Commander Weaver watched the walls around him with a sense of horrified awe. They shook and rattled as if some giant outside were swinging a wrecking ball against them. Bits of acoustic paneling and dust rained down from the ceiling, covering him in white flakes.
He sat on the stairs to the second floor, his head bowed between his legs as if he were praying. Not that he was—he could probably count on one hand the times in his life he had actually prayed. It did seem a miracle, though, that he and Jones had survived the storm even this long.
“Sir, top floor is clear,” Jones said from the landing above. “There’s nothing here. No sign of life, no cells, and no pressure valves. Nothing.”
“I could have sworn I heard something,” Weaver said. He shook his head, his senses still rattled from the fall he took before Jones yanked him inside the building.
Jones continued down the stairs and sat down beside Weaver on the step. They sat in silence for several moments, listening to the howl of the storm outside. Jones whispered something that Weaver caught only a piece of.
“What’d you say?”
“A prayer,” Jones replied. “A Christian prayer.”
“You really believe in that stuff?”
Jones pointed to the cross on his helmet. “If we make it back to Ares, I’ll tell you about it sometime.” He twisted around to face Weaver. “You sure you’re okay, sir?” he asked, his dark eyes searching Weaver’s in the blue glow of their battery units.
“I’m fine,” Weaver lied. He took a sip from the hydration straw in his helmet. The sterilized water tasted like halide tablets, but it would have to do. Half their supplies were sitting in a crate at the bottom of a pit full of monsters.
He hoped the other crate had made it to the surface safely. It was their only chance to save Ares and get back home. Without it, they would have no way to get enough power cells or the pressure valves back up to the ship. There was simply no way he and Jones could carry everything on the return trip—their personal helium ascenders would never lift it all. The valves for the eighty-megawatt reactors weighed forty pounds each, and Weaver still had to find another booster. Otherwise, he would be stranded down here forever. Captain Willis could never risk landing to scoop him back up.
Weaver grunted, his stomach churning from the pills he had ingested. They were supposed to turn radioactive snow into safe drinking water, but he had his doubts. His insides were already starting to ache.
“What do you think those things were back there?” Jones asked. He pulled the blaster from the holster on his leg and brushed off a layer of ice.
“No idea,” Weaver said. “But I’m calling them Sirens.”
“How’s that?”
“Yeah,” Weaver replied. “Those noises they made were a dead ringer for a level-five emergency siren on the ship.”
Jones looked up at the ceiling, then back to Weaver. “How does anything survive down here in this radiation?”
Weaver shook his head. “I don’t know. But they obviously did, okay? Now, stop asking me questions. We need to focus on getting the hell out of here and getting back to Ares.” He rose to his feet and paced up and down the steps.
“We wouldn’t last a minute in that storm,” Jones called after him. “We have to wait it out.”
“The ship won’t wait for us forever,” Weaver grumbled.
Jones was staring at the steel door at the bottom of the stairs. “I know, sir. But with all due respect, if we die in that storm, Ares is doomed anyway.”
“The moment it lets up, we move.”
“Understood,” Jones replied with a sigh. He unfastened his belt with a click and pulled his waste bags from a pouch in his pants. “Thank God for our helmets,” he said as he tossed the bags onto the landing above. “I’d hate to get a whiff of one of those.”
On any other mission, the comment would have gotten a laugh from Weaver, but it didn’t penetrate the cloud of worry.
“You hear that?” Jones said.
“What?” Weaver jolted alert, half expecting to hear the eerie wailing he had heard before the storm hit. He put a hand against the vibrating wall. The wind had risen to a steady roar.
Weaver took a step backward as a crack spider-webbed up the concrete stairwell. The violent rattle of metal siding pulled his gaze to the ceiling on the second floor. He heard Jones shouting, but his voice was muffled by the sounds of the building coming apart. The concrete stairwell walls around Weaver and Jones were fracturing under the onslaught of tornadic wind.
