ATLAS 3 (ATLAS Series Book 3)

by Isaac Hooke

  Those last words set him off, and he started screaming and yelling and even punching his fists into my jumpsuit.

  I’d had it.

  I set the child gruffly back down in the corner and backed away.

  “He’s all yours,” I told Lui as I retreated to the entrance of the study.

  Lui went forward and knelt beside the child. He spoke Korean-Chinese directly to the boy in soft, sympathetic tones.

  After some gentle urging from Lui, the kid erupted in a flood of words that I couldn’t understand. Tears streamed down his face.

  Lui glanced at me. “His folks are dead,” he told me sternly. “When you said you were going to take him to his family, he thought you meant you were going to kill him.”

  I felt sick to my stomach. “I didn’t know.”

  “No. You didn’t.”

  Lui spoke some more soothing words to the child and then extended his hands. The kid glanced at me and slowly stepped into Lui’s waiting embrace. Lui hefted him into the air and triumphantly swiveled toward the doorway.

  The kid abruptly reached over Lui’s shoulders, toward the corner. He’d dropped the ATLAS 5 toy.

  Lui plucked the plaything from the floor and returned it to the child.

  I spotted a child-sized aReal visor on the desk. I snatched it up and handed it to Lui. “This might come in handy.”

  Over the comm I ordered Manic, who still lingered by the entrance, to meet us in the bedroom.

  When Manic arrived, Lui was already halfway out the broken window—he had one foot on the nightstand, the other on the black substance caking the building outside. He still carried the child.

  The boy suddenly straightened in his arms.

  “It’s okay,” Lui told him in Korean-Chinese.

  That was when I heard it.

  “Shh!” I said.

  Lui paused. The child’s face had become deathly pale.

  “I don’t hear—” Manic said.

  I cut him off with a raised hand, and I amped up the external volume sensors on my helmet.

  Yes, I could clearly make out the sound then. A distant, eerie echo. The bone-like rattle of claws and mandibles.

  It originated from the caves pocking the resin just outside.

  And it was slowly increasing in volume.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Tahoe

  I was falling down the abyss with Ghost. His mech, Antares, gripped Wolfhound in its arms. I wasn’t aboard: I sat in the passenger seat of Antares, above the jetpack and behind the head. Below, though not yet visible through the darkness, the calculated position of the cave floor overlay my vision.

  And it was approaching far faster than I would have liked.

  “Ghost,” I said. “You have to drop Wolf—”

  Ghost released Wolfhound and the Gs shifted immediately: the drag from the parachutes kicked in, slowing the two of us.

  Wolfhound plunged away into the darkness. I knew the onboard AI of the mech had taken over and would try to land via air brakes alone. An impossible feat, but it would try.

  Ghost and I were still falling relatively fast, despite jettisoning the extra weight. I wasn’t sure our descent was survivable.

  The cave floor finally emerged through the murk below and I watched as Wolfhound crashed into the rock. On my HUD map, the green dot representing the mech instantly darkened.

  Ghost shifted our position slightly so that we wouldn’t land on top of Wolfhound.

  The bottom came up fast and we hit extremely hard. Antares’s legs folded right up to its chest and the ATLAS 5 shook with the vibration of the impact, rattling my teeth and shaking the hollows of my lungs. A viscid black substance from the cave floor splattered into the air around us.

  Antares stood up as Ghost extended his legs. The parachutes detached, the air brakes retracted.

  We’d formed a crater of sorts: the shockwave from Antares’s impact had cleared a layer of slime from the surface in the immediate vicinity, forming a small circular rampart that ringed the mech.

  Ghost swiveled a Gatling into the ATLAS 5’s right hand and a serpent launcher into its left, then he steered Antares toward the wreckage of Wolfhound.

  The slime coating the cave floor proved ubiquitous. It engulfed Antares up to the ankles, and exerted a gentle suction, judging from the slightly strained whir of the servomotors.

