ATLAS 2 (ATLAS Series Book 2) (23 page)

Fan lifted his hands nervously, but when he spoke, he seemed slightly affronted. “This mere civilian has survived fifteen Stanmonths quite well without you, Shaw Chopra of the UC Navy. But I am not holding back. This is the only alien I have seen, other than the Yaoguai and the Mara of course. I promise you. I did not say anything about it before because I assumed you had seen one.”

I kept the rifle trained on him a moment longer, then lowered it. “All right. I believe you. Now let’s get out of here, if you don’t mind?”

I kept glancing back at the jumpsuit as Fan led me out of the defile. It made me nervous, and I was just glad when we reached the opening and left the alien behind.

We walked along the edge of the valley, beneath the towering cliff of black rock, toward the next defile, where the ATLAS 5 awaited. It was still some distance away, but my nerves were starting to act up again.

I was glad when Fan spoke.

“Do you think we will ever see Earth again?” he said.

I sighed, wishing he’d chosen a different topic.

“We will.” I didn’t look at him, didn’t want him to see the lie in my eyes.

“You do not sound too convinced.”

I couldn’t hide the lie from my voice, could I? I decided not to say anything further.

“Tell me, Shaw Chopra,” Fan said. “You must have taken a Gate to come here. Was it the same Gate we built? Or did the UC build its own? Either way, it is obvious you came here in secret, because my people would never willingly share this place with you.”

“Good guess,” I said. “We built our own Gate in secret.”

“Ah, so that means we have two Gates leading back.”

“No,” I said. “Your SK friends dismantled theirs when they left.”

“Oh.” He seemed perplexed. “But the UC Gate is still intact, yes? The road home is still open to us?”

I wanted to tell him the truth, but I couldn’t. “Yup. The UC Gate is still there.”

If he knew there was no hope for us, no way we’d ever leave this star system, he might just give up right there. I still needed him, for a while anyway, either to make me another oxygen extractor, or to give me his own. It was a selfish reason for lying to him, but it had to be done. Because I wasn’t going to give up, even if there was no obvious way home. I’d find one, someday. I’d sworn I would.

He was all smiles. “That is excellent news! All we have to do is find a ship. A shuttle with stasis pods will do. You have one, I assume? Unless you made some sort of jumpsuit drop to arrive here?”

“I had a shuttle,” I said, unable to keep the regret from my voice.

Fan studied me. “Had? What happened to it? Any chance we could repair it?”

I felt I was revealing too much, and was treading in dangerous waters. Well, might as well tell him the rest. It wouldn’t reveal that I’d destroyed the return Gate. “The AI decided to land while I was in stasis. Wasn’t a soft touchdown: sheared the left wing right off.”

Fan exhaled in disappointment, and his breath fogged the lower portion of his face mask. “A bit too much damage for even my superior repair abilities. Without the parts, or a 3D printer, there is nothing we can do. Why would you let the AI land?”

“Wasn’t my choice. As I said, the AI landed while I was in stasis.”

Fan cocked his head in commiseration. “There is an old saying where I am from: Never let the autopilot land the airplane.”

I smiled wistfully. “Wish we had that saying.”

Fan compressed his lips. “And I wish more of my people heeded its warning.” He paused, as if hesitant to tell me more. Then: “I lost a daughter in a spaceline crash. The AI malfunctioned during reentry.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yes. She was . . . the light of my life. My everything. But, that is not fair to the rest of my family. I have a wife and four other daughters. A family of women. One woman is a handful, but a family of them? Unmanageable!” He smiled sadly. “My oldest was named Lìxúe. It meant ‘Beautiful Snow.’ We called her that because her complexion was perfect, not a single blemish. It was smooth white, like snow. And she had such long, silky black hair. She was seventeen when she died. She was returning to Earth after a lunar beauty pageant.

“She was so shy, she would have never entered on her own. But we goaded and convinced her. We helped her practice, too, for the posing, and the onstage interview. So it was our fault, really. Mine.” His chin quivered beneath his face mask. “I deserve this punishment. I deserve to be marooned on this hell for the rest of my days. That is why I know I will survive the radiation poisoning. I am meant to suffer. I deserve it. I hope for it.”

I didn’t know what to say. To be honest, I just wanted him to stop.

“I remember watching the pseudo-live feed of her performance as it streamed from the moon. She was spectacular. Never again would I witness such a beauty as she. Never again. She was just
glowing
. All the training and drilling we did with her paid off. She performed the poses perfectly. Her pageant catwalk was impeccable. She wore the different outfits like a queen. Even the swimsuit, can you imagine? A queen in a swimsuit! For the onstage interview, she was asked the question, ‘How can we solve the war over Geronium in Mongolia?’ She won the pageant because of her answer. Do you want to know what that answer was?”

