Nicholas Smith - Hell Divers

“All right, people,” Captain Ash said. “Let’s make this as smooth as possible.” She turned the oak wheel and looked to the front of the room as the electrical storm above Hades emerged on the main display. They were heading into the beast—the same maneuver that she had condemned Captain Willis for two days ago.

“Jordan, how far to the coordinates?” Ash said.

“Three minutes, Captain.”

Every officer on the bridge watched the display. The swirling purple vortex expanded to fill the entire monitor. Branches of electric blue snaked away from the center like blood vessels from a pounding heart. The storm looked alive. The sight of it filled her with foreboding.

“Coordinates in T minus thirty seconds,” Jordan said in a cool, crisp voice.

Lightning flashed across the bow as the ship pushed into the edges of the storm. The hull rattled and groaned, and Ash eyed the flickering banks of LEDs on the ceiling.

“Steady,” she whispered. “Steady as she goes…”

A second tremor, this one deeper, shook the ship, and from the bridge they could hear the sound of a distant crack. The vibration rippled through the walls.

“Almost there, Captain,” Jordan replied.

An emergency siren wailed, the red light splashing over the deck. The Hive shook fiercely, the bulkheads creaking and groaning. Ash realized she was holding her breath, and let it out just as Jordan confirmed they were in position.

She cleared her throat before speaking into her headset. “Raptor, Angel, and Apollo, you have a green light for launch. Good luck and Godspeed.”

As the words left her mouth, the ship lurched forward, through the outer wall of the surging storm. Lightning streaked in all directions across the main display. The storm engulfed the Hive like a whale swallowing a shrimp. The ship quaked under the onslaught of electrical strikes.

Ash pulled the wheel a few degrees left, doing her best to keep a steady course despite the violent rocking. Two decks beneath her, under the guts of the ship, humanity’s last hope was about to dive into the abyss, and there was nothing she could do to help them.

X fidgeted in his metal cocoon and waited for the glass doors of his launch tube to split open. An emergency light bathed his pod in red. He braced himself against the metal walls as a tremor shook the Hive. His earpiece crackled, but he couldn’t make out the transmission. The storm had already knocked out the comm and the minimap in his HUD subscreen.

The launch tube rattled as if they had suddenly entered a pocket of extreme turbulence. He watched the flashes of lightning beneath the glass floor. A few minutes ago, he hadn’t felt any of the messy, addictive fear that the sight normally prompted, but now the rush had his heart thumping at almost double time.

“Come on, God damn it, let’s go !” he said, knowing that no one could hear him. Flexing his hands and chewing on his mouth guard, he buried the rising fear in his gut.

The walls of his tube rattled again, knocking him against the side. He crossed his arms over his chest and cursed.

“Come on!”

The sirens clicked off, their whine still lingering in his ears. X blinked just as the panels split beneath his boots. In the same fraction of a second, he heard the unmistakable crack of gunfire above. And the next moment, he was falling into darkness.

“Hold on, kid,” Eli said. The silver-bearded engineer looked over at Tin and narrowed his eyes beneath the bill of his baseball cap.

Tin stood with his back to the wall in the small shelter, gripping the belts that secured his body to the wall. They were alone in here. X had already jumped, and Tin felt like a bean being shaken in a can. But that was not the reason his heart was thumping out of control.

“Wha… what’s that popping sound?” Tin stammered, although he thought knew the answer. He had never heard gunshots before, but the sharp Pop! Pop! reminded him of a video that Professor Lana had shown their class a few months ago.

Eli looked just as unsure. They both stared at the small window over the hatch. Red light filled the hallway outside, but Tin didn’t see anything in the glow.

He tightened his grip on the belts crossing his chest, when the popping sounded again. This time it was closer, and he could hear it clearly over the emergency alarms and groaning metal bulkheads around him.

“Stay put, kid,” Eli said. “I need to check this out.” He unbuckled his harness and went to check the window. “What in the hell…?”

Tin wanted to tell him not to leave, but Eli opened the hatch and stepped into the hallway.

“Hey! What are you doing!” Eli shouted at someone Tin couldn’t see.

The ship rumbled, knocking Eli to his knees. Before he could move, something exploded out of his back and punched the bulkhead behind Tin.

Screaming, Tin unbuckled the belts and dropped onto all fours. He crawled across the floor, keeping as low as possible. He could feel his fingers sliding through warm liquid. He glanced up, straining to see in the dim red light.

At the end of the hallway, a single emergency light churned. The rotating light crossed the paths of four approaching men.

“Mister… mister, are you okay?” Tin whispered, nudging the limp body. The man’s throat made an awful gurgling sound. A few feet away, a Militia soldier lay in a widening pool of blood.

Tin’s eyes flitted back to the four men as they stepped into the red glow. The leader wore a trench coat and had hair that hung like thick vines over his shoulders. Tin recognized him instantly. It was the same guy he had seen lurking outside the farm before the tour, and the same man who had bashed into him at the trading post. When he saw Tin, he pointed and yelled, “Don’t let that kid get away!”

The ship hit a pocket of turbulence and tilted to starboard, sending the four men sliding across the floor. Tin scrambled over the dead guard and bolted into the open stairwell that led to the farm. Grunting, he struggled to close the heavy steel hatch behind him. Pushing with all his strength, he slammed it shut just as a volley of bullets pelted the other side.

X’s mind spun as he fell. One second, his thoughts had been focused and clear; the next, they were agonizingly slow and confused, unable to process what had happened. Someone had done the unthinkable: fired a gun aboard the Hive. Whether it was sabotage or a horrible accident, it didn’t matter. All that mattered now was the mission. He had to trust that Captain Ash would keep Tin safe and deal with the situation. Letting himself get distracted now would doom everyone on the ship, including Tin.

Focus, X.

He got one last glimpse of the Hive and half expected to see it come blazing through the clouds. But the smooth beetlelike hull looked still intact. The ship appeared suspended in motion in the dead center of the storm as lightning danced around the ship. An eyeblink later, his home was gone, swallowed by the clouds.

After relaxing into stable position, he pulled his left hand in as if saluting, while his right fished a flare from his vest. Then, bringing both hands in front of him to maintain equilibrium, he twisted off the plastic striker cap, taking great care not to lose it in the blasting wind. He struck the flare’s tip against the striker surface once… twice… The moment he saw bright red flame spurt from the struck end, he tossed the flare away into the black. He did this twice more, then looked at his HUD.

The data flickered in and out, and X realized that it was going to be mostly useless the entire dive. They had to be at around eighteen thousand feet. He put his velocity at a hundred miles per hour, give or take. Intermittent strikes of electricity curved across his flight path. The storm wasn’t as bad as it looked from above, but it would only get worse.