Atlas (27 page)

I felt extremely safe with Manic at our point, in Ladybug. The mechanical hum of those large servomotors punctuated the mech's every movement, and I felt the ground shake with each step it took, even though I was twelve meters away.

Everyone else looked just as confident as I felt.
Snakeoil with his communication rucksack, walking with his M60 belt-fed machinegun. Facehopper and Bender with their M4 rifles. Alejandro and me with our sniper rifles (and my extra grenades and the Carl Gustav thrown in for good measure). Big Dog bringing up the rear with another M60.

We were practically invincible.

None of us had been wounded during our earlier deployment in Mongolia. I figured that this was going to be just as easy. Even if there were SKs here, I knew we'd easily take them. It didn't even matter if they were better equipped. You know why? Because we were better trained.

I wondered if I could access Shaw from here. Snakeoil was carrying around an InterPlaNet node on his back, so it was
entirely feasible. However, sending any unnecessary communications while in a traveling overwatch was strictly prohibited. If there was an enemy somewhere on these mountains, we didn't want to do anything that might compromise our position.

Shaw. I glanced involuntarily at the sky. She was up there now, somewhere, maybe looking down on the planet at this moment. I couldn't wait to see her when I got back tonight. In that moment I remembered the warning Tahoe had given me, and I quickly forced her to the back of my mind.

Ahead, I caught sight of the Raptor in the permanently gray sky. The unmanned aerial vehicle circled our distant target, reminding me of a vulture.

I pulled up the map on my HUD. The excavation site sat inside a crater approximately two klicks ahead.

The land sloped upward, becoming a narrow escarpment with a high cliff on one side and a steep drop the other. We managed to keep our zigzag formation, even though the path had tightened considerably.

"How the hell did that Equestrian tank get up here?" Alejandro said.

"With difficulty," Facehopper answered.

I could see tread marks on the cliff beside us, as well as
on the path at my feet. The automated tank had had to drive at a forty-five degree angle to traverse the area, with half its treads on the wall, the other half on the path.

Ahead, Ladybug moved on, this impenetrable bastion of unstoppable steel, not slowed in the least by the terrain.

Behind Ladybug, Snakeoil abruptly lost his footing and plummeted over the ledge.

He reappeared a few seconds later, his jumpjets on full burn, and returned to the path.

Snakeoil smiled sheepishly. "Lost my footing. Sorry to scare y'all."

Facehopper didn't find it funny.
"Please mates, for the love of God, watch— where— you— tread."

He'd only just stopped talking when a spine-tingling laugh pierced the air.

I spun, training my rifle on an evil-looking thing at the top of a distant outcrop opposite our own. It just stood there, yapping away, looking like a cross between a hyena and a bear. It had an elongated, wolf-like head. Its bulky body was covered in thick black fur, and tufts of green hair tipped its knees, shoulders, and ears.

Four more of the things ran up onto the outcrop, cackling away like demons.

"HQ," Chief Bourbonjack sent over the troop line (which included Lieutenant Commander Braggs). "We got something. South-south-east of our position. 150 meters. Over." His voice was the epitome of calm.

"Aliens!" Alejandro said. "I knew it! Friggin aliens!"

"Weapons hold. Confirm element. Over." Lieutenant Commander Braggs sent down from his cozy compartment on the
Royal Fortune.

"TJ," Chief Bourbonjack sent to the platoon line, keeping us all in the loop. "Are these SK bioweapons?"

One of the HS3 drones with us hovered over to the strange animals. The lead beast stepped back and growled, lips curling to reveal a row of sharp teeth. The HS3 launched some kind of dart, and the animal yelped, but held its ground, growling even more fervently.

"Receiving prelim data from Arnold
,
"
TJ replied. Arnold was the callsign of the HS3 drone, apparently. "Definitely bioengineered from Earth stock. They seem to be contributing to the terraforming. Inhale the CO2 and H2O, exhale O2. Body uses up the extra glucose. Those green marks on their body? Chlorophyll. Got some incredible adaptations going on, genetic-wise, to let them withstand the low pressure. Our scientists are going to have a field day with this data. Maybe we should bring a specimen back with us."

"HQ," Chief Bourbonjack sent to the troop line. "Confirmed bioengineered elements. Earth DNA. Possible contributors to the terraforming. Over."

I glanced at Alejandro. "Aliens, huh?"

Alejandro shrugged. "Hey, they look like aliens okay?"

"The bioengineered elements are extraneous to the mission," Lieutenant Commander Braggs sent. "However, if you want to engage, it's your call. Over."

