ATLAS 2 (ATLAS Series Book 2) (45 page)

What have I done?

The noise of the bone saw ceased, replaced by another sound. A quiet, squishy sound: the murmur of microchips pressing into neural tissue.

I decided right then I had to watch this. I had to observe with my own eyes exactly what I’d done to Fan. This would be my punishment.

I opened my eyes in time to watch the Alien Weaver power-drill the metal bar into the back of Fan’s skull. The robot’s limbs jerked horizontally down his spine, methodically grafting the remaining sections of the bar to Fan’s spinal column. Medical lasers cauterized the tissue along the edges.

When it was done, it looked almost like his spine itself had been yanked on top of the skin and transmogrified into metal. The crude rivets and bolts on the outskirts of the bar revealed the truth of the graft, however. It was horrifying either way.

Spider-like, the Alien Weaver swiveled Fan so that he resided on his back, leaning slightly to one side with the metal bar touching the floor. Then the Weaver retreated to the rooftop of the tank, folded its limbs, and returned to dormancy.

A glowing, red liquid seeped into the chamber. A Phant.

It carefully steered around Fan’s unconscious body and pooled beside the metallic graft. The liquid diminished in size, seeping into the bar until none remained on the floor. A scatter of glowing red droplets remained on the surface of the metal, held in place by some unknown force.

Fan opened his eyelids.

Except it was no longer Fan. There was a dull light to his eyes, reminding me of someone who had been heavily drugged. He examined his arms and legs and, pressing one hand against the glass wall of the tank for support, clambered to his feet. He glanced through the tank at Battlehawk, but there was no recognition in his eyes. Nor emotion of any kind. It was the kind of look people had when they were inside their Implant.

What had I done?

Movement drew my eyes to the right, to my own dire situation.

At the edge of my vision, a dark green, gaseous Phant floated into my tank, very fast. For some reason I had been expecting a red one.

I waited for Battlehawk to eject me, and for the Alien Weaver to drop from the roof of the tank. I waited for my own inevitable surgery to commence.

But the cockpit did not open.

I realized the inner atmosphere of the tank hadn’t changed, because the encroaching entity remained in vapor form.

Was I to be incinerated, then?

The blue Phant inside Battlehawk began to vent from the ATLAS 5’s brain case.

Then I understood.

They were attempting a swap, as I had seen in Battlehawk’s vid archives: the blue one vacated so that the green one could take over.

Battlehawk had escaped when they tried this before.

Would I be able to do the same?

I’d exhausted all of Battlehawk’s weaponry. I had only my fists. Still, if it came to it, I’d bash my way out.

I was leaning against the cockpit’s inner cocoon when the actuators abruptly yielded beneath me.

Control of the mech was mine again.

This was my chance.

Excitement rose within me as I took three quick steps toward the nearest glass surface.

But the dark-green vapor of the Phant was already seeping inside my ATLAS. It was fast.

Too fast.

I managed to raise my arm, but before I could strike the glass, the cocoon froze up.

No.

I slumped, leaning heavily against the unyielding actuators. I felt such sheer disappointment.

Apparently the Phants weren’t going to make the same mistake a second time.

“Cockpit, open,” I said, defeated. “Inner shell, release.”

I struggled briefly against the cocoon, but it was no use.

The brief opportunity of escape had passed.

“Do not be afraid,” the AI’s deep voice intoned.

I blinked in disbelief. “Battlehawk?”

“No.”

I swallowed. “Who . . . who are you?”

“I am Azen. You are safe now.”

The glass slabs in front of me slid aside, and the mech emerged from the tank. Fan stared blankly past me the whole time.

I’m sorry, Fan.

The ATLAS 5 left behind the horrors of the alien menagerie, and we continued down the tight corridor of interlinked pipes.

I was spared, but to what end? Likely a fate far worse than Fan’s awaited me.

The passageway eventually fell away, and we stood on the edge of a vast, cylindrical shaft. Below, a pit descended into the murk, while above the concave bulkheads vanished into the darkness before ever reaching a ceiling. I could barely make out the far side of the shaft, but I thought I saw openings to other corridors there.

I was starkly reminded of the insides of a Forma pipe, and I suspected the hollow, cylindrical shaft passed through the entire ship, like some inner core. Assuming we were even on a ship . . . I hadn’t seen any windows yet.

Battlehawk, or Azen I supposed, stepped out into the shaft’s empty void—

And was immediately lifted upward.

