X pushed his way through the frantic hubbub outside the med ward. Most people made way when they saw his uniform. One man, however, eyed him with blatant resentment. As if X’s ninety-six jumps didn’t count for dirt. As if X was gaming the system.
Well, he was. But he didn’t care.
Tin was somewhere inside the overcrowded clinic, and X was desperate to find him. He scanned the beds of burned or wounded patients, hesitating every time he saw a kid. Some were almost unrecognizable under the bloody rags covering their wounds.
X grimaced and kept moving.
“Tin!” he yelled, his voice hardening. “Tin, where are you?”
A weak tug on his sleeve pulled him toward a shadowy hallway. Tin’s friend Layla was standing there, her cheeks shiny with tears. “Over here,” she whimpered.
X hurried after her, passing more injured patients. His gut tightened when he saw Tin with a bandage wrapped around his head. He was hunched over an old man’s bedside, hands clamped down over the patient’s thigh.
“Are you hurt?” X said, rushing over.
Tin shook his head and glanced back down at the man. He pushed harder, eliciting a groan of agony.
“Shit,” X said. “Let me.” Brushing Tin’s hands aside, he saw the deep gash and quickly applied pressure. Blood seeped around his palms, staining everything red.
“He’s bleeding out,” X said. “Where the hell are the nurses and docs?”
His words fell on deaf ears. The few medical workers were doing triage—busy saving people they could actually save, and leaving the old, weak, and mortally wounded to die. He knew because in their shoes he would do the same thing. It was the reality of working with limited resources. Life-and-death decisions were made on the fly, and efficient triage meant that some people just weren’t going to make it.
Realizing now that his efforts were futile, X let up on the gushing wound. The man stared at the ceiling with blank eyes. His chest moved up and down twice more before his gasps for air weakened to nothing.
X wiped his blood-soaked hands on his red uniform, looked at Tin, and frowned. “Sorry, kid.”
The boy didn’t reply. He bent over and grabbed something from below the bed that X couldn’t see.
“Commander!” a voice boomed above the confusion.
He turned to see a Militia soldier in gray fatigues, running down the hallway. The mirrored visor on his riot helmet was flipped up, and X saw the urgency in his eyes.
“Commander, Captain Ash has requested all Hell Divers meet on the bridge immediately.”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Sir, my orders are to escort you to—”
“I said I’ll be there,” X snarled.
The soldier nodded and hurried away. Looking down at Tin, X missed his best friend more than ever. The boy had removed his bandage and replaced it with the tinfoil hat.
“You sure you’re okay?” X asked, looking into his eyes, checking the pupils.
Tin nodded and straightened his hat. But his eyes couldn’t hide the truth: that he had just seen someone die and that he wasn’t okay. After everything the kid had been through, X wasn’t sure he would ever be okay again.
“You stay with Layla and her family until I get back, okay?”
Tin nodded again.
X imagined Rhonda’s disapproving frown as he patted the boy on the shoulder and turned to double-time it back to the bridge. She never did understand the oath he had sworn to the Hive. Or, perhaps selfishly, she didn’t want to. Aaron would have understood, though. For a Hell Diver, duty to the ship came before everything else.
* * * * *
If not for the mission clock on his HUD, Weaver wouldn’t have known that night had fallen. He sat with his legs hanging off a pile of rubble, watching Ares burn in the distance. Tendrils of flames reached toward the sky.
His body felt numb—whether from the fatigue, the cold, or the emotions swirling through him, he couldn’t say. He remembered wondering what it would be like to be the last man on earth. Now he knew. Even if the Hive was still out there, he was the only man on the surface.
The cries of the Sirens reverberated through the city, but he paid them little attention. If they came now, he wouldn’t run. There was no reason to carry on. Everything had changed when Ares came crashing down to earth. His wife and kids were gone, along with every human he had ever known.
Before this dive, he had been thinking about asking for a transfer to the Militia so he could spend more time with his family. Usually, Hell Divers kept jumping until their luck finally ran out. But if Weaver were to die, his experience would die with him. He had done this his entire life. He had put his time in, fulfilled his duty. That would have been his pitch to Captain Willis.
