Ghosts

TWO

Magnolia Katib twirled her favorite knife, ignoring the annoying message on the public-address system as she watched the cards being dealt across the table. The game, a version of old-world poker, had evolved over the years. It was cutthroat and fast paced, much like diving. The only noticeable difference was that the high-stakes game couldn’t kill her—unless one of the other players got mad…

The first dog-eared card glided over to Rick Weaver, commander of Team Angel. The second went to the commander of Team Apollo, Andrew “Pipe” Bolden. The third went to Raptor Diver Rodger “Dodger” Mintel, and the fourth came to her.

Despite the size of the blade, the knife spun effortlessly in her hand. Then the ship lurched, and she almost lost a finger. The metal bulkheads groaned as the Hive changed course, but none of her opponents seemed to notice. Storms were part of everyday life on the ship.

Magnolia sank her blade into the head of the Raptor logo someone had engraved long ago onto the faded wooden table. She formed a fort around her cards with her hands. Her mind was only halfway on the game.

“Yo, Mags,” the dealer said. “You with us? The bet’s twenty.”

She shook away her troubling thoughts and focused on the dealer, a longtime dive technician named Ty. He looked at the knife and raised an eyebrow as if to say, Don’t mess with my table. He was chewing vigorously on a calorie-infused stick—a habit he had picked up years ago and had never been able to break.

“Anyone ever tell you that you look like a horse eating straw?” Magnolia quipped.

That got a laugh from Andrew, but Ty just kept chewing.

Magnolia’s eyes flitted to the other players, hunting for tells as they looked at their three cards. Andrew peeled the edge of his card up with a grimy fingernail. He wrinkled his beak of a nose and hunched his wide shoulders so that he loomed over the table. Magnolia considered cracking a joke about his thinning hair, but she would leave the snide humor up to Rodger.

Her eyes flitted to the skinny bearded man with black-rimmed glasses taped together in the middle. The frames accentuated his unusually large brown eyes. He was the newest addition to Team Raptor, chosen not for his fighting skills but for his keen intelligence and ability to cobble together useful tech from bits of scrap. Magnolia suspected that he was smarter than anyone else on the ship.

“Andrew, you look at me like you look at your food,” Rodger said. “Please, don’t eat me. I’d give you really bad gas, and these people have suffered enough.”

“Whatever, man,” Andrew said, scowling. “I heard you shat yourself in the launch tube on your first dive.”

Ty chuckled, and Commander Weaver almost choked on a gulp of shine.

Rodger glanced at her, his cheeks reddening, then looked down at the table. Magnolia glared at Andrew.

“Shut it, Pipe,” she said. She really hated that nickname. Layla had been the one to assign it to Andrew, because of his muscles. Tacky, to Magnolia’s thinking. “Neanderthal” would have fit much better.

Her eyes flitted to Rodger. He gave her a brief smile that revealed a missing front tooth. He had lost it on their last dive, when he tripped after wasting half an hour loading pieces of wood into the supply crate. He was smart, but he was clumsy. She also suspected he was nursing a crush on her, but she didn’t have time for a boyfriend, and he didn’t seem like the one-night-stand type. If she wasn’t training or diving, she was in her quarters, going through the archives. Her main relationship was with history.

“Hurry this shit up,” she said. She was anxious to get back to her latest find, an article about the farms that humans once cultivated on the surface. Maybe she could figure out a way to save the next corn harvest before they all starved.

Andrew checked his cards again, as if they were somehow going to change, and Magnolia used the moment to scratch at the newest tattoo on her forearm. For a while now, she had been working on a full sleeve of the extinct animals that fascinated her.

“What’s a girl like you want with all that ink?” Andrew asked. “What is that gray thing, anyway?

She pulled her shirtsleeve down to cover her tattoos. “Something you’d never be able to recognize.”

Rodger leaned forward. “That’s a baby elephant, right?”

Magnolia tilted her head slightly, amused that Rodger could identify the image on her arm. Maybe he was more interesting than she gave him credit for. He was certainly more interesting than the Neanderthal sitting next to him.

“How’d you know?” she asked.

“My dad made an elephant clock once. It was beautiful.”

Magnolia was intrigued. “Where is it now?”

“Are we going to play or talk about furry creatures all night?” Andrew asked.

“They aren’t furry,” Rodger and Magnolia both said at the same time. She chuckled at that.