Weaver nearly stumbled down the steps to avoid a falling chunk of concrete. He braced himself against the opposite wall and watched in horror as a wide crack zigzagged up the stairs, breaking them in half.
“Run!” he shouted. But looking up, he saw there was nowhere to go. The metal roof was rattling so hard, it was only a matter of time before the storm peeled it back and sucked them right out the top.
Jones hesitated on the broken stairs, huddling against a wall and covering his head with his arms. With nowhere to hide, there was only one option.
Weaver pressed his left palm against the wall for balance. With his right hand, he fished in the cargo pocket on his left leg and pulled a coil of 550-pound test paracord. Uncoiling it, he handed one end to Jones.
“Tie it on your belt!” Weaver yelled.
“No,” Jones said, waving it away. “We can’t go out there!”
“We take our chances out there or we get crushed in here! Pick your poison!”
Above them, a section of roof peeled back like the skin of an orange. They were out of time.
“That’s an order!” Weaver shouted.
Jones took the end of rope from his hand and tied it in a figure eight to his belt. Grabbing the door handle, Weaver yelled for Jones to follow. He put his shoulder against it, using all his strength to push it open. The concrete walls of the staircase broke off behind them, the fragments tumbling down the stairs and narrowly missing Jones. The building swayed, throwing them against each other in the concrete stairwell as the structural metal gave out a loud groan.
Weaver gritted his teeth, wishing he could remember the prayer Jones had whispered a few minutes earlier. He tried to plant his boots as he stepped outside, but the wind took him the moment his feet were out the door. The rope on his belt tightened and yanked Jones from the doorway. The next instant, both divers were sucked into the white void, their screams swallowed up by the howling wind.
* * * * *
X gave up waiting for Tin to come out of his room.
“I’ll be back later,” he said on his way out. He locked the door behind him and headed down the corridor. His destination wasn’t far. The scruffy bar called the Wingman was only a few passages away.
He walked with his hands in his pockets, eyes downcast. The white flicker of a single light told him he was close. It was like the beacon of a lighthouse, warning ships away from the shore. X ignored the warning every time.
The familiar scratchy mechanical sound of an ancient CD player greeted him at the entrance. Hearing the thumping guitar strains of “All Along the Watchtower,” he grinned. The centuries-old Jimi Hendrix tune reflected his mood perfectly.
He nodded at Marv, a middle-aged former Militia soldier who had bought the shit hole of a bar when his term was up.
“Evenin’, X. What can I do you out of?” The burly barkeep finished wiping a glass with a rag of dubious cleanliness.
“Usual.” X scanned the faces of the other three patrons, recognizing none of them. Fine with him—he wasn’t here to talk.
Marv muttered something to a woman at the end of the bar—she was in X’s seat. She grabbed her glass, gave X a scowl, and squeezed past him. He took her place and reached for the mug of ’shine that Marv had already set out. Two gulps, and it was gone. He welcomed the burn—welcomed feeling of any kind after the week he’d had.
X hit his chest with a fist and signaled for another. He didn’t care that Captain Ash had ordered him to stay away from the ’shine tonight. With the liquid warming his gut, he felt happier than he had in a while. And that, he knew, was a bad sign.
“Not taking it slow tonight?” Marv asked.
“Got things to forget.”
He filled the glass to the rim this time. “Don’t we all, brother!”
“I’ll drink to that,” said the man sitting to his right.
X didn’t reply. He stared at the only decoration in the bar—a painting of some ancient battle. Men wearing plate armor swung swords at one another, spilling blood on the grassy fields of a place forgotten to time.
“You’re a Hell Diver, aren’t ya’?” the man asked.
Slamming down the liquid, X tilted his head ever so slightly to catch a glimpse of the talkative patron. He was middle-aged, with a rough face and black dreadlocks down past his shoulders. He looked familiar, but X wasn’t here to think about the past. He wasn’t here to think at all.