This was a grav elevator of some kind, though on a massive scale. Humanity had the tech to build smaller such elevators, though most were constructed for research purposes or marketing gimmicks. I’d never seen anything like this.

The minutes ticked by, and our speed slowly increased until the shaft and its offshoot corridors became a blur. I was taken aback by the sheer immensity of it all. We must have been traveling at least a hundred kilometers an hour. And still there was no end to the shaft in sight.

The occasional Phant or alien jumpsuit traveling in the opposite direction blurred by; amazingly we never collided with any of them.

The mech began to slow, and finally came to a halt. It just hovered there, motionless in the shaft. Abruptly we drifted to the left, traveling horizontally along the concave bulkhead.

We stopped before an opening and floated toward it. The ATLAS 5’s feet touched the solid gangway inside, and then the mech proceeded forward under mechanical power once more, leaving the shaft behind.

We were in a corridor that looked much the same as the previous one, replete with elevated gangway and undulating bulkheads.

“Where are you taking me?” I said.

Azen answered immediately. “My homeworld.”

We reached a wide, spherical chamber. A series of raised, concentric ribs spread from a central point in the deck, and curved up the bulkheads to the ceiling. Between each rib, a passageway led in and out.

A metallic disc, larger than any I had seen before, rested on a dais at the center of the chamber, at the confluence of those ribs.

Gaseous Phants of four colors—red, purple, blue, gray—traveled to and fro between the disc and the many entrances. Those that hovered over the disc vanished. Others materialized from thin air above the disc and drifted toward the passageways.

The incoming vapors queued along the outer rim of the disc. No two Phants ever floated onto the disc at the same time: a single Phant would advance over the disc and vanish; a different-colored Phant would appear shortly thereafter and leave the disc; then the next Phant would move forward.

“What if I don’t want to go to your homeworld?” I whispered.

“You have no choice.”

Azen advanced, and the Phants cleared a path for the mech. The ATLAS 5 waited by the edge of the disc until a Phant materialized in the center. When the alien vapor hovered aside, Azen marched onto the device.

The bulkheads winked out.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Rade

I
stared into the barrel of the rifle, waiting for the guard robot to fire.

Hijak raised his own rifle, and the robot immediately swung its aim toward him.

Lana stepped smoothly between them.

“Lower your weapon,” Lana said to the robot. Her tone and posture had changed—she was Jiāndāo all over again.

The robot lowered its weapon.

“You will escort us to the hangar bay,” the woman continued. It was kind of frightening how easily she had resumed the mannerisms of Jiāndāo, and for a moment I thought the Phant had repossessed her.

“I will escort you to the hangar bay,” the robot repeated, vacating the entrance.

“That’s some Jedi mind shit right there,” Hijak said.

I glanced over my shoulder to confirm that the glowing Phant was still on the operating room floor, and not inside Lana.

We stepped outside, and the robot marched us through the tight corridors.

I gave Lana a questioning look. “Lana?”

“Yes, it’s me,” she said quietly, answering my unasked question. “I programmed this robot myself. Or my possessor did, anyway.”

I couldn’t see glowing condensation anywhere on the robot, and I realized it wasn’t possessed. The Phants didn’t
have
to possess every single robot, not if they knew how to program them.

That probably wasn’t a good thing. Or maybe it was, if it meant they’d obey Lana.

We reached the hangar bay. Two more robots, also not possessed, guarded the entrance airlock.

Thanks to Lana, they let us pass.

Lana ordered all three robots to wait outside.

“Do not let anyone enter, no matter what happens,” Lana instructed the robots.

We entered the airlock, sealed it behind us, then opened the inner hatch to the hangar bay.

The first things I noticed when I stepped into the bay were the ATLAS 6s.

There were eight of them, arrayed in a line against the far bulkhead. So tall that even in their storage postures—with upper bodies hunched forward, legs bent, and shoulder rotors folded away—they barely fit the confines of the hangar.

I felt my heart beat with excitement just looking at them.

“The two of us will get suited up,” Lana said.

I nodded absently as she led Hijak to the jumpsuit closet.

This was going to be quite the joyride.

I was already wearing a UC jumpsuit. When I sealed the helmet, the aReal in my faceplate outlined the mechs in red (as enemies), with generic
ATLAS 6
labels.

That wasn’t going to work.

I hurried over to Lana and Hijak at the jumpsuit closet, and exchanged my UC helmet for an SK version. The fit was perfect. That was one of the nice things about having the jumpsuits manufactured by the same company: interoperability.