“You kids are somethin’ else,” Weaver said. He shook his head and glanced at his cards. His hair and handlebar mustache seemed more salt than pepper these days, and his forehead was a maze of wrinkles. After losing his family a decade ago during the crash of the Hive’s sister ship, Ares, Weaver had dedicated himself to diving—and cards. He had mastered the game, but luckily, Magnolia had discovered the aging commander’s tell. He lifted the edges of each card, one by one, and then squinted with his right eye when he looked at the final card.

Shit, he has a hand. She needed to shut her mouth and pay attention. She checked her credits to make sure she hadn’t miscounted. Two hundred left. The blinds were chipping away at her stack. If she didn’t make something happen, she was going to be begging Ty for some of those calorie sticks until her next payday.

Andrew folded, but Rodger ran a hand over his beard and said, “Ten credits.”

Another rattle shook the aluminum bones of the Hive.

“Sounds like we’re hitting some bad weather,” Ty said. “Maybe we should—”

“Don’t even think about it,” Weaver said. “I call your ten credits and raise you ten.”

Magnolia finally looked down at her cards and tried not to react when she saw they were all suited connectors: seven, eight, and nine of hearts.

She was on her way to a straight flush. Only one hand could beat that, but the odds against securing a ten and six of hearts were astronomical. Worse, if she wanted to play the hand, she would have to commit twenty chips just to see another card. She looked down at the faded, cracked chips in front of her. That was an entire week’s pay on the line.

It was a risk, but it was only credits. The real risk was diving into the black abyss through an electrical storm, which Magnolia hadn’t done for months. She missed the thrill of the dive. But for now, poker would have to do.

“I call Commander Weaver’s bet,” Magnolia said. She could make her decision after she saw her next card.

“You’re not afraid of anything, are you, princess?” Weaver said. “The great Magnolia Katib. Fearless, fast, and—”

“Freaky!” Rodger said with a chuckle, his bushy brows raised over his glasses.

The smile on his face slowly turned to a frown.

“Can’t do it,” he finally said, tossing his cards into the muck pile with Andrew’s.

Weaver eyed Magnolia. “Just you and me now.”

She brushed a lock of electric blue hair back over her ear, trying not to let him get under her skin. It was part of the game. Everyone was a prick when playing cards, even nice guys like Weaver.

“Let’s see another card,” she said.

Ty peeled one from the deck and slid it to Weaver. Then he sent the next to Magnolia. She waited to check her card, focusing first on Weaver’s face. There was no squint this time—only the hard eyes of a man who had lost everything in life except his honor. For the commander, the game wasn’t just about credits. It was about being the best. After X sacrificed himself back in Hades, Weaver had taken his place as the top Hell Diver on the Hive. He didn’t lose easily.

But neither did Magnolia.

The memories of that last dive with X were still raw. She had grown up without a dad, and ten years ago she had lost two of the men she respected most: first her own commander, Cruise, and then X. Their sacrifice was something she could never repay.

Keep your head in the game, Magnolia.

Another tremor shook the ship, and the unmistakable boom of thunder reverberated through the Hive. Magnolia lifted the edge of her fourth card, her breath catching when she saw it was a heart. Not the six or ten she was looking for, but she was still just one away from a flush. A ten would give her a straight. Either would be a difficult hand to beat.

“You’re first,” Ty said to Weaver.

Weaver got out his old-world coin and flipped it while holding Magnolia’s gaze. It was a trick, a ploy to make her think he was gambling. He brought the coin on missions with him, too, and used it when forced to make a decision with only lousy options.

He caught it in his palm, looked down, and said, “Twenty credits.”

Now she had a decision to make.

She could raise his bet and hope she was wrong about him having a good hand. He might fold. Or, if she was right and he did have a made hand—say, two pair or trips—he would call and she would still have a good chance of beating him with the last two cards.

Ty looked up at the lightbulb hanging from a cord over the table. It winked on and off as it swayed.

“Your move, princess,” Weaver said.

Magnolia didn’t twitch as her sweep of blue hair fell over her right eye. She kept her gaze on the commander. She was really starting to hate it when he called her that.

“Call your twenty, raise you sixty more.”

Rodger clapped his hands together. “This is getting good. I need more shine!” He took a long swig from his mug. After dragging a sleeve across his lips, he sat up straighter, opened his mouth, and let out a long belch that filled the room.

Andrew chuckled, Ty covered his nose, and Magnolia’s eyes widened as the belch, reeking of cheap liquor and fried potatoes, continued with no sign of abating.

