ATLAS 2 (ATLAS Series Book 2) (12 page)

I laughed. I really laughed. “I’ve hardly been nice to you.”

“No, you have,” he said. “I want you to keep hazing me. Keep testing my mettle. Even when I get my callsign. It keeps me on my toes.”

“You’re the strangest caterpillar I ever met,” I said. “Of course, I haven’t met very many. Did you hear that, Tahoe? I think we’ve been too soft on our boy Dyson here. He
likes
our hazing.”

Bender leaned forward, and pointed at Dyson threateningly. “I’m going to keep hazing you, don’t you worry. Gonna teach you that you ain’t never going to fill the shoes of the man you came to replace. Not ever.”

Bender surprised me. I thought I was the only one who felt that way.

Dyson crossed his arms. “I never said I wanted to replace anyone. I’m here to offer my sniping skills to the platoon. Use me as you see fit.”

Facehopper rested a hand on his shoulder. “We’ve all been where you are, mate. All of us. Don’t mind them. We’ve lost good people, and you’re a convenient outlet for the grief we all feel. You’ll make it through, just don’t let them get to you. You survived MOTH training, and that’s half the battle. It takes a certain kind of man to get where you are now.”

“I’m not an ordinary
man
,” Dyson said. “I’m a MOTH. And I know I’ll make it through, sir. I’m in my element out here. This is what I trained for. Besides, with you guys at my side, I’m invincible.”

I exchanged a knowing glance with Tahoe. I used to think exactly like Dyson. Because of who I was, and the friends I had, I actually believed none of us would ever die. I was wrong.

But we were MOTHs. We were supposed to believe we were invincible. Yet despite the brave faces, all of us here, MOTHs and Marines alike, knew what was coming. And we were afraid. You could feel it in the air. It was always like this, the day before a battle.

And yet I also sensed excitement. We were, in the end, doing our jobs. Doing what we were trained to do.

Dyson was looking at Bender, as if expecting him to make some gung-ho comment in agreement with what he just said.

Instead, all Bender had to say was, “Don’t look at me with those beady little Chinaman eyes of yours.”

Charming, as always.

Dyson started to look away, but he shot Bender a withering gaze as the words registered. “What did you call me?”

Bender smirked. “You heard me. Chinaman.”

“That’s it.” Dyson stood up from his seat.

I was there to catch him. “Sit down, Dyson.”

He tried to shove his way past me.

On the other side of the table Bender stood too, and was egging on Dyson. “Let him go! Let him go! I got some things to teach this caterpillar!”

“All right,” Skullcracker said, in a voice so quiet I had to strain to hear. “If y’all don’t sit yourselves down real soon, you’re going to find out why I’m called Skullcracker.”

Dyson and Bender regarded the man’s skull-tattooed face warily, and then they returned to their seats.

“Thank you, Skullcracker,” Facehopper said.

Skullcracker inclined his head.

“Tomorrow we fight,” Facehopper said. “And we’re doing so as a team. I need you guys to present a unified front to the world. Do I have to tell the Chief we can’t work together? That he has to assign you two to different drops?”

“No, Facehopper,” Dyson said.

“Bender?” Facehopper glanced at the black man.

Bender had a defiant look in his eyes, but then he lowered his gaze, and said, “No.”

The next day I found myself sitting inside a Delivery Vehicle, waiting to be dropped onto the invaded moon. I wore my pressurized jumpsuit alongside the dozen Marines and five MOTHs from the wargame sims: Facehopper, Tahoe, Skullcracker, Bender, and Dyson. I would’ve preferred if the caterpillar Dyson had been assigned to a different Delivery Vehicle in the end, but I had no say in the matter. I knew it was wrong to resent him, that it wasn’t his fault two good men had to die so he could be here. Still, knowing that didn’t change my attitude toward him.

The remaining members of Alfa platoon, including Chief Bourbonjack, had been similarly spread out among the battalion. Our purpose was to give advice and offer leadership to the Marines. No one else, other than the SKs, had faced a threat like this before.