Strict regulations prevented that company—Nova Dynamics—from selling to anyone but official governments, but my platoon had found company gear on privateer ships numerous times during missions. The serial numbers were invariably erased, but the Chief suspected involvement at the manufacturer level. UC investigators were looking into it, but unfortunately, the matter wouldn’t be resolved any time soon, given that most of our resources were now redirected toward more important matters.

I sealed the SK-version faceplate. The HUD (Heads-Up Display) built into the lens had the usual familiar layout, except for the Korean-Chinese characters.

“Command language: English,” I said as the internal atmosphere stabilized.

Instantly, the characters switched to understandable words.

I should have issued that command when I was working with the SK Weaver back in the operating room. Ah well, I had to cut myself some slack: I
had
been subjected to a lot of pain back there, and I hadn’t had the clearest of thoughts at the time.

I eagerly turned toward the ATLAS 6s. The mechs were outlined in green now, and no longer had generic names. I saw the Chinese characters representing their callsigns, and below them the English equivalents. Hopper. Fang. Tiger. Ox . . .

“What secure comm channel should we use?” Hijak said.

“One-five-nine.” I tuned my comm to one-five-nine. Always a good idea to agree on a secure channel before you started transmitting.

I picked out a jetpack from the rack in the closet and shrugged it on. I’d left my old one behind after using it to take out the robots. The integration was perfect.

I sprinted across the hangar toward the ATLAS 6s.

“Hopper, unlock!” I activated my new jumpjets as the cockpit hatch of the designated mech fell open, and I landed inside.

The cockpit’s elastic cocoon pressed into my body, forcing my posture to match the curled-in-a-ball storage position of the mech. My knees pressed into my chest with enough force to squeeze the breath out of me.

The hatch sealed, leaving me staring at the mech’s innards. Without my Implant, all weapons-related commands would be vocal, just as control of the mech would be via the pressure sensors lining the cocoon. It would feel a bit like trudging in muck at first.

Then the mech’s audio and visual feeds routed to my helmet, so that I heard and saw the world from the heights of the ATLAS 6.

“Hopper, load weapon patterns seven and five!”

“Unrecognized weapon pattern,” a female voice intoned from the cockpit.

A female AI. That was interesting. Mechs were traditionally considered the epitome of masculinity, with voices to match. I guess the SKs viewed their mechs differently . . .

“Load serpent launcher into left hand,” I said.

The serpent launcher swiveled into position.

“Load Gatling into right hand.”

The Gat swung up and into place.

“Guns in hand,” I said.

The weapons swiveled so that the triggers were directly above my fingers.

Unable to stand to my full height within the tight confines of the hangar bay, I lumbered toward the hangar doors. Try doing a buttocks-to-calves squat sometime, then shamble forward, and you’ll get an idea of what that was like. The movement was made all the more difficult by the fact that without the Implant it felt like I was wading through a swamp.

I glanced at Lana and Hijak. They had just finished suiting up.

“This is Rage, comm check,” I sent over the agreed-upon frequency. “One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Over.”

“Hijak to Rage,” Hijak sent. “Comm check. Five of five. Over.”

“I heard both of you,” Lana transmitted. “Five of five. Is that what you want me to say? Over.”

“That’ll do. By the way, Lana, you sure you can operate one of these mechs?”

In answer, she sprinted across the hangar toward the ATLAS 6 labeled “Ox” on my HUD. The hatch fell open as she ran, and she jetted inside. The cockpit sealed behind her.

Ox turned toward me, Gatling guns swiveling into its hands.

“Nice,” I said.

Hijak chose Tiger beside her.

I switched to the backup comm system in the ATLAS 6, and repeated the comm test. The mechs passed with flying colors.

One less moving part to worry about.

“Open the hangar doors, Lana,” I said.

The door interface could be accessed remotely via aReal. Right then I realized I could’ve probably opened it myself, as the Phants had likely disabled the security protocols on these doors, too. We were all one big, happy Phant family.

Abruptly I heard gunfire from beyond the airlock. Our three guard robots were obeying Lana’s instructions to the letter, apparently.

A ship-wide Klaxon sounded.

The Korean-Chinese equivalent of General Quarters sounded over the hangar’s main circuit.

“Uh, Lana?” I sent over the comm. “The hangar doors?”

“The doors won’t open
now
,” Lana transmitted.

“That’s fine. No problem.” I lifted my Gatlings toward the doors and opened fire.