  “Like walking in mud,” Ghost complained, leaving a trail of deep footprints in his wake.

  He reached Wolfhound and knelt.

  I left the passenger seat and, being careful not to touch the cave floor and the thick black slime, I crawled onto the sparking wreckage of my mech.

  Wolfhound was definitely unsalvageable. The left leg had smashed up through the cockpit, while the right leg had sheared the head clean off. The arms had plowed through the air brakes, leaving a tangled mess.

  I said a prayer for Wolfhound’s spirit, in the small chance that the AI actually had one, and then I crept to the storage rack built into the leg. The distorted panel was jammed tightly into place—I had to get Ghost to help me open it. Inside, my heavy gun was twisted beyond recognition. There were still some intact grenades, however, and I took them.

  Since I was basically weaponless, with only a pistol at my belt, Ghost gave me access to Antares’s storage rack and I retrieved the standard-issue rifle he had stowed. There was also a sniper rifle in the rack but I left that behind as it was Ghost’s preferred weapon. I grabbed a few rounds of ammo and then climbed back into the passenger seat to wait for the rest of the squad.

  The green dots of my squad members began to appear on my HUD as one by one they plunged into range. Facehopper came first, followed closely by Trace and Mauler, dragged down as the latter two were by the weight of the payloads. The porters chose not to drop their warheads and landed with the devices. Those were some hard landings, though. The slime craters they formed were about twice as wide as the one Antares had made.

  Ghost did some quick recon while everyone else was arriving, and found the two superslugs, or rather, their remains. A stream of dark liquid oozed from the orifices of each alien carcass. The broken carapaces of dead crabs surrounded them and reminded me a little of rotten, cracked eggs, at least from the way the black blood seeped lengthwise from their bodies.

  I could see nothing in the murk beyond the two slugs other than the cave floor beneath us. Any walls or ceiling were lost to the darkness. Judging from the distance we had fallen, the extent of this cavern had to be fairly monstrous. And I somehow doubted the place was natural.

  When the remaining mechs had landed safely, Facehopper gathered us. I checked the ATLAS 5 status reports on my HUD. Those who carried the nuclear payloads suffered the worst damage. Trace had some minor servomotor damage so that his mech walked with a limp, while Mauler’s left elbow intermittently failed to bend. Ghost’s arm seemed perfectly fine, even though he’d carried the entire weight of our mech chain up there. The squad’s ammo situation was poor: almost everyone was nearly out of serpent rockets and Gatling rounds.

  “Wolfhound?” Facehopper transmitted.

  “Had to abandon the mech in the end,” Ghost sent. “Looks like Cyclone is confined to the role of passenger for the duration of the mission.”

  “I’m no passenger.” I unbuckled and stood up, lifting the rifle over my head. “I guarantee it.”

  “No one’s questioning your bravery,” Facehopper sent. “We all know you’ll fight to the end.” It was actually good, hearing that from him. Despite our differences, he still respected me. “What about the two slugs?”

  “Found them about half a klick to the east,” Ghost sent. “I marked the positions on the map.”

  “Dead?”

  “Most definitely.”

  Facehopper’s mech glanced upward. “How far did we fall, TJ?”

  “Too f
ar,” TJ sent. “At least twenty-five klicks. Let’s just say it could take us quite a while to return to the surface. Assuming we ever find a route back. On the bright side, we’re that much closer to the Observer Mind. It’s only eleven klicks away to our east.”

  Facehopper issued his orders before we could fully absorb the magnitude of our situation. “Zigzag formation, mates. Ten-meter separation. Bomb, Fret, you get the nuclears. I want you in the middle of the squad. TJ, take point. Ghost, drag. Both of you, launch ASS scouts. TJ, yours goes fore; Ghost, yours aft. Cyclone, you get to be the additional pair of eyes at the back of Ghost’s head.”

  I watched Bomb and Fret hoist the payloads from the ground. That was about the only benefit of losing my mech—I didn’t have to worry about carrying around the nuclears anymore, though honestly, I would have gladly ported a nuke for the rest of the mission if it meant having Wolfhound back.