As if we really knew anything more just because we’d fought the enemy once before. These Marines were briefed. They knew what to expect. My experience and that of my platoon’s wasn’t going to make a whole lot of difference, in my opinion. You shot the crabs and slugs. They went down. Unless they were really big, in which case you left them to air support. As for the Phants, well, you ran from those flesh-incinerating and robot-possessing mists for all you were worth.

Lieutenant Commander Braggs was stationed in the CDC (Combat Direction Center, or operations room) of the
Gerald R. Ford
, and he would coordinate with us via Chief Bourbonjack while we were on the surface. Like the rest of the crew, the Lieutenant Commander had his Implant disabled, as Fleet hadn’t found a way to shield direct-brain aReal devices from the crippling electromagnetic emissions of the Phants. So he was relying on an external aReal for his HUD and platoon connectivity. There was no chance of these HUDs overloading like had happened to us on Geronimo, not with the Implants offline. Anyway, while in the CDC, the Lieutenant Commander temporarily gave Chief Bourbonjack access to the audio and video feeds of his aReal, and the Chief in turn shared those feeds with the rest of Alfa platoon.

“What I’m sending you now, boys,” the Chief sent over the private comm channel, “is shared with the understanding that you won’t show it to anyone else. I hope you appreciate that common soldiers and embedded reporters aren’t allowed access to such feeds. But you are MOTHs, and there’s nothing common about you. You can handle scenarios that would have other men pissing in their military-issue undergarments. It’s debatable whether this is a breach of Operational Security or not, but if it is, to hell with op-sec. As far as I’m concerned, you
deserve to see the Commanding Officer and his XO bring this carrier into battle. Especially when you’re going to be droppi
ng out the hangar bay in the middle of it. If you’re going to die, then you damn well deserve to see what hit you. Out, goddammit.” The Chief was stationed in a different drop craft, but I could imagine the grim expression on his face as he said that.

I halved the size of the video feed that the Chief supplied, and moved it to the upper right corner of my helmet’s aReal. On it, I saw the layout of the CDC as perceived from Lieutenant Commander Braggs’s perspective. He was staring at the tactical display, which was a holographic representation of the battle space projected in 3D at the center of the room. The data for the display was filtered and collected via the multiple terminals manned by operations specialists around it. The specialists wore old-style translucent aReal visors, the kind with the red LEDs that strobed at different frequencies, giving the overhead cameras positional data for proper linking of the real and virtual worlds. The specialists wore hand straps with similar strobing LEDs, and used them to interact with their consoles (without an aReal those consoles appeared as blank plates of glass, unless the backup systems were running).

The XO (Executive Officer) of the supercarrier,
Captain Tom Linder
, was the officer overseeing the CDC. He, like everyone else present, wore an aReal visor. He had his own seat at the heart of the command center.

On the tactical display (which, I was told, could be viewed via aReal anywhere on the ship if you had the appropriate access), I saw the green dot representing the
Gerald R. Ford,
and the darker green dots representing our frigate escort, which included a handful of FI ships, three SK ships, and two other UC vessels. One of the escorting vessels was the
Royal Fortune
.

The Captain studied the display. I could see the red dots representing the enemy flotilla (comprised of captured SK ships), with the Skull Ship indicated as a sphere roughly four times the size of the others. The moon and gas giant were represented as bigger spheres, not to scale, but large enough to illustrate their positions in relation to the rest of us.

Our vessels were coming toward the moon from the far side. Like most carriers, we were decked out in LIDAR absorbers and background-rad pass-throughs, but all that was moot when you considered our heat signature would’ve enabled us to be spotted from millions of kilometers off. The moon wasn’t big enough to shield our signatures, not given our angle of approach. But I didn’t think stealth was our objective.

A small alert sounded. On the 3D display, the smaller red dots had begun moving away from the Skull Ship.

“She’s seen us,” an operations specialist said. “The enemy flotilla is breaking away from Bandit 1.” That was the Skull Ship.

Captain Linder nodded calmly.

A voice came over the CDC comm. “Give me an ETA on weapons range.” I recognized the voice as belonging to Commodore William Hanson, the CO (Commanding Officer) of the
Gerald R. Ford
. He was directing operations from the main bridge, where most of the tactical decisions would be executed. The whole point of the CDC was to analyze the battle space and advise the Commanding Officer. But if the bridge fell, the CDC could continue the battle—it was a fully operational backup command center.

