Nicholas Sansbury Smith
HELL DIVERS
To my agent, David Fugate, who provided excellent feedback and encouragement, and the Blackstone Publishing family for believing in my story. I’m lucky to work with such a talented team.
There is no death, only a change of worlds
ONE
The average life expectancy for a Hell Diver was fifteen jumps. This was Xavier Rodriguez’s ninety-sixth, and he was about to do it with a hangover.
He waited outside the doors of the launch bay in silence, head bowed, palms against the cold steel. The armed guards standing across the hallway might have thought he was praying, but he was just doing his best not to puke.
The night before a dive was always fraught with tension, which sometimes led to poor decisions on the Hive. Normally, Captain Ash turned a blind eye to the diver teams’ debauchery; after all, she was dropping them into the apocalypse to scavenge for parts on the poisoned surface of the Old World. Rarely did all the divers come back. A bit of booze and sex the night before was practically a given.
“Good luck, X,” one of the guards said.
X sucked in a long breath, tied the red bandanna with the white arrow insignia around his head, then pushed open the double doors. The rusted metal screeched across the floor, drawing the gaze of Team Raptor’s three other members. Aaron, Rodney, and Will were already suiting up near the lockers.
At the far end of the room, past the dozen plastic domes of the launch tubes, stood a few divers from Team Angel. They were easy to spot in the crowd of technicians and support staff gathered along the wall. Engineers, soldiers, thieves: divers had a wide variety of skill sets, and they would stand out like a flame in the dark even without their red jumpsuits.
He gave the room a quick scan. Team Apollo hadn’t shown up this time. That was fine with X; he didn’t like being watched anyway.
“Nice of you to make it, X!” Will shouted. The newest member of Raptor threw on his dented chest armor and looked X up and down as he walked over to his locker.
“You look like hell, sir,” Will said, chuckling.
“Nothing a few stims can’t handle,” X replied.
He didn’t need to look in a mirror to know that Will was right. X looked much older than his thirty-eight years. Crow’s-feet had formed around his eyes from too much squinting, and his habitual frown had carved its way into his cheeks and forehead. At least he still had most of his teeth. But for his unusually white smile, he would have looked a good deal worse.
X stopped at his locker for another ritual. Tracing a finger over his name tag, he took a moment to remember the divers who had come before him. It was growing more difficult by the day. Some days he couldn’t remember some of their faces at all. But today that was partly a product of his pounding headache.
Opening the door to his locker, he searched the top shelf for a bottle of the stimulants he had discovered on a dive a few months back. The precious tablets—one more thing that was impossible to make on the Hive—were worth their weight in gold.
X felt the burn of eyes on him as he swallowed the tablets. The tall, lean figure of his best friend, Aaron Everhart, filled his peripheral vision.
“Just say it,” X said.
“I thought you said you were cutting back on the ’shine.”
There was no point in lying; Aaron would see right through it.
“Haven’t gotten around to it yet,” X said.
Aaron held his gaze and frowned. “You sure you’re up—”
X held up a hand, as if about to scold a rookie diver. “I’m fine, man.”
After a tense moment, X went to check on Rodney, who was pushing one dark brown foot through his black bodysuit. He glanced up, his blank, emotionless gaze seeming to look through X rather than at him. He was the third most experienced diver on the ship. The work had hardened him over the years, and sometimes X had the passing thought that Rodney wanted to die. One of the doctors had asked X the same question after his last health exam. But who could say? Deep down, all Hell Divers must have at least some hint of a death wish.
“Listen up, everyone,” X said. “I just came from Command. Captain Ash said the skies look good. No sign of electrical storms over the drop zone.”
“What’s on the list this time?” Rodney asked.
“Nuclear fuel cells. That’s it. The captain was very clear.”
“Man, what happened to searching for other shit?” Will said. “I miss the days of scavenging for real treasure.”
X glared at him. “You should be happy that today’s dive is over a green zone—less chance of radiation on the surface.”
“I guess I could get used to these green-zone dives,” Will said. “Maybe I’ll live to become a legend like you someday.” He flashed a grin that evaporated under X’s scowl.
Will was about as young as X had been when he joined the Hell Divers, and just about as naive.
Hard to believe that was twenty years ago. X wasn’t a legend by any stretch of the imagination, but he did have more successful jumps under his belt than any other diver in history. The only one who came close was a guy named Rick Weaver on their sister ship, Ares. Last X heard, Weaver was still diving.
Throwing back his head, X swallowed two more stims. He washed them down with a swig from his water bottle, grimaced, and faced Aaron.
“How’s the little man doing?” he said. “I haven’t seen Tin for a few weeks.”
“Michael’s growing up way too fast,” Aaron said. “He just got accepted into engineering school a couple of weeks ago. They took him two years early.” X caught the trace of sadness in Aaron’s sharp blue eyes, but he wasn’t sure what it meant. Was it because he hadn’t made an effort to see Tin lately, or because Tin had decided to become an engineer instead of a Hell Diver?
“You didn’t think he would want to follow in your footsteps, did you?” X asked.
“Aw, hell no!” Aaron said. His blond eyebrows scrunched together. “Would never want this life for my boy.”
“Can’t say as I blame you.”
Aaron hesitated, his lips forming a thin line. “I wasn’t going to mention it, but you missed his birthday.”
“Shit,” X muttered. “When did he turn nine?”
Aaron’s brows scrunched again. “He’s ten.”
X looked at the floor. “I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to him after we get back.”
Aaron shut his locker. “I won’t hold my breath.”
There was nothing else to say, really. X needed to prove himself, not make another hollow promise. He grabbed his well-worn bodysuit from his locker and slipped his legs through. The internal padding conformed to his musculature as he zipped up the front. Aaron handed him the black matte armor that shielded his vital organs. The piece felt light in his hands, but the titanium outer shell could stop a shotgun blast. The chest plate had saved him from broken bones or worse on countless dives.
Sliding the armor over his head, he sucked in his stomach and fastened the clasps on both sides. It was snug, molded to fit the body of a much younger man, long before his metabolism slowed and his bad habits caught up with him.
The titanium leg and arm guards didn’t fit much better. He clipped them over old muscle covered in a layer of fat that seemed to cling on no matter how many push-ups or laps around the ship he did. After affixing the guards, he slid the helmet on. He completed the routine by inserting his battery unit into the socket on his chest plate. It flickered to life, spreading a cool blue glow over the dull black armor. The equipment was old, like just about everything else on the ship, but the pieces fit together perfectly and protected him from the hostile conditions of a dive.