There was no reaction in Weaver’s features. He looked at his stack of chips, then back at Magnolia. Without taking his eyes off her, he grabbed three columns of twenty chips and pushed them into the pot.

Shit, he’s on a draw, too, Magnolia thought. Her eyes moved to Ty as he dealt their fifth and final card. Then he put a single card facedown in the center of the table. It was the community card, the one that Weaver and Magnolia would share to make or break their hands.

This time, she looked at her card first, allowing Weaver to study her.

Two of clubs. Damn.

She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks. If Weaver’s tell was his squint, hers was a flushed face. She should have put on more fake rouge to hide her real blush. If she lost this hand, she wasn’t going to be able to afford any more black-market makeup for a very long time.

Weaver glanced down at his card, then looked to Ty, who flipped the final card.

She saw the ten first, then the heart.

There was no way she could lose this hand. She would be drinking shine and eating chicken tonight! Her mouth watered at the thought.

Weaver reached out and plucked the stick from Ty’s mouth and tossed it on the ground.

“You have no idea how annoying that is!” Weaver said.

Magnolia almost smiled. The commander was losing his cool.

“How much you got left over there?” Weaver asked.

She bit the inside of her lip and frowned, trying to play the part of a loser. “A hundred credits.”

She felt Rodger’s gaze across the table, and she automatically raised her hand to give him the bird. But when she saw the puppy-dog look on his face, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The guy was practically drooling. It was actually endearing, in a way.

“Has anyone ever told you that you look like Catwoman?” he asked.

“Who the hell’s that?” Andrew said. He hit Rodger’s arm out from under him, making his head fall toward the table.

“Hey!” Rodger protested, wiping his mouth off. “She’s this total badass character from a comic I found in the archives.” When Andrew’s blank look continued, Rodger explained, “A comic book. You know, like Superman?”

“If you’re looking for a super man, he’s right over here,” Andrew said, laughing.

“More like super drunk,” Rodger grumbled.

Weaver snapped his fingers to shut them up and looked back to Magnolia. “I’ll bet a hundred.”

As he wedged the chips from his massive stack, Rodger wasn’t the only one drooling. Magnolia almost salivated at the thought of all those credits. She was preparing to push in the rest of her chips when the Hive jolted violently to starboard.

Andrew grabbed the table, but too late. It slid across the floor, and with it went the chips, cards, and four mugs with varying levels of shine.

“NO!” Magnolia shouted, watching in horror as her cards joined the mess on the floor. The first straight flush in her life, and she couldn’t even prove it now!

“What was that?” Ty asked.

Weaver scrambled over to the wall comm and punched the link. “This is Commander Weaver. What the hell is going on?”

Static crackled from the speakers. The ship lurched again, and a sound like a rifle shot rang out as lightning hit the hull. Magnolia joined Weaver at the comm.

“We’re headed right for a massive storm, Commander Weaver,” replied a voice from the wall-mounted speakers. “Report to the launch bay, ASAP.”

The lightbulb swayed toward Weaver as he squinted in Magnolia’s direction. She knew what the commander’s tell meant. The pile of cards on the floor wasn’t the worst thing that could happen today. If something had happened to the ship and they needed parts, there was a good chance she was about to end her hiatus from diving, in the worst possible conditions—right through the middle of an electrical storm.

“Where the hell did this storm come from?” Jordan shouted, though he already knew the answer. The weather sensors were 260 years old, like every other piece of equipment on the ship. Samson had run out of ways to repair them, which meant Jordan had a fraction of the time he needed to steer away from storms.

Jordan leaned into the spokes of the oak wheel to turn the bow away from the mountain of bulging clouds. A delta of lightning cut through the mass, branching out like veins from a throbbing heart.

“Ryan! Hunt!” he said. “How far out are we? I need a sitrep.”

Ensign Ryan, moving slowly because of a worsening spine condition, got up from his station and pushed his glasses higher on his freckled nose. “Checking the data now, sir, but this one seems very…”

Jordan could finish Ryan’s thought for him. The storms, especially over the Eastern Seaboard of North America, were unpredictable. No one could explain why, but he had a theory. Some of the largest old-world cities had been on the East Coast: New York, Washington, Boston. All had turned into poisoned craters during a war that happened so long ago, no one remembered who started it. Even now, over two and half centuries later, the air above those scorched cities remained volatile and chaotic.

