Nicholas Smith - Hell Divers

Tin carefully folded the hat and tucked it into his pocket. He was surprised at how different he felt without it now. When he was inside the gas bladder, he hadn’t thought about the hat. For a few moments, he felt odd, but he quickly realized it was a good “odd,” a good “different.”

He held the pack of ice from the medic against his head and closed his eyes. It brought some relief to the throbbing of his swollen forehead.

“Tin? Is that you?”

Tin pulled the ice away and saw the stern, youthful face of Lieutenant Jordan. The officer scanned him with a flashlight beam.

“Looks like you got dinged pretty good there.”

“I’m okay,” Tin replied in his most confident voice.

“Good,” Jordan said. He gestured with his hand. “Follow me. Captain Ash is waiting for us on the bridge.”

Tin hurried after Jordan, through the dark passageways. The emergency message continued to crackle from the ancient speakers overhead, and the splash of red from the emergency lights told him the divers weren’t back yet. The Hive was still on lockdown.

Thinking about Travis, he remembered something his father had said after the food riots two years ago. There’s a difference between fighting for what you believe in and killing for what you believe in. Violence is never the answer.

Tin smiled, finally understanding what his dad had meant.

Jordan stopped when they got to the doors outside the command center. He spoke quietly with two soldiers standing guard. Both men acknowledged Tin with a respectful nod. He heard a chirp, and the doors whispered apart.

“Those guys heard you patched a gas bladder by yourself,” Jordan said.

Tin felt his heart pound with excitement as he walked into the busy command center. He laid his bandaged hands on the metal rail overlooking the levels, taking it all in. He had been here only a couple of times. This time was different from the others. The space was alive with movement, electronic chirps, and raised voices. On the bottom deck, Captain Ash held the oak wheel, her gaze locked on the main display. He felt a thrill at being in the middle of it all.

Jordan motioned for Tin to follow him down the ramp. A skinny officer with black-rimmed glasses looked in Tin’s direction for a brief moment, and Tin thought he saw the man nod.

Approaching Captain Ash, Tin stood as straight as he could. When they were a few feet away, she regarded them with a smile, one eye still on the display.

“Tin…” The captain paused, her lips pursing as if she was unsure what to say. “Thank you. Thank you for being so brave. If it weren’t for you, the ship would already have crashed.”

Tin swelled with pride.

“You’re welcome, Captain.”

“When this is all over—”

The ship lurched before Ash could finish her sentence. She put her other hand on the wheel and shifted her gaze back to the monitor. Tin, still a little woozy, lost his balance, but Jordan caught him by the elbow.

“What was that, Ryan!” Ash shouted.

“Pocket of turbulence,” the skinny officer with glasses shouted from the second deck. “The storm’s gaining on us!”

“What’s our altitude?” Ash shouted back.

“Twenty-four thousand feet and climbing.”

Ash wiped a bead of sweat from her brow and said something Tin couldn’t quite make out. She cocked her chin at the captain’s chair. “Get Tin buckled in. Things are going to get bumpy again.”

Jordan motioned for Tin to sit, but he stood his ground. “Is X back yet?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Ash said. She turned for a split second to look at Tin. “But he will be. If anyone can make it back, it’s X.”

Tin saw the confidence in her eyes and knew that she wasn’t lying. He took a seat in her chair and reached in his pocket for his hat as Jordan buckled him in. On the main display, the mud-colored clouds churned like dark cake batter. The sight terrified him, but he had to be strong now. For the first time since his dad had given him the hat, he didn’t feel the need for it.

The divers were frozen in place inside the ITC building. The crack of thunder overhead provided a reprieve from the wailing of the Sirens searching for them outside. Lightning cracked above the roofless tower, and in its glow, X saw the creatures flapping away.

His gaze shifted to the nests hanging from the walls. So far, he hadn’t seen any movement inside the egg-shaped cocoons. If Sirens were inside, they were likely sleeping.

Seconds ticked by and became minutes. After a while, X wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Without his HUD online, he couldn’t see the mission clock. Murph trembled a few feet away, his hand pressed against his belly.

X wished he could take away Murph’s pain. Something about seeing another diver suffer made him want to shoulder the burden. These were his brothers, his sisters. Their pain had become his.

At last, the shrieks died away, and X let out an icy breath of relief. The Sirens, it seemed, had given up their search.

He waited a few more minutes, just to be sure. When he couldn’t hear anything but the wind, he flashed a hand signal toward a set of doors across the atrium. Using the intermittent flashes of lightning to guide them, the divers crossed the space. They fell into a simple routine: Scan the walls and ceilings. Take a step. Freeze for a minute. Repeat.

Every motion was strenuous. The lack of movement made their body temperatures drop even further, and without the battery units on, they would soon be hypothermic. Murph wouldn’t last much longer. He was dying. There was no time to rest.

They had to keep moving.

A flash from the storm illuminated the layer of ice that had formed over their black matte armor, so that the divers looked like the statues X had seen in pictures of Old World parks.

He checked the doors ahead. Something had forced them apart. Drawing nearer, he saw where claws had raked across their surface. Four agonizing steps later, he reached the opening. The weak light in the lobby obscured the hallway beyond.

X waited. Listening, probing. He could make out the dim outlines of a few doors along the right wall. There was no trace of motion or any sounds to indicate that the Sirens were inside.

A tremor rippled through his chilled body. He flexed his forearms in an effort to keep his blood flowing. The shadows in the hallway suddenly shifted. Or was it just his eyes playing tricks on him?

Get with the fucking program, X.

He wedged his way through the opening in the door and shuffled forward on feet that felt as if they were someone else’s. Reaching the wall, he shouldered his rifle and swept it from side to side. He could see only vague shapes in the blackness: door frames and windows, maybe a chair—he wasn’t sure. Without his optics, he was all but blind.

He shuffled back to the doors and waved his team inside the passage. They huddled around him and he pointed to his chest, signaling for them to reinsert their batteries. His teeth chattered as he locked his unit into place.

The other divers inserted their battery units, and cool blue light glowed across the hallway. Warm relief flooded through X as his heat pads kicked on. He took a piss that burned like acid. Grimacing, he sucked down more of the chem water.

Only minutes later, X felt surprisingly refreshed. He patted the vest pocket that held the paper fortune Tin had given to him, and remembered the final sentence: Face your future without fear.

X motioned for the other divers to come closer, and they crowded around, lit by the glow of their batteries. Murph was holding back a cough. X could see it in his shaking chest.

“This is it,” X whispered. “We’re almost to our objective.” He threw the strap of his rifle over his back and punched the screen on his minicomputer. A map with their location emerged on his HUD. He fingered the nav marker of the supply crate they would use to send their cargo back to the Hive .