ATLAS 3 (ATLAS Series Book 3)

by Isaac Hooke

  The kid closed his eyes. “Thank you.”

  Before this mission began, I had wanted to see rivers of blood flow from the enemy. I had wanted vengeance, plain and simple.

  But now for the most part all I cared about was getting my squad home again.

  I couldn’t tell that to the kid, though. The promise of vengeance was probably the only thing getting him through this.

  “Rage,” came Hijak’s static-filled voice over the comm. “We’ve—” Static. “The enemy.”

  I stepped away from Tung. “Say again?”

  “We’ve sighted the enemy.” His voice was the epitome of calm.

  My jaw clenched and I involuntarily glanced at the aReal I’d placed by the entrance to the room. The motion alarm hadn’t gone off, of course.

  “The rest of us will be right up.” I tried to keep my tone serene.

  “There’s a problem,” Hijak returned.

  “A problem?” I sent.

  “The horde isn’t coming from only one direction.”

  I felt the hairs on my nape rise. “What do you mean?”

  “We’re surrounded, Rage. They’re approaching from all flanks.”

  I was stunned.

  Sure, I had suspected the enemy knew we were here. How could they not, given the liquid Phants we’d spotted every few streets along the way to the hospital?

  But what I hadn’t expected was such a swift, organized response. Least of all one that would catch us so terribly off guard. Our pants were down, right to the heels.

  Thus far, the enemy had been acting as if they didn’t have any overall organization. But it seemed they had found someone or something to lead them. Some alien general. Maybe the Guide?

  I should have known better. Here I was, dawdling, checking up on every one of my brothers, engaging in small talk, when I should have been packing up and getting ready to leave. I’d taken too long, giving the enemy enough time to lay an ambush.

  That was why I didn’t make a good leader, despite what the Chief had said.

  Damn it.

  “The numbers I’m seeing are mind-blowing,” Hijak continued. “Crabs and slugs on all sides, sprawled across every city street as far as the eye can see, some overflowing onto the rooftops in places. They’ve also got mechs, combat robots, tanks—you name it. I don’t think we’re going to be getting out of this one anytime soon. Not when each of us has enough jetpack fuel for only two or three jumps.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him what to do, but no words came.

  Because Hijak was absolutely right.

  We wouldn’t be getting out of this one.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Tahoe

  The shimmering wall of insects came toward us. It sealed the tight passage from floor to ceiling and blocked our retreat to the mechs.

  “Uh,” Fret said.

  “Aft MOTHs,” Facehopper said from beyond the payload behind me. “Open fire.”

  Ghost, Trace, Mauler, and I were the aforementioned “aft MOTHs,” located as we were on that side of the nuclear device.

  Ghost and Trace dropped so that they were out of the line of fire of Mauler and me, then all four of us shot our standard-issue rifles at the living wall. Because of the tight confines, the rest of the squad could do little more than watch from beyond the payload.

  The gunfire didn’t make an iota of difference. Individual insects were easy enough to pulverize, but more always flowed in to fill the gaps, and the wall rolled inexorably closer. Even grenades didn’t really help, though the enhanced blast wave caused by the confined space certainly unbalanced us.

  One of the grenades sent an insect flying toward our group. It landed upside down on its carapace in front of Trace. The creature reminded me of an oversized locust, minus the wings. Stunned, it wiggled its eight legs in the air and twisted its pincer-like mandibles back and forth.

  Trace promptly squished it with the butt of his rifle, splattering his gloves with black goo.

  “Cease firing!” Facehopper sent. “Cease firing.” His voice sounded solemn. “Guess that decides it. No more ATLAS mechs. We move forward. Trace, you get to see your Observer Mind after all.”

  The four of us in the aft area swiftly crawled over the nuclear device in pairs and rejoined the rest of the squad.

  The eight of us hurried onward at a crouch, eager to put as much distance between the rolling wall of insects and ourselves as possible. My quad and back muscles were getting sore because of the hunched posture, but there was nothing I could do about that. Not even the strength-enhancement of the jumpsuit helped.

