ATLAS 2 (ATLAS Series Book 2) (9 page)

He left the podium and walked down into our midst.

“Men. My men. Our greatest trial awaits.” He looked at each and every one of our faces, as if he wanted to remember us in this moment, while we were still innocent and naive, while we still held on to our youthful idealism by however small a thread. As if he wanted to burn our features into his mind one by one, before he told us what had happened and changed our lives forever. As if he believed that only a short time from now, there might not be very many of us left alive
to
look at.

“Do you remember the alien vessel we encountered at Geronimo?” Braggs said. “The big one that looked like a giant skull?”

“How could we forget, sir?” Fret said.

“It’s finally arrived in human space.”

CHAPTER TWO

Shaw

S
o this was what prison was like.

Isolation from the world you once knew. Isolation from your favorite foods, your favorite places. Isolation from the friends, family, and loved ones you once spent time with.

Isolation from the very air of the world, living apart from it, inside a thin shell of multilayered fabric.

I wasn’t the first person in the galaxy to experience such things. Many people lived in prisons. A lot of the times, those prisons were of their own making.

As mine was.

Yet, for all that I named this life a prison, at the same time I was free.

There was no one holding me back. No guard to check that I stayed in my cell. No watchman to wake me in the morning. No sentry to call for lights-out at night.

I was free to roam the vast empty spaces of this dying world.

Free to discover what I would, when I would.

Free to kill.

I was getting rather good at it.

I had criticized Rade for taking life in battle. But I understood now what he did and why he did it. When it became a necessity, when it became kill or be killed, that’s when morality went out the window.

Rade was a warrior.

I had become one, too.

I had to.

When the will to live, the burning fight inside you, was stronger than anything else, especially those who wanted to kill you, then you’d ascended to the level of warrior. That was all there was to it.

Accepting the warrior mentality was what separated those who survived from those who did not.

And I would survive.

I’d sworn I would.

Queequeg and I were on the hunt. My faithful companion had sprinted far ahead, having picked up the scent of our wounded prey. Inside my pressurized suit, all I could smell was the musty scent of recycled air—not that I’d be able to match Queequeg’s sense of smell even if I
could
breathe the atmosphere. I simply followed along behind him, keeping to the path of misplaced shale and trusting to Queequeg’s nose. There wasn’t any blood I could track, because all liquids boiled away when exposed to the atmosphere of this inhospitable world.

Queequeg was a hybear—a bear with a hyena’s head and an uncharacteristically long tail, bioengineered by the SKs to survive the hostile environment of Geronium. But to me he was just a very big, very loveable dog.

I glanced at the map overlaying my helmet lens. My Implant was deactivated, of course. I had turned it off months ago as a safety precaution (the alien mists of this world could use it to scramble my vision and hearing), and I relied solely on the aReal built into my helmet.

On the map I confirmed I wasn’t deviating too far from the original path I’d plotted. I should still be able to make the Forma pipe by tomorrow afternoon. That would leave me around eight hours of oxygen.

Assuming everything went well.

I pushed the very real possibility of running out of O
₂
from my mind: I was starving and had to eat. When a meal presented itself on Geronimo, you embraced the opportunity with open arms.

Today, hybear was on the menu.

Queequeg topped a rise ahead and vanished from view.

I sometimes worried that eating the flesh of his own kind would do Queequeg psychological harm. I supposed it helped that he thought of himself as human, and probably didn’t count the act as cannibalism. Still, it didn’t change the fact that it
was
cannibalism.

I topped the rise shortly thereafter and spotted our prey. It was a stroke of luck to find a hybear alone; the things usually attacked in packs.

It limped along in the valley below, trying to run, an act of extreme will made difficult by the fact it had only three legs. Earlier, when the starving animal had attacked, I’d cut its forelimb off with my rifle-scythe, a weapon I had cobbled together from a standard-issue rifle and the long, sharp mandible of one of the beasts. I could see the slight green steam of blood wafting from the severed end of the limb even now.

