Atlas (34 page)

He didn't answer.

"TJ?" Still he said nothing. "TJ! Petty Officer Second Class Wilson!"

"I— I don't know what I see." TJ said.

"Then show us the damn feed!" Lieutenant Commander Braggs said.

Too late.

The green dots abruptly winked out and the gunfire stopped. The red dots froze as the Implants recorded the last known positions of the hostiles.

Mao clambered to his feet and took off at a run down the tunnel, back the way we had come.

The metal anklets he wore clattered at Big Dog's feet. Somehow the SK Officer had managed to get them off.

Ghost swung his sniper rifle around, dropped to one knee and aimed.

I rested a hand on his shoulder. "Let him go," I said.

The albino hesitated. He glanced at the Chief, who nodded. Ghost lowered the rifle.

Facehopper gripped TJ by the shoulders. "What did you see, Petty Officer?"

TJ shook his head. "I don't know, sir. Creatures. Thousands of them."

"The hyena things?"

"No," TJ said. "These were different. More like... like... just, this roomful of gnashing teeth and claws."

Facehopper glanced at Chief Bourbonjack. "Orders?"

That clattering, chittering sound had been growing in volume. It sounded way worse than the infestation on my plantation ever had.

Lieutenant Commander Braggs was the one who answered. "Our backs are exposed here, with that five-way fork behind us. Let's fall back to a more defensible position. And might as well turn on your helmet lamps. They know we're here!"

As we retreated, the clattering continued behind us, seeming more frantic than before.

Or maybe just more eager.

I switched off the night vision, then gladly turned my helmet lamp up to full intensity. I didn't think I could fight whatever was trailing us in the dark. Not physically. Not mentally. But in the light, I had a chance.

Alejandro wasn't too far ahead. I could see Tahoe beyond him. The strength-enhancers in our exoskeletons were operating at full bore, and we pushed the suits to the max, spurred on by the unseen threat.

Soon the platoon emptied into the forking section of tunnel. We continued on, arriving at the vast cavern with the beautiful crystalline structures. The clattering had faded somewhat behind me.

Lieutenant Commander Braggs called a halt. "Here," he said, turning toward the circular, five-meter diameter tunnel we'd just evacuated. "We make our stand here. We can guard this entrance all day. It'll be like Thermop—"

Before he could finish, my vision exploded with digital snow. Ear-piercing, garbled static consumed my hearing.

I fell to my knees, reflexively trying to cover my ears with my palms, but there was no way my gloved hands could ever reach them, not through the helmet. I shut my eyes tight, but that randomized pattern of digital snow didn't go away. It looked like flickering black bugs crossing a white background.

The Implant was malfunctioning.

I concentrated on the command words that would shut the device down. Thinking proved difficult with my hearing and vision so sorely affected, but I managed to remember the words and I said them in my head.

Zulu Romeo Lima
!

The Implant switched off.

I fell forward, panting, sight and sound restored.

The ominously beautiful cavern was back.

As was the clattering sound.

There was no way to reboot the Implant, not without returning to the
Royal Fortune
. I wasn't sure I wanted to turn it on again anyway.

Half the platoon was on their knees in front of me, their hands held to their helmets, their bodies rocking in distress. The other half was trying to help those who were down.

The clattering grew louder. At the edge of the glow cast by the helmet lamps, I could barely make out a milling crowd of black shapes piling into the circular tunnel beyond.

Most of my platoon mates had recovered now, including Alejandro and Tahoe. TJ was still struggling nearby, so I went to him and shouted on the comm. "Zulu Romeo Lima!
Zulu Romeo Lima
!"

TJ finally disabled his Implant, and Alejandro and I helped him to his feet. I definitely felt his weight, because with the Implant offline I couldn't uptick the power of my exoskeleton. That meant I wouldn't be able to boost my strength much further than my body's own natural muscle power—the exoskeleton would offset the weight of the jumpsuit and not much else.

I'd also lost the Heads-Up-Display generated by the Implant.

I tried accessing the secondary
HUD that was built into the facemask: "HUD, on."

Nothing.

Well, at least we still had suit-to-suit communications.

"Good thing we retreated," Big Dog said grimly. "If our Implants had burned-out in the middle of combat, I doubt any of us would be here."

Lieutenant Commander Braggs nodded. He was staring at the circular tunnel. "As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted, we make our stand here. Standard wedge formation."

We spread out without question, and dropped. None of us wanted to run. It was time to get some payback for Bravo Platoon.

I looked through my scope and took aim.

Ahead, a stream of...
things
... crawled through the tunnel toward us. Hundreds of them. Sharp spikes covered the black carapace that was their bodies. They had eight pairs of legs, with pincers and crushing mandibles on all sides. No eyes that I could make out. About one meter tall by two meters wide (three by six feet). Black, semi-translucent skin, so that I could see the three red hearts beating inside.

They were like big, multi-headed, black crabs.

"MOTHS!" Lieutenant Commander Braggs said from the head of the platoon. "Fire at will!"

