ATLAS 2 (ATLAS Series Book 2)

by Isaac Hooke

  Species X25910 was the working designation for the alien race, of which the Phants were X25910-A, or X-A for short. If you wanted to get into more detail, a purple, faster Phant was X-A i, while a blue one was X-A ii. Crabs were X25910-B, or X-B, and slugs were X25910-C, or X-C. There were alternate naming conventions for the bigger crab and slug variants. Crabs were also called Workers, because they were the ones who laid down the deposits of Geronium-275 that coated the buildings of Shangde City. And the slugs were called Burrowers, because of their tunneling abilities. The vast subterranean network beneath the city? The handiwork of the slugs.

  X25910. The fleet scientists must have thought it a brilliant idea to give the alien race the most impersonal name possible. That way there would be no chance we’d feel empathy for them. A nice sentiment on the part of Fleet, but entirely unnecessary as far as I was concerned. The things looked like giant crabs and slugs, so I don’t think any of us would be developing feelings for them. For me, it didn’t matter what names Big Navy came up with, because those aliens would always be evil butchers in my mind.

  They’d murdered my brother in life and best friend in the world, Alejandro Mondego. And they had taken Shaw Chopra from me, the only woman I’d ever cared about.

  During the initial stages of the Tau Ceti II-c attack, eleventh hour negotiations had taken place between the SK and UC governments on Earth, culminating in a peace treaty that ended all extra-solar aggression between the two space-faring empires. With the flipping of a few bits in a rad-shielded, error-checking-and-correcting memory chip, privateering was outlawed, economic sanctions repealed, and borders opened up.

  Humanity had united against its common foe.

  I never thought I’d see the day, but we were actually going to help the SKs. They needed us. Just as we would probably need them in the coming days. Though I had to wonder just how long this “alliance” would hold.

  Because of our proximity to the necessary Gate, my platoon was part of the second wave of responders. We were teaming up with a battalion of Marines who were also in the region. We’d be working with them in more of a traditional combat capacity, rather than a direct-action-type role. At least at first. Meaning we’d be taking part in the heart of the fighting.

  Just the way we liked it.

  For me, I was just glad the war had finally come.

  It was payback time. My misgivings, my feelings of inadequacy, had lessened with the announcement of the war. I still wanted to transfer to a different task unit eventually.

  But first I wanted some payback.

  The Royal Fortune dropped us off at the Gerald R. Ford, the lone UC supercarrier in Gliese 581. With a crew complement of five thousand, it was basically a mobile space city.

  We proceeded through Tiàoyuè De Kǒng Gate to Tau Ceti. It felt odd, traveling through the Gate in a full-blown UC warship, given that previously we’d had to sneak past inside the cargo hold of an SK bulk carrier.

  More starships and troops were on the way of course, from all of humanity’s space-faring empires. No one wanted this alien plague spreading beyond Tau Ceti.

  The Gerald R. Ford spent the next few weeks crossing Tau Ceti. Giving the enemy vessel a wide berth, we arrived at the gas giant Tau Ceti II roughly two months after the Skull Ship’s arrival. The Gerald R. Ford took up a position in orbit around the massive planet near the orbital station Lequ (“Pleasure” in Korean-Chinese), a merchant hub that had been appropriated and transformed into a forward operating base. There the Gerald R. Ford joined the remnants of the SK Navy in the system, alongside other United Countries and Franco Italian (FI) warships. The location had the added benefit of stealth, because Lequ orbited the gas giant in a position directly opposite the Tau Ceti II-c moon, masking the heat signature of our fleet from the enemy.

  The remaining orbital stations were being used as staging centers for the evac of the other two moons. An evac of this magnitude took time, and only a quarter of the populations of the moons had departed so far. More rescue ships were on the way from outside the system.

  Anyway, a few days after our arrival, the commanders held a fleet-wide teleconference. A plan of action was conceived. The troops were mobilized.

  The day before we dropped, I found myself in the mess hall with half the platoon. We’d just finished a war game sim with some Marines, and we were chowing down on much-needed carbohydrates.