“The red jumpsuit give it away?” X said reluctantly. He tapped his empty glass on the table and anticipated the man’s next question.
“I knew some Hell Divers once. They said you guys don’t talk about what you see, but come on, man.” He nudged X in the side. “I’ll buy you a drink.”
X didn’t like that. His body was the only real estate he truly owned on the cramped airship. Invade, and there were apt to be problems.
“They were right,” X said.
The man squinted. “Hey, I’ve seen you before. You’ve been around a while. I know you’ve, you know, seen things.”
Marv froze, his hand stuck inside another glass with the same dingy rag. He kept an eye on X but didn’t say a word.
“Come on, just one story,” the drunk wheedled. “I heard you guys found life down there recently.” He wiggled a finger again, back and forth. “But not human life.”
X didn’t like that, either. Rumors annoyed him. His vision began to fade as the ’shine took hold of his senses. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he considered telling the man about the beasts down on the surface, just to see his reaction.
Marv cut in. “Why don’t you get going, pal. You’ve had enough ’shine tonight.”
“Wasn’t talking to you,” the man replied. Shifting his glazed eyes back to X, he reached out as if to touch the scar above his eye. “I know you got some stories in you.”
X grabbed his hand, stood, and whipped the arm back around into a hammer lock. Now he remembered where he had seen him. It was the same guy from the hallway earlier, who had mouthed off to the Militia soldiers.
The man resisted, jerking his arm, but X was quick, pushing the trapped hand farther up between the shoulder blades as his other hand bounced the man’s head off the table. The smack of bone on wood resounded in the small space.
The man struggled to get free. “Lay off, man! You think you’re so goddamn special, don’t you? You got any idea how the rest of us live? I think …”
X hiked the arm up a little higher, and the words trailed off into a whimper. The other customers scattered from the bar.
“You weren’t thinking all that much,” X said. As suddenly as he had grabbed the man, he loosened his grip and let him go.
“Shit,” Marv said. Putting the “clean” mug down on the bar, he readied the rag for messier duty.
A beat later, the drunk slid his face off the bar. He staggered backward, murmuring a string of profanities.
Marv mopped up the streak of blood with a quick sweep. “Now, hike your ass out of here!”
The man stumbled away, cupping his mouth with his right hand and flashing the middle finger of his left. He mumbled something, X heard only the tail end of it.
“My dad was never like you.”
X shook his head and plopped back down on the stool. “Sorry, Marv,” he said, watching the man limp into the hallway.
“Guy had it coming,” Marv said, running the rag over the counter one more time. “But you’re picking up his tab since you’re the reason he didn’t pay.”
“Yeah. No problem,” X replied, downing a final drink. He tossed his credit voucher onto the table and waited for Marv to run it. “Don’t happen to know who that guy was, do you?”
“Only been here a few times.” Marv slid the voucher back to X, then looked at the ceiling, deep in thought. “Trey? No, Travis. I think his name’s Travis. Yeah, that’s it.”
X had known a Travis once, the son of a former diver on Team Angel. Had that kid really grown up to be such a waste of space? X had never bothered to look in on him after his father died. Was that what he was mumbling about?
His mind was pleasantly clouded from the ’shine. It was time for him to go home. In a few short hours, he would meet his new team—more divers that he would likely be leading to their death.
* * * * *
Travis Eddie stumbled down the rungs to the lower decks, putting a hand to the goose egg on his forehead. He was drunk and angry—an unstable combination. He felt at the threshold of his self-control, but he couldn’t let the gasket blow. He had to stay in control. With two strikes on his record, he was one away from the brig. And if he ended up there, he could never help the lower-deckers or his brother. Rotting away down here was unendurable, but the thought of the dark gallows—now, that made him shudder.
No. He was not going out like that. Not before he saw some changes on the ship.
