Nicholas Smith - Hell Divers

X slung his rifle over his shoulder and looked through the binos. The earth was pockmarked with craters, some as much as a thousand feet in diameter, and inside each dark hole moved a sea of flesh.

“Holy shit!” Murph breathed. “Are those…?”

“Sirens,” Katrina said. “But what are they doing?”

X scoped the nearest hole. Hundreds of the creatures were digging in the dirt. “I don’t give a shit what they’re doing,” he said. “We need to keep moving.”

He zoomed in on a cluster of towers beyond the pits. A few stood much taller than the others. The buildings had withstood the years of relentless wind and snow. He didn’t need a sign to tell him this was the ITC campus.

“There are so many of them,” Katrina said.

X twisted to face Weaver. “Why the hell did you bring us here ?”

“I thought you should see,” Weaver said. “Thought you should understand.”

“You wasted ten minutes,” X snapped. He unslung the rifle and grabbed it by the stock. “We don’t have time for sightseeing.”

Weaver shrugged. “So you don’t want to know what they’re digging for?”

X shook his head. “Not really.”

Katrina tapped him on the shoulder. “Maybe you should listen.”

“Fine. What, Weaver? What are those mutant fucks digging for?”

Weaver pointed to the nearest hole. “Same thing we’re here for.”

X walked back to the window and took a closer look with his binos. What he saw didn’t make any sense. The creatures were eating the dirt and then spitting it back out.

“Power,” Weaver said. “Not the same we’re after, but I think they feed off radioactive material.”

“And us,” Magnolia added.

“All the more reason to keep moving,” X said. He didn’t know what the Sirens were or where they had come from, but one thing was clear: the bombs dropped by his ancestors hadn’t just destroyed the Old World—they had created a new one and populated it with monsters.

The image of Tin crawling through the tunnel in gas bladder twenty-one was etched on Captain Ash’s brain. She ran back to the bridge as fast as her bulky armor would let her. If the boy really was inside, perhaps they wouldn’t need to raid the farm at all. She just needed to give him a chance to fix the bladder. Maybe no one else had to die.

She hurried past the two guards standing outside the bridge. The place was buzzing with activity when she arrived. Jordan stepped away from the oak wheel at the bottom of the room and saluted.

“Welcome back, Captain,” he said. “That was quick. I think I just had the shortest command as captain in the history of the ship.”

Ash grinned. She couldn’t recall Jordan ever cracking a joke before. Unclasping her body armor as she walked down the stairs to her chair, she set the pieces neatly on the floor.

“Have we confirmed that it’s Tin inside the bladder?” she asked.

“ Tin ?”

“Who else would it be?”

Jordan shook his head, “I don’t know.”

“We need to figure it out. Right now! Gonzalez said he was a second away from putting an arrow in someone’s chest. Both strike teams are still on standby, but before we make our move, I need to know who’s in that maintenance tunnel. If there’s a chance Tin can fix the bladder…”

“You’re leaving this up to a kid ?” Jordan asked. He bit the inside of his lip and looked away. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“Tin’s not just any random kid. He’s brilliant.”

“Captain, even if he’s been through the technical training, actually patching a bladder is a far cry from memorizing the instructions in the technical manual. The bladders are hot inside. And they’re huge .”

“I’ve made my decision. We give Tin—or whoever’s inside the gas bladder—a chance before I risk a battle inside the farm. Tell Jenkins to stand down and fire only if the hostages are in danger.”

Before Jordan could reply, Ash changed the subject.

“Have we heard anything from X or the other divers?”

“Nothing yet.”

She checked the mission clock. They still had seventeen hours, assuming the Hive lasted that long.

Ash ran up to navigation. “Ensign, what’s the status of the storm?”

Ryan’s fingers pecked at the keyboard. “She’s holding steady, Captain.”

“What’s our altitude?”

“Sixteen thousand feet and dropping,” Hunt replied.

“Jordan,” Ash said. “Get over here.”

He hurried over with his hands on his earpiece, talking as he moved. The red glow from the rotating emergency lights swirled across his path. He paused on the first step of the ramp. “Samson’s on his way here, Captain.”

“Good,” Ash said. “I’ll meet you at your station.”

Jordan nodded and hurried off.

Ash glanced at the main display. “You let me know the moment that storm starts to grow.”

“Aye, Captain. I’m keeping an eye on it.”

Samson arrived a few minutes later and stopped on the stairway, hands on his knees, panting. His chubby face was covered in grime and sweat. The glow from the emergency lights made his glistening skin look drenched with blood.

Ash gave him a few seconds to catch his breath before waving him over to Operations. Jordan was already pulling up the Hive ’s blueprints on his monitor. Hundreds of different-colored lines, depicting tunnels and pipes weaving through the compartments of the ship, emerged on the screen.

“Show me the gas bladders,” Ash said.

Jordan punched a button and drilled down a layer. The other tunnels and pipes vanished, replaced by a blue overlay of passages that connected to the twenty-four lozenge-shaped helium bladders. Each had two entrances: one angling from the lower engineering deck, the other crossing straight over from the farm.

Samson pointed at the screen. “I have teams inside bladders nineteen and three. They’re working on fixing those now.” He scratched his shiny scalp. “What’s our altitude?”

“Sixteen thousand feet and dropping,” Jordan replied.

“How about that storm?” Samson asked. “We still at a safe distance?”

“For now,” Ash said.

Samson leaned over Jordan’s shoulder. “Bladder twenty-one is sealed off. Whoever went inside locked the entrance to the farm. We have no way of knowing whether it’s been patched unless we fill the bladder with helium. But if someone’s still inside…”

“Have you tried contacting them?” Ash interrupted.

Samson put his hands on his hips and sighed. “Those speakers are two centuries old. They haven’t even been serviced since before I was born.”

“Try to get a message through, Jordan,” Ash ordered.

He pulled up the control panel for bladder twenty-one.

“Let me,” Samson insisted. “I know this system a lot better than you do.”

Ash nodded, and the two men exchanged places. Samson’s stubby fingers typed quickly, tapping into the system. Then he scooted the mike closer to the monitor and said, “Does anyone in bladder twenty-one copy?”

Ash twirled her wedding ring absently. She hadn’t had a chance to check in with Mark for hours. He had responsibilities just as she did, and was busy working in the water reclamation plant. If the worst happened and the ship went down, she’d be duty bound to stay here on the bridge, while Mark would be trapped belowdecks—they would never see each other again.

A crackle of static interrupted her morbid thoughts. Samson dialed down the volume while Jordan glanced over at Ash.

“Try again, Samson,” Ash said.

A moment later, the crackle of static broke into a voice that was soft and high—a kid’s voice.