  When we were in position, Facehopper said: “TJ, lead the way.”

  And so we advanced into the endless cave-borne night.

  Soft, slightly unnerving squishes issued from the ATLAS 5s as those metallic feet trod the black slime that carpeted the rock floor.

  We’d gone maybe thirty meters past the second dead superslug when TJ reported towering black ovules protruding from the murk ahead.

  Facehopper immediately called a halt.

  I momentarily switched to the scout’s POV to observe the ovules firsthand. The things appeared tall, but randomly placed. They didn’t reside too close together—at least those currently visible on the outskirts—so our mechs could navigate between them if necessary.

  “Big-ass eggs,” Bomb sent.

  “TJ, see if your scout can find a way around them,” Facehopper sent.

  I didn’t blame him for wanting to go around. We all remembered what had happened the last time we encountered ovules, and those were a tenth the size of these.

  TJ instructed the scout to probe the perimeter and the drone vanished from range.

  It returned ten minutes later.

  “I gave the ASS a five-klick threshold in either direction,” TJ sent. “The ovule ranks end about four klicks to the north and two to the south.”

  “So we go south,” Fret said. “Give the area a wide berth.”

  Facehopper remained silent, and I knew he was weighing our options. Finally: “Proceed to within one hundred meters of the perimeter. Once there, line up, keeping separation at fifty meters. I want to check something first.”

  “You think this is the Queen’s doing, don’t you?” I said.

  Facehopper didn’t answer.

  We approached the outskirts of the ovules and formed a line as requested, one hundred meters away, spacing our mechs fifty meters apart, which was about the limit of our weak InterPlaNet nodes in the persistent interference.

  “TJ, send the scout forward,” Facehopper sent through the static.

  The drone moved out.

  I could still see one of the dead superslugs behind me, at the edge of the ambient light. Ghost’s drone was out there, too, watching our aft quarter with me.

  I switched to the forward scout’s perspective, shrinking the view to half size so I could simultaneously observe our rear.

  Headlamps lighting its way, the scout passed into the rank of ovules. The alien objects were scattered randomly about the floor, and looked to be about twenty-five meters tall, or twice the height of our mechs. They were separated between thirty to fifty meters each. The ovules seemed to be empty shells: caved in on one side, their outer layers were blackened as if charred or spent in some way.

  As the scout moved deeper, some of the objects appeared fuller and taller than the rest. These ones formed perfect, egglike ovals. They were hued differently, too, seeming more red than black, and they had what appeared to be branches of some kind coating the outer surfaces, like a layer of kelp. Those branches swayed in a breeze I couldn’t feel in my jumpsuit.

  One of the fuller ovules lay near the scout’s course. As the drone passed, I realized those weren’t branches coating the outside, but rather snakelike limbs of some sort. The limbs swayed back and forth, anterior ends opening and closing, revealing banks of white, razor-sharp teeth.

  “Let’s go back,” Bomb said nervously over the comm.

  “I’m with you,” Fret transmitted.

  “TJ, analysis?” Facehopper sent.

  “I’m actually getting a jumble of readings,” TJ responded. “The snake things seem to be individual life-forms. Kind of like parasites embedded within the shell. But beneath the actual surface I’m detecting another organic signature. A single life-form taking up all the available space inside.”

  Motion caught my eye directly above, outside the drone’s perspective I’d established over a quarter of my HUD. I shut down the POV and looked up: a giant appendage, or tentacle, or something, darted through the air some distance above us. It came from some central point beyond the ovule ranks.

  “Retreat retreat retreat!” Facehopper sent.

  Our mechs sprinted away; the slime resisted our movements every step of the way.

  The tentacle hurtled by above and to our right, passing us.

  Ghost swiveled his torso toward the object and trained his Gatling gun on it, as I’m sure others were doing squad-wide.

  “Hold your fire!” Facehopper transmitted.

