ATLAS 3 (ATLAS Series Book 3)

by Isaac Hooke

  There was a slight issue with what TJ was suggesting, because to manually separate a booster rocket you had to be on the rocket itself, as that was where the control panel resided. Which meant that when the rocket separated, you went with it. And since the two jumpsuits provided with this civvie lifeboat didn’t have jetpack assemblies, there was no way to get back. Nor did the suits have proper UC-issue utility belts, which contained three-meter-long cords packed into tiny canisters at the front that could have been used as tethers.

  Fret got up and, fighting the weightlessness, cracked open the lifeboat survival kit. It was supposed to include a tethering line for emergency spacewalks, but in typical Sino-Korean fashion, most of the contents of the kit had been pilfered. Probably shortly after the lifeboat had been installed.

  Fret looked up in disbelief. He, along with everyone else, must have realized that going out there was a classic one-way trip to hell.

  “I’ll do it,” I said, opening my buckle. I immediately floated upward.

  “Get back in your seat, Cyclone,” Facehopper said. “You too, Fret.”

  Fret dutifully obeyed but I ignored Facehopper and pushed off from the bulkhead. Battling dizziness, I floated toward the jumpsuit closet.

  “I said back to your seat!” Facehopper grabbed my leg as I went by and he hauled me toward him. Waves of pain passed up and down my body from the aggravated insect bites.

  Facehopper’s voice softened. “It has to be me, Cyclone. You know it does. I’m the leading petty officer. I’m the one who takes the hit for the team.”

  Fighting the pain, I wriggled from his grasp. “You’ve got it the wrong way around, Facehopper. We’re the ones who are supposed to take the hits for you.”

  “No.” Facehopper unbuckled and floated toward me. “I won’t order anyone to stay behind. I won’t live with the guilt. Not this time.”

  I smiled sadly. “You don’t have to order me. I’m volunteering.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  I met his eyes defiantly. “Yes I am.”

  “You always were the insubordinate one.” Facehopper positioned himself between the closet and me. “But I can’t let you do it. You have a wife and kids, mate. Kids. You have to live. For them. I have no dependents. It should be me.”

  “Merda!” TJ glanced over his shoulder at us. “That debris cloud isn’t getting any slower. We have maybe a minute, max. Let’s all pick straws or something, because we have to choose someone. Now.”

  As much as I wanted to live for my kids, there were some things worth dying for. Like one’s brothers. And I knew if I didn’t do this, if I let Facehopper walk to his death, I wouldn’t be able to look my kids in the eyes ever again.

  “Gotta do it.” I shoved off from the deck, moving past Facehopper toward the jumpsuit closet. “I’m sorry.”

  Maybe I was just feeling the emotion of the moment. Maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly because of the rad sickness. Whatever the case, I’d made up my mind, and there was nothing Facehopper or anyone else could do to stop me.

  Or so I believed.

  Because before I reached the jumpsuit closet something knocked into me.

  Or rather, someone.

  In the zero G, I was sent hurtling into the far bulkhead.

  I turned about to face my attacker.

  It was Facehopper, of course.

  He pushed off from me and launched toward the closet.

  I caught him by the arm and yanked him back.

  “I knew I should have court-martialed your ass after Crimson Pipeline.” Facehopper twisted his body around and put me in a headlock. “You insubordinate little shit. Always want to fight, do you? Well let’s bloody fight!”

  I shoved off at an angle from the bulkhead and slammed him into the ceiling, breaking free of the headlock.

  Facehopper clocked me a good one in the face with his free hand.

  I got him back and then kicked him in the boot near his gunshot wound. He curled up in pain.

  I spun around and pushed off from the ceiling, toward the closet. No one else interfered. The rest of my brothers were probably too exhausted to do anything other than watch.

  Facehopper grabbed one of my legs and hauled me backward. Pain sparked up and down the area but adrenaline made it easy to ignore.