The same went for those cities on the West Coast: wastelands such as Los Angeles, Portland, and Seattle. But other than Hades, the Midwest hadn’t been hit as hard during World War III. That was why the Hive and the ships before her had scavenged most of the known locations in the center of the continent. Jordan was now forced to search the more severely irradiated cities in the East for parts, fuel cells, and whatever else the Hell Divers could salvage.

Although he couldn’t see it, he knew they were above the ruins of one of those cities now—a place the archives called Charleston.

“We’re ten miles out from the nucleus of the storm,” Ryan announced.

Another brilliant web of lightning flashed across the main display. The resulting boom of thunder rattled the bulkheads of the command center.

The ship was already too close.

“Your orders, Captain?” Ryan said.

Jordan felt the spokes grow slippery beneath his sweating palms. He continued to scrutinize the skies as if they might give him an answer.

“Sir?” said another voice before Jordan could reply to the first question. Ensign Hunt stood a few feet away, hands clasped behind his broad back.

“I have an update for you, sir.”

“Can’t it wait until later?”

“It’s about that transmission from the Hilltop Bastion,” Hunt said.

Jordan glanced over his shoulder to make sure none of the other crew had heard. “Keep your voice down,” he said quietly.

Hunt took a step closer so that he stood right beside Jordan. “That signal you asked me to research is getting stronger, sir. I’m not sure how old it is, but I was able to identify the coordinates.”

“And?”

Hunt jerked his chin toward the screen. “We’re getting close.” He hesitated and then added in a harsh whisper, “What about that other transmission? If word ever gets out that he survived…”

Jordan shot him a stern look. He had been obliged to let Hunt in on some of the secrets aboard the Hive. Since he was communications officer, all transmissions from the surface filtered through him. Most were ancient recordings, playing on a loop. But if Hunt kept pushing, kept asking questions, Jordan would have no choice but to replace him.

Captain Ash had been too soft on security and information leaks, and look what had happened: an armed insurrection led by the lower-deckers. Six years ago, not long before Ash’s death, she had discovered that one of her own officers was hacking into the restricted archives. The officer, a middle-aged woman named Janet Gardner, had been searching for information about the war that devastated the planet. That knowledge was forbidden for good reasons. There were things the citizens of the Hive didn’t need to know. Things that would threaten their sheltered reality, like the truth about the surface and what dwelled in the darkness.

Ash had been too lenient with Officer Gardner. Jordan wouldn’t make the same mistake.

“Sir, there’s something else,” Hunt said.

“What is it?” Jordan asked.

“I think I know who’s been hacking into the archives.”

Jordan scanned for any sign of eavesdroppers. The bridge wasn’t the right place for this conversation, but he couldn’t just walk away from the storm. The only people watching were several kids, all apprentices training for careers as the next generation of officers.

He took one hand off the wheel to wave them back to work. They would learn their duty fast or be kicked to a less desirable apprenticeship.

As they scattered, Jordan cocked an eyebrow at Hunt. “Proceed.”

“It has to be Magnolia Katib, sir. She’s logged more hours in the archives than anyone else on the ship.”

Gritting his teeth, Jordan nodded and pivoted back to the view of the screen. Magnolia was a loose cannon, with no respect for the rules. He would deal with her soon.

On-screen, the storm appeared to have no end. The border of the clouds stretched at least fifty miles east to west—a solid wall of black cumulus and flashing electricity.

Ryan cleared his throat to remind Jordan that the clock was ticking.

“I’m thinking, Ensign. Rash decisions get people killed. Patience keeps us alive.”

“This could be it,” Hunt said, his eyes bright. “This could be what Captain Ash was looking for. Perhaps this is what she was trying to say before—”

Jordan cracked his neck from side to side, silencing the man. Only Jordan knew what Captain Ash had been looking for—and what she thought she had found before she died. Magnolia was just like her: always curious, always searching.

Curiosity got people killed.

“Sir, I’m just saying it’s worth checking out, don’t you think?” Hunt said.

Hunt was a decent officer, but like Ash, he was also an optimistic dreamer. When Jordan took over command, she had told him to use his heart first, then his mind. And for a few years, he had bought that advice. But now he knew, the best compass wasn’t in his chest. It was the one on the monitor to his right.

Math and science were the only things that could save humankind, not some delusion of a promised land.

There was nothing down there but death and monsters.

He made his decision. He would not risk the integrity of the ship by going through the storm, and he would not waste lives by dropping a Hell Diver team to the surface.

