Atlas

by Isaac Hooke

  "Man, he shoots his mouth off anyway," TJ said. Beyond his facemask, I could only see a small part of the Atlas moth inked to his neck. He didn't seem so tough when he was cocooned like that inside the suit. The same was true of everybody else. Inside the bulk you couldn't tell the strong from the weak, and it didn't really matter because the jumpsuits boosted everyone's strength to near identical levels. Jumpsuits, the great equalizer.

  "I've never shot my mouth off," Manic said. "Well, sure, sometimes when the fighting gets heavy, maybe I have a tendency to flap my lips, but that's only because I'm trying to distract the enemy."

  TJ snorted. "What, you think the enemy can hear you?"

  "Well sure, not every target is far off you know."

  "Dude, if you've let them get that close, then something is very wrong," TJ said.

  Manic folded his arms. "I'm taking a nap now. Goodbye." He inclined his head and closed his eyes.

  "Don't know about you guys, but I sure hope I don't get stuck babysitting Fleet," Bender said.

  I glanced at the two Fleet scientists who stood off to one side in jumpsuits. They'd be coming with us.

  "What do you think we'll find down there, Chief?" Snakeoil said.

  Chief Bourbonjack shrugged. "Couple of empty whiskey bottles. Couple of uneaten MREs. Maybe a few bodies. Who knows? We land, insert the scientists, look around, take the scientists home. Back before dinner."

  "I like the sound of that," Skullcracker said. He had a detailed picture of a screaming skull spray-painted on his jumpsuit. It complemented the tattoo on his face quite nicely. "Speaking of dinner, I've already placed my order with the galley. Got a steak in line. Mashed potatoes. Gravy. The works."

  "You know that stuff's all reconstituted, right?" Lui said, a look of disgust on his face.

  Skullcracker shrugged. "Tastes good to me."

  The airlock of the hangar bay irised open and Lieutenant Commander Braggs entered. He was wearing his service khaki and nothing more—he obviously wasn't coming down with us. Alfa platoon immediately mustered in front of him.

  "All right boys," Lieutenant Commander Braggs said. "Listen up. Operation Dead Cat Bounce is a go. The HS3s report no occupants in the SK base, living or dead. I repeat, no occupants." HS3s were those basketball-sized, Hover Squad Support System drones we always sent ahead for scouting purposes.

  "Maybe the SKs truly abandoned the place," Braggs continued. "Or maybe they're just out for lunch and will return with a couple of ATLAS mechs in a few hours. As of this moment, we have a bunch of Centurions performing a sweep of the base and the immediate area, but I want Alfa platoon to follow up. Chief?"

  "Thank you sir." Chief Bourbonjack stepped forward to address us from inside his jumpsuit. "Alfa platoon will touch down in the relative center of the outpost." An overhead map overlaid my vision. I saw the outline of the different buildings in the outpost. A flashing dot in the middle indicated where we would land. Looked like some kind of courtyard. "We're going to augment the Centurions down there, do a building-by-building search until we've secured the entire outpost. Big Dog, Skullcracker, and Tahoe, you're on the heavies. Ghost, Trace, Rade, Alejandro, you're our snipers. TJ and Bender, drone ops. Snakeoil and Fret, commos. We're going in without Weavers to make room for the scientists and their survey equipment, so we're going to need a couple of you to double as corpsmen. Since Trace and Rade are the fastest runners in the platoon, they win that role by default. As for the ATLAS 5s, I'm giving Manic and Lui the authorization to ride Ladybug and Aphid down."

  "Thank you sir!" Lui said.

  I still got a bit jealous whenever someone else got assigned to the mechs, but I'd assume whatever role my Chief needed me to. If he wanted me to be a sniper first and a corpsman second, I'd do it without question. Someone had to assume those roles. And if he thought I was the best man for the job, that was a complement.

  "Bomb," Chief said. "No mech for you this time round. I want you to be grenadier."

  I could tell Bomb wasn't too happy about that—he was one of the platoon's official ATLAS pilots after all—but he took it in stride. "Yes sir!"

  "This will be a hot drop," Chief Bourbonjack said. "We're treating it like a warzone. Any questions?"

  There were none.

  "Well," Lieutenant Commander Braggs said. "You heard the man. Get yourselves equipped!"

