Atlas

by Isaac Hooke

  I put my head back, and the doc left me alone.

  I sent a message to Shaw. Hey babe.

  She sent me a message right back. Rade! I'm coming down to the convalescence ward right away.

  Okay...

  "Hey again," I said when she arrived.

  Her eyes were red. Obviously she'd just been crying.

  She threw herself at me and gave me a hug.

  "Whoa, careful, you're hugging an injured man here," I said, feeling a little dizzy.

  She pulled away, the concern written all over her face. "The doc told me you were fine!"

  "Yeah. He says that about everyone."

  "What's wrong then? You're going to be okay, right?"

  "Shaw, yes I'm fine. Maybe a bit worse for the wear, but otherwise just dandy. Look, new shoulders." I lifted both arms, doing my best not to flinch. "Now I can climb Everest without toilet paper apparently. Or wait, that's Alejandro."

  Her lower lip was trembling and I thought she was going to start crying.

  "What is it?" I said.

  "Nothing." She turned around, unable to look at me. Or maybe she was just ashamed because she almost teared up. "I was so worried about you, Rade. You almost got killed down there. And now you're just making light of everything. Acting like it's some kind joke."

  "Shaw..."

  She spun around to face me. "Next time you're down there on the surface, try not to be so selfish. Try to remember there are people up here who care about you. Who want you to return in one piece."

  I was completely taken aback, maybe even a little offended. "Selfish? You're calling me selfish? You really don't understand, do you? In a gun battle, all that's keeping the enemy from killing you is your Mark 12 and your platoon mates. I'd die for any one of them, Shaw. Any one of them. And they'd die for me. Selfish." I nearly spat the word.

  "Didn't you just hear what I said about the people who care about you? You say you'd die for your platoon mates. Well that's wonderful. But what about me? Would you live for me, Rade? Would you?"

  I forced a laugh. "You care about me, do you? What happened to being just friends who bang? Why the sudden concern for my wellbeing? I know I'm a great screw and all, but come on..."

  That did it. The tears I'd seen welling in her eyes spilled over.

  "I see I've made a mistake." She turned to go.

  "Shaw, wait, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. Shaw—"

  She hurried from the ward in a huff.

  I could be such an insensitive jerk sometimes.

  Shaw, I'm sorry—

  She blocked me.

  Great.

  Well, at least Alejandro was in good spirits when he woke up.

  "Well looky here," Alejandro said. "Someone's all bright and shiny this morning."

  "Hey Alejandro," I said grumpily.

  "Man, it feels like someone stuffed a rag down my windpipe," he said. "Like all the way down." He struggled to sit up. "Caramba, I'm dizzier than a mamacita on a stripper pole." He lay back down.

  Doctor Banye hurried in from his office in full, wild-haired glory, and attended to Alejandro, eventually telling him the same details he'd told me. When I mentioned the "upgrade" Banye had done on his lower intestine, Alejandro actually made it up off the bed and almost got the doc in a chokehold, but he ended up tripping on his IV tubes.

  Banye sedated him and helped him back up on the bed, then hurried away.

  "That doc freaks me out," Alejandro said, heavy-lidded from the sedative. He shook his head. "I got a whole new set of pipes. And new guts, like you. I guess that makes us gut brothers. Like blood brothers, but without the blood. Hey bro, we got guts."

  "Har har."

  Alejandro frowned sleepily. "I'd never be able to afford something like this back on Earth. I can't even imagine how much money they spent on us today."

  "Like the doc says, we're valuable assets now. It'd cost the military way more to replace us than to fix us up."

  "God I hope so," Alejandro said. "Because the moment that's not true, we're dead men. Thanks for what you did back there by the way. When I said I owed you one, I meant it."

  "You don't owe me a thing. You've saved my life countless times over the years."

  "If you say so. But I do owe you for this one, Rade. And I'm going to pay you back. Because that's how we do it."

  "Seriously, it was nothing. You'd have done the same for me. Besides, I was the corpsman. It was my duty to get you fixed up.

  Alejandro nodded, closing his eyes. "Yeah, but you patched me up before properly taking care of yourself. I won't forget that."