  “Damn it, Facehopper!” I began kicking him with my free boot. “Let—me—do—this!” I got in several good hits, including a glancing blow to the underside of his chin, but he refused to release me.

  We both froze when we heard the airlock seal with a loud thud behind us.

  I glanced at the closet. One of the jumpsuits was missing.

  “Who went outside?” Facehopper said. “Who—”

  A quick scan of the ranks told me a certain albino was missing.

  Facehopper released me and floated to the intercom. He pressed the send button. “Ghost, do you copy, over? Ghost?”

  “I’m living up to my name, boss,” Ghost said over the lifeboat comm. He sounded weary.

  “Get back in here right now.”

  “Has to be me, boss,” Ghost returned. “There isn’t time to send someone else and you know it.”

  Facehopper glanced at TJ in the cockpit. Our pilot shook his head sadly.

  Our leading petty officer hauled himself to the closet anyway and began suiting up. He left the lifeboat comm line open. “I’m coming to get you.”

  “Won’t matter, boss,” Ghost sent. “I lost a lot of blood down there. Too much. I’m not going to make it anyway.”

  “We’ll get you patched up!” Facehopper said.

  Ghost’s chuckle sounded eerie over the comm. “If the blood loss doesn’t kill me, the rad poisoning will. I’m built differently than you guys. Albinos don’t handle radiation all that well. Especially not at the dosage I was hit with down there. I won’t live to see tomorrow, even with treatment.”

  “You don’t know that,” Facehopper pleaded. He shoved on the jumpsuit chest assembly. “Ghost, please. What about your four-year-old kid?”

  I could feel Facehopper’s agony. Literally feel it. It should have been me out there. I was perfectly willing to give up my life for my brothers. To die so that they might live.

  And that’s when I realized everyone here was ready to make the same sacrifice. In a heartbeat. If Ghost hadn’t reached the airlock first, then someone else would be out there at that moment.

  Facehopper had to know this was one thing he simply couldn’t order. Telling a MOTH to sit back while his brothers died? It just wasn’t possible.

  “My kid?” Ghost sent. I could hear the sadness in his voice. “My kid will turn out well, don’t you worry. It’s better this way. I don’t want to influence him. Don’t want him to become a soldier. I’d prefer that he lived a long, carefree life. A normal life. That’s what we’re all fighting for, isn’t it? To end this invasion so that our sons and daughters can grow up in safety. In peace. If I die in the line of duty, my wife and kid’s residency status will automatically be upgraded to full citizenship. My kid won’t have to enlist. He’ll be free.”

  Fully suited, Facehopper sealed his helmet and went to the airlock.

  I propelled myself from the bulkhead and grabbed his arm assembly. “Let him go, Facehopper.”

  “Maybe I can reach him,” Facehopper said. “Bring him back in time.”

  I shook my head. “No one’s reaching him now. You go out there, you die, too.”

  “Don’t grieve,” Ghost said over the comm. “Don’t shed a tear. Don’t you dare. I couldn’t have wished for a better way to go. Serving my brothers to the end. When you look back on my life, on everything I did, I hope you can say, ‘He conducted himself with honor, courage, commitment, and above all integrity. He conducted himself like a MOTH.’”

  The lifeboat shuddered. Through the portal, I watched the booster roc
ket fall away. Ghost’s jumpsuit floated beside it. He shoved off toward us but there was no way he was going to reach the craft in time.

  The all-consuming debris was almost upon us.

  “TJ, can you get him?” Facehopper said. But he must have known, he must have seen, the lifeboat couldn’t go back there. Not into that.

  TJ shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

  Facehopper collapsed in his suit. “Punch it.”

  TJ applied the left and right rear thrusters at the same time.

  The lifeboat jerked forward, riding the crest of the debris.

  Beyond the portal, the booster rocket and the jumpsuit that contained Ghost were swallowed by the meat grinder of rock and steel behind us.

  The comm filled with static.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Rade

  Apparently the repairs had gone extremely well on Azen’s mothership, because in less than a week’s time the green’s Skull Ship was ready to depart.