  My eyes drifted to Dyson, seated beside me. He hadn’t said a word the entire meal. He stared straight ahead, and from the glazed look in his eyes, I knew he was inside his Implant.

  He was Asian American, like Lui, but I suspected he had at least one parent from a different nationality because of the blond hair and Romanesque nose. Or maybe he’d merely had reconstructive surgery. His brow bore the scar of a botched tattoo removal, and though he never said what the tattoo had originally depicted, I thought it looked like a Chinese dragon (though most of us told him it must have been a penis). Dyson had grown his beard out, and its thickness matched the beards of the other MOTHs. Well, except for Tahoe, whose inability to grow a decent beard earned him daily jibes.

  None of the Marines here had beards, by the way. They simply weren’t allowed. Beards were the cachet of the Special Forces.

  “Must have some great porn in that embedded ID of yours,” I told Dyson, not one to miss an opportunity to ridicule him. I didn’t really care if the Marines listened in: they knew we fought among ourselves just as much as they did.

  Dyson’s head jerked up and he stared at me. His eyes smoldered.

  Finally he forced a smile. “Hey, Rage.”

  “So come on, what’s your deal?”

  He frowned. “What do you mean? Nothing. I was just listening to the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’ ”

  “The what?”

  “You know, the old anthem? Before Unification?”

  “Ah.” I nodded slowly. “That’s a good song. But have you heard ‘Al Grito De Guerra?’ One of the best anthems out there.”

  “I haven’t,” Dyson said. “Different lewds for different dudes, huh?”

  “I think he just called you gay,” Tahoe told me, jokingly.

  “Quiet, Tahoe,” I said. “We’re trying to have a conversation here.”

  “Why do you call him Tahoe?” Dyson said. “Everyone else calls him Cyclone. That’s the callsign programmed into my aReal . . .”

  “Only I’m allowed to call him Tahoe,” I said. “And we’ll leave the explanation at that.” I decided I’d try to treat him as more of an actual human being. At least for today. So I said, “Tell me, Dyson, are you looking forward to the upcoming battle?”

  “I’m here to do what I signed up for. Kill some baddies. Save the world. You know how it is.” Dyson could fake bravado with the best of us.

  “I do indeed.”

  “Just never thought I’d be fighting side by side with stinking SKs.”

  I regarded Dyson thoughtfully. “Interesting. I thought you were Chinese.”

  “Half Chinese,” he said. “The other half is Swedish. The better half.”

  I shook my head. “No wonder Lui doesn’t want you to hang out at our table.”

  “Hey, I’m only telling you the truth.”

  “And what’s the truth? That you hate your heritage, your origins, your ancestry? That you hate your own genes? Not a lot of sense in that. If you’re going to fight with us, you have to put aside your own self-hatred. I’m surprised you even made it through training with an attitude like that.”

  “Yeah, well, this attitude of mine was exactly what got me through training,” Dyson said. “My hatred for my Chinese half. It kept me going. Made me want to prove to myself I was better than that half. And I am. I’m not some weak Chinese.”

  “Who says the Chinese are weak?” I stared at him incredulously. “You’re lucky, you know. You’re going to be fighting alongside the S
ino-Koreans today. Try fighting against them sometime. Just ask Tahoe.”

  “Hey, don’t drag me into this,” Tahoe said. “I’m not touching this conversation with a seven-foot pole.”

  Dyson glanced between Tahoe and me. “You don’t understand,” he said quietly. “I’ve been fighting the Chinese my entire life.”

  “What do you mean?” I said, though I had a good idea.

  “Try growing up in the UC when you look like a member of its greatest enemy,” Dyson said bitterly.

  “You don’t really look all that SK to me,” I said.

  “Not anymore.”

  Ah. Reconstructive surgery, then.

  I swallowed a particularly large serving of rice.

  “Thanks, by the way,” Dyson told me.

  “For what?”

  Dyson hesitated, then: “For being so nice to me.”

  I laughed. I really laughed. “I’ve hardly been nice to you.”

  “No, you have,” he said. “I want you to keep hazing me. Keep testing my mettle. Even when I get my callsign. It keeps me on my toes.”