“Just stop it, okay?” I said.

“What?” He seemed genuinely stunned. And hurt.

“Look, I don’t want to know anything about you or your dead daughter.” I know it was cold, but it had to be said. “I don’t want to get attached to you. Keep the conversation light.”

“Why?” Fan was blinking rapidly. “So it will be easier to kill me?”

I shot him a look. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“You know as well as I do how harsh and deadly this environment is. Humanity wasn’t meant to live here. Either of us could die at any moment. All it takes is a puncture or gash in our suits, something too big to patch, and we’re gone. Look at our boots. Yours have just as much tape as mine. They’re not going to last forever. What happens when we run out of tape?

“The number of ways to die out here is endless. Don’t even get me talking about the hybears, and the alien beasts. But as I told you before, I’m military, and I’m trained for scenarios like this. Sort of. Anyway, I’m the one most likely to survive, got it? I don’t care if you’ve lasted out here fifteen Stanmonths. You’ve already admitted you’ve exhausted your anti-rad medication. You think you’re meant to live, and to suffer? I have news for you: you could die any day. So I’d rather not get attached. And besides, you’re basically my enemy. Your men shot up some good friends of mine on this world. I shouldn’t even be talking to you. The only reason I’m with you, for now, is because I need you. Is that understood?”

He didn’t reply. I hated speaking so coldly, but everything I said was true. He might not have been responsible for the men who fired at Rade and his platoon, but he likely had similar orders. I had to be careful around Fan. Still, he
had
lowered his rifle when we first met. I had to give him credit for that. But it could have been a ruse. Maybe he had intended to reach my shuttle, then shoot me when we got there. And now that I’d revealed I didn’t even have a working shuttle, maybe I was of no use to him anymore, and he might kill me the first chance he got. He might be lying about being a civilian, too.

Yes, I had to be very careful around this man.

“I said, is that—”

He raised a hand. “Yes, yes. I understand.”

“Good. Now let’s move.”

He remained still.

“What is it now?” I said. My patience was wearing thin. And I was normally a patient person. I had to be, given my situation these past eight months.

“My daughter’s answer was, if we want to solve the war in Mongolia, we should get to know the people of the UC. We should invite their citizens to billet with our own in a cultural exchange. The war will end if we work together, side by side, toward the common goal of peace.”

It was a good answer, I had to admit. But I forced myself not to care. We were as far away from Mongolia and the social issues of Earth as we could get. “The two of us, working here and now, will have no affect on the relations of our countries back home.”

“But it is a start, you have to admit,” Fan said. “Even if we are working together for all the wrong reasons. Because we face a common enemy.”

“That sounds like the right reason, to me.”

“As I said, it is a start.” He pointed toward a defile cut into the rock face five meters ahead. “Your mech is in there.”

I stared at the narrow gorge, this ominous crack of darkness in the valley wall.

So it was time to face death.

I’d enter that defile, and either I’d never return, or I’d come out piloting an ATLAS mech.

I wanted to turn back. I wanted to flee. But I couldn’t. Every moment was precious. My oxygen reserves were running out. Live or die, I had to go in.

“Right, then,” I told him. “Wish me luck.”

He did no such thing.

I approached the entrance. This defile appeared way tighter than the last one. The flashing dot on my HUD map promised that the mech awaited around a bend some twenty meters inside.

“Queequeg, stay,” I said. “Watch him.”

I steeled myself, and then, rifle at the ready, I entered the defile.

Queequeg followed me.

I turned on the animal. “I said stay!”

Queequeg sat down and whined softly.

I advanced cautiously into the gloom. I heard soft footfalls behind me, and glanced back.

Queequeg had resumed his accompaniment.

I almost got mad at him but I realized there was no point. Nothing I could say or do would make him remain behind.

He wasn’t going to let me face death alone.

That was loyalty for you. Something you couldn’t buy. Something you had to earn.

In the Navy, I had taken loyalty for granted, because the people I had served with, the people I had trained with, were all innately loyal. It was the nature of the service. We had shared something with each other that we’d shared with no one else. That we
could not
share with anyone else. Living together. Training together. Fighting together. You couldn’t get more intimate than that. And it was that intimacy, that sense of sisterhood and brotherhood, of belonging to something bigger than yourself, that bred loyalty in the Navy.