  "I know you won't, Alejandro." I got up and started wheeling my IV toward the head. Over my shoulder I added, "Buy me a beer when we're back home or something."

  He was already snoring.

  I spent the rest of that day, and half the next morning, resting in the ward. At least I was in good company. Lui, Manic, Big Dog, and Facehopper woke up in turn.

  Big Dog had taken a bullet in the abdominal sac, too, and like me the doc had to print him up a new large intestine.

  Facehopper was being treated for multiple shrapnel injuries obtained during one of the rocket strikes. The shrapnel had formed a seal with the jumpsuit, sparing him from decompression, which is why he was able to fight on throughout the gunfight.

  But what was the most eye-opening for me were the injuries sustained by Lui and Manic. Because their ATLAS mechs suffered such grievous blows, Lui and Manic had broken bones throughout their bodies, along with several punctured organs. Luckily, none of those punctured organs included the heart or brain. Manic had to have half his face reconstructed where his helmet had caved in. Lui meanwhile lost his right leg below the knee (the Weavers had already installed a new one, but he'd walk with a limp for a while until his body acclimated to the new tissue).

  I'd always thought that riding an ATLAS was the safest, most powerful position in the platoon. I mean come on, we're talking an ATLAS here, this super-powerful mech, this one-man-army. Invincible? The ATLAS mechs gave new meaning to the term. It was a revelation, that's for sure, to see that the ATLAS pilots were some of the most badly injured among us. I guess it made sense though—in an ambush situation, because of their size and threat level, of course the ATLAS mechs would be the first targets.

  The only people worse off than Lui and Manic were Bender and Fret. Neither had awakened—they were both in a medically induced coma in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit), just past doc's office. Both had suffered headshots, Fret while he defended the Moth Delivery Vehicle, and Bender while we made our desperate stand on the slope (Bender's earlier wound in the lower back was a joke in comparison, and the doc had already taken care of it). Their damaged neural tissues had been replaced, but extreme swelling and intracranial pressure required that the fluid be drained from their skulls every six hours. The doc warned us that when they woke up, their personalities would probably be different.

  So much for being invincible. So much for our training making us unstoppable.

  I should back up a bit regarding Fret. Facehopper explained that while we were busy in the firefight on the plateau, another group of SKs had ambushed the MDV back at the outpost and had attempted to flee the planet. Mordecai and the scientists were taken hostage, while Fret, who was in charge of guarding the MDV with Bomb, took a hit in the face. The strands of hair and globules of coagulating blood sealed the puncture hole in his suit, saving his life, however his helmet quickly filled with blood. Bomb managed to drain the blood with careful positioning of Fret's body, stabilizing him until Bravo Platoon arrived.

  As for the hijacked MDV, the Royal Fortune easily overrode the command codes and steered the craft back to the launch bay. The SK renegades surrendered when the doors of the MDV opened to three master-at-arms carrying belt-fed machine guns.

  The brig of the Royal Fortune could only fit nine people with its triple-racked bunks, so the rest of the captured SKs, including those who survived the firefight, were locked in the gym. All the gym
equipment had been moved to one side of the room and sealed off—I guessed we wouldn't be working out there for a while. The badly injured prisoners were stuffed into the convalescence ward here with us, beyond the sealed bulkhead. The doc told me that there weren't enough beds for everyone, so mattresses with restraining buckles had been put on the floors and in the outer hall on that side of the bulkhead. Navy master-at-arms worked alongside Pacification and Protection robots to safeguard the gym, the brig, and the SK side of the convalescence ward at all hours.

  During the next two days other members of Alfa platoon visited us here in the ward, as did members of Bravo platoon, or the Black Panthers as we called them. (They called us the Artists in turn.)

  Tahoe, Snakeoil, Bomb, Ghost and Trace became relatively permanent fixtures in the ward. They stayed pretty much the whole time during those two days, except during mess breaks. They talked with us, played co-op games on our aReals, and generally helped pass the time.

  One talk we had stands out for me, because it helped me cope with what happened.