  “You’re the strangest caterpillar I ever met,” I said. “Of course, I haven’t met very many. Did you hear that, Tahoe? I think we’ve been too soft on our boy Dyson here. He likes our hazing.”

  Bender leaned forward, and pointed at Dyson threateningly. “I’m going to keep hazing you, don’t you worry. Gonna teach you that you ain’t never going to fill the shoes of the man you came to replace. Not ever.”

  Bender surprised me. I thought I was the only one who felt that way.

  Dyson crossed his arms. “I never said I wanted to replace anyone. I’m here to offer my sniping skills to the platoon. Use me as you see fit.”

  Facehopper rested a hand on his shoulder. “We’ve all been where you are, mate. All of us. Don’t mind them. We’ve lost good people, and you’re a convenient outlet for the grief we all feel. You’ll make it through, just don’t let them get to you. You survived MOTH training, and that’s half the battle. It takes a certain kind of man to get where you are now.”

  “I’m not an ordinary man,” Dyson said. “I’m a MOTH. And I know I’ll make it through, sir. I’m in my element out here. This is what I trained for. Besides, with you guys at my side, I’m invincible.”

  I exchanged a knowing glance with Tahoe. I used to think exactly like Dyson. Because of who I was, and the friends I had, I actually believed none of us would ever die. I was wrong.

  But we were MOTHs. We were supposed to believe we were invincible. Yet despite the brave faces, all of us here, MOTHs and Marines alike, knew what was coming. And we were afraid. You could feel it in the air. It was always like this, the day before a battle.

  And yet I also sensed excitement. We were, in the end, doing our jobs. Doing what we were trained to do.

  Dyson was looking at Bender, as if expecting him to make some gung-ho comment in agreement with what he just said.

  Instead, all Bender had to say was, “Don’t look at me with those beady little Chinaman eyes of yours.”

  Charming, as always.

  Dyson started to look away, but he shot Bender a withering gaze as the words registered. “What did you call me?”

  Bender smirked. “You heard me. Chinaman.”

  “That’s it.” Dyson stood up from his seat.

  I was there to catch him. “Sit down, Dyson.”

  He tried to shove his way past me.

  On the other side of the table Bender stood too, and was egging on Dyson. “Let him go! Let him go! I got some things to teach this caterpillar!”

  “All right,” Skullcracker said, in a voice so quiet I had to strain to hear. “If y’all don’t sit yourselves down real soon, you’re going to find out why I’m called Skullcracker.”

  Dyson and Bender regarded the man’s skull-tattooed face warily, and then they returned to their seats.

  “Thank you, Skullcracker,” Facehopper said.

  Skullcracker inclined his head.

  “Tomorrow we fight,” Facehopper said. “And we’re doing so as a team. I need you guys to present a unified front to the world. Do I have to tell the Chief we can’t work together? That he has to assign you two to different drops?”

  “No, Facehopper,” Dyson said.

  “Bender?” Facehopper glanced at the black man.

  Bender had a defiant look in his eyes, but then he lowered his gaze, and said, “No.”

  The next day I found myself sitting inside a Delivery Vehicle, waiting to be dropped onto the invaded moon. I wore my pressurized jumpsuit alongside the dozen Marines and five MOTHs from the wargame sims: Facehopper, Tahoe, Skullcracker, Bender, and Dyson. I would’ve preferred if the caterpillar Dyson had been assigned to a different Delivery Vehicle in the end, but I had no say in the matter. I knew it was wrong to resent him, that it wasn’t his fault two good men had to die so he could be here. Still, knowing that didn’t change my attitude toward him.

  The remaining members of Alfa platoon, including Chief Bourbonjack, had been similarly spread out among the battalion. Our purpose was to give advice and offer leadership to the Marines. No one else, other than the SKs, had faced a threat like this before.

  As if we really knew anything more just because we’d fought the enemy once before. These Marines were briefed. They knew what to expect. My experience and that of my platoon’s wasn’t going to make a whole lot of difference, in my opinion. You shot the crabs and slugs. They went down. Unless they were really big, in which case you left them to air support. As for the Phants, well, you ran from those flesh-incinerating and robot-possessing mists for all you were worth.

