“Why aren’t you going, Commander?” asked another.
Michael turned back to the bay just as the militia guards pulled on the massive doors to seal them shut. Through the narrowing gap, he saw Rodger climb into his tube and throw him a thumbs-up.
Knowing that Rodger cared for Magnolia was reassuring. Perhaps a little bit of love was exactly what this mission needed. That and a miracle.
Rodger stood in his drop tube, listening to the countdown. This was his tenth dive—five short of the magic number. The average was fifteen dives before ending up as a splat on the surface, or a lightning fritter on the Hell Diver highway. Of course, X’s legendary ninety-seven dives had thrown the curve way off. A lot of men and women had to get dead their first dive to balance out his record.
But Rodger didn’t plan on being one of those. Nope, he had two missions right now. One: locate a special section inside the Hilltop Bastion that Jordan wanted him to search. Two: rescue Magnolia and sweep her off her steel-toed boots, if possible. The wood carving inside his vest pocket was supposed to help with the second objective. The piece fit nicely next to the ITC access card Jordan had given him.
In the tubes on either side of his, Andrew and Weaver were likely feeling what Hell Divers described as “the rush.” The other divers were all addicted to it, to varying degrees, but Rodger had never experienced the heady blend of fear and adrenaline. The fear was too strong. Today, though, he felt different as he waited for the glass doors to whisper open and drop him into the hell below. Because today Magnolia was down there, and he was going to bring her home or die trying.
“Thirty seconds,” Ty announced over the channel.
“Copy that,” Weaver replied. “Ready to dive.”
Rodger tried to hold in a belch. He was hungover—or, more accurately, still a little drunk—after last night. The stimulant he had taken this morning was keeping him awake, but it had soured his stomach.
Captain Jordan hadn’t seemed to care, or even notice, when giving Rodger the mission to find the room that housed cryogenic chambers. Jordan hadn’t been forthcoming about what he expected him to find there, but the captain had insisted that he tell no one of the mission until he was on the surface.
Rodger let the belch escape as he contemplated whether being privy to secret information was a good or a bad thing. While he didn’t like Jordan, it was nice to be entrusted with a quest. Never in his life had he been in charge of anything like this. He wouldn’t let the captain down. Nope, he would find this bunker and whatever prizes it held. But first, he would rescue Magnolia.
The red glow swirling in his tube shifted to a cool blue. Klaxons faded in the background. Rodger clamped down on his mouth guard and checked the Velcro flap of the pocket containing Magnolia’s present. His vest was stuffed with magazines for his rifle, flares and shotgun shells for his blaster, and his engineering gear. He wore a duty belt containing everything he would need on the surface.
The voice of Captain Jordan fired over the channel. “Good luck, divers. Remember your objectives and complete the primary mission first.”
Yeah, yeah, Captain. No scavenging for lumber and no searching for lost girls. Asshole!
“We dive so humanity survives,” Weaver said.
Andrew and Rodger both muttered the words along with him.
Rodger’s thoughts turned to his parents, as they always did before a drop. They had hugged him goodbye, but they hadn’t said the actual word. They never said goodbye; they always said, “Catch ya later.”
He smiled. Pop’s birthday was coming up soon. Maybe Rodger would bring him back something from the surface. In his heart, he was hoping to bring back his future bride, but it was too early even to voice such hopes. Still, he hoped that someday soon he would be able to introduce Magnolia to his folks. He was sure they would love her as much as…
“Prepare for launch,” said Ty’s voice.
Rodger wrapped his arms around his chest as the final warning beeped. The glass floor opened just as he locked his gloved fingers together. It was an effort to keep from flailing at the sides of the tube as he fell—something he had done the first six dives.
He felt a moment of numbness as the sky opened up below him. He clenched his muscles—a reflex the other divers had tried to train out of him. No matter how many times they told him to dive loose, he tensed up like a wound clock spring.
As he fell, he arched and positioned his body on the mattress of air so he could see the Hive. The turtle-like hulk seemed to float effortlessly. He scanned the turbofans, almost afraid to look, but they whirred too fast for him to spot any blood on them. An instant later, crosswinds sent him tumbling away from the view.
To the east, lightning cut through the darkness. It was hard to gauge how far away the storm was, but the bolts were impressive. Long ago, when he was in school, he had read that lightning could be hotter than the surface of the sun. He hadn’t believed it until he saw his childhood friend Hal struck on a dive. The blast had raced through his body, blowing out his fingers and the bottoms of his feet and taking off the top of his skull.
Rodger blinked away the memory of Hal’s smoldering remains and craned his neck one last time to see the airship.
“Catch ya later, Mom and Pop,” Rodger whispered as the ship vanished.
He shifted his attention to his HUD. The readings were all normal. They were at eighteen thousand feet and falling through clear skies.
Weaver and Andrew had fanned out in intervals of a thousand feet. Rodger saw the glow of Weaver’s battery unit to the west. They all were diving in the stable falling position that divers used in fair weather: arms loosely out, elbows and knees bent at right angles. As Rodger blasted through the clouds, he caught a glimpse of lightning below. The wall of black clouds disguised the strike, and the visible bolt quickly waned, leaving a residue of blue light.
On his HUD, the altitude ticked down. They were already down to fifteen thousand feet, and he was falling at just under a hundred miles an hour.
Static crackled over the open channel. “Rodger Dodger, Pipe, be ready to nosedive. Looks like a layer of electrical activity pushing in below.”
The dark clouds were deceiving, like a clean bandage hiding an infected wound. Sometimes, it was hard to tell exactly what you were falling toward, until it was too late.
Another pocket of crosswinds took Rodger, sending him spinning toward Weaver.
“Watch it!” The words were difficult to make out over the crackling static.
Rodger brought his arms to his sides, kicked his boots together, and speared through the sky in a headfirst dive, veering away from Weaver, who was still getting head-down.
As Rodger looked down, the floor of clouds lit up with bright strikes. His electronics suddenly turned to gibberish. His HUD winked on and off.
Shit. NOT good!
A wave of nausea boiled up from his guts. He could taste the bile. It was almost as nasty as the herbal slime his mom forced him to drink whenever he was sick. The comm channel broke into a jumble of words and static. Whatever Weaver was trying to say, Rodger couldn’t hear him. He focused on trying not to puke as he cut through the clouds like Superman.
“We dive so humanity survives!” he cried. “I’m coming, Magnolia!”
NINE
Magnolia hung from the tangle of canopy and shroud lines, hardly daring to move. She wanted to look at her left arm, but she was too afraid—if the girder had cut through her suit, she wouldn’t last the day.
She had heard noises in the street below. Whatever had made them was gone now, but she could see shadows moving around down there.