"They're not actually producing enough glucose from the sun to survive," TJ sent on the platoon line.

Facehopper glanced at Big Dog. "That means they've been getting the bulk of their nutrients from somewhere else..."

Big Dog pursed his lips behind his facemask. "I suppose if there were any surviving SKs left behind, now we know what happened to them."

Those snarling jaws took on a whole new dimension.

"
Puto
!" Alejandro cursed.

"Facehopper, has your squad come to the same conclusion we have?" Chief Bourbonjack sent on the platoon line.

"We have sir,"
Facehopper sent. "Ghost, Trace, Alejandro, Rade. Take them out."

The creatures didn't have a chance. We picked our targets and downed the bioengineered animals at the same time. Four gurgled yelps echoed across to us as we shot, and the creatures went flying back. When the dead animals came to rest, greenish steam wafted from their wounds.

"What is that?" Alejandro said, the disgust evident in his voice.

"Their blood," Big Dog said, rather dispassionately. "The boiling point of a liquid is dependent on pressure. The higher the pressure, the higher the boiling point. The lower the pressure, the lower the boiling point. You bleed out here, your blood's gonna boil."

"Then why don't their eyes bug out, or boil away or something?" Alejandro said, lowering his rifle.

"Dunno," Big Dog said. "Ask TJ. He's the one with the sensor drones."

"You know what? Forget it. I don't want to know. Bioengineering.
Caramba
. It's just as bad as encountering an alien." Alejandro stared at the bodies a moment longer. Then he glanced at me. "What if we were wrong about them?"

I couldn't meet his eye. "We weren't."

The escarpment leveled out, and we proceeded across a short plateau, keeping our zigzag formation. Manic's ATLAS 5 crunched eagerly ahead, an unstoppable war machine ready to go into action.

The rad trail eventually led to a relatively wide, v-shaped defile. Cover was limited, though if we were attacked in there, I could probably burrow into the shale that was a prevalent feature of the landscape.

According to the green dots marking the map on my HUD, the Centurions and the Equestrian were about three hundred meters ahead, roughly halfway through the defile. There were two green dots on both my left and right, and looking up I saw the corresponding HS3s hovering along the peaks of the bordering slopes.

"How's it look, TJ?" Facehopper sent over the platoon-line.

"All support troops report clear."

"I don't like it," Facehopper transmitted. "Chief, recommend we turn back and find another route."

I glanced at squad two, twenty-five meters behind us. The Chief seemed to be looking up at the rocky escarpments. "I'm with you, Facehopper. We double-back, find another route. TJ, recall the scouts."

"Recalling... wait." TJ jerked his gaze upward. "Just lost contact with the HS3s!"

I turned around in time to watch a barrage of rockets launch from the tops of both escarpments.

My training took over.

I could almost hear the instructor's voice in my head, guiding me through each step of the Contact Response protocol.

"Drop!" the imaginary instructor said.

I dropped immediately. The shale scratched the bottom of my facemask.

I never saw where those rockets struck, but I heard the explosion, and felt the shockwaves.

There was little to no cover here. I tried to burrow as far as I could into the loose, rocky shale, and keep my head down, hoping the black and gray digital pattern of my jumpsuit would hide me. I heard the familiar belt-whip sound of bullets flying past and narrowly missing. The shale exploded all around me as the rounds struck. Black dust kicked up.

"Find your buddy!" the instructor said.

I glanced to my left. Alejandro was there, dug into the shale about five meters away. He nodded, then looked into his scope, aiming up the escarpment.

I glanced over my shoulder. The other members of the platoon were dispersed behind me, wherever they could find cover. In a tiny depression here. Behind a pile of rocks there. Or just on the open ground like me, burrowed into the shale.

"Complement you buddy's field of fire!" the instructor said.

I gazed into my scope. The range wasn't great enough for the processors in the EXACTO rounds to kick in—any hits I made would be all me. A
target in a jumpsuit decided that now was a good time to lift his head from behind the rock he was hiding behind.

I took him out.

There was a bright flash overhead. With a quick glance skyward, I saw that the Raptor drone was on an exponentially decaying flightpath, a plume of smoke streaming from its engine.

We'd just lost our air support.

I forced myself to peer into the scope again.

Another
target presented himself. He was close enough that I could make out his features through the lens of his jumpsuit.

Definitely SK.

Got him.

"Ladybug down!" Manic sent on the comm. "Hydraulics are blown to shit! Can't lift my arms or legs!"

What, how could that be possible? An ATLAS 5 already out of action?

"Aphid down!" Lui said on the platoon comm.