Since we didn’t have a chance to vent the atmosphere first, shooting the hangar doors
triggered an explosive decompression in the bay—loose equipment and tools hurtled past and smashed into the doors, widening the gaps torn by my Gat fire. I heard what sounded like hammer blows around me as some of those objects struck my ATLAS on the way out.

My mech didn’t shift at all, and neither did the other ATLAS 6s or the lone shuttle. The hangar’s artificial gravity remained active despite the rupture, and the decompressive forces were far too weak to counter the weight of the heavier objects.

I glanced toward the inner airlock, and beyond the portal saw SKs in jumpsuits piling inside. I turned my Gatling toward the airlock, and they immediately piled right back out again.

Good.

I proceeded toward the damaged hangar doors and barreled my way through the gaps in the metal.

Hopper passed from the ship’s artificial gravity field and into the weightlessness of the void. There was a chance I’d suffer from decompression sickness, since ordinarily I was supposed to wait an hour for my body to adapt to the pressurized environment of a jumpsuit, but it wasn’t like I had a choice in the matter. The nausea I felt now definitely wasn’t decompression sickness though, but rather the directionless disorientation of space.

There was a huge, floating rock in front of me. I’d seen it on the bridge view screen earlier, and back then I’d thought it was a planetoid of some kind, but now I realized it was one of the larger specimens of the Tau Ceti III ring belt. Smaller rocks drifted past all around me.

I jetted toward the big rock and released a lateral burst to swing my body around by 180 degrees.

The receding ship swept into view. As expected, it was an SK vessel, triangular overall, with crowded, box-like superstructures erupting at sharp angles from the surface. Frigate class, judging from the size—roughly half as big as the large rock. Likely the frigate used the gas giant on the one side and the rock on the other to mask its thermal signature from the rest of the system.

Lana and Hijak followed close behind me in their ATLAS 6s, dwarfed by the ship. Lana seemed quite capable in regards to mech operations. Walking in a mech was relatively easy, but firing off the jumpjets with pinpoint precision to steer herself through space? Not so easy. I suspected her little stint as a Phant host had something to do with her abilities.

“We should get behind that rock, Rage,” Hijak sent. “Before the ship comes about for an attack vector.”

I didn’t think the frigate needed to come about for an attack vector at all. Already I saw a battery of turrets, part of the frigate’s point defense system, swiveling toward us.

“You guys go ahead.” I jetted upward immediately, wanting to draw fire away from the others.

“Rage . . .” Hijak transmitted.

“That’s an order! I know what I’m doing.”
Not really.
“I’ll be right behind you.”
I hope.

Piloting an ATLAS 6 out here, I was basically the equivalent of a large, Avenger class starfighter, but with more firepower. And I was going to take advantage of that fact.

I targeted the turret battery with my serpent launcher and told Hopper, “Override friendly fire protection.”

“Friendly fire protection disabled,” Hopper answered.

I made sure the recoil dampening was dialed down to zero, then I fired off three rockets before the enemy turrets could come to bear.

The rockets struck, as indicated by three bright flashes of light.

A lucky shot: I’d taken out the entire battery.

The SK frigate activated its starboard thrusters, trying to bring more weapons to bear.

I spotted another collection of turrets farther along the hull and I let loose a second rocket barrage.

Too late.

Those turrets unleashed hell, detonating my rockets in bright flashes.

The parallel threads of turret fire continued slicing through the void—deadly, silent ribbons of light that swiveled straight toward me.

Crap.

I jetted downward and swung Hopper around to face the large rock.

I activated my horizontal jumpjets at full burn, cut the flow after two seconds, then followed up with a half-second lateral burst.

Turret fire streamed past just to my left, noiselessly continuing onward to smash into the rock in front of me.

I released another half-second burst, directly vertical, further altering my trajectory, and followed up with a countering burst so that I swung around the rock in a wide, elliptical trajectory.

I glanced over my shoulder and watched the ship and its deadly fire vanish from view behind the large mineral body.

Hijak and Lana were waiting for me on the other side.

“Nice driving,” Hijak said.

“Let’s go.”

Everywhere I looked, the countless rocks of the Tau Ceti III ring belt floated past. According to the aReal in my helmet, the belt was roughly eighty thousand kilometers wide, with a local height-density ranging from as little as twenty meters to as high as two kilometers. Imagine a ring-shaped disc whose thickness varied along the edge.

The rocks themselves ranged in size from one centimeter to a hundred meters. Some were made of ice tinged with tholins such as methane, while others were composed of silicates.