ATLAS 2 (ATLAS Series Book 2) (17 page)

That gave me a chuckle. “When you’re the only person on a planet eight thousand lightyears from Earth, and you suddenly meet another person and he’s pointing a rifle at you, the Good Samaritan postulate kind of goes out the window. So I ask again, what do you want?”

He smiled. It didn’t touch his eyes. “Yes. I have a rifle pointed at you. Do you know why? Because I am not sure I can trust you. And as for what I want . . . maybe . . . maybe all I want is companionship.”

Companionship. It was a nice thought, if he could be believed. Still, I had more important needs at the moment than companionship. “Do you have any oxygen you can spare?”

“Mm? Oxygen. It is a precious commodity on
Hēi S
ö
.” That seemed to be his name for the planet, and according to my helmet aReal it meant “Black Death.” “Perhaps if you would be willing to do certain things for me, I could give you some oxygen, yes.”

I scowled. “What kinds of things?”

“Oh, I am easy to please, no worry, no worry. Do not look at me that way! It is not what you were thinking. Not at all. There is no way we can do
cào
in these jumpsuits anyway! Ha!” According to my aReal, cào meant sexual intercourse. “I can’t even visit Miss Five!” He made a masturbatory gesture.

I felt my brow furrow. “You stay away from me.”

“I am joking,” he said, emphatically. “Joking.”

I just shook my head. He sure had a strange sense of humor . . .

“My name is Fan,” he said, edging closer. I saw now that he had a grizzled beard, and weathered lines around much of his face. Must have been in his mid-fifties at least.

“Fan?” I hesitated. “You can call me Shaw, I suppose.”

“Shaw.” Fan scrunched up his face inside his helmet. “Like George Bernard?”

“Never heard of him.”

“Shaw Chopra,” he said, obviously accessing the public profile of my embedded ID. I wished I’d blanked it, like he had. “UC Navy Astrogator.” Gotta love Radio Frequency Identification.

“Yup. Tell me, are you alone, Fan? Are there others?”

“Except for two support robots, no others. And you?”

“I am alone.” I glanced at his rifle. “Maybe we can come to some sort of arrangement. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend?” Fan said.

“Not really what I was thinking, but sure,” I said.

Fan seemed confused. “I do not understand. What is your arrangement?”

“All I meant was, maybe you’re right. You’re alone, I’m alone, we should team up.”

For a second I thought Fan was going to agree. Then his face darkened. “Do you really want to team up?”

I gave him my most winning smile. “I really do.”

Fan kept me in the sight line of his weapon a moment longer, then he lowered the rifle slightly. “Well!” He broke into a grin. “We should prepare these carcasses. Food does not grow on trees around here. Ha! It can be the first shared act of our new friendship! You start with this Chéngdān.” He beckoned toward the animal Queequeg had been eating. “And I will choose one of the others.”

I shrugged, then retrieved my knife and knelt beside the carcass. I started skinning it.

Satisfied that I was working, Fan climbed the small rise, keeping his eyes on me and Queequeg the whole time. When he reached the top, he knelt beside the closest hybear body and set the rifle down.

Got ya
.

I looked over my shoulder.

Queequeg took that as his cue. The animal bounded up the short rise with lightning speed.

Before the SK could reach his rifle, he found himself pinned to the ground under Queequeg’s weight, with a nice set of claws pressing into the fabric just beneath his helmet, threatening to puncture the suit.

Queequeg knew not to kill him. Not right away, at least. Because Fan was a human, like me.

“Call it of
f
!” Fan said frantically. If he was a civilian, his suit probably wouldn’t be strength-enhanced. And even if it was, whether he could shove Queequeg away before having his throat ripped open was questionable. Queequeg was the fastest hybear I’d ever seen.

I casually approached, and snatched the rifle from where Fan had dropped it. “Not bad for a ‘pet,’ wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes. Beautiful animal.” To Queequeg: “There, there, nice Chéngdān
.
”

Queequeg snarled in return.

I aimed the rifle squarely at his face mask. “How’s it feel to have a barrel poking you in the face?”

“Uh, good?” Fan said. “If it pleases you, call the nice Chéngdān
off.”