Captain Linder glanced at one of the operations specialists.

“Two minutes, sir,” the specialist said. “So far, only the flotilla is moving. Bandit 1 remains stationary, as predicted.”

When we were about ten minutes away from the drop waypoint, designated by a flashing blue indicator on the tactical display, more red dots began to appear. These were needle-sized.

“Enemy vessels just launched fighters,” an operations specialist said.

“I see them,” Commodore Hanson said over the comm, from the bridge.

“Your orders, sir?” came another voice over the comm. I assumed it must be the Tactical Officer, Lieutenant Commander Miko, who was also on the bridge.

“Hold present course and speed.” Commodore Hanson answered.

“Confirm fighter class,” Captain Linder said.

“Avenger class, sir,” one of the operations specialists answered. “Unmanned and remotely operated.”

“Why launch them so early?” Captain Linder said. “By the time those fighters are in range, the communications lag with the host ships will force the onboard AIs to do most of the work.”

“Unless the fighters are operated by Phants,” Commodore Hanson said from the bridge.

A few tense moments passed.

“Enemy flotilla within mortar and torpedo range, sir,” Miko said over the comm.

“Lock mortars on target,” Commodore Hanson said. “Spread fire evenly among the enemy carriers and frigates. Order our escorts to do the same.”

“Locking mortars on target, and notifying escorts,” Tactical Officer Miko answered.

Launched by rail guns, mortars were true fire-and-forget weapons. Comprised of iron or other minerals, mortars had no propulsion systems of any kind, and never deviated from their initial trajectory, or their initial velocity, after launch. You didn’t need a warhead to cause damage with a mortar—at the velocities starships moved in space, a hit from a mortar could tear a ship in half. Also, since the projectiles were mined from asteroids and other planetoids, they were cheap and easy to replenish.

There was no real defense against mortar projectiles, which were basically mini-asteroids. You could launch a nuke, if you were willing to waste one, but that was about it. The chances of hitting an incoming mortar with one of your own were minuscule, and the Gatlings of point defense systems hardly scuffed the surfaces. The best thing to do was steer out of the way, which made them very effective for target herding.

After a moment, the Tactical Officer’s voice could be heard over the comm. “Mortars locked. The
Gerald R. Ford
and escorts are ready to fire.”

“Fire,” Commodore Hanson said from the bridge.

“Muting the bridge.” Captain Linder leaned forward. “Now comes the moment of truth. Will our SK allies fire on their own countrymen?”

On the display, yellow lines that represented mortar projectiles streamed out from each of our ships, with dashed lines indicating the intended targets. Four projectiles were headed toward each of the seven enemy vessels.

The three SK vessels on our side had all fired.

“Looks like they came through for us,” Commander Bane said. He was Linder’s second. “Maybe they believe none of their countrymen are alive on the captured vessels.”

The Captain rubbed his chin. “Maybe.”

“Thoughts, Captain?”

Captain Linder bit his lower lip. “The alien beings we face aren’t omni-powerful, despite what some of you might believe. They can’t simply board human ships and expect to know how to navigate them, let alone the strategies to employ in combat. There are SKs on board those captured vessels, fighting for their alien masters, don’t you worry. There have to be.”

“But if Phants possess their fighters, as the Commodore suggests, how did the alien beings learn to pilot them?”

Captain Linder frowned. “I don’t know. But piloting a fighter and operating a carrier lie on two very different ends of the complexity scale.”

Mortar projectiles appeared on the display, coming from the enemy ships. The dashed lines of the computed trajectories converged on the
Gerald R. Ford
.

All of them.

“Interesting strategy.” Captain Linder continued rubbing his chin. “What do you make of it, Bane?”

“We
are
the most dangerous threat,” Commander Bane said.

“Yes, but assuming they do disable us, our escorts pack more than enough punch to take down the rest of them.”

“The battle has only started, sir,” Commander Bane said.

“Yes indeed.”

“Alter trajectory to avoid mortar projectiles,” Commodore Hanson said over the comm. “I want a starboard burst of thrust, followed by a countering portside burst the moment those projectiles are cleared.”