The
second
ATLAS 5?

I couldn't believe it.

Both mechs, gone.

It must have been dumb luck on the part of the attackers.

The ATLAS 5s were invincible.

We
were invincible.

Our training had taught us that.

Our deployment in Mongolia had taught us that.

This shouldn't be happening.

Yet here it was.

We were going down, one by one.

Well at least I knew what the targets of those initial rockets had been. The ballistic shields each ATLAS carried were meant to protect against armor-piercing
bullets
, not rockets. The first strikes would have crumpled the shields away, leaving the mechs defenseless for the second and third strikes. The ATLAS 5s had something called a "Trench Coat" countermeasure, which used 360-degree radar to send out seventeen pieces of metal, one of which was bound to hit any incoming rocket. However, it didn't work too well when four or five rockets locked onto a mech at once.

On my HUD map, a bunch of red dots appeared on the escarpments, about three hundred meters into the defile, to the left and right of the green dots that marked the robot friendlies—our support troops were identifying and transmitting the positions of the enemy units further in. I gazed through my scope, down into the defile. I saw the Centurions pinned behind the Equestrian tank. The tank was firing repeatedly up the slope on one side, taking out huge chunks of the escarpment.

I observed a barrage of rockets launch from the slope behind the Equestrian. I'm not sure where those rockets hit, but the Equestrian hurtled straight up into the air and landed upside-down. The displaced Centurions took cover behind the damaged shell of the tank, taking heavy fire. The command unit of the Centurions, the Praetor, fell in a shower of sparks.

We weren't going to be getting any help from that quarter.

The hail of bullets continued around me. Shards of rock and dust were just flying into the air. Along with the communications equipment in Snakeoil's rucksack was a newly developed Node-jammer, which was supposed to scramble SK wireless frequencies and prevent the enemy adhoc network nodes (ie: their Implants) from exchanging information. In theory that meant if an SK identified one of us, our positions wouldn't be broadcast to all the other SKs. It was a recent technology, and I dearly hoped the SKs hadn't yet developed a countermeasure.

On my HUD, everyone's vitals were bright green: No one had been injured. Yet. Apparently the SKs were firing based on sight alone, so I guess the jamming technology was working.

Suddenly the gunfire around me began to pick up.

I'd been spotted. I searched for cover, any cover. My eyes focused on Ladybug, Manic's crumpled mech.

"Going for Ladybug!" I sent on the squad one line.

I got up, and somehow managed to make it behind the mech without getting hit. Facehopper, Bender and Snakeoil were already there, and had given me covering fire. Manic was there too—he'd ejected from the mech and was now firing a pistol. His jumpsuit was blackened in several places, and one side of his facemask was smashed in, but so far the glass had held and he seemed to be maintaining suit pressure.

I took up a position on the right flank of the fallen mech and threw a few grenades, then switched to full-auto to give Alejandro and Big Dog a chance to join up with us.

We were in a defensible position, but I kept waiting for another barrage of rockets to come in. For every target we took down, another replaced him. I'm not sure how long we kept firing there from behind the mech, all I know is the gunfire never abated on either side. We were using up our magazines at a frightening rate. Big Dog had already exhausted his M60 rounds, and he'd switched over to an M4 rifle.

Behind us, about twenty meters away, squad two was firing from behind a small, waist-high boulder, giving us support. Lui's mech lay crumpled on the ground not far from the boulder.

You'd think we could just use our jetpacks and get to the higher ground. But that was the worst strategy in a situation like this. You used your jetpack, you exposed yourself to attacks from all sorts of projectile weapons.
In the heat of combat, an airborne soldier was, more often than not, a dead soldier. The jetpacks were more useful in urban warfare scenarios, where you could flit between buildings for cover.

The enemy continued to advance down either slope, and I realized that they were trying to outflank us. It was classic military strategy: get 360-degree coverage on your target and you will take it out. The kind of strategy we would have employed.

"Guys, you really need to get over here!" Chief Bourbonjack said over the comm.

Just then th
e inevitable barrage of rockets came in, and we dropped behind the damaged mech. Clouds of shale and dust filled the air. I had visions of that Equestrian flying up and turning over, and I hoped that wouldn't happen here.

A shard of shale embedded in my helmet lens, causing tiny cracks to spider along the surface of my facemask. When the dust settled, my mask seemed foggy. I wiped my gloved fingers across it, clearing away soot.

"You guy's good?" Facehopper said. He was covered in black dust like the rest of us.

"Never better," Big Dog said. "You worry about your fine English ass instead, how about that?"

