ATLAS 2 (ATLAS Series Book 2) (5 page)

The grenade went off seconds after we’d left the stairwell.

The explosion hurtled me into the far wall, and I slid to the floor.

Gunfire erupted from upstairs. I rolled behind a small cabinet, feeling groggy. I was vaguely aware as Tahoe took cover on the floor across from me, beyond the lower banisters of the spiral staircase.

I blinked away the dizziness long enough to say over the comm, “Taking fire from upstairs!”

We could’ve really used Trace right then.

“Hold on!” Facehopper sent.

I glanced at Tahoe’s vitals. Bright green, as before. The vitals representing the financier and privateer captain, conversely, were a dark green tinged with red—it wasn’t them shooting at us. They were still unconscious, and we’d lose them, soon.

Pieces of the cabinet broke away beside me as bullets from above traveled right through the thick wood. I may as well have hidden behind papier mâché for all the good it was doing me.

“Rade,” Tahoe said. “Armor piercers!”

“Kinda figured that,” I said. “I’m a bit vulnerable here. Some cover?”

Tahoe let loose a wave of suppressive fire and I dove deeper into the room. I landed behind a couch.

“Well, this mission has gone downhill fast,” I said.

“Got one of them!” Tahoe sent. Then: “Ugh!”

“Tahoe!” I peered out from behind the couch. “You okay?”

I saw him lying flat on the floor behind the banisters, unmoving. His vitals had taken a dip, and had suddenly grown very dark.

I fired suppressive rounds at the balcony. “Tahoe?”

Still he didn’t move. Now I was getting worried.

I fired off more shots, getting ready to make a mad dash to his side. “Tahoe you son of a bitch, answer me!”

Finally he stirred. His vitals brightened. “Just got the wind knocked out of me is all.”

“Where are you hit?”

He lethargically resumed his position behind the lower banisters. “The shoulder. Suit absorbed half the impact. I’ll live.”

“Shoulder wounds seem to be popular today.” Better than head wounds.

I made a quick mental evaluation of the situation. I could still hear gunfire coming from the foyer, and I doubted help was coming from that side of the palace any time soon. Facehopper was relying on us to reach the main targets on the balcony by ourselves, if we could.

I wasn’t about to let him down.

I examined the map of the second floor. I thought I saw a way to outflank the upstairs attackers. “Tahoe, can you cover me again?”

“Yeah.” He sounded winded.

I instinctively glanced at his vitals again. Hadn’t changed.

“Then do it. I’m going to make a break for the rear entrance.”

He glanced at me from across the room. I thought he was going to ask me why I was going back again, but then he obediently laid down suppressive fire with his heavy machine gun.

He trusted me to the core.

I dove through the doorway into the adjacent room. I landed, rolled to my feet, and took cover beside the doorway. I made a quick scan of the room with my rifle, even though I’d already marked it as clear (MOTHs were cautious like that), and then I hurried to the rear door.

Outside, the pool area seemed quiet.

“How’s it look, Ghost?” I sent, wanting to be sure.

“Not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse,” Ghost replied from where we’d left him on overwatch. There was no hint of pain in his voice. He was carrying on his duties to his brothers despite his wound. Like any of us would.

I could still hear the roar of Tahoe’s heavy machine gun behind me. “Tahoe, bro, let them return fire for a minute.”

The heavy gun cut out.

I waited until I heard the sound of small arms fire from the next room, then I vaulted outside, spun around, and activated my jetpack. I landed on the ledge just beside the upstairs window.

Grasping one of the eaves above me for balance, I carefully peered around the window frame.

It looked like I’d interpreted the map properly: this was the same window I thought it was. Beyond, I could see the assailants. They were privateer sentries, dressed in black jumpsuits. Two alive; one dead and bleeding out on the floor, thanks to Tahoe. The unguarded backs of the living two were exposed as they aimed down at Tahoe’s position through the banisters.

Amateurs.

I was glad to catch a break here. If those buffoons had been combat robots, they wouldn’t have made the mistake of leaving their rear unguarded.

Now I just had to figure out how to get a shot off through the bulletproof glass. The three bullet holes from Trace’s earlier shots marred the center of the glass. I couldn’t just ram the barrel of my rifle into the holes and fire, because there wasn’t enough room to aim from the ledge. Nor could I create new holes from here, for the same reason.

But if I leaped backward, out into the empty air, and initiated a continuous burst from my jetpack . . .

I programmed the desired trajectory into my jetpack, using the position of the two privateers in relation to the window, and directed the autopilot to fire the appropriate nozzles to put me in position half a meter up and two meters away from the ledge and hold me there for three seconds. It would take me about two seconds to aim and fire at each target. If I missed, the privateers would likely reposition, and possibly snipe me before I landed.

I’d just have to make sure I didn’t miss. Hopefully the artifacts in the glass from Trace’s bulletholes wouldn’t interfere with my aim.

Since this was going to be a relatively close shot, I made a mental note to use the iron sights built into the barrel, which would be visible through the translucent scope mounts.

I took three deep breaths.

One.

Two.

Three.

I leaped backward and engaged the autopilot.

The jetpack brought me to the designated position in midair, and held me there.

I aimed and let off two quick shots, moving the barrel between targets—

The bulletproof glass perforated twice beneath my powerful armor-piercing rounds—

I scored two successive head shots. The privateers died without even knowing what hit them.