  “You think those alien insects can chew through the nuke’s shielding?” Fret transmitted.

  “Better hope not,” TJ replied. “Or else we’re all going to be feeling a little hot shortly.”

  “We won’t feel a thing if it goes off,” I sent. “Instant vaporization isn’t something you’re consciously aware of.”

  “I was being sarcastic,” TJ replied.

  “Anyone else get the feeling we’re being herded?” Bomb transmitted. “I mean, why send those insects after us?”

  “Maybe they’re the only things that can fit inside these tunnels?” Facehopper suggested.

  “Other than Phants,” I sent.

  “Other than Phants,” Facehopper agreed.

  “Sixty meters to the Observer Mind,” TJ sent.

  Immediately after TJ made the announcement, we reached a dead end. The cave terminated in a flat wall of rock. A small crawl space near the floor offered the only means forward. A horizontal cleft in the rock, really. A human body might be able to squeeze through, but—

  “We’ll never fit in these bulky jumpsuits,” Fret sent, completing my thought.

  “Well shit.” Facehopper turned around, shining his headlamp the way we’d come. There were no visible signs of the pursuing insects, not yet, though the distant crinkling I heard from my external mic told me they were still out there, and coming. “TJ, what’s the atmosphere like?”

  “Surprisingly breathable,” TJ said. “I’m detecting trace amounts of methane and chlorine, however. Probably wouldn’t want to inhale the stuff for more than a day or so.”

  “Rad levels?”

  “Relatively low,” TJ said. “But the levels will get stronger the closer we move to the surface.”

  We’d taken the precaution of having subdermal anti-rads—known as “the juice”—installed beneath our skin, but the radiation treatment was drip-fed at a relatively slow rate. If the rad levels increased substantially, the drip feeds wouldn’t be able to compensate.

  Facehopper stared at the hole in the rock by his feet. “Well, nothing for it, mates. Jumpsuits off. It’ll be just like the pipeline crawls we used to do under the bay back in training.”

  “I hated those,” Fret said.

  “We all did,” I agreed.

  We stripped out of our jumpsuits, which was a bit difficult given the cramped quarters. Our helmets were too bulky to bring along, which meant we had to leave behind the built-in aReal visors. We kept only our cool vents undergarments and our boots: we looked like a bunch of divers clad in blue, skin-hugging wetsuits. The various body frames of the squad were now apparent, with myself, TJ, and Mauler on the more muscular end of the spectrum. Probably wouldn’t help us here. If anything, our builds would be a hindrance. If any of us got stuck in that hole . . . I looked away, shuddering.

  We disconnected the headlamps from our helmets and loaded each one with a battery from our suits. We double-checked the safeties on our rifles and then tied the lamps to the undersides. We taped spare rounds and grenades to the stocks of the rifles, along with the rolls of the utility tape.

  The insectile crinkling continued behind us, distant, though seeming to very gradually increase in volume. It felt strange to hear sound with my own ears again rather
than via the filtered speakers of my helmet.

  “Hurry up,” Facehopper said, glancing down the passage behind us.

  Bomb was taping his complement of microexplosives to his rifle. “What’s the current thinking on the missing drones?”

  Trace eyed the hole. “I’m not actually sure the drones would fit in there.”

  “They’d fit,” I said. “Because if they didn’t, we’d be in a heap of trouble right now. Those drones are about the same size as a human head.”

  Trace clasped his head with his hands in the front and back, as if measuring it, and then he knelt. Maintaining the distance between his palms, he moved his arms in front of the opening and compared its height to the separation of his hands. “Gonna be tight,” the Bengali said.

  “Mauler,” Ghost said. “I thought you instructed your ASS to return if the tunnel dynamics changed?”

  “I did,” Mauler answered.

  “Then why didn’t it?” the albino pressed. “This certainly qualifies . . .”

