Hell Divers X: Fallout (eBook)

PROLOGUE

Twenty-one years ago . . .

The Hive carved through altocumulus clouds twenty thousand feet above the surface. The nuclear-powered helium airship flew south, toward a zone never explored since the bombs of World War III turned the planet into a wasteland and created ongoing electrical storms that blotted out the sun.

Two hundred forty years had passed since civilization ended. For most of the 1,042 survivors living aboard the airship, the past wasn’t a daily thought. Most passengers didn’t think about the Old World at all—only how to survive another day on the airship.

But not everyone aboard remained in the dark about conditions on the surface. The Hell Diver teams knew exactly what was down there on that blasted surface.

In the launch bay of the airship, Hell Diver Xavier “X” Rodriguez sneaked a nip of shine from his flask and slipped it back into his locker while his best friend and fellow diver Aaron Everhart pulled on his chest armor rig.

“I saw that,” Aaron called out.

“What?” X asked.

Aaron secured the side clips and turned his blue eyes on X. There was no judgment there today, just disappointment.

“Sorry, man, just taking the edge off,” X said.

“You always say that.”

Aaron snapped the last closure on his chest rig and went to the crate, guarded by two militia soldiers, in the center of the launch bay. The soldiers took out a key and opened it, then retreated to the double doors, where they waited with crossbows cradled.

X and Aaron pulled out weapons and ammunition from the cache normally stored in the airship’s armory.

Each diver took a blaster—a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun with a third barrel for a flare. X picked out his favorite assault rifle. It had a scratched barrel, and duct tape on the grip. He stuffed extra magazines into the carrier vest over his armor.

Aaron pulled out a bolt-action rifle and slotted rounds into a bandolier draped like a sash over one shoulder.

Both divers stuffed extra shotgun shells into every pouch and pocket. Where they were diving, they just might need every round.

Normally X didn’t feel predive jitters. He had eighty-one jumps under his belt, most of them in green zones—areas where radiation was minimal and the biggest concerns were failed chutes in the air, and sinkholes on the surface.

But today was different. Today they were diving into a yellow zone that no one had seen for over two centuries.

If Aaron was nervous, he wasn’t showing it. The tall, lean diver ran through the checklist—if anything wasn’t working right, now was the last chance to fix it.

“You good?” X asked.

“Just another jump into paradise, right?”

“Not exactly,” called out a voice.

Both men straightened as Captain Maria Ash strode across the room, moving fast and with purpose, as usual.

“We’re moving into position now,” said the captain. “Our surface sensors are sending back some disturbing data.”

“This isn’t a yellow zone, is it?” X asked.

The captain shook her head. “The electrical storms are minimal, but the surface has high radiation,” she said. “That’s why I’m here: to give you the choice.”

X almost laughed. He knew there was no choice. Hell Divers never had a choice. If they refused to dive, humanity died. If they died on the surface, humanity died.

The only way to survive was to dive.

Aaron looked at X, commander of their four-man team.

“I’ll go; you stay,” X said to Aaron.

“Nah, you know I can’t let you go alone.”

“You got Tin to worry about. I got myself.”

“He’s my kid, but he’s your godson.”

“Yeah, but a boy needs his father.”

X looked back to the captain.

“So, you want to let us in on what this mission is?” he asked. She pulled out a tablet, clicked on the screen, and handed it over.

Aaron leaned down to look at the location of an Old World hospital.

“Medicine?” X asked.

“Not just any,” Maria said. She brought up a new image. “This is a vaccine called Redotal, which I believe will eradicate the cough.”

X and Aaron exchanged a look.

The airship was in the middle of a pandemic as a virus they called simply “the cough” ripped through both the upper and lower passenger decks.

“You find this, and you’ll give us a second chance to continue sailing until the storms clear or we find a new home,” Maria said.

“I’m in,” Aaron said.

“I’m the commander—” X started to say.

