Nicholas Smith - Hell Divers

Getting four nods, he broke into a jog across the snow, and the others followed. A light powder began to fall as they ran.

At the next intersection, he signaled for all to stop. The divers crouched and stared at a green apparition flapping in the wind on the right side of the road. Finally realizing that it was a parachute, X lowered his blaster. The chute was green, but divers from the Hive always flew black chutes.

“Diver at six o’clock,” X whispered. “Doesn’t look like one of ours. I’ll check it out.”

Hugging the banked snow against the buildings, he warily approached the canopy. Beyond the chute, he saw armor half covered by snow. He pulled the canopy away and bent next to the body. The head was buried in snow, and he dug for several seconds to uncover a female face he didn’t recognize, staring back at him with frozen, dead eyes.

He waved his team over without shifting his gaze away from the woman. She must have been part of the Ares team. Brushing the snow off her chest plate to search for a weapon, he saw the empty battery housing. Indeed, she had been stripped of much of her gear.

“What the fuck?” X said.

His team hovered over him and stared at the corpse.

“Where’s her gear?” Tony asked.

“I don’t know. Makes no sense.”

He wiped the toxic flakes that had collected on his visor. The beacon on his HUD was finally moving away from their crate. He didn’t have time to ponder what it all meant. Now was their chance to get to the crate and arm themselves before they ran into the Sirens.

“Time to move,” X said. He motioned his team on, and they left the dead diver where they had found her, just as he had left Aaron and so many others before her.

Travis leaned down and put a hand on the kid’s shoulder. He was still unconscious. Alex had hit him hard—way too hard.

He glared at Alex, wanting to slap the crooked grin off that scarred face. Killing a Militia guard for their cause was one thing, but shooting an unarmed engineer and hitting a kid?

“What the hell is the matter with you?” Travis snapped.

Alex took a step back. “Little fucker deserved it for kicking me, Trav. He’s one of them spoiled upper-decker brats.”

“Doesn’t give you the right…” Travis took a breath. Arguing with Alex wasn’t going to get Raphael out of jail or get them any closer to justice for those belowdecks. He had to keep a tighter rein on the others—especially Alex.

He checked the boy once more. He looked to be not much older than ten—about the same age Travis had been when his father lost his life on a routine dive. He respected the boy for standing up to Alex. It reminded him of himself at that age.

“Don’t touch him again,” Travis said. He rose to his feet and looked at the overhead and the curved bulkheads.

The ship wasn’t shaking anymore, but something was still wrong. Every few minutes, the Hive would shiver as if it was fighting for altitude. Maybe Captain Ash wasn’t lying after all. Maybe the ship was in trouble.

No, Brad was right: the ship was always in trouble. Nothing had changed, and he wasn’t about to back down now. His brother was still rotting in jail, and the lower-deckers were still suffering.

Travis slung the rifle over his back. Alex, too, was right about something: the kid was an upper-decker, and that made him valuable.

“When the kid comes around, let me know. I have an idea.”

Captain Ash hammered the wall with her fist, drawing several stares. She was beyond frustrated. The Militia should have seen this coming. They should have had someone keeping an eye on Travis since his brother landed in prison after the riots years ago. Somehow, amid the chaos of life aboard the ship, Travis had fallen through the cracks. She blamed herself, too. She had been too lenient with the lower-deckers when she put an end to the random Militia searches for contraband and weapons. She had required the Militia to have probable cause before searching the trading post and belowdecks. Her decision was an effort at appeasement, but in the end, it had helped doom them all.

But pointing fingers or dwelling on her mistakes wouldn’t fix the ship. She had to move on. She had to continue to lead.

Jordan’s voice pulled her from her thoughts.

“Captain, we have no other choice. We can’t meet their demands, and Travis doesn’t sound like he’s going to budge. We have to raid the farm.”

Ash looked at her second. His features were stern and strict. He was the most loyal officer she’d ever had under her command, but his overeagerness to raid the farms proved he still had a lot to learn about leading.

“There has to be another way,” Ash said.

She walked over to the top of the ramp. The main display on the bottom floor showed the Hell Divers’ mission clock. Below that, another number was counting down: the Hive ’s altitude.

“Nineteen thousand feet,” Ash said.

“And dropping,” Jordan replied. “Which is why we need to get control of the farm. We need one of Samson’s men in there.”

Ash continued down the ramp to her chair.

As she passed navigation, Ensign Ryan stood. “Captain, I’m getting odd readings from the electrical storm over Hades.”

Ash paused on the stairs. “What kind of readings?”

“Something seems to be happening inside the storm.”

“Is it growing?”

“Slightly, but our sensors are picking up activity on the surface. Looks like a surface storm of some sort is moving across Hades.”

“What’s our distance?” Ash asked.

“We’re two miles away.”

“I doubt we can go above it this time,” Jordan added. “And there’s no way we can outrun it if it grows bigger.”

“We can’t abandon the divers, either,” Ash said. “They’re our only chance of staying in the air.”

“I know, but I would suggest putting some distance between us and that wall of cumulus,” Jordan said, staring at the screen.

“Agreed,” Ash said. “Tell Samson to direct some power to the rudders. Take us off autopilot. You’ve got the wheel. Remember, if the divers send up those crates, we have to be in range to pick them up.”

She watched lightning break across the skyline on the front display. X was down there, doing his part to save the ship. He had never asked for anything back until this last jump, and she had already broken her promise to him. Tin was now a hostage, or worse.

“On second thought, I’ll take the wheel,” Ash said. “Jordan, radio the strike team. Tell them I want a plan that doesn’t involve shooting up the ship and getting everyone on the farm killed.”

Icicles like spears hung from the metal awning of a building at the end of the street. The lower floors were buried in snow, and X couldn’t see a way into the frozen structure.

They were four hours into the mission, and he wasn’t going to risk another step until he had a look at that crate. It had landed in the street beyond this building. If they could get inside, he could scope the area before committing them to the open ground surrounding the crate. The rogue beacon had vanished off the minimap, but he wasn’t going to take any chances.

“Looks like there’s a way in over here,” Magnolia said. “Come on.”

X trailed the divers through the gusting wind to a snowbank that rose to a third-floor window. He had missed it on his first pass.

“I’ll go first,” Magnolia offered.

“No, kid, you won’t,” X replied, pushing past her as he unsheathed his tactical knife. “I’ll check it out. You guys hold here.”

Magnolia protested, but X scrambled up the wall without her. Sure, she was fast, and she was good at sneaking into places, but Hades wasn’t some guarded pantry on the Hive . She wasn’t ready for what likely awaited them at the ITC building. X wasn’t sure he was ready.