Atlas (18 page)

"Did you bring ice?" Lieutenant Commander Braggs said.

"Roger that," Facehopper said, grinning. He handed the bucket to the Lieutenant Commander.

"Uh, I thought you said you'd fall on a grenade for us, sir?" I said.

"And I would." Lieutenant Commander Braggs smirked. "But this isn't a grenade." He shoved a handful of ice down my pants.

I started shivering right away. Damn, it was cold. I had flashbacks to sea immersion.

"You're not some kind of substandard graduate, are you Mr. Galaal?" Lieutenant Commander Braggs said.

"No sir!"

"Well, good. You can never tell these days, what with the duds they've been sending us."

He stuffed ice down Alejandro's and Tahoe's pants next.

"Welcome to the brotherhood," the Lieutenant Commander said. He, Chief Bourbonjack, and Facehopper grabbed felt markers and proceeded to draw graffiti of a highly sexual nature across our faces and chests.

"Go go go!" Facehopper shouted over the comm line.

In my rifle's scope, I kept an eye on the building Facehopper was leading his fire team into. I was on overwatch position on the third floor of an apartment across the street. I lay by the window, on an upturned nightstand. I'd put a bedroll from an adjacent room on top, making the setup semi-comfortable.

Outside, the buildings were made of either stucco, or bricks. Two to four stories tall, the rows of boxlike, squat houses were broken only by the occasional colorful monastery or school. Two- or three-story apartments stood at every street corner. A towering statue of Buddha covered in a green patina dominated the center of town; the statue had one palm upraised as if it were trying to stop the war that swept the country.

I heard gunshots on the comm, then "clear!" I kept scanning the two different exits to the building. No targets came out.

I moved on to the next house in my range, and watched a Marine fire team sweep the building. Still no targets. I moved on to the next house. A division of Centurion robots dressed in Army camos emerged. I saw a basketball-shaped drone hover down from an open upper floor window—an HS3 (hover squad support system) drone. We'd been using the things to help us map out the city, and to sweep through buildings we'd already cleared. Unfortunately, the insurgents had been shooting them down constantly. Either this was one lucky HS3, or we'd received a fresh supply of the things. Anyway, still no targets for me.

Too big for the buildings, a couple of ATLAS mechs roved unopposed between houses. The fanatics had figured out a while ago that four or five rockets launched from behind were the best attack against the mechs, so our platoons often used the ATLAS 5s as bait to draw out the rocketmen for our snipers. It wasn't a tactic that was approved of by the Brass, and if the Lieutenant Commander had known we were using the multi-billion digicoin mechs as bait he would've probably shat his pants. Nevertheless, the ATLAS boys sure seemed to be having fun down there.

A gunship strafed a smoking target in the distance. Far above, a Raptor circled unchallenged, ready to provide heavy air support. Both aircraft sent a clear message to would-be attackers: We rule your skies.

My platoon was working with the Marines
in the contested zone in Khentii Province, Mongolia. The Russians, our allies, were trying to take back New Baganuur city. Most of the fanatics who had taken over the city weren't even Mongolian. Sure, there were the small groups of Mongolian guerrillas who didn't want to return to Russian rule, but for the most part the fighters were foreigners. Basically anyone who wanted to kill Russians or members of the UC had come to this city. You had your Chechen rebels, your mujahadeen, your kashmiri separatists. And while Sino-Korea wasn't directly involved, there were a fair share of Sino-Korean fighters who'd joined in, just because. Ex-military, judging from the armaments and equipment they'd brought along with them.

Why the big deal with Mongolia? This small country that sat smack-dab between Russia and China was home to thirty percent of the world's Geronium-275, precursor to Geronium. Starship fuel.

You'd think with all the colonies we had out there on other planets that this wouldn't matter.

It did.

So far, in all the systems we'd gone to, no other planets containing any form of Geronium or its isotopes had been discovered, save for the deposits detected beneath the metallic hydrogen core of a gas giant in Gliese 581—of which there was no economical means of harvesting.

So Mongolia was just a little important to us.