“Tin’s not immune to the cough, Xavier. I’m coming with you, for his future and for everyone else’s.”

Captain Ash held each man’s gaze in turn, then lowered her head slightly in a rare display of emotion. In the glow of the lights, X saw the strain in her features. A cancer survivor, she looked older than her five decades, and he could tell she had more than her physical health weighing on her mind.

“I always thought it would be a storm, or perhaps engine failure, that sent us crashing to the surface like so many of the other airships since the war,” she said. “But now this virus threatens our population just as much, if not more.”

“Just one question,” X said. “If this medicine is a couple of centuries old, it’s gotta be past its prime.”

“Stored in liquid nitrogen at minus 196 degrees Celsius—three-quarters of the way down to absolute zero. It’ll be as fresh as the day it was made.”

“I’ll find . . .” X’s eyes darted to Aaron. “We will find the medicine. Don’t worry, Captain.”

“I know you will,” she said, with another rare form of emotional expression: a smile. “Be careful down there. You are two of our last heroes.”

They moved over to the launch tubes, normally operated by technicians who were absent today due to the mission’s secrecy. The two militia guards escorted the weapons cache and Captain Ash out of the bay.

X held up a gloved fist like an Old World boxer. “Let’s save the world again, man.”

“Don’t let that juice get you cocky.”

“Never, boss.”

Aaron cinched his helmet and climbed down into his launch tube. X did the same, smelling the worn plastic and the lingering scent of the cleaning solution he’d used on his visor.

The heads-up display (HUD) flickered online, a small green subscreen showing both his and Aaron’s life-support systems.

The dive clock blinked on: 2:00. Two minutes.

The warning siren blared as X looked down at the glass exit hatch beneath his feet. Wispy clouds drifted under his boots.

Red light bathed his pod, and he hit a button on his wrist computer to turn on his helmet lights.

Sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight . . .

X checked his HUD as the digital map of their dive came up. Once he confirmed all systems were online, he double-checked his rifle strap and gear—all snug.

Featherlight and strong as a sword. Featherlight and strong as a sword.

He squeezed his fists, but the alarm drowned out the cracking knuckles.

Twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven . . .

The red faded away, replaced by a cool blue that did little to relieve X’s anxiety. He wasn’t worried about dying; he was worried about failing.

He had already lost his wife to cancer, and with a third of the ship sick, this was the most important dive of his career.

His headset clicked on, and the soothing voice of Captain Ash surged into his ear.

“Good luck, X and Aaron. You are the best of us,” she said. “Good luck and dive safe.”

“We dive so humanity survives,” X and Aaron said simultaneously over the comms.

Ten, nine, eight . . .

X looked down just as the glass hatch whispered open. He tucked his arms by his sides and slid out into the dark clouds. For a moment, he had the sense of being truly as light as a feather, as if his body no longer belonged to him. Then his guts caught up and his blood warmed, prickling across his skin.

One hundred eighty pounds of flesh and bone, in addition to the hundred pounds of armor and gear, plummeted toward the dead surface.

He spread his arms and legs out through the puffy altocumulus. A single blue light glowed to the east, where Aaron fell at the same rate.

A little farther east, a fork of lightning arrowed through the black sky.

“Raptor Two, you see that?” X said over the comm.

Static crackled into his earpiece, hardly audible over the whistle of wind across his armor. In the green hue of his night vision, he searched for Aaron, but the other diver had vanished now.

X checked his HUD and saw the green dot representing the man he trusted most in life—a man who had stood by his side through the dark times. Aaron was there when X struggled with drinking. He was there when his wife died, and after, when the drinking got worse and resulted in more risk-taking on missions.

Some of the other thirty Hell Divers on the airship liked to joke that X had a death wish. He didn’t correct them; maybe he did.

“Too close for comfort,” Aaron finally replied. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Race ya,” X said.

Bringing his arms against his sides, X rotated head down,...