ATLAS 2 (ATLAS Series Book 2)

by Isaac Hooke

My scope passed the motionless Artificial again, and I paused. Something seemed off about this whole situation, somehow. My danger sense was firing, and I sensed a trap.

  Well, we’d come this far. Couldn’t really turn back now. We’d just have to proceed slowly, and carefully, sticking to everything we’d learned and practiced in training.

  First order of business: ensure the High-Value didn’t flee.

  “Hijak,” I transmitted. “How’s your sniping?”

  He tapped the barrel of his sniper rifle. “They don’t give us these babies unless we’ve earned them, sir.”

  Maybe, but my first instinct was that he sucked. I didn’t want to believe anyone else could ever be as good a shot as Alejandro.

  I suppressed the thought.

  “All right,” I said. “Take out the High-Value’s right foot. I’ll get the left. On three. We have to get both at the same time. I don’t want the High-Value limping off on one foot.”

  “Wait a second. Is that a good idea? Sir?”

  “I don’t have time to argue with you, Hijak. Rules of Engagement say we’re fine. We’re supposed to capture the High-Value. Whether we bring it in with or without feet is irrelevant. It’s a robot. It’s not going to feel any pain.”

  “But how do you know the Phant won’t abandon the body if we shoot its feet?”

  “Would you prefer the alternative? Losing the High-Value because it decides to run? No, we’ll just have to take the risk. While we still have time.”

  “What if it just drags itself away with its arms?” Hijak insisted.

  “We’ll reach it before then. Look, can I count on you or not?”

  Hijak hesitated only an instant. “You can count on me, sir.”

  “Good. On three.” I aimed past the pillar, exposing as little of myself as possible.

  “One.”

  Brick shards exploded against my face as bullets ricocheted from the pillar. I’d been spotted.

  “Two.”

  More shards. I knew I might receive a fatal head wound any second. But I didn’t flinch. Just a little longer . . .

  “Three.”

  I pulled the trigger.

  The Artificial’s upper body swung forward as both its legs pinwheeled backward from the force of the impact, and it flopped to the floor.

  I ducked behind cover.

  So Hijak was as good a shot as he said he was, after all.

  Then something exploded from the direction of the High-Value.

  I crawled to the opposite side of the pillar and looked out.

  Beyond the line of Centurions, the floor had collapsed in a circular pattern where the Artificial had fallen, and the High-Value was now gone.

  A blur of motion to my left caught my eye: a Dragon HS3 drone hovered past.

  Likely the SKs had sent in their own porters by now, and they’d taken up a position on the level just below. They had set explosive microcharges and stolen the High-Value right out from under us.

  Damn it.

  They were good, I’d give them that.

  I shot the HS3.

  The damaged drone spiraled across the line of Centurions and swooped into the circular pit. I heard a distant crash.

  “We have to get down there!” I wasn’t about to let the SKs seize the High-Value Target. Not after all this work.

  I unhitched a grenade from my belt, let it cook for three seconds, then launched it toward a group of two Centurions. I cooked two more grenades in turn, releasing them shortly thereafter.

  The explosions went off one after another.

  I peered through my scope and started terminating the remaining Centurions, aiming at the brain cases. Hijak did the same on his side. Our ammo was running low.

  Ahead, to the right and left, more Centurions piled down the stairs. The alien in the jumpsuit decided to join them, carrying that huge, nasty particle weapon with three of its tentacles.

  I’d just about had enough of this.

  “Mark the pit on your HUD,” I told Hijak.

  Then I threw a smoke grenade.

  “Run!”

  The grenade exploded, and I dashed into the smoke screen. I heard the whiz of bullets as the Centurions fired at us anyway.

  Though I couldn’t see a thing in the smoke, my HUD indicated the pillars around me as blue wire frames, and the circular pit in the floor appeared as a two-dimensional outline.