An explosion ripped through the burning debris—a painful reminder that none of that mattered now. The glare dazzled him momentarily, and he closed his eyes to block out the nightmare for a few seconds—only to have a memory of his family reassemble in his mind.
He could see Kayla and Cassie vividly. Both girls sat on the living room floor of his cramped apartment, their freckled faces bright in the glow of candles from Jennifer’s birthday cake.
Another blast roared in the distance, but Weaver kept his eyes closed, trying to stay back in the sky with his family as long as he could. After a few minutes, he was only vaguely aware of the burning ship.
“Happy birthday, beautiful.” Weaver heard his own voice in his head and saw his wife turn and smile that same perfect smile he had fallen in love with twenty years ago.
“Come over and help me blow out these candles!” he remembered her saying.
In the memory, Weaver walked to the table and put his arms around his daughters. Jennifer blew out a weak breath and frowned, looking to Kayla and Cassie.
“Can you girls help me?” she said.
His daughters leaned in and blew with every bit of breath in their lungs. Weaver recalled his own smile, and how odd it had felt at the time.
Kayla and Cassie had laughed and looked up at him. But something was different now. There was something wrong with the cake in his memory. The candles were burning out of control, the wax leaking onto the vanilla frosting. He could see Jennifer’s smile relax with the rest of her features, and then her cheeks contorted, her skin melting and falling away from her jaw.
The once-happy memory now a nightmare, Weaver wanted to open his eyes, wanted to make it stop. But if he did, he would open them to the real nightmare of his home and family gone. There was no escaping it.
Tears rolled down his dry skin, and he watched in horror as his daughters’ faces softened and peeled away from their bones. Their clothes caught fire, and they slumped to the ground. The shriek of a Siren ripped their burning bodies away from his mind, and his eyes finally snapped open.
“No!” Weaver shouted. “No!”
He gasped for air, clutching at the armor over his chest with one hand and pushing at the ground with the other. Rising to his feet, he looked out over the bluff. Pinpricks of red light surrounded the charred remnants of the airship.
“I’m sorry,” Weaver whispered. “God, I’m so sorry for …” He choked on his words, distracted by a blur of motion in the sky. Something swooped from the clouds and soared over the field of embers, vanishing in the plumes of smoke.
Weaver fumbled for his binos, wondering if he was really losing his mind. He pulled them from his vest and zoomed in on the debris for the first time. Scattered coals glowed everywhere he looked. Pieces of shrapnel, hunks of metal … His breath caught at the sight of smoldering bodies.
“My girls,” he murmured. “My beautiful baby girls.” He felt like tossing the binos and screaming at the top of his lungs, but another flash of movement streaked over the embers. He followed a dark outline to the edge of the field, where it dropped to the ground. Another brilliant explosion ripped through Ares, spreading a curtain of light over the wreckage.
Weaver shielded his helmet with one hand and waited a moment for the brilliance to pass. When the light began to recede, he brought the binos to his visor and searched the field. A Siren stood over one of the embers, but this one was different. Leathery wings hung at its sides. It dropped to all fours and hunched its back, and the spiked vertebrae split in half, swallowing the wings like a mouthful of teeth closing over some morsel. The monster let out a screech, and a cacophony of wails answered from the sky.
Within seconds, a squadron of Sirens was soaring through the smoke and wheeling over the smoking bodies. He staggered closer to the edge of the bluff.
The realization hit him harder than a crosswind on a dive. The creatures were here to scavenge. Waiting for the fires to die down so they could feed on the burned bodies of his family and the other dead passengers of Ares. He started to feel his body for the first time since the crash.
When the numbness had finally passed, and the anger of a man who had lost everything took hold, he swung open the cylinder of his revolver and, with cold, stiff fingers, loaded the last of his bullets. Then he tapped his minicomputer to run a diagnostic on his suit. The cracked screen was frozen solid.
It didn’t matter. All he needed was enough battery to get to the wreckage and search it for his family so he could give them a proper burial. He would rather the Sirens ripped him apart than let them feed on his girls’ remains.