  Mauler shrugged. “Maybe I programmed it wrong.”

  “A Phant probably got to it,” Bomb said.

  “A Phant.” Crouching beside me, Fret eyed the line of jumpsuits distributed against the wall. “There has to be a way to bring along the EM emitters.”

  “Maybe there is.” I grabbed the back plate of one of the abandoned torso assemblies and set it on the cave floor in front of me. I placed my knees on either side of the steel bar that housed the emission source, then I grabbed one end and yanked. I managed to rip the bar free.

  I handed it to Fret. “One EM emitter, as ordered.”

  “Follow Cyclone’s lead, mates,” Facehopper said. “Tear away your emission sources. We’re going to need them yet.”

  And so we ripped away the steel bars from the remaining torso assemblies.

  Facehopper crawled to the cleft and shone the headlamp on his rifle into the opening. “Bomb, care to do the honors?”

  Bomb knelt and, shoving his rifle and emitter in ahead of himself, low-crawled into the crevice.

  The rest of the squad followed in turn.

  I watched in growing apprehension as my brothers vanished one by one into that dark orifice set amid the bowels of the alien-infested moon. Facehopper had assigned me as the drag man, and after everyone else had gone inside, I hesitated, staring uncertainly at the cleft.

  How the hell did I get myself into these situations?

  The spirits had abandoned me. But could I really blame them, given that I had abandoned them first?

  I glanced over my shoulder one last time, shining the light back the way we had come, but I still couldn’t see the insects. Even so, that soft crinkling persisted, making the hairs on my nape stand on end.

  I felt a sudden panic that I was going to be left behind.

  I hastily shoved my rifle into the cleft, along with the EM emitter, and then low-crawled inside. Lying prostrate, I gripped the weapon with my left hand, the steel bar with my right, and wormed my way forward.

  A thousand tonnes of rock surrounded me, scraping my sides, back, and belly. The lamp attached to my rifle lit the way forward. I saw the boots of my nearest squad brother, about two meters ahead. That’d be Mauler.

  This was my reality now.

  Rock. And boots.

  “Are you in, Cyclone?” Mauler’s voice came from just ahead.

  “Unfortunately,” I replied.

  “Cyclone is in,” Mauler said, and from the slight muting of his voice I knew the words were directed at the man in front of him. I heard the phrase repeated in turn by those ahead of Mauler, the words becoming fainter each time until the meaning became unintelligible.

  As I crawled, more muffled words came from far ahead, but I couldn’t discern what was said, nor even recognize who the speaker was. At least I didn’t hear the rustling of those insects anymore. That soft crinkling couldn’t compete with my own labored breathing in the confined space, nor the scrape of my body against the rock.

  “Lucky bastard,” Mauler said over his shoulder to me. “You’re the only one without a beard to snag in these rocks. I swear I’ve pulled out half my facial hair by now.”

  “So that’s who’s leaving behind all these patches of fur,” I joked halfheartedly. “And here I was, thinking they were your pubes.”

  “Funny,” Mauler said. “When I signed up, if you had told me I’d find myself crawling like a worm twenty-five klicks beneath the surface of some moon in the heart of SK space, without a mech or a jumpsuit, retreating from alien insects toward some other, potentially deadlier alien, I would have punched you in the face for lying to me.”

  Another retort came to mind, but I didn’t feel like joking, not anymore. My body was already aching from the tight confines and the hard rock. “We do what we have to do to complete the mission, Mauler. And we do whatever it takes to get out alive. If that means worming our way through a hellish tunnel barely bigger than a roadside culvert, then so be it. We’ve been through worse. We’ll get through this.”

  “Sounds almost like you’re spouting something from one of the motivational manuals,” Mauler said. “What are you, an instructor now?”

  Though he tried to hide it with humor, I could hear the anxiety in his voice. I knew he was thinking the same thing as I was. What happened if the crawlspace became so tight that none of us could advance any further?

