Hell Divers (16 page)

He turned to find her looking at the picture frame he had passed earlier.

“Looks like we're in an ITC building,” she added.

X hurried to her side and brushed off the dust. He was scanning the map when his helmet speaker crackled.

“X, this is Sam. Looks like a dead end here.”

X kicked the wall. “There's nothing here, either.” The building they were looking for was likely buried under a pile of rubble and snow. He stared at the map again, scrutinizing it for something he had missed. He rubbed off a layer of dust covering the upper corner. The fourth floor was labeled “Operations Center.”

An idea seeded in his mind. Jordan had said they didn't know the exact locations of the cells or valves in Hades. Maybe, just maybe, there was something inside the ops center that would tell X where to find them. If the
Hive
was forced by circumstances to send all three teams into Hades, he could at least tell them where to go.

“Sam! Murph!” he yelled. “Get over here. I may have something.”

* * * * *

Captain Ash sat impatiently in the command center on the bridge. Over an hour had passed since Team Raptor jumped off the ship. Desperate for news, she picked at a crack in the chair arm's leather. The wait during a dive was always excruciating, but this time it was even worse. The human species' very existence rested with the luck of a few brave men and women twenty thousand feet below.

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.

* * * * *

The beams from Team Raptor's headlights cut through the darkness, dancing across the concrete walls of the narrow stairwell. Sam was on point, with X on his six. They moved up the stairs quickly, with Magnolia's and Murph's footfalls close behind.

“Should be the next floor,” X said. “Check it out.”

Sam moved with a soldier's precision, sweeping his weapon across alternating fields of fire. He continued up the stairs to the next landing and disappeared from view. X used the moment to check the radiation. It was lower here but still high. They had to move quickly.

“All clear,” Sam said a moment later.

X glanced at Magnolia and Murph, in the shadows below. He didn't need to see their faces to know they were terrified.

“Stay here,” he said to them, and he was darting up the stairs before they had a chance to protest. Sam waited outside a heavy door on the next landing. He grabbed the handle and twisted it, but it clicked: locked.

“See if you can hack in,” X said.

Sam searched the wall and brushed off a layer of dust to reveal a rectangular security panel. Pulling a cable from his vest, he uncoiled it and plugged one end into his wrist computer, the other end into the panel.

X was impressed. Sam operated as if he had done this a hundred times before. Hacking into Old World facilities wasn't all that hard if you had the right gear. The minicomputers the divers carried had codes to most of the ITC facilities, and enough juice to jump-start the old tech. It was just a matter of time before they cracked this one.

The wait was shorter than X expected. The panel chirped, and the door creaked open.

“On me,” X said. Rifle up, he swung the door open.

Inside was a space frozen in time. Row after row of dusty tables filled the room. The floor was littered with shattered computer monitors. In the center of it all, a single desiccated corpse stared with empty eye sockets up at the ceiling.

X worked his way down the aisle toward the body and motioned for Sam to take the adjacent row.

“Think any of these computers work?” X asked.

“Probably not, sir.”

X stopped to examine the corpse. There was little left. The clothes had mostly disintegrated, revealing a membrane of dried skin stretched over bones. It was hard to tell whether it had been a man or a woman.

“Murph, Magnolia, get up here,” X said over the comm. He flung his assault rifle over his back and continued toward a rack of file cabinets at the front of the room.

“Murph, see if you can get one of these computers working. Might be a long shot, but it's worth a try.” X checked his mission clock. They were down to the bone: thirty minutes remained.

He pulled open a cabinet and thumbed through the contents. “Magnolia, get over here and help me,” he said. “Sam, you watch the door.”

Magnolia said, “What am I looking for?”

“A map, I don't know. Something that tells us the location of the manufacturing buildings in Hades.”

He pulled out a piece of paper that flaked apart in his hands. The next piece was so faded, he couldn't make out the text.

“God damn it,” X said.

They spent the next fifteen minutes digging through the contents, looking for anything that might give them a lead to the location of the ITC factory in Hades. X tried to think, but it was impossible to concentrate when they were so close to the wire. The
Hive
was waiting, and without anything substantial, he considered telling the team to abandon the search. With the ship running on backup power, Ash still needed time to maneuver into position over Hades and drop all three teams. On top of that, they needed time to actually find the parts and then get back to the
Hive
. He hated the idea of returning with nothing concrete, but they had run out of time.