Weaver pushed the final bullet into the cylinder of his revolver and closed it. Trekking toward the wreckage, he tried to remember the words from Jones’ prayer, but after a few minutes he gave up. “I’m coming home, girls,” he whispered. “I’m finally coming home.”
* * * * *
Captain Ash ran through the hallways on her way to engineering. She couldn’t remember the last time she had visited Samson in the filthy compartment tucked just inside the hull of the Hive, but she couldn’t wait for him to report in. She needed to know their situation now.
The closest entrance was a two-minute walk from the bridge. Her presence drew the gaze of every resident flowing through the halls. Most were gazes of resentment and anger. They wanted someone to blame for the power shortages, the radiation poisoning, the meager rations. Naturally, that blame rested with her, even though she had done everything in her power to keep the lower-deckers alive. She had given them a third of the livestock from the farm, given them their own doctor—even given them extra rations. None of that seemed to matter to anyone. Most of them didn’t have any real grasp of how the ship operated. In the past, they had reverted to riots, and there were rumors of another rebellion brewing. She turned a blind eye to the black-market goods they sold, but violence was the one thing she absolutely would not tolerate on her ship.
Ash walked with her head held high because in the end, it didn’t matter what they thought, so long as she kept them alive. It was the burden many leaders had carried before her, and she shouldered it without complaining. One day, they would thank her when she led them to a new home, one with real ground beneath their feet and the sun overhead. But that dream seemed far away now.
A soldier standing guard outside engineering threw a quick salute as Ash and her armed escort approached. The entrance was tucked away in a dimly lit hallway off the main corridor.
“Captain,” the man said. He raised a clipboard. “I wasn’t expecting anyone from command this morning.”
“Samson doesn’t know I’m coming.”
“No problem, ma’am,” the guard said. He waved his key card over the security panel and hoisted the door open.
“Stay here,” Ash said to the two soldiers. The door sealed behind her with a metallic snick, and she could hear the hum and clank of the engine compartment. The noise reminded her that she was about to enter a world of grease and smoke—a world much different from the spotless white bridge.
Samson waited at the bottom of the staircase with his hands on his wide hips.
He scowled and raised his brows as if to say, I told you so. Ash didn’t have time to argue with him. She needed to know their situation, and she needed the information ten minutes ago.
“Talk to me,” she said. “How bad is it?”
Samson grunted. “Bad, Captain. Really bad. We’re running on battery power. I was forced to shut down all the reactors. There are several leaks.” He paused and massaged his forehead. “They’re contained—for now. But I lost four men. They sacrificed themselves so the radiation wouldn’t kill everyone aboard.”
Ash felt the anger threaten to take hold again. “I’m sorry, Samson …”
He held up a hand. “I don’t think you understand, Captain. The damage to the ship is critical. I’m not sure I can fix her this time. Six of our gas bladders ruptured from a power surge. We lost a thousand cubic feet of helium, and as you know, it takes time to produce more through our usual collection method.”
Ash could hardly believe what she was hearing. How could the ship go from being in its best in years, to worst?
Hades, that’s how.
Burying her misgivings over the ill-fated rescue attempt, she said, “How much longer until the gas bladders are fixed and refilled?”
Samson rubbed his eye, leaving a streak of grease. “I … I don’t know. Harvesting helium isn’t easy, Captain.”
“Then show me the damage.”
“With all due respect, I don’t have time for a tour,” Samson said. “I need to fix our ship!”
“And I need to see the damage so I know what I’m dealing with.”
“Suit yourself,” he huffed. He led her across the small lobby and into the offices. Row after row of faded metal desks filled the room, but only two engineers were working there.
Samson stopped at a door on the opposite end of the room and lifted a breathing apparatus from a cabinet on the wall. He handed it to the captain. “There was a fire earlier. Might still be smoke.”
Ash slid the mask over her face and tightened the band around her ponytail. Samson waved at the security camera and gave a thumbs-up. The door chirped and swung open.
A wave of heat rolled over them as they stepped onto the catwalk extending over the machinery. The hiss of steam and clack of parts that needed grease filled the room.