Alejandro turned over, stifling a yawn. He was taking a rest on the floor beside me, while Tahoe was guarding our backs with his heavy gun. Like everyone else on this deployment, we were wearing trimmed down, planet-side jumpsuits, with ordinary helmets. No facemasks, but we still had SCBAs we could don in case the enemy decided to launch chemical weapons.

The suit exoskeletons were still strength-enhancing and had jetpacks of course, and provided protection against shrapnel and lesser bullets. Didn't really help all that much when half of your opponents used thermobaric grenades and armor-piercing rounds though.

I waited a few more minutes, passing my scope from house to house, until finally the frustration of having no targets got to me.

I turned to Alejandro. "Well, it's been about three hours. Your turn big boy."

Alejandro rubbed his eyes. "How many did you get?" he said.

"Nada. Haven't seen an engageable target the entire watch."

"Mmm." Alejandro took my place, and relaxed into a sniping position on the bedroll, eye on his scope.

I lay back on the floor and closed my eyes. After about ten seconds I heard him fire.

"I hate your guts," I said.

Irritated, I scratched my beard with my free hand. It was getting pretty itchy.
Everyone on the team had a thick beard by now. Only spec-op soldiers were allowed facial hair, mostly because we were the ones given the hardest operations, the ones where you had to sit motionless in the field for days at a time and where it was physically impossible to shave, or the missions where shaving would give away the fact you weren't a native. Anyway, the guys considered beards a badge of honor. We grew them mostly because we could.

Alejandro and I had pretty fancy beards by now but Tahoe unfortunately was incapable of growing anything more than a thin mustache and a soul patch beneath his lower lip. Anyway, we made fun of his lack of beard quite often.

Speaking of which...

"Hey Tahoe," I said, sitting up. "I've been thinking about your beard. Or rather, lack thereof. Maybe I should snip off a piece of mine for you? What do you think? With some glue and a little creativity we could get you a decent facial rug. You'd look very manly."

Tahoe didn't say a word, not looking back from his defensive position by the doorway. I should probably leave him alone, let him do his job. I laid back and closed my eyes.

"You know, I'm kind of glad this deployment is on Earth," Tahoe said suddenly.

I glanced at him. His back was still to me, his eyes on the hallway, his rifle pointed out the doorway. Good.

Alejandro fired off another shot.

"Lucky
puto
," I told Alejandro.

"What was that, Tahoe?" Alejandro said. "I couldn't hear over Rade's whining."

"I said, I'm glad we're still on Earth."

"Why,
hombre
?" Alejandro sounded tense, as he usually did when he was concentrating on finding something to kill. "I thought a big reason you crossed the border and joined up was for the chance to go into space? Mr. Astrophysicist and all..."

"That was part of why I joined up, yes," Tahoe said. "But you know what? Being
a father changes everything. I don't want to be away from my wife and kids for more than eight months at a time. If we go into space, it could be up to two years. Or longer. It's just not worth it anymore, for me."

"You know it's inevitable that we're going into space, right?" I said. "This is just the
beginning. This is our training ground. You better get used to the idea, Tahoe. You're going to be away from your wife and kids for long stretches of time."

He didn't answer.

"Straight up, I'm not looking forward to space deployments all that much either," Alejandro said. "I kind of like my planet."

Alejandro let off another shot.

"Damn you," I said. "I think I want to go on overwatch again."

"No way
jose
."

"That's already, what, two? And you only just started."

"Three," Alejandro said. "I don't know what the big deal is anyway. See those ATLAS mechs down there? I'd rather be piloting those."

"At least you're getting kills," I said.

But he wasn't the only one who wanted to pilot an ATLAS. Most of the platoon did, but there just weren't enough mechs to go around. At first I had thought it a little unfair. My ATLAS aptitude scores were the highest on the team. But I had to give our designated pilots Manic, Lui and Bomb some credit: they had actual field experience. Eventually I decided to accept whatever role the Chief gave me. If he wanted me to be a sniper, I was going to be a sniper. If he wanted me to be a corpsman, I was going to be a corpsman. And not just any sniper or corpsman, but the best this team had ever seen. Which is why it pissed me off so much that Alejandro was getting all the kills.