  There was no going back. Not with those alien insects behind us. Yes, the fear and tension in that cramped space was quite palpable. I could smell the blood, sweat, and tears of my brothers.

  “Maybe I am quoting from a manual,” I said. “Because maybe the inspirational phrases from some textbook are all we have left at this point. That, and the discipline forged into our being by the iron crucible of our training.”

  He didn’t have anything to say to that.

  There was some sporadic, muffled chatter up ahead, but for the most part the squad crawled on in silence.

  I focused on the moment, blocking out all thoughts, concentrating on the task at hand.

  Shove the rifle and EM emitter forward. Find hand and footholds. Pull with the arms, push with the legs.

  Repeat.

  I don’t know how long I snaked my way forward like that. All I knew was that the crawlspace seemed to be getting tighter. Maybe it was an illusion but I could swear I had less room to move my elbows, less space to raise my head, less leeway to position my feet.

  It wasn’t an illusion. The crevice became so cramped that I had to keep my arms fully outstretched ahead of my body—there simply wasn’t any space to retract my limbs. I literally wormed my way forward, swiveling my hips from side to side, shoving against the rock with my boots.

  Muffled voices came from up ahead, growing louder as news was relayed down the line.

  “TJ is stuck up ahead,” Mauler finally said. “We have to wait.”

  Fantastic.

  TJ was the most muscular among us; he had the biggest, widest body in the squad. I wasn’t surprised he had gotten stuck.

  Unfortunately, I was the second largest present. That meant the chances I would become hopelessly wedged, too, were very good.

  Clear your mind, Tahoe. Don’t think beyond the present moment. Therein lies the path to failure.

  I managed to blank my thoughts, for a little while anyway. But then my mind wandered to the pursuing insects.

  I held my breath, listening.

  I didn’t hear anything.

  Even so, they had to be close. It was a wonder they weren’t here already, given our incredibly slow advance. And, of course, I just had to be the one bringing up the rear. My body would be the first one those insects ravaged.

  My heart was pounding in my chest and I felt a rising sense of panic. The mind-clearing thing wasn’t working. I needed to distract myself or I’d become paralyzed wi
th fear.

  “It’s at times like this I wish I was a little scrawnier,” I said, hoping Mauler felt like talking.

  His boots shifted up ahead. “What, give up all that muscle?”

  I was relieved he had answered. “Yeah.”

  “What about the girls? You really think your wife would like you as much if you lost all that brawn?”

  “Of course she would,” I said, not really caring what we talked about, as long as we talked. “She married me for my brain, not my arms. Besides, think about all the time we waste in the gym. The months and years of our lives spent eating and working out.”

  “We’d be dropped fairly quickly if we couldn’t keep up in training,” Mauler said.

  “That’s different. I’m talking going to the gym in addition to training.”

  Mauler didn’t answer right away. “Don’t know what I’d do without the gym. I get my focus there. Working out, being in the moment, helps me forget about everything else in my life. Helps train my mind to focus in times of need. To me, working out is almost like a form of meditation. I concentrate on the pain of the lactic acid buildup in my muscles, let that pain guide me through to the end of the workout, or the current set anyway. The gym is one of the greatest mentors of mind-body discipline I’ve ever known. Anyhow, I couldn’t give up all that food. If I abandoned the gym, I’d become monumentally fat.”

  Ghost was in front of Mauler, and his voice floated back, muffled but understandable. “Hey, don’t get me started on food, bros. All I’ve been thinking about for the past hour are cheeseburgers.”

  The time reference reminded me of the dual nuclear warhead countdowns, but since I didn’t have my aReal I had no idea how long we had until detonation.

  “You and your cheeseburgers,” Mauler said. “I’ll take a hard-boiled steak any day.”

  “You actually hard boil eggs, not steaks,” Ghost said.

  “Ever heard of sous-vide?” Mauler said. “It’s where you evenly cook your meat on all sides, using a vacuum-sealed container and hot water. Works wonders. And technically, that’s boiling.”

  “If you say so,” Ghost said.