Engineers in light-blue coveralls clustered around the generators, checking displays and gauges to make sure the turbines were working properly, oblivious of the observers above them. They each had a task that, combined with the others, kept the Hive flying.
Samson moved to the other side of the mezzanine and pointed to a metal block, covered in white foam, on the aft starboard corner of the room. “One of the generators was destroyed,” he said. “There’s no fixing it. But it’s the reactors I’m most worried about.”
As they continued down the walkway, Ash imagined the thermal energy flowing from the reactors belowdecks to the generators. The steam produced by the heat turned a turbine inside as it passed, and the rotary motion created the electricity. The electric power then traveled through miles of conduit that stretched throughout the bowels of the ship, to all the places it was needed. That energy fed everything from the ship’s motors to the lights above her head. The nuclear reactors were the heart of the ship, powering all its systems.
“All but one of our reactors has been damaged,” Samson said. “The pressure valves on reactors two through eight are stuck. Even if I can unstick them, they still have to be replaced.” He pointed toward the west wall. “I have a team belowdecks now, and I’ve already diverted power from every source I can, but it’s not going to be enough.”
Ash followed Samson’s pudgy finger, which pointed to an open hatch. An engineer in a space suit crawled out of the opening and dropped to the deck. Even from a distance, she could see the grease and ash that covered him. The worker removed his helmet and broke into a coughing fit. A medic wearing a red cross on his arm rushed over, pulled an oxygen mask out, and helped the injured man slide it over his face.
Ash blinked, taking it all in. The damage was beyond comprehension. Her effort to save Ares may well have doomed her own ship.
“My God,” she murmured.
“No,” Samson muttered. “Not even God can save us if we don’t get the reactors back online. Until then, I’m requesting we shut down every noncritical system on the ship and divert that power to the turbofans, the farm, and the water treatment plant. It’s time to get out the candles.”
“Are you sure that’s the only way? There’s been increasing unrest lately. A blackout will only make things worse. We could face another—”
“Damn it, Captain, we need to shut down the power to the lower decks. Every dwelling, every store—everything that’s nonessential. The mechanical threats are worse than any human threat on board.”
Ash took a few seconds to consider the ramifications of Samson’s request, then nodded. “I’ll have Jordan put out the order to increase security on the ship. Every Militia soldier will be put on patrol and sentry duty.”
“Good,” Samson said. He pulled a folded piece of paper from his coveralls. “I’ve put together a list of what I need to get the reactors back online. In the meantime, the remaining gas bladders will keep us in the air—as long as we don’t lose another one. We can only run on backup power for about forty-eight hours.”
Ash took the list and turned away from the railing. “I’ll tell Jordan to plot us a course to the closest location for the items on your list.”
He held up his hand. “We won’t make it far. The turbofans and rudders will drain the backup power faster if we try.” He paused and gave her a meaningful look. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m afraid our only option is a dive into Hades.”
The lesion in Ash’s throat burned, and her gut ached. Resisting the urge to put her hand to her stomach, she clenched her jaw and looked out over the compartment. Everything had changed in the blink of an eye. Ares was gone. The Hive was dying, and she was going to have to do exactly what Captain Willis had been forced to do. She finally understood. Willis hadn’t been crazy, or even foolhardy—just desperate. They had all just been trying to survive—like her, trying to save their people.
“How long can you hold off on diverting energy from the noncritical functions?” Ash asked.
“I’d like to do it ASAP,” Samson said. “But if you need time …” He glanced down at his watch. “I’d say you have nine hours, tops.”
“I’ll make an announcement tomorrow morning, first thing. You stay close to the damn radio, Samson. We may be forced to turn those reactors back on. You got it?”
The engineer nodded again, his dewlaps jiggling. “I’ll keep things running the best I can until then.” He pushed off the railing. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get down there with my crew.”
Taking his place at the railing, she gripped the warm metal and stared at the hatch that led down to the reactors. The injured engineer was slipping his helmet back on and preparing to reenter the tunnel. They all had jobs to do, and like the engineers below, Captain Maria Ash had to get on with hers. She had a ship to command, a riot to forestall, and over five hundred souls to protect.