  Azen had promised to collapse the Slipstream that led to Geronimo, eight thousand lightyears away, and thus prevent more of his kind from ever coming through again. To that end, Azen set a course for the Slipstream outside Tau Ceti. Apparently there was still damage to his vessel’s main drive, which temporarily prevented the ship from creating mini-Slipstreams to “hop” through space. That suited the Navy Brass just fine: they wanted to escort the Skull Ship all the way to the Slipstream anyway to ensure that Azen lived up to his word. After all, the appearance of the third Skull Ship had caught them off guard, even more so when it started attacking its own vessels, and the surprised members of the Brass still weren’t sure how far they could trust the newcomers.

  Half the fleet began the long journey of chaperoning the colossal vessel to the Slipstream, while the remainder began the voyage home. My battle-weary platoon was part of the latter group and we hitched a ride aboard the Royal Fortune.

  We dropped off Giger and Tung at the orbital processing station above one of the Tau Cetian colony worlds. There, refugees from the conflict were sorted and categorized by need. The resettlement process would take several weeks, apparently. I wished there was something more we could have done for the two of them, but when it came down to it, they were the responsibility of the SK government. Shaw talked about adopting Tung but even if Giger allowed it, the childcare costs on her part would be prohibitive. She couldn’t afford a robot sitter, and saddling her folks with another child at their age wasn’t an option. In the end she decided that Giger was the best custodian for the boy.

  We exchanged embedded ID numbers with Giger and Tung and said our good-byes, promising to stay in touch. I hoped life treated them well. They deserved it.

  Shaw kept me company on the Royal Fortune through the long weeks home. She helped me come to terms with the deaths of Hijak and Ghost. Tahoe helped, too. As did the rest of the platoon. We all visited the convalescent ward often, where the former members of Digger Squad were being treated for radiation sickness.

  Tahoe told me about his near death experience, and how Alejandro had guided him in the end. It gave me hope that my brothers weren’t really dead. That they were out there, somewhere, watching over us. It was a nice thought.

  Still, despite all the comforting words, and the caring, loyal friends around me, I felt such terrible guilt, especially over Hijak’s death. Because though I grieved his passing, I was glad it was him who had died and not Shaw. Him.

  Hijak, I hope you can forgive me.

  It was funny. I had wanted vengeance so badly before, and once I’d finally achieved it, I felt hollower than ever. Killing all those Phants, destroying those Skull Ships, it hadn’t brought Alejandro back and never would. Instead, it had caused more of my brothers to die.

  We’d won in the end, but so many good people had given up their lives to achieve that victory that sometimes it felt like we’d lost.

  Some months later I watched the prerecorded footage transmitted from the Gerald R. Ford as Azen’s Skull Ship passed through the Slipstream. Captain Linder was on the bridge and apparently in command of the Ford—I asked around later and according to the rumor mill Commodore Hanson had stepped down for undisclosed reasons.

  On the footage, the fleet lined up on either side of the Slipstream, which didn’t have a Gate built in front of it. The Skull Ship proceeded to float between the human vessels, approaching the invisible rift in spacetime alone. Bit by bit the cranial vessel was consumed, seeming to pass behind some starry veil.

  When the ship was gone entirely, the moments dragged out. Nothing more of import transpired: as far as I could tell it was just an ordinary Slipstream traversal, minus the Gate.

  But then a bright flash filled the remote viewscreen.

  That was new.

  Someone reported: “The quantum emissions have ceased, Captain. The Slipstream is gone.”

  So it was done. The Phants and their ships were cut off from humanity.

  Still, like Azen had said, there was nothing to prevent the enemy from crossing those eight thousand lightyears to our space using their “hop” technology. Seven hundred years was all it would take, a tiny span of time for interdimensional entities such as Phants. If Azen couldn’t persuade his brethren to stand down, humanity might face this threat all over again. I could only hope that we’d be ready for them the next time.

