ATLAS 2 (ATLAS Series Book 2) (21 page)

“Nice to see you too, Bender,” Dyson returned.

Together we sprinted toward the new sinkhole as Delivery Vehicles launched frantically around us.

The smaller crabs had thinner cords, but because I was running low on ammo I chose my shots selectively, issuing very short bursts, taking care not to fire unless I had a clean target. I did a lot of bashing and stomping as well.

Wading through the upturned, twitching alien carapaces, I fought my way to the side of the slug closest to the drop vehicles and unleashed Gatling fire all along its flank, just above the skin, aiming to cut away as many of the umbilicals as I could. Like a barber shaving hair.

My MOTH brothers were beside me, doing the same thing. In moments we’d severed roughly three-fourths of the crabs connected to that side.

Then we turned our attention on the slug itself.

The thing was white hot, and steaming, which meant it had freshly burrowed through the surface. It was, thankfully, one of the smaller ones, so our Gatling bullets actually had some effect on it.

“Yo!” I could hear Bender yelling over the comm. “You like that, bitch? You like that?”

I switched to my incendiary weapon and vomited a swathe of adhesive flame onto the slug’s skin.

“Let’s move back for some serpents, boys!” I said.

We retreated to a safe distance, fighting off a few more crabs along the way, then unleashed our serpent rockets into the slug. Explosions rocked its body.

The thing seizured, its body alternately rounding then inverting, like a larva thrown onto a heating element. In its frantic death throes, it ended up coming right at us. I moved too slowly, and took a meaty hit in the chest, sending me flying backward several paces.

Before I could do anything, I found myself surrounded by a half-dozen crabs, and the second slug was fast bearing down on me.

Time to start bashing.

I splattered three of the small crabs with every thrust of my lone arm. I crunched two underfoot with each tread of my feet.

But for every one killed, three more replaced it. I couldn’t move my lone arm fast enough.

Pincers clanged against external tubing and servomotors. Mandibles chewed at exposed wiring. Warning indicators went off inside the cockpit.

I loaded my incendiary thrower.

Turning, I unleashed a stream of flame and ignited an entire row of the things. The fire just consumed the alien entities. They screamed and flailed about, trying to rub the flaming adhesive from their carapaces. I sprayed fire for a few more seconds, but was forced to back off because the heat from the conflagration became too intense.

Something bashed into me from the side and I was sent sprawling.

Three crabs were instantly on top of me.

I couldn’t use the incendiary thrower at this close range, because some of the fiery substance might splash my mech. If Dragonfly caught fire, there’d be no dousing it and my cockpit would quickly become an oven.

I was able to bash one of the crabs aside, but two more immediately replaced it. I struggled to stand up, but the crabs kept coming, beating me down. I attempted to swap out my incendiary thrower for the Gat, but the swiveling weapon mount got jammed on the legs of a crab.

So now I had no weapons.

Threads of Gatling fire abruptly came in above me, severing the crabs at the umbilicals.

I was finally able to stand.

I bashed the dead crab from my hand, freeing up my weapon mount. The Gatling finally swiveled into place.

I turned toward my rescuer.

Bender.

“Thanks for coming to my rescue,” I said into the comm.

“Who says I was coming to your rescue?” Bender was just waling on those crabs. “Maybe I just wanted to steal your kills.”

“Steal away, brother.”

“I ain’t your brother!” Bender slammed his huge metallic fist down and split a carapace in two.

Behind me, the other slug had died and faded from existence. So at least I didn’t have to worry about an attack from that vector. Unless something else emerged from the sinkhole.

“All drop ships are away!” Sergeant Crabbuster announced on the comm. “To the booster payloads, people!”

“Man,” Bender said. “Just when I was starting to have fun.”

Four crabs came from nowhere and jumped Bender, pinning him.

I aimed at the connecting cords, but something shoved me forcefully from behind, hurling me to the shale.

More crabs.

What—

Another slug had come out of the sinkhole behind us.

The clatter of mandibles on steel filled my cockpit. I lifted my Gat and let off some rounds into a crab’s soft underside.

Gatling fire from my right flank mowed down the remainder.

I clambered to my feet in time to witness threads of Gatling fire clear the area around Bender, too.