He stopped at the bottom of the stairwell and flicked a dreadlock over his shoulder. The moment he opened the hatch to the first compartment, he heard the sporadic coughing of sick passengers.
Hundreds of bunks lined each wall as far as he could see. Some were surrounded by metal partitions; others were blocked off by nothing more substantial than blankets thrown over makeshift clothing racks. For most, a thin piece of muslin cloth was the only privacy they had from the other bunks.
This was the first of two compartments housing the four hundred lower-deckers. He was lucky to live in the first. The second contained those afflicted with radiation poisoning. He made his way over there only if he had to. The suffering was almost too much to bear. Because of leaking radiation, more and more children were born with deformities. Those who survived early childhood rarely left the second compartment, where they lived like caged animals, confined to their filthy mattresses and forced to rely on their parents.
Captain Ash and her staff rarely ventured down here. Maybe it was easier to live up there and forget about those below. Travis couldn’t deny that Ash had made some changes as captain: increased rations, a doctor who made rounds every other day, a crew of engineers who worked to seal off the radiation. But they were hardly enough, and there was more food to go around, but it never seemed to make it down here.
Travis felt a silent scream of rage well up inside him. It wasn’t right. No one should have to live like this, and yet, this was how it had been his entire life.
Drawing in a deep breath, he fought the spins from the ’shine. He shouldn’t have mouthed off to the Hell Diver. That was a mistake. Next time, he would be smarter.
After the nausea passed, he used the nighttime glow from weak LEDs overhead to navigate his way to his bed. There was just enough light to show him the gaunt faces of those already asleep. Most, like him, were between the ages of twenty and thirty, though they looked twice that. Anyone much older didn’t live long—not down here. Flu and cancer were rampant. The average life expectancy was right around thirty-seven years, so he had maybe a decade of this to look forward to.
Travis passed a small candlelight vigil where a dozen monks meditated. He stumbled past them. He had lost his faith a long time ago.
Ahead, Travis saw a line snaking toward the centrally located shit cans. He joined the end of the line. The single metal hatch squeaked open, then shut, as each passenger did what they could to keep the putrid smells mostly isolated by shutting the hatch when done. The trick was to take a deep breath just before entering and hold it as long as you could. Then you could postpone the real suffering until hypoxia forced you to let it out and inhale the stink.
When it was finally his turn, drunk enough to forget this dictum, he staggered inside and almost vomited. With no air circulation, the stench of ammonia and excrement made his eyes water. He squeezed between two men and pissed into one of a dozen wide holes cut into the floor. From there, tubes sucked the waste through the bowels of the ship, to the digester, where it became methane gas for cooking, and compost for the farm. It was best not to think too hard about how they managed the biomass on the Hive.
No one inside spoke; they were too busy holding their breath. Travis bore down, voiding his bladder as fast as he could, then zipped up and staggered back out into the relatively clear air of the corridor. He hurried back to his bed and plopped onto his back. He didn’t bother pulling the curtain across the railing he had fashioned from salvaged wire.
“That you, Trav?” said a rough voice.
He glanced over to the next bed. Alex was sitting up in his bunk, with his legs thrown over the side. The scarf he normally wore over his face hung loosely over his chest. In the weak light, Travis could see the tight skin on his friend’s right cheek and chin, where doctors had removed the melanomal cancer. Ten years ago, Alex had been one of the best-looking kids on the ship, but the cancer had taken part of his face—and, Travis sometimes thought, part of his mind.
“What happened to your head?” Alex asked.
“Ran into a Hell Diver.”
“You kiddin’ me, man? One that knew your dad?”
Travis shook his head. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
Alex snorted. “Whatever. They’re all the same. And they’re all going to pay.”
Travis closed his eyes. He didn’t want to think about his dad right now, or what he must do to help the lower-deckers. Nor did he want to talk to his crazy-ass friend. He just wanted to sleep off the ’shine so he could visit his brother in the morning.