A rocket struck the right side of the mech and the explosion sent the seven of us hurtling backward.

I landed, and the bullets immediately picked up around me. I was out in the open.

I picked up my rifle and scrambled back to cover. Other members of squad one did the same.

I heard a whir behind me.

Thirty meters away, Aphid was getting up, the servomotors in its legs revving wildly. The whole front side of Lui's ATLAS had been bashed in, the charred ballistic shield welded to its chest. Must be cramped as hell in the cockpit. The right leg was dented all around the knee area, but the mech was able to walk.

The gunfire shifted away from squad one, toward Aphid instead.

Go Lui!
I sent his Implant. I probably wasn't the only one sending him messages of encouragement right about now.

The gatling gun on the mech's right hand locked into place, and Lui aimed it at the men coming down the closest escarpment and fired.

The roar of the gatling filled the air. Lui immediately stopped taking gunfire from the closest slope of the defile. He rammed his left fist into the ground, breaking off the useless remnants of the ballistic shield, then he swiveled the second gatling into place on his left arm and aimed it up the other slope.

Each gat was capable of firing one hundred rounds per second, or 6,000 per minute. The fire rate was so incredibly fast that it was like a thread of light connected the gats to their distant target, a thread that alternately dimmed and brightened at various points along its path. Those bullets almost seemed to be traveling in reverse, away from the target: the effect was similar to a hub cap spinning at high speeds and seeming to
rotate backward.

Anyway, the enemy positions were positively battered.

I hadn't been paying much attention to the comm chatter up until this point, but I tuned in now.

"I want that mech covered!" Chief Bourbonjack was saying.

Liu raced Aphid up the nearest slope.

I turned my rifle toward the top of the defile and started taking out fleeing SKs, keeping one eye open as I shot so as not to diminish my battlefield awareness.

A rocket fired down at Lui.

Lui
darted sideways and launched the "Trench Coat" countermeasure: seventeen pieces of metal flew toward the rocket. Incredibly, the rocket got through. Lui spiraled his body as the rocket came in, and the missile tore by just in front of his torso, exploding further down the slope.

Unscathed,
Lui landed, then clambered the final steps to the top of the leftmost peak. Red dots instantly appeared on my map around his position as men in SK jumpsuits were identified. Liu swept his massive arm to the left and right, swatting them from the escarpment like bugs. As fast as those red dots appeared they vanished.

I was scanning those slopes, looking for the rocket operators. I was distracted by the sound of several rockets firing, and when I swung my scope toward Lui I saw that he'd swapped out one of the gatlings for a rocket
tube and was unleashing a barrage of serpents at the peak on the opposite side of the defile. The deadly payloads took out good chunks of the slope. Rock shards and SK body parts rained down. More red dots appeared and vanished.

Aphid leaped across the defile to the opposite peak. That action flushed fifty SKs down the escarpment, conveniently outlined in red on my Implant. Those men scrambled over and down the rockface toward my position.

Lui didn't dare unload his gatling at the fleeing men—we'd be caught in the crossfire.

But Lui didn't have to do the killing now.

We were perfectly capable.

I peered into my sniper scope and picked off SKs one after another. I was like a killing machine. Cold-hearted, relentless. Shaw had been right about me after all.

I was a killer.

But right now all that mattered was that I kill, or be killed.

Alejandro, the other sniper in squad one, was firing almost constantly, as were Big Dog, Bender and Facehopper with their M4s. Snakeoil was using up the last of his own M60 ammo.

I decided I wanted to do some more damage.

I lowered my sniper rifle and slid the strap of the Carl Gustav off. I loaded a round, mounted the Gustav against my shoulder, held the grips near the front, aimed through the optical sight, and fired from my prone position. Where it struck thirty meters above me, a huge chunk of rock fell away from the slope. The fragments from the warhead took down five SKs.

On autopilot, my body automatically slid the hinged breech aside to reload the Gustav. I popped in the second round, and fired. Another huge chunk of rock fell away. That was my last round so I had to toss the Gustav
away.

I grabbed my rifle and started picking off men again.

The SKs continued to run into our meat grinder. They didn't have a choice, not with Lui behind them in Aphid.

For a second I thought we might actually win this.

For a second I thought the tide of battle was shifting our way.

That we were invincible after all.

But then three more rockets streamed toward Lui's position from the opposite slope. He'd missed a group of enemies.

Actually no, that wasn't true. I
was the one had missed that group of enemies. I should have taken them down. I should have kept scanning that opposite slope. But I'd been too tempted by the easy targets.