“I didn’t need your help!” Bender sent me as he got up.

“Wasn’t me.”

I looked to my right. My aReal identified the ATLAS 5 standing there as “Dyson-Pitchfork.”

“Dammit, caterpillar,” Bender transmitted. “I had the situation well under control.”

A bunch of crabs jumped Bender once again from behind.

“I can see that,” Dyson transmitted.

Dyson and I helped Bender beat the crabs off.

“Let’s go!” I said, advancing through the mob. “Stay close!”

The three of us fought our way through the horde as yet another slug emerged from the sinkhole.

An ATLAS mech appeared on my nine o’clock. Then two more. The MOTHs of Bravo platoon.

Brothers to the end.

Now that the drop ships had all launched, the defending ATLAS 5s piloted by the Marines had fallen back. The mechs were moving in a wedge formation, cutting a path through the horde of fresh crabs. Only fifteen mechs remained.

We joined their line. MOTHs and Marines continued forward in a unified front of atomic-powered steel.

We broke free of the swarm and sprinted across the vast Geronium plain at full speed, traveling in the direction of the payload elements.

Behind us, the possessed mechs, robots, liquid Phants, and superslugs overran the now undefended insertion site, joining the newer slugs and crabs.

But we were far ahead of them.

According to my HUD map, the booster rockets were distributed across a quarter klick of land. The ATLAS mechs in our wedge formation separated into smaller groups, heading toward the different clusters of blinking dots on the map.

Whoever reached a booster first took it. That was the unwritten rule, and no one seemed to mind, because in theory there were more boosters available than mechs, given the losses we’d incurred.

My group had whittled down to five ATLAS mechs by the time I’d come close enough to take a booster.

Dragonfly decided to turn on me in that moment, as the ATLAS 5 fired its Gatling into the booster rocket as I approached.

The fuel canisters found on the jetpacks of mechs and jumpsuits were designed not to explode when struck by bullets. The tanks found on booster rockets, however, offered no such guarantee.

Thus, when the stream of Gatling fire from my mech struck, the booster’s large fuel tanks ignited. Spectacularly so.

All five mechs nearby, including my own, were sent hurtling backward by the ensuing fireball.

“Just what the hell are you doing?” Bender sent.

“I’m not in control.”

Somewhere along the way, one of the Phants had entered my ATLAS 5 without my knowledge, biding its time. I don’t know why it waited. Maybe at first it had wanted to board our ship via the mech—a Phant had attempted something similar back on Geronimo. But then with all of us close to the booster just now, maybe it thought it wouldn’t ever get a better opportunity to take down so many mechs at once, and it decided instead to attack. Who knows? This was an alien entity, and its thinking was completely alien to our own.

Dragonfly started to rise from where it had fallen.

I had to stop it.

I activated the cockpit release, and the inner shell folded away as the hatch fell open. I drew the pistol from my belt, and aimed into the small crack beneath the cockpit, between the hatch and chest piece. In my gun sights I could discern the mech’s brain case. It was slathered in glowing condensation.

Before I could fire, Dragonfly reached inside and wrapped its fingers around my arm. My jumpsuit was useless—those colossal digits easily crushed the exoskeleton, not to mention my muscle and bone underneath. I felt tendons rip and fasciae tear and bones splinter. The whole arm felt like it had been caught in a meat grinder, and pain worse than any I had ever felt before flashed through my being.

Dragonfly tore me out of the cockpit and flung me aside like a rag doll.

I landed several meters away, and blacked out.

I must have been under only a few seconds, because when I came to, the battle space hadn’t changed all that much around me, according to my HUD.

I started to sit up.

That’s when I realized I couldn’t use my right arm.

The whole limb was a mangled mess, barely connected to my shoulder socket via a piece of skin and loose jumpsuit. Blood poured out of the empty shoulder joint like a geyser, in bursts timed to my beating heart.

I vomited. Twice.

Feeling incredibly nauseated, I reached into the left cargo pocket of my jumpsuit leg assembly with my good hand, and retrieved the suitrep kit. I was vaguely aware of Gatling fire erupting close by as blood slowly pumped from my wound.