Queequeg was already far down the incline, running at full-tilt and eager for the kill.

By the time I reached the bottom, my faithful companion was shaking the last dregs of life from the prey, his jaws wrapped firmly around its neck.

I sat back and waited until Queequeg was done killing it. Then I watched as he ate.

That was one of our rules: whoever made the kill, ate first.

When Queequeg was satiated, he sat down beside me and contentedly rested his head on his forepaws.

I got to work on preparing the meat. One of the nice things about having grown up on a farm on Earth was that I was familiar with the farmer’s trade, down to the butchery and cleaning of animals. Although it was a cider farm, my parents had believed in natural living. So in addition to the apple trees, we grew crops and raised livestock.

First I jabbed a syringe into the skin to drain the green blood. A tube led away to the collection device built into my rucksack. I remember when I used to call the sacks “spacebags” thanks to the indoctrination of Basic Training—that seemed three lifetimes ago. Anyway, my suit recycled most of the water I excreted from my pores, bladder, and whatnot, but it wasn’t enough, and the blood would augment my supply. Not that I drank it raw—the collection device extracted the water from the blood plasma. The first time, I wasn’t sure the extraction process would work, because these were bioengineered animals after all. But apparently hybear blood plasma was fairly similar to normal mammals, coming in at roughly ninety-two percent water. I wasn’t sure where the animals got their own water from, however. Other than from eating each other.

Ideally, I would have preferred to hang the hybear first, for proper skinning, but obviously I didn’t have a winch or tractor handy, which meant I had to keep rolling the carcass as I peeled the skin away with my utility knife. Bits of shale stuck to the exposed muscle and fat; I removed the small rocks by wiping one of my gloved hands down the surface. It would’ve been nice to have some water to wash away the excess hair and rocks with, but the liquid would have merely boiled away, like most of the remaining blood did.

I’m not going to go into too much detail on the cleaning, like how I removed the anus and intestines and other internal organs after skinning it, or how I cut off the head, cracked open the sternum, and carved away choice portions of meat with my knife (wishing the whole time I had a meat cleaver). I’ll just wrap by saying I collected a nice bundle of meat and secured it to the storage compartment of my rucksack. That meat would keep me and Queequeg fed for the next few days.

The cleaning done, I covered the offal and skeleton in shale, forming a cairn of sorts. That might keep other hybears away for a couple of hours, but eventually the scent would drift to them, and the hybears would close like sharks.

Once the cairn was built I hiked to the next rise, putting some distance between me and the offal in case any nearby hybears picked up the scent early. Then I sat down and retrieved a cut of meat.

Queequeg was whining beside me, already hungry again.

I sliced away a small portion and tossed it to him.

Queequeg caught the meat in midair with his jaws, and swallowed it in two bites. Then he looked at me, panting, those puppy dog eyes begging for more.

I cut off another piece and tossed it to him. “No more. I have to eat, too, you know.”

And so I did.

First I cooked the meat with the surgical laser built into the index finger of my gloves. I had to keep pulsing the laser, and since my Implant was disabled, I couldn’t vary the depth of those pulses. I held my laser finger different distances from the meat to vary the cooking depth. Heat radiation helped roast the surrounding meat, but I still had to rotate the cut to ensure I cooked it thoroughly. It took a lot of time, which only seemed all the longer because of my hunger. I kept an eye on my power levels, because if I wasn’t careful the laser could exhaust the suit batteries.

Eventually hunger and impatience got the best of me, and I decided the meat was cooked enough, though it couldn’t have been more than extra-rare. I reached into the cargo pocket of my left leg, retrieved the suitrep (suit repair) kit, and fetched the reusable “SealWrap” funnel from inside.

The SealWrap was meant to form a seal between suits when a soldier needed to perform an impromptu operation on another soldier in a hostile environment—very useful for tactical combat casualty care, otherwise known as battlefield medicine, when the war zone just so happened to be on an inhospitable world, or in space. I’d found an alternate use for it though: with the SealWrap I could transfer food from the lethal environment outside to the pressurized confines of my suit.