“Direct all noncritical power to the rudders and turbofans,” Jordan ordered. He spun the wheel to the right, guiding the Hive away from the storm. The bulkheads groaned in protest.

Hunt looked as if he wanted to say something else, but he kept his mouth shut and returned to his station. That was good. Jordan didn’t want to make a scene in front of his crew. He continued turning the wheel, but the more he pushed, the more it seemed to resist him.

Digital telemetry scrolled across his personal monitor, followed by a message: Error 414. It took Jordan a moment to recall the error code, but as soon as he did, he shouted, “Ryan, get Samson on the horn! We’ve got a problem with the rudders!”

“On it, sir.”

“We’re nine miles out, Captain,” Hunt announced from the deck above.

The bow split through the southern edge of the storm, barreling northeast toward the towering monstrosity. Jordan tried to force the wheel, but it hardly budged. The turbofans allowed some movement, but without the rudders, they would veer into the storm.

The knot in his stomach tightened. There was no way the Hive would survive a trip through that. He couldn’t drop a team down there even if he wanted to. This was exactly why he had tried to avoid the East Coast.

Cursing, Jordan twisted the wheel with all his strength. A shudder went through the ship.

He checked his monitor again, taking in the information with a quick sweep. The bow was turning at a forty-five-degree angle, but the rudders were now completely jammed. The Hive was spearing straight toward the flashing purple beast.

Jordan caught a drift of Katrina’s herbal perfume, but he kept his gaze on the main display.

“Captain, I’m here,” she said.

“About time, Lieutenant. Things are about to get very—”

The Hive lurched again, throwing Jordan into the wheel. His shoulder hit one of the wooden spokes. He caught himself, but Katrina hit the floor.

“Katrina!”

She smiled back at him from one knee.

“I’m okay.”

“Go strap in,” he said.

“But—”

“That’s an order, Lieutenant.”

Red lights flashed over her path as she made her way to her seat. The emergency alarm screamed from the PA system. Ensign Ryan had tripped and fallen on his way to another station. Letting out a grunt of pain, he put his hand to his unnaturally curved lower spine. Two other officers helped him up, and Jordan went back to steering the ship.

He grabbed the spokes and put all his strength into turning the wheel, pushing against the resistance.

“Lieutenant, Tell Samson he’s going to be out of a job if he doesn’t fix my damn rudders!” he shouted at Katrina.

An empty threat, Jordan thought grimly. If Samson failed, no one would have a job.

Katrina was already talking into her headset, relaying his orders. Jordan’s eyes flitted back to the main display. He drowned out the chaos around him by drawing in steady breaths and exhaling through his nose. If the sky was the ocean, and the storm a rocky beach, then the Hive was racing toward the shoals faster than he could turn it away.

“Captain,” called a voice nearly lost in the alarms.

Jordan glanced behind him and caught Katrina’s gaze. Her sharp eyes told him things were about to get even worse.

“Samson says he can’t fix the rudders from inside the ship.”

Jordan closed his eyes in anticipation of what came next.

“We need to deploy a Hell Diver team to fix them,” Katrina said.

Jordan pushed harder on the wheel. The aluminum struts creaked ominously.

“On this bearing, the heart of the storm will hit us in less than forty-five minutes,” Hunt said.

Forty-five minutes. There was never enough time, but he had been in situations with less of it than he had now. Life in the sky was always coming down to the wire.

They were almost parallel with the storm now, but soon it wouldn’t matter. Jordan knew the ship as well as he knew his own body. Without the rudders, they were, as Ash used to say, dead in the air.

“Sir, Samson is asking for your orders,” Katrina said.

Jordan used his shoulder to wipe the sweat from his chin and then turned to his XO. “Direct full power to the turbofans—full reverse.”

He made himself breathe deeply before he gave his next order. Every time he ordered the Hell Divers deployed, it was a potential death sentence. Their ranks were already strained by the losses they had sustained this year, but they knew the risks. On the bright side, perhaps fate would take care of his little blue-haired security problem, and he wouldn’t have to take further action to deal with her.

“Send Michael and Layla topside,” he said. “They’re the best engineering divers we have left.” He hesitated before adding, “And someone find Magnolia. I want her on this mission.”

As his officers scrambled to carry out his orders, Jordan heaved a nervous sigh. Maybe one good thing could come of all this after all. He wasn’t proud of the things he had to do as captain of the last airship in the sky, but the guilt was a burden he could bear if it meant keeping the human race alive.