I fumbled three skin seals out of the kit. I shoved my arm back into its socket and braced the glove against the ground, so that the torn limb stayed in place. Since the jumpsuit was ripped open, I was able to numbly slide the skin seals over the exposed flesh of my shoulder area, one by one. The seals activated, instantly suturing the wound and halting the blood loss. I tentatively sat back, lifting the near-severed limb from the ground. My arm remained in place, thanks to the sutures. Couldn’t move it though.

I didn’t feel any pain, surprisingly. Just an incredible lethargy.

I was in shock.

I tried to stand.

Unfortunately, I’d lost a lot of blood. Stars filled my vision. Hydrostatic pressure was at an all-time low in my veins, and I nearly blacked out again.

Plunking myself back down, I retched.

I blinked the stars away, trying to get my wits about me.

All suitrep kits came standard with one IV, filled with a plasma volume expander. Using my teeth to hold the IV tube, I managed to hook the tube into the injection slot of the glove on my good hand. Then I connected the bag of plasma volume expander to the tube.

Inside my glove, a needle extended directly into the dorsal venous network of my hand, and started pumping the much-needed volume expander into my body.

Still using just the one hand, I secured the fluid bag to my belt with tape. The pain started to come then, so I quickly slotted some morphine into the glove, and let it inject.

I felt better immediately.

I stared at my mangled arm. I felt distant, almost disconnected from myself. There was no vomit this time. Just . . . curiosity.

First I’d lost the arm of my ATLAS mech.

Now I’d gone and basically lost my arm for real.

I almost couldn’t believe it.

A part of me noticed that the nearby Gatling fire had ceased.

Two mechs rushed toward me. Bender’s and Dyson’s. From the stooped posture of Dyson’s ATLAS, I thought he was injured somehow. Might’ve been mere external damage, though.

“Wait while I load Rage,” Bender said to Dyson. “Then I’ll take you to the next booster.”

“I’m fine.” Dyson sounded winded. “Don’t need an escort.”

“You’re not fine.”

“See you in orbit.” Dyson sprinted off in his ATLAS 5.

“Wait! Bitch.”

Bender’s mech, “Rocketman,” carefully plucked me from the shale and lowered me behind its head, just above the jetpack, into the seat specifically provided for a passenger. I sat back, facing Bender’s six, and weakly buckled the seat belt with one hand.

“Rage, you gotta patch your suit before we launch,” Bender said. “Rage?”

“I’m on it.”

Bender hurried after Dyson, but the other ATLAS already had a good lead on him. “Dumb ass thinks he doesn’t need my help.”

As Bender ran, I groggily worked on repairing the huge gap that had been torn into the shoulder area of the jumpsuit. Like Bender said, I had to do it before we launched, because otherwise I’d be pinned by G forces and before I knew it I’d be surrounded by the void of space.

Fighting the drowsiness caused by the blood loss and morphine, I ended up wrapping all four suit seals around the shoulder area. The suit was only slightly damaged below that point, as far as I could tell.

To confirm that I hadn’t missed a spot, I shut my face mask and initiated internal pressurization and oxygenation.

“Suit integrity one hundred percent,” the friendly female voice intoned from the speakers in my helmet.

I still couldn’t use my mangled arm, but at least I was space-ready.

In theory I needed to wait an hour before entering a zero-g environment to prevent risk of decompression sickness, but obviously I had more important things to worry about.

In the distance behind us, I watched the possessed Equestrians and ATLAS mechs break away from the enemy front; they were trying to hunt down the laggards among us before we all escaped.

“And there he goes,” Bender said. “Guess the bitch is fine after all.”

On the HUD map I saw Dyson’s dot blink repeatedly, indicating liftoff.

Soon Bender reached a booster, and began the hook up.

“You ready Rage?” Bender said.

“Yes.”

“How’s your suit integrity?”

“One hundred percent,” I said.

He paused, and I knew he was confirming my status on his aReal.

Incoming gunfire started to come in on us.

“Damn it. Piss of
f
!” Bender initiated liftoff.

I watched the landscape fall away below, along with the half circle of possessed ATLAS 5s and Equestrians, and the robots, crabs, and slugs beyond them. It was a good thing we’d retreated when we had, because the numbers were just insane down there.