  Lieutenant Commander Braggs was stationed in the CDC (Combat Direction Center, or operations room) of the Gerald R. Ford, and he would coordinate with us via Chief Bourbonjack while we were on the surface. Like the rest of the crew, the Lieutenant Commander had his Implant disabled, as Fleet hadn’t found a way to shield direct-brain aReal devices from the crippling electromagnetic emissions of the Phants. So he was relying on an external aReal for his HUD and platoon connectivity. There was no chance of these HUDs overloading like had happened to us on Geronimo, not with the Implants offline. Anyway, while in the CDC, the Lieutenant Commander temporarily gave Chief Bourbonjack access to the audio and video feeds of his aReal, and the Chief in turn shared those feeds with the rest of Alfa platoon.

  “What I’m sending you now, boys,” the Chief sent over the private comm channel, “is shared with the understanding that you won’t show it to anyone else. I hope you appreciate that common soldiers and embedded reporters aren’t allowed access to such feeds. But you are MOTHs, and there’s nothing common about you. You can handle scenarios that would have other men pissing in their military-issue undergarments. It’s debatable whether this is a breach of Operational Security or not, but if it is, to hell with op-sec. As far as I’m concerned, you deserve to see the Commanding Officer and his XO bring this carrier into battle. Especially when you’re going to be dropping out the hangar bay in the middle of it. If you’re going to die, then you damn well deserve to see what hit you. Out, goddammit.” The Chief was stationed in a different drop craft, but I could imagine the grim expression on his face as he said that.

  I halved the size of the video feed that the Chief supplied, and moved it to the upper right corner of my helmet’s aReal. On it, I saw the layout of the CDC as perceived from Lieutenant Commander Braggs’s perspective. He was staring at the tactical display, which was a holographic representation of the battle space projected in 3D at the center of the room. The data for the display was filtered and collected via the multiple terminals manned by operations specialists around it. The specialists wore old-style translucent aReal visors, the kind with the red LEDs that strobed at different frequencies, giving the overhead cameras positional data for proper linking of the real and virtual worlds. The speciali
sts wore hand straps with similar strobing LEDs, and used them to interact with their consoles (without an aReal those consoles appeared as blank plates of glass, unless the backup systems were running).

  The XO (Executive Officer) of the supercarrier, Captain Tom Linder, was the officer overseeing the CDC. He, like everyone else present, wore an aReal visor. He had his own seat at the heart of the command center.

  On the tactical display (which, I was told, could be viewed via aReal anywhere on the ship if you had the appropriate access), I saw the green dot representing the Gerald R. Ford, and the darker green dots representing our frigate escort, which included a handful of FI ships, three SK ships, and two other UC vessels. One of the escorting vessels was the Royal Fortune.

  The Captain studied the display. I could see the red dots representing the enemy flotilla (comprised of captured SK ships), with the Skull Ship indicated as a sphere roughly four times the size of the others. The moon and gas giant were represented as bigger spheres, not to scale, but large enough to illustrate their positions in relation to the rest of us.

  Our vessels were coming toward the moon from the far side. Like most carriers, we were decked out in LIDAR absorbers and background-rad pass-throughs, but all that was moot when you considered our heat signature would’ve enabled us to be spotted from millions of kilometers off. The moon wasn’t big enough to shield our signatures, not given our angle of approach. But I didn’t think stealth was our objective.

  A small alert sounded. On the 3D display, the smaller red dots had begun moving away from the Skull Ship.

  “She’s seen us,” an operations specialist said. “The enemy flotilla is breaking away from Bandit 1.” That was the Skull Ship.

  Captain Linder nodded calmly.

  A voice came over the CDC comm. “Give me an ETA on weapons range.” I recognized the voice as belonging to Commodore William Hanson, the CO (Commanding Officer) of the Gerald R. Ford. He was directing operations from the main bridge, where most of the tactical decisions would be executed. The whole point of the CDC was to analyze the battle space and advise the Commanding Officer. But if the bridge fell, the CDC could continue the battle—it was a fully operational backup command center.