“If it pleases me?” I cocked my head. I considered prolonging his torture, but decided he’d had enough. “It does please me. All right, that’s enough Queequeg. You can let him go. Queequeg!”

He released Fan, but not before snapping at the air in front of the captive’s face mask, making Fan wince. Queequeg returned to my side.

Fan clambered to his knees and kept his hands in the air.

“Remove your bailout oxygen canister, and toss it over to me,” I said.

He didn’t move.

I swung the firearm toward the ground and squeezed the trigger.

The loud boom and the explosion of black shale beside Fan confirmed the weapon was loaded after all.

Queequeg started slightly, but remained in place. The animal had heard me fire a rifle before, when I still had ammo, so he was used to the sound by now.

Fan, on the other hand, leaped right into the air. He hastily unbuckled his life-support system and disconnected the bailout cylinder. He threw the cylinder my way, re-securing the system to his back.

“You never had any intention of teaming up, did you?” Fan said.

“I’m a bit of a lone wolf, but depending on what you have to offer me, I may just stick around. However, I’m the one who gets the rifle.” I retrieved the bailout canister, then moved several paces away so I could swap mine out for his. I was just glad the UC and SKs had the same supplier for their jumpsuits, which ensured universal connectors. “Queequeg, watch him.”

Queequeg snarled, voicing such intimidating growls that Fan actually retreated a step.

“You’re the one who drained the oxygen from the Forma pipe back there, didn’t you?” I unbuckled my life support. I’d be breathing surplus suit oxygen until I reattached it.

Fan kept his eyes on Queequeg. “If it pleases you, yes. I am a terraforming engineer. A civilian contractor. I used to live inside that chimney. Until the Yaoguai demons came and destroyed the generator.”

I nodded. “So how long have you been watching me?”

“I did not watch you long. I was returning to get some parts from the chimney . . . I saw you emerge. I hid, and followed you. Then the pack came.”

“I see. You said the demons came and destroyed your machinery. You mean the crabs?” I remembered the sinkhole inside the Forma pipe, and the beasts inside it.

Fan shook his head. “Crabs? I do not know this word.”

“They have claws, like this.” I pantomimed a snapping claw with my glove. “And a few heads. A hard carapace.” I knocked on my chest piece with a fist.

“You speak of the
Mara
?” Fan said. “The creatures with many heads, and three hearts? Connected by cord to—”

“Yes, that’s them.”

He frowned at my interruption. “Well, the mist of the Yaoguai came, and I fled. When I returned, the Yaoguai were gone, but my equipment was sabotaged. Unfixable. The tanks still had oxygen so I chose to stay for a little while and work on a small project of mine. One night, a few Standays later, the floor caved and the Mara came. I held them back with my rifle. Then I used a grenade to seal the hole, severing the cords of the Mara. They died. No others came.”

I finished securing his bailout canister to my life-support system, then I swiveled the entire apparatus around so that it rested beneath my rucksack. It locked into place. I glanced at the O
₂
readout: eight hours now remained. What a relief to see the oxygen bar back in the positive.

I retrieved the rifle. “For a civilian, you’ve quite the fighting spirit, if you really took down those crabs on your own.”

“Civilian contractors who work with the military are trained to fight,” he said, puzzled. “Is it not the same with your UC?”

“Probably. Either way, you got lucky as far as I’m concerned. If those crabs were determined, they could’ve gotten to you. A couple more sinkholes and you wouldn’t be here.”

He scowled like I’d just given him the gravest of insults. “It was
skill
, not luck.”

“Sure. Anyway, what have you been doing for oxygen? You’ve obviously long since depleted the Forma tanks back there. You should be well on your way to the next pipe by now. Unless you have another source.”

He seemed reluctant to tell me. I gave my hybear friend a look.

Queequeg advanced a pace, growling louder than he had yet.

Fan recoiled. “Okay, I speak. I speak!”

Queequeg glanced at me, and I nodded. The animal stood down.