  I hurried to the loadout area and grabbed a Mark 12 rifle from the rack, as did the other snipers. The heavy gunners took the M60 machine guns, and everyone else picked up the standard M4 rifle. One thing I did was swap out the lower receiver of the Mark 12 for one from the M4.

  I collapsed the stock and slung the Mark 12's strap over my shoulder, then stowed a 9-mil pistol in my belt, stocking up on armor-piercing rounds for both. I also loaded up on grenades.

  "Enough grenades there for you, Rade?" Facehopper said. "I thought the Chief assigned Bomb the role of grenadier?"

  I glanced at Facehopper's belt. He'd only taken two.

  I shrugged. "Figured I have the room, so why not."

  "If you accidentally blow yourself up don't say I didn't warn you, mate."

  I considered putting some of my grenades back, but pride wouldn't let me.

  Fret piled on the grenades just like me. Grinning widely, he said, "You can never have too many grenades."

  I grabbed a bunch of extra magazines, maybe more than I should have, filling up almost every available pouch in my jumpsuit. Since I was also corpsman this time out, I grabbed a full medbag off the rack and tossed it over my shoulders—it fit easily over my jetpack. The bag had various medical supplies including four one-liter IVs filled with blood substitutes, SAM splints, all-purpose tape, pressure dressings, jumpsuit seals, etc. You'd think a lot of it would be difficult to apply to a man in a jumpsuit, but not so: There were injection slots above the gloves where you could attach a vial or IV tube, and inside the suit a needle would extend directly into the dorsal venous network of the hand. There was no breaching of the suit, no chance of depressurization. There were also SealWraps, these self-sealing, translucent funnels I could wrap around one wrist to form a seal between my glove and the suit of a patient. Using the surgical laser in the index finger of my glove, I could then cut a hole in the patient's suit without depressurizing the whole thing. When I was done, I just left the funnel on the suit until the patient could get back to a safer environment.

  Everyone carried a smaller medkit, affectionately called a suitrep (suit repair) kit, because it had mostly jumpsuit seals and patches, though it also had a few bandages, one IV, a SealWrap, and some clotting agents. This went into the left-hand cargo pocket on the jumpsuit leg assembly. You always used someone else's suitrep kit if they were wounded in the field and you got there before the corpsman or Weaver, because if you used your own kit, how would you help the next guy, or yourself?

  I hesitated beside the Carl Gustavs. Those things packed a mighty powerful punch. I still remember what happened when Bender fired one of those in the apartment back at Mongolia. Took out the entire side of the building.

  What the hell. Never hurt to have a portable rocket launcher with you. I grabbed one of the Gustavs and looped its strap over my shoulder, then clipped two "high-explosive dual purpose" rounds to my belt—the kind that fragmented on impact, useful when you wanted to shred a lot of soft targets at once.

  "You're acting like you've never been on a drop before," TJ said, rather snarkily. "A bit nervous today, caterpillar?"

  "I'm not a caterpillar," I said.

  "Facehopper ain't given you a callsign. You're a caterpillar."

  I ignored him and went over to Fret, who was struggling to fit the heavy communications rucksack down over his jetpack. I told the tall man to bend over, then I helped him secure it, making sure no part of the sack blocked his jumpjet nozzles.

  I approached the MDV (MOTH Delivery Vehicle). Basically a shuttle on steroids, the MDV was made of a variety of heat resistant materials, including reinforced carbon-carbon, toughened f
ibrous insulation tiles, felt reusable surface insulators, and so on. Design-wise, it had wide parabolic wings on either side and a stabilizing fin on top. There were small windows lining the left and right sides. Near the center of the fuselage a small hook allowed the drop arm to latch on. Black nozzles on the rear provided forward thrust, and similar nozzles on the underside added lift. Thrust outlets on the left and right of the fuselage allowed the MDV to make lateral adjustments during flight. A swivel-mounted gatling turret hung beneath the cockpit.

  "Warning," a female voice echoed in the hangar. "Depressurization commencing. Hangar atmosphere venting overboard. Warning."

  Robotic arms were loading the scientists' survey equipment into the MDV storage compartment. I sidestepped those arms and hurried up the ramp, heading straight to my designated drop space. Clamps automatically wrapped around my shoulders and my waist.