  We'd just finished playing a game of Drone Wars, an interactive strategy game that mimicked the techniques and strategies involved in drone warfare. Everyone started the game with one Raptor, five Centurions, and two Equestrians. You could build more, but that required resources, which had to be mined by worker robots. You had to protect those worker robots, because they had no defenses, so you had to either build defense towers or assign Centurions to the workers. Anyway, the last game, I'd just devastated the other players, Alejandro in particular, who I'd wiped out in a mad rush in the first thirty seconds, taking out all his worker robots before he could assign any defenses.

  "Good game," Facehopper said. "Who's up for a rematch?"

  "Not me," Tahoe said. "I'm getting hungry. Gonna be supper time soon."

  "All right, mate," Facehopper said. "Have a good supper."

  Tahoe shrugged. "In ten minutes."

  The others started talking about the game, and the strategies they'd used. How Ghost had nearly missed Tahoe's mine, or how Facehopper's Raptor had taken down Lui's Centurions just in time, and so forth.

  I lay back, put my hands behind my head, and stared at the ceiling.

  "You're pretty quiet, Rade," Tahoe said. "Normally you'd be gloating your ass off right about now. What's up?"

  I smiled briefly. "I don't know. Guess I'm not really in the gloating mood."

  Facehopper sat up in his bed. "What's on your mind, Rade?"

  I hesitated. These were my brothers. I could tell them anything, especially this group. Might as well open up.

  "I'd been dreading coming to this planet," I said. "But once we got here, I was sure everything would go well. I guess because, well, together I always thought we were invincible. But what happened out there, I just... it took me by surprise, to say the least. Seeing my teammates fall like that. Seeing my best friends, my brothers, go down. We're supposed to be the most elite spec-ops unit in the galaxy. We do not fall. Our training hammered that into our head. And throughout our entire deployment in Mongolia, not one of us got hurt. And yet here we are. Seeing my platoon brothers fall was like having pieces of my heart torn out."

  Tahoe nodded. "When I saw Lui go down in Aphid, and then watched you guys get shot up, that was just gut-wrenching. All I could think was that I was next. That I'd never get to see another sunset on Earth. Never get to hold my wife in my arms or make love to her again, or watch my kids grow up. But somehow I fought through it. Somehow I managed to block out those thoughts and stay focused on the battle. My training I guess. The discipline that we force ourselves through each and every day. When I was lying out there on the mountainside, I kept telling myself I'd been through worse in training. That I could take this. But like Rade, I definitely felt humbled. I wasn't a superman. Not anymore. None of us were."

  Tahoe was seated beside Facehopper's bed, and was close enough for the leading petty officer to rest a hand on his shoulder.

  "That's a feeling all MOTHs get," Facehopper said. "Both caterpillars and veterans. It's a rude awakening, that's for sure, and it happens to us all, one way or another. The first deployment is usually easy. The second one, not so much. You soon learn that no, you're not invincible, despite what your training, or your distance from the last deployment, might have led you to believe. All you can do is compartmentalize those feelings. Block them out and fight on. Sure, when someone falls you save them if you can, and if you can't you have to deal with it later, because now, right now, you have to fight on for those of your brothers who you still can fight for."

  I stared at my hands. I'd killed so many men with these hands. First in Mongolia. Now here. I wondered why I never felt any remorse for what I'd done. I guess it was because of my training. It had desensitized me. Pointing a rifle and shooting at someone in a simulation felt no different than doing it in real life: my brain couldn't draw the distinction between simulated rounds and live ones.

  I was kind of glad about that actually.

  I didn't think I could handle regret and guilt right about now.

  "You three have finally been blooded," Facehopper said. "It's time for your callsigns."

  I didn't look up from my hands. "You know, it's funny. I've been waiting for this day for so long, the day of my naming, but now that it's finally arrived, for some reason I don't really care. I don't even want a callsign anymore."

  "That's how you know you're ready," Facehopper said. "When you finally realize that teamwork and brotherhood are more important than mere names. By giving you a callsign, we acknowledge this fact, and show you that we recognize this trait in you, and trust you with our lives. You're one of us now."

  "Yeah, but—"

  "No buts." Facehopper said. "Today is your naming day."

  "Okay... what's my callsign, then?" I said, resignedly.

