Starting off Hell Divers, Smith introduces the character Xavier Rodriguez,(X), commander of the helldiver Team Raptor. His wife had previously died of cancer because of radiation poisoning caused by reactors from an airship named “Hive,” which is the home of half the remaining population of the world. X and his team are tasked with once again retrieving parts for the Hive only found on the poisoned surface of the Earth. Just as Team Raptor was released from, Rodriguez spotted a streak of electricity, indicating that there was a storm beneath their feet which they were forced to maneuver through. Xavier was the only diver who made it through the electrical storm that killed his best friend and his two other teammates. As he landed, he made a promise to take care of his best friends’ newly orphaned son, Tin. Xavier was forced to tread on, with the weight of an orphaned child waiting for his dead father to return to him from his dive. As he got to the location with the needed parts for the airship, the commander had discovered a new mutant creature, unseen by any other living diver from the Hive, or from it’s sistership the Ares. After retrieving the needed parts, Rodriguez was hunted by the humanoid monsters, fearful for his life. At a point in the chase, he was able to deploy his helium booster and ascend into a safe opening through the storm. X is filled with rage at the captain of the ship for sending Team Raptor to their deaths, and describes to her what the monsters he saw down there were like. The Hive is at the brink of another riot from the lowerdeckers of the ship. They believe they are being treated unfairly by the upper deckers, even though they have been given medical attention, larger rations, and heavier protection from the radiation that seeps through to the living quarters. Later on the Hive receives an SOS recording from the captain of the Ares, explaining how the ship was caught in an electrical storm, and that the ship was in critical condition. With the valuable parts obtained by X, the Hive was in it’s best condition in years, and the Captain, Maria Ash, decides to fly to Ares’ coordinates to reassess the situation from there. The Hell Divers from all three teams Apollo, Angel, and Raptor were scared for their lives when they heard about Ares, because the location of the ship is where 3 full hell diver teams went to scavenge for the Hive, but never came back. This place was named Hades, and was avoided at all costs, but the Ares couldn’t make it to any other location. Smith switched the POV of the book to a different hell
diver (Commander Weaver), from Team Titanium of the Ares. He and one other diver had made it to the surface, and were facing severe weather and the same monsters that X had seen at the other facility. Weaver and the diver (Jones) make it to the warehouses with the needed parts, but only Jones goes in to check it out, which was a huge mistake as he ends up being ripped apart by the humanoid creatures in there. The Commander makes it inside too late, and finds Jones’ corpse being eaten by monsters, and runs out to try and establish a new plan to retrieve the parts. All of a sudden, he hears blasts coming from the sky that aren’t caused by the electrical storm, and he looks up to see his home, the Ares crashing down to the wasteland spewing out fire everywhere. Weaver is devastated by the sight as he now knows his wife and daughters are dead, along with anyone he has ever known.
Getting to Hades, the Hive was put in the same critical condition that Ares had before it crashed down to the ground. So Captain Ash was forced to send all three teams down, and only a few made it to the ground without being fried by lightning or snagged out of the air by the male version of the humanoid creatures. On the ground, the surviving divers found Commander Weaver of the Ares, and he joined them to finish their mission to save the Hive. He taught them a trick about the monsters that saved the divers’ lives, the creatures are attracted to energy, so taking out their battery unit from their chest made them invisible. Some more divers had died along the way, but a few had made it back alive to the Hive with the needed parts, but X was left stranded in the air, waiting for the Hive to locate him, but the airship kept flying further away. He was left by his people, and would probably never see them again.
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