Just as the experiences Queequeg and I had shared bred loyalty. I’d saved his life on more than a few occasions, and he’d saved mine. I didn’t take for granted the loyalty he showed me, not at all. I had earned every iota of it. As he had earned mine.

Good old Queequeg. Loyal to the end.

The farther we traveled into the tight defile, the darker it became, the high black walls denying the sunlight.

Queequeg started to chatter and low nervously beside me.

“Quiet, Queequeg,” I hissed.

For once, the hybear obeyed without question.

I reached the bend indicated on my map. I saw telltale scuff marks on either rock face, which could have been made by something large and mechanical as it squeezed past the tight turn. Whether or not an ATLAS mech had made them was another story, however.

The flashing waypoint on my map beckoned to me.

Well, here goes.

I held my rifle at the ready. My index finger trembled uncontrollably against the outer edge of the trigger guard.

Slowly, warily, I stepped around the bend.

Nothing shot at me.

I crept forward. Around me, the defile widened slightly.

After only three paces I froze.

Fan had told the truth after all.

Ahead, thirty meters away, an ATLAS 5 loomed in the dim light.

The mech stood roughly three times the height of an ordinary man, a giant robot soldier with arms, legs, and a pinched head. Its outer surface was hued differing shades of black to match its surroundings. The black panther spray painted onto the chest piece stood out almost in relief. Numerous dents and scratches covered the metal.

I realized the ATLAS 5 wasn’t active because the vision sensors on its forehead were dark. Maybe it was in some sort of standby mode. That, or the reactor core had failed.

Or perhaps it was just possessed.

I took another tentative step, vaguely wondering if it was a good idea to keep my rifle aimed at the steel giant. Especially when that rifle was of SK make.

Step by slow step I approached, leaving the safety of the bend behind me. I was risking everything by doing this. I should’ve stayed back and thrown a rock or something.

I was about to retreat and do just that, but my motion must have triggered a wake-up signal because a yellow glow abruptly flooded the ATLAS 5’s vision sensors.

The mech swiveled its twin Gatling guns straight toward me and opened fire.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Rade

I
fell asleep (or blacked out) shortly before Bender’s mech docked with the
Gerald R. Ford
, and when I came to, I was on a bed in the Convalescence Ward. I heard the
beep, beep
of multiple wireless EKGs from other beds around me.

The place was packed. Wounded personnel occupied every bed. I didn’t recognize anyone from Alfa or Bravo platoons, so I assumed most of the men were Marines. My Implant was still offline, so I couldn’t just pull up the profile associated with each man and check.

I flexed my fists, or tried to. Only the left one responded. The right limb wouldn’t move at all.

I studied the arm. It wasn’t bandaged, like I would have expected. It did have a needle jabbed into the dorsal venous network of the hand, with a tube leading to an IV drip, but otherwise there was no sign the limb had ever been mangled in the crushing grip of an ATLAS 5. It did appear paler than my left arm, and far less muscled. When I spotted the thin, circular scar around the shoulder area, I had a sudden sinking feeling in my stomach.

Hesitantly, I touched the limb with the fingers of my other hand, confirming what I feared: my old arm had been unceremoniously chopped off and replaced with a bio-printed graft.

I knew this because the texture of the skin was slightly off, somewhat similar to corrugated cardboard. It felt the same as Chief Bourbonjack’s bio-printed hand, which I shook when Facehopper had first introduced me to Alfa platoon. I still remembered Facehopper’s words at the time:
The Chief’s got more body parts shot off than anyone I’ve ever met.

I was well on my way down that path.

Wonderful.

Disturbed by the texture, I continued running my hand up and down the arm. The nerve endings seemed to be functional in the limb at least, because I felt the pressure of my fingertips, and when I gave the forearm a good pinch, I cringed at the pain. So it was partially working.

Now I just had to figure out how to move it.

“Welcome back, Mr. Galaal,” someone said nearby.

I glanced to my left. “You again.”

“Me again.” Doctor Banye had been the GMO (General Medical Officer) of the
Royal Fortune
, and he must have transferred to the
Gerald R. Ford
along with Alfa platoon. Still, I hadn’t expected to have him attending me—maybe the ward was just short-staffed, given the number of wounded from the last battle. Robots performed all the surgeries anyway these days. Doctors merely gave the approval.

The dark-skinned man was dressed in blue scrubs, and he still hadn’t learned how to properly comb his hair, instead leaving it in a wild, disheveled mess. Just like his scraggly beard. That ingratiating smile made him look like a cross between a Fakir and the Cheshire cat.

“What’s the deal with my arm?” I tried to move the bio-printed limb again. Still nothing.