  I leaped into the pit, plunging from the smoke to the level below, not knowing whether I’d land in a roomful of possessed robots or something worse.

  I crashed to the floor and rolled aside. I got up on one knee and scanned the room, aiming my rifle from quadrant to quadrant.

  No robots.

  The level appeared almost identical to the one above, replete with equidistant pillars.

  As Hijak landed beside me, I spotted the two SK porters, sheathed in gray jumpsuits, not far ahead. They were placing fresh microexplosives, this time to blow the outer wall, probably because there weren’t any obvious windows nearby. They had the footless High-Value Target secured inside their own glass container.

  Though trapped, the Artificial wasn’t properly positioned inside the container—the Artificial sat on the edge of the metallic circle etched into the glass floor. That meant the electromagnetic containment beam was inactive. Yet the possessing Phant hadn’t fled—drops of purple condensation still covered the base of the High-Value’s neck, reaching up from underneath its camos.

  Odd.

  I dashed toward the SKs. “Wait!”

  The two porters turned back.

  They were women.

  Hijak and I halted two paces from them. We kept our weapons raised.

  “Disarm the microexplosives,” I said.

  “You are MOTHs?” the nearest woman said in heavily accented English.

  “I said disarm the microexplosives!” I waved the barrel threateningly.

  The two women exchanged a glance, then raised their hands in surrender. That seemed kind of easy, considering they were supposed to be elite commandos.

  “Give me the detonation device.” I glanced at the remote in the closest SK’s hand.

  In response, she pressed the detonator and activated her horizontal jumpjets, hurtling right past me. She must have dialed up the blast intensity of the microcharges beforehand, because the explosion threw me to the floor.

  I heard a high-pitched keening in my ears, and bright stars filled my vision.

  I drunkenly blinked the points of light away, but before I could recover, a heavy boot pressed into my chest. Groggily, I tried activating my jetpack, but it malfunctioned.

  The woman disarmed me, then unbuckled my jetpack, rolling me to the side. As the pack fell away, I saw why the controls hadn’t responded: I’d landed atop the glowing liquid of a Phant, and it was flowing into the jetpack. On the floor nearby lay the crumpled shell of the HS3 I’d shot down. I hadn’t realized the drone was possessed.

  Jetpacks had limited AIs, but the nozzles began to fire out of sequence as the Phant took control.

  This was all very odd. The Phant could have killed me. I had seen the alien entities incinerate entire jumpsuits while the human occupants were still inside. It was how Alejandro had died. But instead, this one chose to spare me and possess my jetpack.

  Why? I was starting to suspect that given the choice between AI and flesh, they would choose the AI first.

  I tried to resist as the woman plasticuffed me, but my mind was still foggy, my body slow. The high-pitched keening in my ears had faded to a distant buzz, but all sound still seemed muffled.

  The woman hauled me toward the glass container. In front of it, a wide, gaping hole had been blown into the warehouse wall, nine stories above street level.

  The woman secured the plasticuffs to the loop built into the lower le
ft corner of the container.

  Inside the glass, the Artificial watched me with an empty expression, the stumps of its feet occasionally sparking.

  “You should really turn on the EM containment field,” I said to the woman. My voice sounded distant.

  The SK woman gave me a mocking smile.

  The second woman secured Hijak to the other side of the container in the same way. Hijak had his head bowed, and he bore a nasty cut along his temple. He kept blinking the blood from his eyes. His jetpack was also gone.

  “Chief, we’ve been captured,” I sent over the comm. Weakly.

  Static.

  Metallic clangs issued from behind me.

  The Centurions from the floor above were leaping through the hole in the ceiling.

  “Uh,” I said.

  The clangs continued as more robots landed, punctuated by a single loud thump as the alien in the jumpsuit plunged down.

  The women quickly hoisted the glass container between them, with help from Hijak and me, since we wanted to get the hell out of there. Then the SKs vaulted outside and activated their jumpjets at full burn.

