Hell divers x fallout, p.1
Hell Divers X: Fallout, page 1
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series by new york times bestselling author
Nicholas Sansbury Smith
Hell Divers
Hell Divers
Hell Divers II: Ghosts
Hell Divers III: Deliverance
Hell Divers IV: Wolves
Hell Divers V: Captives
Hell Divers VI: Allegiance
Hell Divers VII: Warriors
Hell Divers VIII: King of the Wastes
Hell Divers IX: Radioactive
Hell Divers X: Fallout
Hell Divers XI (coming soon)
Hell Divers XII (coming soon)
Sons of war
Sons of War
Sons of War 2: Saints
Sons of War 3: Sinners
Sons of War 4: Soldiers (coming soon)
Orbs
Solar Storms (An Orbs Prequel)
White Sands (An Orbs Prequel)
Red Sands (An Orbs Prequel)
Orbs
Orbs II: Stranded
Orbs III: Redemption
Orbs IV: Exodus
e-day
E-Day
E-Day II: Burning Earth
E-Day III: Dark Moon
Extinction Cycle
(season one)
Extinction Horizon
Extinction Edge
Extinction Age
Extinction Evolution
Extinction End
Extinction Aftermath
Extinction Lost (A Team Ghost short story)
Extinction War
Extinction Cycle:
Dark Age (season two)
Extinction Shadow
Extinction Inferno
Extinction Ashes
Extinction Darkness
Trackers
(Season one)
Trackers
Trackers 2: The Hunted
Trackers 3: The Storm
Trackers 4: The Damned
NEW FRONTIER
(TRACKERS SEASON TWO)
New Frontier: Wild Fire
New Frontier 2: Wild Lands
New Frontier 3: Wild Warriors (coming soon)
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Copyright © 2023 by Nicholas Sansbury Smith
E-book published in 2023 by Blackstone Publishing
Cover illustration by K. Jones
Series design by Kathryn Galloway English
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental
and not intended by the author.
Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-6650-2435-8
Library e-book ISBN 978-1-6650-2434-1
Fiction / Science Fiction / Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic
Blackstone Publishing
31 Mistletoe Rd.
Ashland, OR 97520
www.BlackstonePublishing.com
For Josh Stanton,
the captain of the Blackstone ship, you are more than my publisher; you are a friend and mentor. Your unwavering support and passion for Hell Divers has elevated the series to a level I never dreamed possible. I am forever grateful for everything you do.
“Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have the strength.”
—Teddy Roosevelt
RECAP SINCE
HELL DIVERS IX: RADIOACTIVE
In a devastating betrayal, Captain Rolo has all but wiped out the Vanguard army with a nuclear warhead targeting the supercarrier Immortal. But he had no way to know that King Xavier and the surviving Hell Diver and Cazador teams from Brisbane were on the assault ship Frog. But in the race to escape the explosion, the ship was damaged, stranding X and his remaining forces on Australia’s Sunshine Coast.
Outpost Gateway has suffered a different sort of disaster: an attack from carnivorous vines. Director Rodger Mintel sent out a desperate plea for help as the radioactive tendrils tore into the bunker, which X received just before Captain Rolo’s betrayal. No one knows if Rodger survived the attack, and X and Magnolia fear the worst.
At the Vanguard Islands, Michael Everhart has been framed for the murder of Oliver and his son, Nez. Michael’s wife, Layla, has been under twenty-four-hour guard as she cares for their son, Bray, and Rhino Jr., unable to help. Michael, unaware of X’s predicament, has pinned all his hopes on his mentor returning to free him.
Back in Australia, Hell Diver Kade Long has been captured by the Knights of the Coral Castle. They dragged him to their leader, known as the Forerunner, who seems to be half-man and half-robot. As Kade’s comrades all fight for their lives and freedom elsewhere, Kade sits in a cell in the underwater Coral Castle wondering what the knights’ plan for him is—and hoping it’s not execution.
Meanwhile, the truth of what happened at Brisbane is spreading, and so is the radiation from the nuclear blast. The fallout threatens to destroy everything in its path, including the king’s remaining forces and the Coral Castle itself . . .
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 her
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, rocketing earthward in what they called a suicide dive. It was the fastest survivable way to the surface, but crazy dangerous when the electronics went out.
So far, so good, X thought.
His HUD displayed the data he relied on during a dive: 15,005 feet; 134 mph velocity; 8 degrees Fahrenheit; 105 beats per minute.
X remained calm as he dived, his eyes flitting from his HUD to the shelf of clouds. He bit down on his mouth guard as he got batted around in a pocket of turbulence.
“God damn it,” he grumbled. Strong as a sword . . .
Experience took over and X regained control, spreading his arms and legs out again before pulling back into a delta shape.
At eight thousand feet, the electronics suddenly went haywire, the data scrambling across his HUD and then winking off altogether.
“Son of a bitch!”
His shout was lost in the howling wind. Aaron wouldn’t be able to hear him anyway. They both were now deaf and blind.
With his night-vision goggles offline, X could see only the blue glow of his battery pack and the lights from his helmet. They surrounded his body like a halo around a comet as he streaked toward the surface.
This wasn’t the first time his equipment had fritzed out in an electrical storm, and that was why X had taught himself to calculate his altitude and velocity without the help of his sensors.
Aaron would be doing the same thing, looking for any sign of the surface before they smacked into it.
Flashes of lightning gilded the horizon, capturing the outline of a cloud in the beetle shape of the Hive.
X looked away as he broke through another wind shear, the turbulence tugging him in all directions. He stiffened his back, flexed his muscles, and used his arms to hold his position.
Thunder boomed so close his bones rattled.
He watched his HUD for a glimpse of his altitude. He tried to calculate the distance since he’d last seen it, but doing math while the wind beat him like a drum was nearly impossible.
Lightning flared to the east, where he’d last seen Aaron.