“Nothing works,” Murph said ruefully.

X scanned the room. It was a dead end. They had gambled and lost, and there was nothing to do but suck it up and return to the
Hive
.

“Fuck it, we're out of time,” he said. “Let's get the hell out of here.” He waved the divers toward the exit, but Magnolia hung back. X could hear her rifling through the file cabinet.

“Wait,” she said. “Maybe I got something.” She pulled a laminated paper from a drawer and held it under her beam. He brushed off the surface.

“Looks like a map,” she said, handing it to X.

X snatched it from her hands and gave it a quick glance. She was right. It was a map of someplace called Chicago, Illinois—and it showed the location of the ITC headquarters. “Chicago” must have been the original name of Hades.

Magnolia reached back inside and pulled a second map. This one gave the location for the factories around the HQ. There were dozens of the domed buildings, and each was labeled. They would tell Samson exactly which structure they were looking for.

“Jackpot,” X said. “Any more?”

Magnolia peered into the open drawer and shook her head.

X stuffed one of the maps into his vest pocket and handed the other to Sam. “Just in case one of us doesn't make it back.”

Sam took it reluctantly.

“Let's get back to ship,” X said. He led the team back toward the building at double time, twice nearly stumbling down the stairs.

The speaker in his helmet crackled to life when he got back to the hallway. The faint sound of an emergency alarm filled the channel, and he could hardly hear the message over the noise.

“Commander X, do you copy? Over.”

X halted and said, “Roger that.”

A flurry of white noise crackled in his ear. He clenched his jaw, waiting anxiously for it to pass.

“Commander, we've been trying to reach you for thirty minutes!”

It was Jordan, and his normally calm voice held an edge of panic.

“You need to get back to the ship ASAP! The storm above Hades is heading your way. You have fifteen minutes to get home. I repeat, fifteen minutes!”

“On our way,” X said. Flicking off his headlamp, he switched on his night vision and peered out the window they had entered through. He could see in green the surging clouds and the lightning that webbed across the horizon. There was something else, too—something in the air that looked like bats, moving away from the storm. It wouldn't be the first time his eyes played tricks on him.

“Got to move!” X shouted, waving his team forward. The static in his earpiece had faded, but the electronic whine of the emergency siren aboard the
Hive
continued as he raced toward the window. When he got there, he slid to a stop. The noise wasn't coming from his comm channel. It was coming from the tiny dots flapping across the skyline.

X stared at the formations of winged creatures sailing toward him. There was no doubt in his mind they were the same creatures that had torn Aaron's body to pieces, but somehow, these had evolved to fly.

“What the hell
are
those things?” Magnolia shouted, pushing past him and staring at the sky. Then, speechless, she slowly backed away until she hit the wall.

“Sirens,” X said, barely comprehending what he was saying. He watched the beasts and the storm beyond in terrible slow motion. For the past few days, he had promised himself he would be strong if he encountered the monsters again, but he never imagined seeing them in the air. Even the sky wasn't safe from the monsters.

The shouts of the team sounded faint in the background. Magnolia had cowered away from the window and was sitting on the floor with her knees to her chest. Murph had crouched right behind her, his visor roving from side to side as he scanned the horizon.

The Sirens worked their way into a solid V formation, turning slightly as the lead creature fixated on Raptor's location. There were a dozen of the pale creatures, flapping their leathery, frayed wings like demons in some fevered nightmare.

X felt a hand on his shoulder and heard Sam's robust voice.

“Commander!” he shouted. “Commander, we have to move!”

“We're too far away from the ship,” Murph shouted back.

Sam shook X again, harder this time.

“We have to get into the sky,” X finally said. “It's our only chance. Captain Ash will pick up our beacons and maneuver the
Hive
accordingly.” He faced his team. “Everyone get outside and deploy boosters. Now!”

“No,” Magnolia said, her entire body shaking. She stood and turned to run. “We have to hide!”

“There's no time” X yelled. “We have to get back to the ship!” He grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her back to the window, then climbed out onto the mound of snow and pulled her with him. Before she could react, he spun her around, punched her booster, and yelled, “Shoot 'em if they get close!”