  What happened next was a blur of adrenalin-fueled helplessness. My life was in someone else’s hands and there was nothing I could do about it.

  Hijak and I were dragged through the air by the plasticuffs while the women steered the container. The cuffs dug into the wrist area of my suit, threatening to puncture it. The street flowed by, nine stories below.

  We smashed through a window on the building across from the warehouse, and landed roughly. Other SKs in gray jumpsuits unhooked Hijak and me from the glass container, then deactivated our PASS (Personal Alert Safety System) devices, which could be used to track us—though probably not very far in the alien-induced interference.

  Two of the SKs tied us to their backs, just above their jumpjets, then they carried us through the city, leaping from building to building, following the rest of the SK platoon over the swarming crabs and slugs. The glass container was ported along through it all.

  Oddly enough, none of the enemy robots on the streets fired at us. Maybe it was an illusion. Maybe they were firing, but their aim was so bad I just didn’t notice. Or maybe they didn’t want to harm our precious cargo.

  Eventually we emerged from the southwest corner of the city, precisely opposite the original waypoint we had used for the insert.

  I tried reaching the Chief several times over the comm, but I never got through. It was pointless to keep trying, because he couldn’t come for us now.

  No one could.

  The SKs unceremoniously strapped Hijak and me to the floor of a drop shuttle, alongside the caged Artificial. The SKs never once activated the EM field inside the glass container. I kept expecting the Phant to flow free, but it didn’t.

  Instead, the host Artificial merely smiled at me.

  The SK soldiers clamped into their respective seats, and the drop shuttle sped away.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Shaw

  Queequeg moved deftly among the ranks, dodging claws, evading mandibles, just tearing a path through the cords and severing the crabs from their host slug. It was a trick I’d taught him in earlier fights, and it was the fastest way to dispatch the smaller beasts.

  I followed in his wake, piloting Battlehawk, shooting any crabs that Queequeg had missed or that came at him from the sides.

  Fan guarded the rear from his perch behind my head. He was using the rifle, ammo packs, and grenades he’d retrieved from my mech’s storage compartment. He targeted the cords of the crabs too, and was doing an admirable job of protecting my back. I was fairly certain he was military by now, judging from some of the kills he’d made. I supposed that was a plus. I needed someone who could fight along with me.

  We had held out for a surprisingly long time, mostly because of the tight nature of the tunnel, which siphoned the enemy toward us in manageable quantities, so that the most we faced at any one time were two or three.

  Even so, I knew it was only a matter of time before our ammo ran out. When Fan exhausted his, I’d be forced to watch our back more often, leaving Queequeg exposed. Soon thereafter my Gatlings would empty, then my serpents, and finally my incendiaries.

  Not good. Not at all.

  We were trying to reach the surface, shooting and hacking our way back through the rearmost tunnel. It seemed hopeless. But I’d faced countless hopeless situations before. I’d always gotten through. Always.

  Now wouldn’t be any different. It couldn’t.

  We reached the slug that was the source of the current batch of crabs. Queequeg pulled back, allowing me to whale on the beast with my Gatlings until the alien phased out.

  Queequeg, Fan, and I rushed through the temporary gap left by the evanesced slug, and we ran right into the next opposing group of crabs.

  The slug meanwhile rematerialized behind us, blocking our retreat vector, but also cutting off attacks from crabs in that direction.

  “Let me know if the situation changes behind us,” I said, wishing I still had the second pair of eyes afforded by the ASS drone, which we’d lost to a crab.

  “The situation changes!” Fan said. “The big one disappears again to allow the other Mara to pass!”

  The slug had realized its mistake, then.

  “Well don’t just sit there,” I said. “Fight!”

  I felt the pressure of a medium blast wave behind me.

  “That was my last grenade!” Fan said.

  “Do what you can!”

  I’d been careful to use my Gatling guns in controlled bursts to conserve ammo, but my left one clicked now when I fired it.

