesitated. His features hardened, and he said, “We can’t afford to wait for them to get back.”

She watched a streak of lightning zip across the display. It arced to the top of the storm clouds and vanished into inky darkness. It was hard to imagine a sun still shining somewhere above that blackness.

The thought blossomed into an idea. The ships were built for limited high-altitude flying. If she could fly them above the storm…

“Maybe there’s another way,” Ash said. “Jordan, divert all available power to the turbofans. I have an idea.”

Weaver looked up. The high-rise across the street was gone, its top four stories sheared off by the impact with Ares. The embers of his home, his family, and all that he held dear smoldered just a city block away. The flames from a recent explosion in the hulking wreckage continued to lick the sky, warding away the scavengers that swooped and wheeled overhead.

The debris was spread as far as he could see: hunks of smoldering metal, the twisted blades of turbofans, a piece of an engine, parts of bodies.

He had assumed that he would feel rage when he got here. He was supposed to feel it. But as he looked over the destruction, all he felt was hollowness. His emotions had evaporated like the helium from a ruptured gas bladder.

Holding Sarah’s blaster out in front, Weaver continued toward the crash site. The battery unit, food, and water he had retrieved from her corpse had prolonged his life, but he wasn’t sure for how long. The sky was filled with ravening monsters. Their unearthly cries reverberated through the city as they searched for an opening in the flames below. The screeches flowed together in a rhythm that surely meant something to them.

There were dozens of the creatures, maybe more. He still couldn’t quite get his mind around the idea that they had survived down here. Somehow, they had adapted to the brutal life on the surface. Maybe it was their leathery skin, or something else he couldn’t see. He didn’t give a shit either way. All that mattered was keeping the abominations away from his family.

Weaver holstered the blaster, pulled out his binos, and focused them on the ship. The bow was buried under a mound of dirt, and the hull was split down the middle, exposing aluminum beams like the rib cage of some prehistoric behemoth. He flinched as another explosion rocked the ship. A yellow plume of fire billowed up in his scope. The tendrils reached into the sky and engulfed one of the winged creatures. Screeching, it managed a few more wing beats before spiraling down into the flames.

Seeing it, Weaver felt some hint of emotion at last: a tingle of satisfaction. He stuffed his binos back into his vest, scrambled up a mound of snow, slid down the other side, and bolted toward the nearest building. Reaching it, he slowed to a walk, hugging the walls, his blaster trained on the sky. The winged Sirens didn’t seem to notice his presence. They were more interested in the ship.

The distraction allowed him to get closer. He ran down the final stretch of street, slipped around the corner, and took shelter in the lobby of a building lit by the glow of the burning debris field.

He watched for an hour from the safety of the doorway. Falling snow slowly drowned the raging fire, and thick plumes of smoke rose into the sky. The lowering flames allowed the creatures to get closer to the wreckage. Weaver watched one of them swoop down between the exposed ribs of the hull. It flapped out of the swirling smoke a moment later, fighting for altitude. Something was weighing it down.

Weaver pulled his binos again and zoomed in on the monster’s legs and the charred body gripped in its talons. His rage forced him out of the safety of the building.

“No,” he whispered. “I won’t let you take my family.”

Another Siren sailed over the debris field and grabbed a tiny corpse and flapped away into the darkness. Several others soared after it, screeching in their strange, dissonant language.

“NO!” Weaver shouted, his voice edging on hysteria. He strode out onto the street and aimed his blaster into the sky. The fierce anger of a father who had lost everything returned. Blinking away tears, he ran toward the wreckage of his home. Beyond his blurred vision, he saw something that brought a pain worse than what he had felt when Ares came crashing down.

Corpses and body parts were strewn across the snow-covered dirt. His friends and family sizzled as the snow hit their scorched bodies. Their faces surfaced in his memory, but he buried them. He wouldn’t let their memories weaken him right now. He needed his strength for what was about to happen.

“Hey! Hey, you flying fucks!” Weaver shouted in a voice that sounded deranged even to him.

The shriek of a Siren answered his call. It pivoted in the sky, flapping toward him now. Two more of the creatures flanked the beast, cutting through the air and diving at him. Weaver centered the iron sights of his blaster on the approaching monsters. When all three were within range, he squeezed the trigger.

The gun made a strange popping sound, and sparks shot out the left barrel. The creatures whistled through the air, the wind over their backswept wings rustling like the suit of a diver in free fall.

Heart pounding, Weaver hit the selector switch and pulled the trigger a second time. This time, the gun fired two Magnum loads of double-aught shotgun pellets. The projectiles spread, punching through delicate wings, and tearing into lean muscle. The Sirens let out a cacophony of pained wails and crashed to the ground ten feet away in an explosion of dirt and ash. Weaver snapped open the breech, ejected the two spent shells, and dropped two fresh ones in.

Weaver stared at the field of the dead. The dying embers scattered across the dirt shimmered under a flash of lightning. Pulling his gaze away, he raised his blaster and fired at another formation of monsters swooping toward him.