  I received a message from Shaw just then.

  Come back in one piece, you hear?

  Yes ma'am, I sent back. Keep the ship safe for me while I'm gone.

  You know I will.

  Alejandro clamped in across from me. He was grinning. "See you planetside, puta!"

  By then everyone else was onboard, except Manic and Lui, who would drop directly in their ATLAS mechs.

  The ramp closed. I felt the compartment shake as the drop arm latched onto the MDV (though I couldn't see the arm, of course) and the craft slid forward on the magnetic rails, which now extended out from the hangar and into space.

  I watched through the small window across from me, between the shoulders of Big Dog and Alejandro, as the MDV passed the open doors at the end of the bay. The metal bulkheads of the hangar slipped away, replaced by the stars of open space.

  I felt the weightlessness instantly. It was like my stomach jumped. I had no sense of balance or direction at all. I was upside-down. No, I was sideways. No, rightside-up. I'd experienced this sensation many times before in training, and I concentrated on ignoring the confused feelings my inner ear was sending to my brain.

  The rails supported the weight of the MDV as we slid forward. When we were three meters from the ship, the advance ceased. I knew that the rails were withdrawing right now. The craft abruptly shifted, which meant the robotic arm alone held us in place.

  That arm must have opened, because through the window the Royal Fortune shot skyward.

  I could see the planet nearing below, this spherical object that quickly became planar and swallowed the horizon. I started to feel some Gs—when I moved my head my inner ear reacted, reinforcing my sense of balance and of up and down. The forces increased to around two Gs as the atmosphere of the planet abruptly (and temporarily) slowed our descent.

  The sky outside the window changed colors, going from light pink to red-and-orange in a matter of seconds, as I looked out from the fireball that the outer surface of the MDV had become. I always got this slight panicky feeling here, like I was inside a box at the center of a raging bonfire. You'd think there would be some shaking, or some vibrations, but I felt nothing.

  Thankfully the compression shockwave of reentry never lasted very long, and the sky soon turned gray as the MDV fell into the upper atmosphere.

  The G-forces picked up, pulling me left, then right, then left again, locking my facial muscles in fixed positions each time. This was new and unexpected. It was like the MDV had flown directly into a hurricane and we were being battered in all directions.

  "Hang on people," Mordecai said. "Some strong winds in the upper atmosphere." He was our MDV pilot today. A Special Warfare Combat Crewman. Basically someone who failed BSD/M. I remembered him actually. He had been one of the overly muscular dudes whose weight had worked against him in training. Still, Mordecai was one of the best pilots out there, and if anyone could land us in a hurricane it was him.

  The G's picked up again, and the impromptu rollercoaster ride of tight turns, corkscrew inversions, and steep loops got so bad that I almost passed out.

  When things calmed down a bit, I noticed that the two scientists had their heads bowed inside their helmets. I checked their vitals on my HUD (Heads-Up-Display). They were unconscious.

  "Sir, the scientists," I told Chief Bourbonjack.

  "I see it," the Chief said. "Take care of them after we secure the site."

  The turbulence increased for a few moments, then finally ceased entirely. "We're through," Mordecai said. "It's all smooth sailing here on in, folks. Heading for the outpost."

  Through the window, the sun illumed a jagged landscape of shiny obsidian. The black rock ranged as far as the eye could see.

  "Looks homey," Trace said from beside me.

  A few minutes later the MDV did a quick pass-over of the outpost and I caught a glimpse of the mirrorlike domes and the can-shaped passageways that connected them.

  Mordecai landed us in the relative center of the outpost. Through the window I recognized the courtyard from the earlier briefing: Domes and connecting passageways surrounded the MDV on all sides.

  Chief Bourbonjack straightened up. "TJ, report."

  "HS3's report all clear, Chief," TJ said.

  Chief Bourbonjack looked down the ranks. "Prepare to deploy to the alleyway indicated on your six."

  I pulled up the map on my HUD and saw the alleyway highlighted in blue.

  The MDV's ramp folded down and my shoulder and waist latches clicked open.

  "Trace, Fret, Bender, Big Dog, give me a defensive perimeter on the MDV!" Chief Bourbonjack said.

  The designated troops sprinted outside.