  Empty.

  I cycled in a serpent launcher instead. According to the supply indicator on my HUD, this was the final rocket. Battlehawk had already exhausted most of the serpent inventory during its tenure with Bravo platoon, and I’d already emptied the last three from the right-side launcher when I’d made the Improvised Explosive Device.

  So, one rocket left.

  Had to make it count.

  I aimed the launcher down the tunnel, and though I couldn’t see the slug through the darkness, I knew it was down there somewhere.

  I fired.

  The warhead detonated roughly thirty paces ahead, and the flash illuminated a tsunami of crab body parts.

  I hadn’t hit the slug then, but I had inflicted damage on its minions.

  The blast wave sent crabs in the immediate area flailing into the floor and walls.

  Queequeg was knocked off his feet.

  Battlehawk held its ground, although the cockpit shuddered around me.

  One crab recovered right away, and tried to get Queequeg while he was down.

  I split the crab in two with a Gatling burst from my right arm.

  No one hits my friends while they’re down.

  Another crab got up in front of me.

  I depressed the weapon trigger—

  My right Gatling clicked.

  Out of bullets entirely now.

  The doomsday scenario I had rehearsed in my head so many times before was finally upon me. Trapped in a cave, surrounded by beasts, slowly running out of ammo. It didn’t matter if I was in a mech or a jumpsuit, the final outcome was the same.

  Don’t give up! Don’t give up! Don’t give up!

  I cycled the incendiary throwers into both hands. These weapons fired some kind of oxidant and combustive together, allowing me to throw flames even in zero oxygen. I turned toward the rear, away from Queequeg, and activated the incendiaries. The crabs behind me were roasted, yes, but as soon as the creatures left weapons range the fires immediately flickered out.

  The crabs devised a strategy: they would dive in and get struck by the jellied gasoline, then they’d retreat, the flames would quench, and then they’d dive right back in again.


  I decided it was best to save the incendiary throwers for the slug, so I turned back toward Queequeg and began using Battlehawk’s body as my main weapon.

  This involved a lot of bashing and stomping.

  “Stay still!” Fan said. “I hit nothing when you move like that!”

  “Do your best!” I said. “Stay alive!”

  I wasn’t an infantryman. I had no training in small-unit tactics. I didn’t know the proper strategies for close-quarter combat situations, nor did I even know the full capabilities of the mech. I considered telling Battlehawk to fight the battle for me, but I remembered all too well what an AI had done to my shuttle, crash-landing it while I slept.

  No. I fought my own battles. And if that meant I had to take a brute force approach, and smash whatever came my way, then so be it. The crabs were relentless, but I wasn’t going to back down. I’d force my way out or die trying.

  Still, if Battlehawk knew something that could save my life . . .

  “Battlehawk, any ideas?”

  “Keep doing what you are doing,” the AI intoned.

  Very helpful.

  I waded through the living and the dead, striking with my fists, tromping with my feet, making my way toward the next slug, which I couldn’t yet see. I had refused to let Battlehawk fight on autopilot for me, and yet I was doing that very thing myself. My mind operated on automatic, blatantly killing everything around me, so that when I came across Queequeg’s snarling face in the mayhem, I nearly smashed it in.

  I truly was a killer now. Worse than Rade ever had been.

  Stunned and ashamed by what I had become, I didn’t move.

  Queequeg leaped past and bit into the umbilical of the crab beside me, which had taken advantage of my inaction to attack my mech.

  Other crabs surged forward to assume its place, and in moments they were literally all over me. Mandibles chewed at external pistons and compressor joints. Pincers clattered against exposed tubing and wiring.

  It sounded like I was inside a flimsy tin shed covered in insects. Warning indicators blared all over the place, though I had no idea what most meant. I knew my right elbow joint was damaged, because I couldn’t bend the arm all the way. My left arm was sluggish. My right eye camera winked out intermittently.