“The skin tone will even out with exposure to UV rays,” Banye said. “And obviously it’s going to take some time before the muscle mass is restored. But given the ample PT you MOTHs perform, the arm should be looking much the same as the other soon enough.”

“I’m not so concerned with how it
looks
, doc,” I said. “I can’t move the thing.”

“Ah!” Banye steepled his fingers, and tapped them together repeatedly. “How can I explain this? You have a completely different arm now, one that just so happens to reside in the same place as the amputated one.”

“Yeah, doc, I kind of figured that,” I said.

“You must understand, when you move your hand, you’re actually moving the old, nonexistent ghost hand. Obviously that won’t work. Instead you have to learn to activate the muscles of the new hand, using an entirely different part of your brain. It can take some minds a very long time to reorient to the new neural pathways, though MOTHs usually adapt quicker, because of your innate competitive drive, I suppose. You MOTHs don’t like to be out of action very long.”

“No we don’t.” I tried moving my fingers again. Still nothing. “Any suggestions to hurry the process along?”

“It helps to activate the pain pathways. Take a stun pen, set it to maximum voltage, and apply it to the part of the arm you wish to train. Here, let me show you.”

He retrieved a metallic stun pen, turned the dial to the max, and held it to the bio-printed limb. “I am now activating the thermal nociceptors at the tip of your thumb.”

I felt an intense burning sensation in my thumb.

“Ouch!” I said.

He withdrew the pen.

“Now move the thumb.”

I tried. Nothing.

He applied the pen again, and while the rest of my body flinched at the pain, the arm did nothing.

“Move the thumb,” he said.

Couldn’t do it.

He repeated the painful process ten times in total, and the last three times I managed to twitch my thumb after he withdrew the stimulus.

He tossed me the stun pen and I caught it with my good hand. “Practice.”

“Great. I get to inflict pain on myself all day.”

Banye’s tone took on a cynical edge. “Not so different from what you MOTHs do all day anyway, is it?”

“Good point. Is it dangerous at all?”

Banye shook his head. “The device doesn’t actually harm tissue. It’s a
stun
pen. Stimulates the nerve endings via harmless jolts of electricity.”

“Sure doesn’t feel harmless,” I said. “I don’t remember Lui having to do any of this when you replaced his leg below the knee.”

“Oh he did, believe me. You just didn’t see it. A lower leg replacement is actually far easier to adapt to, because the human body learns to walk on something like a stump fairly quickly, and of course a bio-limb is far more than an ordinary stump. Plus, during locomotion, the toes aren’t really put to use, at least not with the same level of motor coordination expected of the arms and fingers, so someone with a replaced lower leg can usually be up and about by the next day.”

It made some sense, I had to admit.

Then I had a sudden thought, and narrowed my eyes. “So tell me. What other body parts did you decide to replace without my permission this time?”

Banye blinked rapidly, but the smile never left his face. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

“Oh.” Banye’s smile edged toward the sheepish. “I suppose I do. You are speaking of a body part other than your arm?”

I smiled obligingly. “Yes.”

He backed away, saying nothing.

I shook my head. “Be straight up with me, doc. Tell me what you did.”

“Well, I noticed in your record that you are genetically predisposed to retinitis pigmentosa, which means you had a sixty percent chance of total blindness by age forty. Also, your eyesight wasn’t twenty-twenty. So, I took the liberty—”

“Ahh no,” I said. “Hell no. You didn’t. You couldn’t have.”

His grin wavered. “Err, well, I thought—”

I struggled to get up.

Banye wasn’t smiling anymore. He retreated to his office in a hurry and barricaded the door.

I lowered the safety rail, swung my legs off the bed, and got up. I wheeled my IV over to the nearest mirror. My eyes looked fine as far as I could tell. Even so, I pulled down the skin beneath my left eye, and rolled the eye upward. Stamped onto the sclera of the underside I saw the tiny letters ANDERSON INC.

“You bastard.” I performed a similar inspection on my right eye.

Same stamp.

I glared at Banye through the window of his office. “You replaced my eyes!”

I went back to my bed, and glowered at the Marines around me, most of whom seemed amused.

“Wipe those smirks off your faces,” I said. “He’s your doc, too. Probably a good idea to confirm he hasn’t bio-substituted your testicles.”

That stopped the smiles.

A couple of men actually checked.

The doctor tentatively emerged from his office when I slid the safety rails of the bed back into place.

“Hey, doc, can you triple the size of my dick?” one of the Marines said.

“Now now,” Banye answered. “Essential procedures only.”