  Facehopper mulled it over. "Well, what I remember most about you from back there was how you fought when the SKs had us pinned behind Manic's mech. You were one pissed-off MOTH. Definitely wouldn't sell your life cheaply. You just wailed on the SK positions. Threw a full complement of grenades. Even launched a Gustav a couple of times. You were just pure, raw, rage. There, that's your callsign. Rage."

  "Rage," Alejandro said. "I like it."

  Tahoe nodded thoughtfully.

  I shrugged. I didn't really see it, nor did I care. "Okay."

  "And you, Alejandro." Facehopper scratched his chin. "From the way you kept fighting through to the end, protecting your fellow team members even though you had a punctured lung and could hardly breathe, your callsign is Houdini. Because you escaped death and kept battling on."

  Alejandro chuckled.

  "What is it?" Facehopper said. He glanced at me and Tahoe.

  Tahoe grinned widely. "Houdini was what we called him in training."

  "We have ourselves a synchronicity, then. All the more reason to choose that name. The universe is trying to tell you something." Facehopper gazed at Tahoe next. "As for you, Tahoe, I've been talking with the Chief. He was definitely impressed by what he saw, and he had a couple of suggestions."

  "Oh yeah?" Tahoe leaned forwardly eagerly. "Like what?"

  "Hell-On-Wheels."

  "Pfffft," Big Dog said. "Hell-On-Wheels! Ridiculous. That's the name of a platoon, or an Equestrian. Not a teammate. Never let the Chief name people. Look what he calls himself. Chief Bourbonjack. Come on."

  "Well okay then." Facehopper tapped his lips. "The Chief's other suggestion was Cyclone."

  Big Dog considered that for a moment. "Better, but still kind of corny."

  "And none of our callsigns are corny?" Facehopper said, sitting back.

  "What about Fearless?" Alejandro suggested.

  "That's even worse," Big Dog said.

  Tahoe shrugged. "Call me whatever you want, I'll do my job to the best of my abilities either way. But I'm definitely not fearless. I almost wet myself out there, I'm ashamed to say. Yes, a big guy like me, surprising isn't it? But being outgunne
d and pinned down by SKs on a planet 8,000 lightyears from home isn't exactly what I'd call a pleasurable experience, not at all."

  "You're not the only one who was afraid," Big Dog said quietly.

  Facehopper nodded gravely. "Cyclone it is."

  * * *

  The nice thing about being in the ward with Facehopper was that I got to hear his briefings with Chief Bourbonjack.

  "Gives me the creeps having those SKs so close." The Chief nodded at the sealed bulkhead.

  "They can't hear, don't worry," Facehopper said.

  "I know they can't, but still..." He shook his head. "Suppose the doc's got most of them sedated anyway."

  My eyelids were only open a crack, but it was enough to see Facehopper give me a significant look. I closed my eyelids entirely. "We can switch to subvocals if you prefer."

  "No," Chief said. "I trust wireless communication even less. Anyway, okay... here's the deal. The Lieutenant Commander had our boy Ghost do some interrogations in the Box. He'd take an SK officer or enlisted and bring him in for a little session, all one-on-one like. Ghost would feed a good dose of truth serum to the subject, then ask the same questions, and get the same answers."

  Facehopper arched an eyebrow. "Let me guess, those answers were just short of useless."

  "Bingo," the Chief said. He sat down, sitting in one of the empty chairs that our visiting platoon mates had vacated when the Chief had ordered out all "non-essentials." He shook his head as if to clear it. "You're going to love this. Guess why they were abandoned on the planet? No idea. Guess why they destroyed the Gate? They didn't know the Gate was destroyed. Oh, but this is where it gets good. Guess why they stopped mining the Geronium? Death. Yup. The 'Great Death' swept in and scared them off."

  Facehopper frowned. "Any elaborations on that point?"

  "None. And get a load of this. You know those hyena-bear things we encountered? Turns out the SKs did bio-engineer them. Why? Not so much for terraforming, but for protection. Against what? They won't say. Well, let me rephrase that. They don't know. The mysterious Great Death again. Keep in mind all of this is taking place after the truth serum has been injected right into their medial prefrontal cortexes. We asked where their support robots were. Their ATLAS mechs and walkers. No idea. All they could tell us was that their company was the last surviving group of SKs on the planet.