“Tahoe, the upstairs hallway is clear,” I transmitted as I soft-landed on the courtyard below. “I say again, the upstairs hallway is clear!”

“Proceeding to main targets,” Tahoe returned, rather stiffly.

When I got upstairs, I hurried down the hall to Tahoe, who was crouched beside the financier and privateer captain.

Two empty syringes lay on the rug beside him—Tahoe had injected the antidote into each man.

It hadn’t helped: neither of them was breathing.

Tahoe was attempting to restart the heart of the financier. Blood poured from Tahoe’s shoulder wound and onto his jumpsuit as he worked, but he ignored it, staying focused on the resuscitation.

He glanced up in despair at my approach.

“We’re too late,” he said.

We confiscated all the computer equipment we could and returned to our jury-rigged privateer ship, the
Royal Fortune
, via the MDV (Moth Delivery Vehicle). After passing through the airlock and de-suiting, we were ordered directly to the briefing room.

Ghost and Tahoe bid us good luck and headed to the Convalescence Ward to get their shoulder wounds treated. I almost wished I was injured too, just to avoid the epic chewing out I knew the Lieutenant Commander was going to give the rest of us.

“Lóng Xiōng had the bank codes of every privateer he funded stored in that tiny bundle of neurons known as his brain,” Lieutenant Commander Braggs said. He was the officer in charge of Alfa and Bravo platoons, MOTH Team Seven. He towered over us from his position at the front of the room, and though he was fifteen years my senior, he still had a full head of thick, brown hair. His face was mostly hard, angular planes, like the chisel-work of some Olympian statue. Speaking of Olympian, he had the body of an athlete despite his rank, and often joined us for PT (Physical Training).

“With Lóng Xiōng’s cooperation,” the Lieutenant Commander continued, “we could’ve identified those privateers at the ID level, and had our cyber attackers seize all their assets and shut them down without ever having to Gate into SK space. With one blow, we could’ve bankrupted half the privateers in the region, leaving them without any money to pay their crews. But now we’re back to square one.

“What a debacle. Team Seven is supposed to harbor the best of the best. We’re supposed to be the ace up Big Navy’s sleeve. The Commander-in-Chief knows that if he has a mission whose success is critical, he can rely on us. Well guess what? He can’t rely on us anymore. You failed. You’re not the best. Not now. And you’re not going to receive the most pivotal missions. Other task units are going to get called in a whole lot more, and we’ll be the ones given the drudge work.

“Well done, people. Bravo Zulu. I hope you’re proud of yourselves. I really do. What part of our warrior credo—‘failure is not an option’—did you not understand? Because
failure is not an option
. And yet you failed. You better damn well hope the data we recovered from Lóng Xiōng’s computer systems contains the IDs and bank codes of the privateers he funded. And you better damn well hope we can decrypt that data in the first place. Now get the hell out of my sight.”

We returned to the berthing area of the ship and did our best to prepare ourselves for the long voyage back.

Wasn’t fun. The mood was abysmal throughout the platoon. None of us liked to fail a mission.

I couldn’t help but feel it was my fault. Firstly, because of my hesitation when faced with a woman target, a delay that had cost precious moments. Secondly, because I had ordered Trace away just before Tahoe and I encountered the balcony shooters. If Trace had stayed, we would’ve eliminated the shooters faster. More lost moments. Finally, I should have triple-checked the tranquilizer dosage. Snakeoil had prepared it, but I was the one who had loaded the darts in the end.

I was starting to think I wasn’t cut out for this anymore.

Did I mention I’d lost the two most important people in the galaxy to me eight months ago?

Well that was my fault too.

I wasn’t a MOTH anymore. I don’t know what the hell I was.

I was broken, that’s all I knew.

I still had another eleven and a half years in my service term. I couldn’t quit, not unless I wanted to get deported back to my native country. But I could always request a transfer to a different task unit. And being deported wouldn’t be so bad anyway . . .

Bender and TJ, our drone operators, and two very smart guys, worked with the fleet cryptologists to decrypt the data we’d recovered from Lóng Xiōng’s computers. On the third day, Bender returned to the berthing area early. The black man wasn’t wearing his usual jewelry, and instead bore the puffy eyes and cracked lips of a man long deprived of sleep, but for all that, he had a big smile on his face.

“We cracked it, bitches,” Bender said. High fives were exchanged all around. Mine were only halfhearted.

So disaster had been averted by a few very smart people in our midst. We got lucky. But that wouldn’t always be the case. A time would come when the rest of the platoon wouldn’t be able to cover the mistakes of the broken people like me.

The overall mood of the platoon improved markedly in the following days, though there was still a dour undercurrent to everything we did. By the time we reached the neutral space that was the rest of Gliese 581 and docked with the station
Divertimento
Grande
above
Gliese 581b, we were more than ready for our much-needed liberty.

But by that point, I’d already decided I wasn’t going to hold these good men back anymore. These better men.

I was going to request a transfer out of MOTH Team Seven.

The Chief refused my transfer request.

“Give it a few weeks,” Chief Bourbonjack said. Our fearless leader, Bourbonjack reported directly to Lieutenant Commander Braggs. He was a grizzled man, with streaks of gray running through both his hair and beard. His dark eyes were always observing, taking in and measuring not only the situation at hand, but the temperament of the men around him. His nose matched those hawkish eyes—hooked, like a beak.