Again
I heard him fire.

"Bitch," I muttered.

"Hey," Alejandro said, not looking from his scope. "Not my fault if the bad guys decide to show themselves on my watch."

"Maybe they just find Alejandro more attractive than you, Rade," Tahoe said from his position by the door.

"What?" I said. "With his ugly face? Right."

"You never know," Tahoe said. "The insurgents might have a thing for ugly. You've heard of the similarity theory of personal attraction? You know, ugly attracts ugly?"

"Now you're talking."

"Well, if that were true," Alejandro said. "Then Tahoe would be getting all the baddies. Because he is one ugleee bastard."

"Hey, I'm married," Tahoe said.

"So?" Alejandro pressed. "What does that have to do with anything? You think
mamacitas
marry only handsome dudes?"

"In my case, yes. Besides, I'm an artist in bed."

Alejandro chuckled. "That's fine, mighty fine. But it's not going to help you in the end. You do know that the divorce rate for MOTHs is ninety percent, right? Artist in bed." He shook his head. "That only makes it worse when you're away. She gets used to that constant pleasuring, and comes to
expect
it. What do you think your
mamacita's
doing back home right now? When the cat's away..."

"Hey." Tahoe turned away from his position for the first time. "Don't you be talking about my wife like that."

Alejandro shifted beside me, but he still hadn't looked from his scope. "Relax
hombre
. I was kidding. Of course she's keeping all alone and to herself right now, raising those kids of yours. Of course she's not giving the plumber a special bonus payment involving handcuffs and bed poles and—"

"That's it!" Tahoe locked his M60 and sloughed it off his shoulder.

I sat up. "Get back to your position, Tahoe. Get right back. Now! Do your job."

"Well tell him to quit provoking me," Tahoe said petulantly, though he did pick up his M60 again.

"He's just mad because I'm getting all the baddies," Alejandro said.

I made my voice as stern as possible. "Stop provoking him, Alejandro."

"Yes sir." He looked away from the scope for the first time, and glanced back at Tahoe. "Rade here thinks he's Junior Chief or something."

"Every second you take your eyes away from that scope is a second one of our guys could die," I told Alejandro. "Remember that."

He shook his head. "
Caramba
. Two seconds. I look away for two seconds." He put his eye back on the rifle site. "How long do you think Tahoe looked away from the hallway he was supposed to be watching?"

Normally the two of them were way easier to get along with but we'd been out here for about eighteen hours straight now, and we were getting on each other's nerves. That was nothing compared to the five days we stayed awake during Trial Week of course. But still, the lack of sleep didn't have the greatest impact on our moods.

"How's it look up there, mate?" Facehopper sent on our fire team frequency, in that slight British accent of his.

"Great view, great view, Facehopper," Alejandro replied. "All is well. Just took over from Rade. Got four kills so far." He just had to rub it in, didn't he?

"Well, let me know when you need to find a new hide," Facehopper sent.

"Roger that," Alejandro said. "We should be good for the next
half-hour or so, sir."

I shook my head. "Why does Facehopper still think he needs to babysit us? We've been on deployment for two months, you'd think we'd know our way around by now."

"I heard that, Rade," Facehopper sent.

"Oh." I felt my face flush. "Sorry sir, I thought my comm was off."

"It was," Facehopper sent. "But your mate kept his turned on."

Alejandro winked at me.

"Anyway, as always, be sure to let me know when you switch hides," Facehopper sent.

"Affirmative," Alejandro returned. "By the way, sir, any openings for ATLAS 5 pilots coming up soon?"

"Negative," Facehopper answered.

Alejandro shrugged. "Had to ask."

Behind me, I heard a muted thud as the far door to the apartment burst open.

"Fuck." Tahoe opened fire.

"Sir sir taking fire sir sir!" I sent to Facehopper, ducking beside the doorway of our room.

Alejandro rolled from the window and took up a position on the other side of the doorway, beside Tahoe.