“I have engineered a solution from the Forma equipment,” Fan said resignedly. “I have created a small solar-powered extractor. It uses a heating unit to raise the temperature to 2,500 degrees Kelvin. I put rocks into the extractor, and the heat boils away the oxygen. Hydrogen from the atmosphere strains through a tungsten shield, combining with the oxygen to form water. The water pumps into an electrolyzer, and half of the water separates into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is returned to the atmosphere, the oxygen and leftover water are stored for my use. Simple as cake, as they say in the UC.”

I felt my lips quirk. “Inventive. I want to see this extractor of yours. Lead me to it.”

“You want oxygen, I understand, I do,” Fan said. “But there is a problem. It will not extract enough for the two of us. We can share for now, but in the long run we will use up oxygen faster than we can replenish it.”

“How much can you make?”

“I can make one canister in a week,” he said. “But I just refilled my canister this morning.”

If that were true, then it really would only work for one person. Advances in rebreather and canister technology had boosted the oxygen capacity to ten days, but if it took seven days to refill a canister, and Fan and I kept distributing the oxygen equally between ourselves, eventually we’d run out of O
₂
.

“One canister’s worth per week?” I told him, suspecting a lie somewhere. “Seems like a lot to me. I didn’t think there was that much oxygen trapped in the surface rocks.”

“You know how modern rebreather technology works, yes?” Fan said. “The canisters do not actually store ten
days
worth of oxygen. Most of the O
₂
and CO
₂
you exhale is recycled. Even in semiclosed mode. When you breathe out, the carbon dioxide is redirected to the internal CO
₂
to O
₂
converter, which changes—”

“Yes yes, I know all about the glow-discharge and permeation process that disassociates the CO
₂
into carbon monoxide and oxygen. What, you think they don’t educate us in the UC Navy?”

Fan shrugged. “So then you know an oxygen cylinder stores only a day of air, but lasts
ten
days in practice.”

“Sure, but a day’s worth of oxygen is still a lot of rocks to process with some jury-rigged extractor,” I said.

“Did I mention I have two support robots helping me collect the rocks?”

“Well, I might have to borrow one of those robots when I get my own extractor.”

Fan seemed confused. “Your own?”

“I’m going to take you to the next Forma pipe, and you’re going to make me another oxygen extractor.”

His confused expression deepened. “I am?”

“Yes. We’ll go back to your camp first, that way you can fill me up with however much O
₂
your extractor has produced. I take it the machine isn’t portable?”

He shook his head.

“Didn’t think so,” I said. “I’ll keep refilling at your campsite until I have enough oxygen to make the journey to the next Forma pipe, then.” I assumed by the time I’d extracted enough oxygen to make the journey, Fan would still have sufficient O
₂
to join me.

I prodded him forward with the barrel of the rifle. “Come on then, finish cleaning the meat from that carcass, then lead the way to this camp of yours.”

He didn’t move.

“Look, Fan—”

“If it pleases you,” he interrupted. “There is another, closer source of oxygen. With it, we can make the journey to the next chimney sooner.”

I felt my eyes narrow. I didn’t know if it was my instincts, or my military training, but I suspected a trap. That, or he was just trying to keep me away from his camp for some reason. “Another source?”

“One of the ATLAS mechs your people brought to this planet. At least, I assume it was your people, because it is not one of ours.”

I actually laughed. “There are no functional UC ATLAS mechs left on this planet.”

Fan’s expression soured. “George Bernard Shaw, who you claim to have never heard of, said, ‘My way of joking is to tell the truth, because it is the funniest joke in the world.’ I can prove I have seen a UC ATLAS mech.”

“All right. I’ll play your game. Prove it.”

Fan spread his hands. “On this ATLAS mech there is a black cat spray painted on the front. With yellow eyes. Ah, you recognize what I say as the truth now, yes?”

A black panther was the symbol of Bravo platoon, MOTH Team Seven.

The question was, why was the mech so far south, when it had originally landed thousands of klicks to the north?

“Let me see a vid clip,” I said.

He spread his hands in what seemed regret. “Unfortunately, I did not make one.”

I frowned. “I’m assuming the mech isn’t operational? Otherwise you wouldn’t be alive right now.”

“It is operational. But you are right, I
am
lucky to be alive. It shot at me when I approached.”

“Possessed?”

Fan shrugged. “Maybe the Yaoguai inhabits it. Maybe not.”