“That
is
essential,” another Marine said. “Jack’s got a dick so small his wife confuses it for his pubes.”

“Please, I’m dealing with a patient now.” Banye approached my side.

I considered making a lunge at him, but thought better of it. Instead, I said, “Why the whole eyes? Couldn’t you just replace my lenses or something?”

“Well, yes, but that would have done nothing for your genetic predisposition. I thought you would be pleased. You now have no chance of blindness, and you have better than twenty-twenty vision. Verily eagle-eyed! Perfect for a spec-ops man.” Banye sounded excited as he latched onto that latter point, and he became all smiles once more. “Can you imagine that? You no longer have to rely on your rifle scope to correct your vision, or your aReal visor!”

“I don’t want eagle-eye vision!” Again I had to suppress the urge to throttle him.

“Can he see in the dark?” a Marine asked. “Or through women’s clothing?”

“Quiet, please!” Banye scolded the man. “And no, he can’t.”

“Then what’s the point?” the Marine said.

I closed my eyes, letting my lungs deflate, promising myself I wasn’t going to hurt the doctor.

What did it matter? As long as I could see. And looked normal.

“Don’t worry,” Banye said. “You won’t have to undergo the same neural adaption period as a new limb. Once grafted, ocular tissue is essentially part of the brain, and as far as your mind is concerned your new eyes are exactly the same as the old ones. It is similar to replacement organs running on the autonomic nervous system—the intestines, the lungs, and so forth—none of which require retraining.”

“Don’t talk to me,” I said, turning away from him.

Banye sighed, but he left me alone to harass another patient.

I closed my eyes, just wanting to shut out the world for a while.

The bastard replaced my eyes!

“Is that you, Rage?” a weak voice came from the far side of the room.

“Dyson?” I sat up, but it was a big ward and I couldn’t see where he resided.

“Yes, sir!”

You’d think he’d be the last one I’d want to meet right now. But he was a member of my platoon, a familiar voice among a group of strangers. Someone who reminded me of who I was and the people I fought with. A brother, who had been injured with me. Maybe not the most beloved brother, but a brother nonetheless.

I had to go to him.

I got up and wheeled my IV toward the side of the room where I’d heard his voice. I spotted him in one of the beds near the corner.

He looked a little pale to me. I could see the square-shaped impression of a bandage wrapped around his chest, beneath the patient gown.

“What happened to you?” I said.

“Took a good hit in the stomach is what happened,” Dyson said. “Next time, try to give a little warning before you decide to sic your ATLAS 5 on us.”

I glanced at his chest. “Your stomach was punctured?”

“I’ll say. Thanks to shrapnel from the exploding booster rocket. I tell ya, it’s painful as hell when your stomach acids spill out and start dissolving your guts.”

I raised a halting hand. “Too much detail.”

“Sorry. Anyway, I made it all the way into orbit, but passed out before I docked with the
Gerald R. Ford
. Pyro from Bravo platoon had to bring me in. When I came to, I discovered the doc had replaced my stomach, my duodenum, and the lower half of my esophagus. Don’t know if all that was warranted or not. But he says I’ll be able to smell a match burning from a klick away.”

“Is that what he said?”

“Strangely enough. And I know he’s right, because my sense of smell has already improved. Take this room. I’ve been in wards before, you know, from training injuries. But I’ve never really noticed the smell. The disinfectant, the sweat, just this overall odor of human suffering. Did you know, I can pick out the individual smells of each man around me? I even smell
you
, Rage.”

“Yeah, but don’t tell me what I smell like. So the doc replaced the olfactory receptors in your nose then.”

He nodded slowly. “Probably. Though I have no idea why. I broke my nose when I was a teenager, but I can’t see that necessitating an olfactory operation.”

“Yeah well, he decided to swap out the lower three inches of my friend’s intestine during a lung operation, simply because my friend had had a prolapsed rectum at one point in the past. The doc called the operation a ‘preventative’ measure. And you just heard what Banye did to my eyes, right? It’s ridiculous. Just because I didn’t have twenty-twenty vision. I was only half joking when I told the Marines to check their testicles. The guy’s a bit whacked.”

“I’ll say.” Dyson rubbed his own eyes, apparently mortified at the thought. “This friend of yours whose lower intestine was replaced, he’s on the Teams?”

I nodded warily. “Was.”

“What happened to him? He quit?”

I stared at Dyson for a moment. Then I turned away, because I was close to punching him. “He’d never quit. And he didn’t. He gave the ultimate sacrifice for his Team. He saved my life.”