It was a little messy, but it worked.

With the hunk of laser-cooked meat situated in the center of the funnel, I placed the edges of the SealWrap against the outer perimeter of my face mask. I strictly ignored the rumbling of my stomach: I had to take good care here, because if I got the positioning off, I’d die. I activated the sealant, and felt the suction pull my hand toward the mask.

I tied off the other end around my wrist, then I held my breath, and said: “Suit, release face mask.”

The glass plate descended inward slightly, breaking the seal between the glass and the helmet. The SealWrap abruptly inflated as the atmosphere of my suit expanded to fill the available space.

I could still breathe.

I hadn’t made a mistake.

I sighed in relief.

I could already smell the roasted meat, and I salivated.

“Suit, lower face mask.” The glass plate slid down.

I tilted my head back and let the hunk of meat fall toward my mouth. As expected, it wasn’t cooked well at all. It was very rare actually, cold and bloody. But I bit into it, chewed, and swallowed. I had to. Tasted like raw, wet beef.

I remembered the first time I ever did this. I’d run out of rations, and was starving. I’d returned to the shuttle with a big piece of meat from a fresh kill (this was when the shuttle still had power). I cooked it thoroughly, draining as much blood as I could. The smell was amazing—I’d been living on meal-replacement rations for months before then. Still, I was hesitant to take a bite. I was convinced the meat was going to be toxic in some way. I had to remind myself these animals were bioengineered from Earth stock, so when it came down to it I was eating meat that was theoretically compatible with my stomach. Exotic meat, sure, but edible nonetheless. Eventually my stomach had overruled me, and I’d dug into the cooked hybear. Tasted great. Unfortunately, a few hours later I suffered intense abdominal pains. It got so bad I thought I was going to give birth to an alien lifeform or something. The cramps lasted for days, as did the diarrhea, but eventually I got over it.

And I never got sick on hybear again.

Still, the meat was tough, even when barely cooked, and eating it made the gums of my back molars sore. My molars had always given me trouble with the tougher meats, and now I regretted not getting those teeth removed on Earth. The pain was getting worse lately. My gums didn’t have a chance to recover, not when my entire diet consisted of meat. The whole area was probably infected at this point.

That day while eating, the pain got so bad I gave up halfway through. There was still a sizable portion of meat remaining, but I left it half-chewed in the funnel and broke down and wept.

There I was, bawling like a child, one hand SealWrapped to my face, a half-eaten piece of meat pressed against my chin. I rued my lot in life. Rued the day I ever came to this forsaken planet, and the day I ever signed up.

“I just want to go home!” I said aloud, sobbing. “I just want to live again!”

Queequeg lifted his head beside me, and pricked his ears in concern.

I continued to blubber away.

Queequeg lowed softly in commiseration.

I lowered my free hand to his head, and petted him.

The movement soothed me, though I could scarcely feel anything through the fabric of my glove.

“I’m sorry, Queequeg,” I said, composing myself. “Sometimes, the situation seems so bad, so hopeless, like there’s no way out. And it just feels like the weight of the whole world is pushing down on me. It makes me want to give up. But that’s the easy path, isn’t it? To lie down, vent out my suit, and let it all end.

“But I
can’t
give up. I won’t. I’m just not capable. My friend Rade told me something, once. That the human spirit is resilient in the face of adversity. And I’ll let you in on a secret, Queequeg: I’m one of the most resilient people there is.”

I shifted my head toward a small tube on the inside of my helmet, and took a long sip of water.

I could do this. I could live.

But I was done eating for that day.

I shut my helmet and removed the SealWrap, packing it away with a promise to clean it later. I tossed the leftover meat to Queequeg, and then I continued onward toward the Forma pipe.

I’d had it with self-pity. I wanted to get on with my journey. I couldn’t let myself look too far into the future, too far past the now. Couldn’t let the despair of my situation overcome me. I had to focus on reaching the next Forma pipe. One attainable goal at a time.