  I watched in amazement as the incredibly long limb ignored us and slammed down into the superslug’s carcass ahead. On impact, the tentacle shuddered and small, dark creatures fell away along its length, landing in the slime. These tiny creatures promptly beetled away into the dark.

  “Halt!” Facehopper sent when it was obvious the alien limb had no interest in us.

  The huge tentacle latched onto the superbehemoth’s body and began dragging it toward the ovule ranks behind us. I stared, dumbfounded, as the appendage hauled the giant corpse past. Crushing any shells in its way, the body cut a swath through the ovules before vanishing into the darkness.

  We remained motionless for a moment, speechless, unsure of what to do.

  Then another tentacle abruptly launched from beyond the ovule ranks, this one seemingly headed straight toward us.

  “Scatter!” Facehopper sent. “But hold your fire!”

  We did so.

  This second giant tentacle proved equally unconcerned with us. It hovered near a few members of the squad as it passed but otherwise left us alone. I caught a glimpse of dark objects swarming all along its surface—from here they appeared to be fist-sized insects of some kind.

  The tentacle struck the floor not far from the corpse of the second slug, which was visible by then at the edge of our ambient light; the appendage groped around until it latched onto the behemoth’s carcass, then it, too, dragged the body toward the ovule ranks.

  “Get me some flares airborne!” Facehopper sent.

  TJ launched flares.

  More of the cavern was illuminated, and I followed the retreating tentacle with my eyes, toward the source.

  What I saw was utterly repulsive.

  I’m not even sure how to describe it.

  Imagine all the creatures from your nightmares and place them there, in that heart of darkness, and join them all together, and you’d have an idea of what I was witnessing.

  Nestled in the middle of the ovules lay this unfathomably large, unfathomably ugly, thing. A huge, bulbous, gelatinous mass whose extent not even the light from the flares could illuminate. I’d seen some tall buildings in my life, but overall this creature was taller and wider than any skyscraper I’d ever seen. No creature should be this massive. And yet there it was.

  Its entire surface constantly shifted and moved, and when I zoomed in, I saw more of those fist-sized insects, covering every square meter of the underlying entity, probably a few meters deep.

  Long tentacles st
reamed away from the creature on all sides, bigger than the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge. Some of those tentacles were hovering rather threateningly above, as if listening, or perhaps “smelling,” for the next target. Fist-sized insects fell away from the hovering limbs in random chunks. Luckily, no tentacles passed directly over our positions or we’d potentially have those insects raining down on us.

  One of the limbs had drawn the first slug to the outermost edge of the gelatinous creature, where the carcass was being engulfed slowly by a maw that had opened in the entity’s side.

  The grotesque sight made me wonder: That vast pit we’d fallen down, was it some kind of garbage disposal chute? Were dead slugs and crabs purposely thrown into the abyss to feed this thing?

  And if so, were the colonists also disposed of in a similar manner?

  As I watched, a bulge appeared in one of those hovering tentacles, a swelling that moved peristaltically outward from the main body. It reminded me of the protuberance you’d see when a snake devoured something larger than itself.

  The weight of the protuberance impelled the tentacle lower, and as the bulge moved outward, the tip of the appendage touched the ground roughly a hundred meters to the right of TJ’s scout, which was still embedded within the ovule ranks.

  I switched to the scout’s viewpoint. As the bulge reached the end of the tentacle, the skin folded open and a fresh ovule emerged, covered in those squirming, snakelike appendages.

  The tentacle began to retreat. It paused a short distance directly above the fresh ovule and quivered suddenly, causing a clump of fist-sized insects to fall away.

  The alien snakes that covered the ovule greedily snatched up the insects. The whole thing oddly reminded me of someone jerking a food shaker over a fish tank.

  “Well mates,” Facehopper sent in text mode. He didn’t want to risk voice. Probably a good idea. “I believe we’ve found our Queen.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Rade

  The rattle of claws and mandibles continued to grow in volume.