  "Everyone else deploy to the alleyway! Deploy deploy deploy!"

  I was the second-last out. I ran forward at a crouch, staying close to Alejandro, my "buddy" for the mission. I kept a watchful eye on the nearest dome, slightly distracted by the platoon's reflection on its surface. I was looking for any sign of enemy fire. I saw movement on my three: One of the spherical HS3 drones, acting as a scout.

  I ducked into the alley—a small space between two of the domes—and dropped, taking my place near the back of the group. Crouched at the entrance to the alleyway, Ghost and Facehopper covered the MDV.

  I heard a sonic boom, then a cloud of dust erupted from behind one of the domes on the left. Another sonic boom, another cloud, this time further off in the distance, on the right. The HS3 scout spun off toward the nearest cloud, and I switched to its viewpoint.

  The two-meter tall form of an ATLAS 5 emerged from the cloud. Gatling guns mechanically swung into the armed position on either hand. The augmented reality label "Lui - Aphid" floated in green above the mech.

  I switched back to my own view, glad to have the mechs on our side.

  Each of us reported "all clear" over the comm line. I saw two more streaks in the sky then, which marked the payload elements that were launched after the ATLAS 5s. These contained the jetpacks the mechs would need to return to the ship. Nothing I need concern myself with. That was the domain of Lui and Manic.

  "Site secure," Facehopper said.

  I hurried to the MDV to check on the scientists. They were awake, and responded well to the brief mental status exam I gave them. Satisfied that they didn't need any further attention, I returned outside.

  All the men were gathered around Chief Bourbonjack, though most of them kept their eyes on the domes and interconnecting passageways of the outpost.

  "Report, Rade," Chief Bourbonjack said.

  "The scientists are a bit shaken up, but otherwise ready to go."

  "Good." He glanced at TJ. "Have all the Centurions checked-in?"

  TJ nodded. "They've done three random sweeps of every single compartment. Place is as abandoned as you can get."

  "I want all the buildings checked again," Chief Bourbonjack said, glancing at Facehopper. "I'll be damned if I trust some robot."

  "Got it, Chief." Facehopper turned toward the rest of the platoon. "Ghost, Trace, and Big Dog, provide moving overwatch of the sweep. You pick the hide. Rade, Alejandro and Tahoe, you provide overwatc
h on the scientists and the MDV. Your hide is the roof of that silo over there."

  I looked at the building indicated. A cylindrical structure. It might have been a silo of some kind, maybe for grain.

  "Yes sir!" I ran at top speed toward the smaller dome beside the silo. When I came close, I leaped, activating my jumpjets with a mental command. The boost from the jet sent me to the roof of the dome. As my foot made contact, I bent my knees and pushed off, activating the jets again. I landed on top of the silo and dropped.

  Alejandro and Tahoe were right behind me. They scaled the silo just as expertly (Tahoe took a more direct route by firing his jumpjets twice in a row, straight up, while Alejandro followed my path) and settled in beside me. Alejandro and I kept watch on the MDV through our scopes while Tahoe guarded our backs.

  I watched my teammates fan across the square in two groups. The nearest fire team converged beside an airlock. The lead man activated the release, and returned to his position against the wall as the hatch opened. He "pied" the entrance, slowly stepping away from the wall, keeping his gun trained inside the airlock and moving in a semicircle, or "pie" pattern, increasing his angle of view. Then he gave the all-clear and all four piled in, closing the airlock behind them. If things got hot past that inner airlock, they'd be piling out of there just as fast.

  I saw a glint of metal in the distance, and backtracked on my scope.

  It was just one of the Centurion robots, on patrol over on the west side of the outpost. A spheroidal HS3 drone joined it.

  "Anything?" Alejandro said.

  "Negative. You?"

  "Nada."

  Movement drew my eye skyward, and I saw the Raptor drone fly past at 15,000 meters. It was operating in full stealth mode, and made no sound at all. If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have even known it was there.

  Nearby, the white-hot globe of the alien sun shone its yellow light down upon us. It was about the size of my fist, and whenever I looked at it, the photochromic polycarbonate in my facemask instantly darkened.

  I waited with Alejandro, prostrate on the rooftop, keeping watch on the MDV as the scientists started to setup their survey equipment.