Hell Divers Read Online Free Page A

Raptor?”
    â€œAfraid not, Captain,” Jordan said. “But engineering did fix the faulty sensor.”
    â€œDoesn’t help X and his men, now, does it?” Her tone was harsh, but she wasn’t mad at Jordan or engineering—only at herself. The damage was already done. She had likely sent an entire team to their deaths. Hell Divers were a precious resource. Of every five recruits, only one made it through the training alive. And the life expectancy of those who did was only a few years. X and Aaron were the exceptions. To think she had lost them because of a faulty sensor made her throat hurt even worse.
    Maria made herself breathe deeply. The faint scent of bleach lingered in the air. The entire bridge was spotless and bathed in clean white light. The tile floor, walls, and even the pod stations matched the white uniforms of those who worked here. Keeping the room immaculate and bright was a tradition handed down through the generations. The bridge was a beacon of hope, and Maria wanted her staff to embody that hope at all times.
    With Jordan in tow, she walked down the center ramp that bisected the room. Passing operations and navigation, she asked him, “You got a sitrep from engineering?” She stopped beside the oak steering wheel in the center of the platform and rested her hand lightly on it.
    Nodding, Jordan continued to the main display at the front of the room and activated it with a flick of a finger. A close-up of Chief Engineer Roger Samson’s bald head filled the screen. The cam pulled back to a short, burly man, scratching his scalp and staring at another monitor offscreen.
    â€œSamson,” she said, “Jordan says you have a sitrep.”
    Startled, the engineer looked up. “Yes, Captain. We have a major fucking problem. The electrical storm caused severe damage to the pressure relief valves on two of the reactors. Both are stuck, and I had to shut them down. Luckily, we didn’t have any radiation leaks.”
    Maria breathed a sigh of relief. “Radiation” and “leak” were the last two words a captain wanted to hear, since even a small leak could kill everyone aboard.
    â€œI have to keep them offline until we can get a crew to fix them. Probably be a couple days. We’re running at half power now, with two others already offline. I need those fuel cells from Team Raptor, and I need ’em yesterday.”
    â€œCan’t you take cells out of the damaged reactors and put them in the two that are offline?” Jordan asked.
    Samson snorted, then caught himself and said, “Doesn’t work like that, sir.”
    â€œSo what do we do?” Jordan folded his arms across his chest.
    â€œWe pray X comes back with cells,” Maria said. She knew her ship inside and out. Without the reactors, they were dead in the water— air , actually. The thermal energy they produced converted into electrical energy that fed through a network below decks. Some of that energy was stored in a backup battery the size of an entire room. When it was gone, the helium gas bladders would keep them in the air, but without power, the ship’s systems would fail. Everything, from the water reclamation plant where her husband worked to the massive farms where they grew their food, would shut down. The rudders and turbofans would be useless, and the Hive would drift helplessly through the sky, dark and dead, until an electrical storm or a mountain peak dealt the final blow.
    â€œHow are the gas bladders holding up?” Maria asked.
    â€œWe lost another two,” said Samson. “Down to sixteen of twenty-four. I was able to revert the helium back through the network, and we’ve diverted energy from all nonessential sources, but I’m running out of options. Pretty soon, we’re going to have to start shutting off lights.”
    Jordan shook his head. “If you do that, we’re going to have to worry about more than just