  The green, Surus, had remained behind to fulfill the role of “political observer” to our species, or to the SK government anyway—currently Surus resided in Tau Ceti, where he supervised the Phant cleanup effort. There were many of the vaporous entities still floating around the system, not to mention the crabs, slugs, possessed robots, and Acceptors on the intact Tau Ceti II moon. It would take years to hunt down all the alien assets, especially considering that so far Surus had refused to share any technology.

  I’m sure there was a senior Navy officer somewhere out there who was patting himself on the back, feeling he’d scored a coup for the UC by saddling the SKs with the Phant advisor. But I suspected we’d be seeing a lot more of Surus when the cleanup effort in Tau Ceti was complete.

  The green certainly had his work cut out for him. The current climate of friendly relations between the UC and the SK governments wouldn’t last: Our two nations were far too competitive, far too greedy, for that. In a year, maybe two, we’d probably be right back where we started, at war once more over geronium-rich Mongolia, with privateers cruising our respective space lanes and causing either side to divert precious naval resources.

  Remember, too, that thanks to the invaders we had a new source of geronium to fight over: the remnants of Tau Ceti II-c, which would eventually form a nice ring belt around the gas giant, and the partially converted moon Tau Ceti II-b.

  The SK government had already taken steps to safeguard this new fuel source by restricting incoming traffic through the system Gates—under the pretense of safety, only SK military vessels, or SK and FI emergency resupply ships, were allowed past customs.

  Hoarding all that geronium would shift the balance of naval power far in favor of the SKs. You could fly only as many starships as you had the fuel to power them by, after all.

  There were going to be some big wars fought over the remnants of those moons.

  Maybe I was wrong.

  Maybe I wasn’t giving humanity enough credit.

  I hoped so.

  The bright, cloudless blue of the sky. The brilliant, blinding disc of the sun. The dazzling, glittering waters of the fountain.

  The swallows singing in the willows. The honeybees buzzing in the daisies. The dachshunds barking in the kennels.

  Green grass. Green pines. Green hedges.

  All of it, almost surreal.

  Finally, I had returned to Earth.

  I never thought I’d feel the warm rays of my homeworld’s sun on my face again. Never thought I’d inhale the crisp, clean air
. Not in this life.

  And yet here I was.

  I almost couldn’t believe it.

  I was sure Shaw felt just as overwhelmed by it all as me.

  No one on this planet would ever know how close we had come to annihilation. To the citizens of Earth, the invasion must have seemed like such a distant conflict, so far away, with no chance of ever affecting them. They had continued their daily lives, oblivious, the cogs of society grinding ever onward, providing them with the comforts they so took for granted.

  The actions of the MOTHs would go entirely unsung. No one would ever know the full extent of what we had done that day, nor the sacrifices we had made. The Brass merely informed the media that a Special Forces team had contributed to the destruction of the Skull Ships. That was it. Revealing any more than that would be a breach of national security, and we couldn’t allow that.

  Not that any of my brothers cared in the least about what the colonized worlds were told. We didn’t want the glory. We weren’t in it for that. As far as we were concerned, we were just doing our jobs.

  And two of us had died. How could we dare take any glory for what had happened, knowing that Ghost and Hijak had paid the ultimate price for the victory? How could we profit from their deaths in any way?

  We couldn’t, of course.

  There would be no glory for us. No medals, no handshakes with the Commander-in-Chief, no photo ops with schoolkids, no starring roles in films.

  The details of what we did that day to save humanity would remain forever in our hearts and the hearts of those closest to us.

  My fallen brothers, I will never forget you.

  I glanced at the woman beside me. Dark hair. Tanned skin. Sparkling eyes.

  It was partially because of her I was here today. She had filled the hollow space inside me where vengeance had taken hold, replacing it with hope and life.

  During the last leg of the voyage I had seriously considered leaving the Teams. I would have been deported, of course, but that didn’t matter to me. I could have married Shaw and moved to France, her homeland. And there we could have lived out the rest of our days in peace.