Facehopper had his Carl Gustav over one shoulder and he launched a rocket. It struck, and I saw claws and pieces of shell splatter into the air. Ordinarily the pressure waves from firing such a powerful weapon in an enclosed space like this could get pretty intense, but I hardly felt a thing. The suits did an amiable job of protecting us. The crabs weren't so well-protected, though, judging from the ruined, twitching bodies left behind.

Big Dog launched his own Gustav; almost half the platoon was firing rockets at the incoming targets, while the other half reloaded those rockets. The constant stream of sonic booms resounded across the cavern.

I didn't have a Gustav, and nobody nearby needed help reloading, so I stuck to my rifle. One of those 'crabs' walked squarely into my sites, skittering right for me.

I fired.

The creature added its splat to the others.

"Goddamn aliens!" Alejandro said over the platoon comm. He was helping Tahoe reload his Gustav nearby.

Skullcracker and Big Dog were the first to run out of rockets. They picked up their heavy guns and started mowing down the
aliens like they were cutting grass.

A bus-sized, black creature slithered forward, barely fitting the confines of the tunnel's five-meter diameter. Though I couldn't see most of its body, I had the impression it was oval-shaped. It had these long feeler things in front, with two smaller ones where a mouth should be.

A giant "slug," for lack of a better term.

Skullcracker and the rest of the platoon just unloaded on it. The bigger creature seemed to be phasing in and out of existence, so that sometimes our gunfire passed right through it. Eight rockets and countless rounds of ammunition later, we finally brought it down. The nearest living crabs abruptly turned over and died right along with it—though we hadn't touched them. The lifeless slug faded entirely out of existence, leaving behind the dead crabs.

More alien crabs surged forward, crawling over and around the bodies of their brethren.

"There's too many!" someone shouted.

"TJ, Facehopper, see if you can bring the tunnel down on their heads," the Lieutenant Commander said.

Rockets struck the roof of the tunnel ahead, and succeeded in bringing down a lot of fragments, but didn't come close to sealing off the tunnel.

"Angle's no good," TJ said.

I was picking them off shot by shot. I ran out of ammo, swapped magazines. Fired again. Making every shot count. Ran out. Swapped.

Beside me, my team mates were delivering just as much damage, if not more, but there were just too many of the things. For every twenty that fell, another twenty came forward to take their place. Our ammo supply was steadily diminishing. Already the Gustavs were silent.

I hadn't noticed this before, but as the crabs got closer, I picked out dark, slimy cords leading away from the carapaces. I followed the cords with my eyes. They led to another one of those bus-sized slugs, slithering along in the
circular tunnel not far behind. As that slug phased in and out of our reality, its cords stayed in place, maintaining the connection to at least two hundred crabs.

Facehopper hurled a grenade at the slug, timing it so that the grenade exploded just as the creature phased-in. The explosion rocked the chamber.

The slug continued forward, ignoring the gaping hole in its side, and emerged from the tunnel into the main cavern. Big Dog, Skullcracker, and Tahoe launched more grenades, while the others unloaded their rifles into it.

We were forced to back away as the onslaught became too intense. The crabs connected to the slug closed on our wedge, the nearest ones falling about ten meters away from the tip of the formation.

I concentrated on keeping the crabs at bay, as did the other snipers, while the rest of the platoon focused on the slug itself. The bullet-riddled creature, chunks of flesh sloughing from its body, finally succumbed, and collapsed in a lifeless mass on the floor. The remaining one-hundred or so smaller crabs that had been connected to it abruptly turned over, legs crimping in death. The dead slug dematerialized.

But the onslaught didn't cease.

More crabs simply piled out of the tunnel.

And more slugs. Two, one after another.

We'd backed to the far side of the cavern now, and concentrated all our fire on those slugs. Grenades were hurled in force. Machine guns unloaded.

We brought down those two slugs, and the crabs connected to them instantly died.

But then the slugs got smart. When the next one emerged into the cavern, it stayed back, letting its crabs advance, stretching the cords that bound them to the limit.

The smaller creatures literally swarmed our position.

"Get the cords!" someone shouted on the comm.

I switched to full auto and fired at those semitransparent, organic umbilicals, severing entire swaths of crabs from the host slugs.

The disconnected creatures instantly turned over and died.

The rest of the platoon concentrated fire on the cords too, but when we'd severed most of the crabs, the slug merely retreated, phasing out of existence so that the next slug and its army of crabs could take over.

This was a war of attrition.

And we were on the losing side.

I switched back to semi-automatic mode, and peered through my scope, searching the enemy lines, trying to see if there was something we were missing. Something obvious that could turn the tide to our advantage.

A bullet ricocheted off the tunnel floor beside me, and rock chips exploded in my face.

"What the—"

Another bullet whizzed past.

"I'm taking fire!" I said into the comm.

"It's Lucy!" TJ said, not ceasing the attack. "She's turned on us!"

I looked through my scope again, through the churning ranks of crabs. Sure enough, I spotted a flash of metal in the midst of the creatures.

It was indeed one of the Centurions.

There was a strange, blue glowing mist around its upper chest. I'd never seen anything like it. "What's wrong with it?"

TJ didn't answer. He was occupied.

I turned toward Alejandro. "Ammo!"

Alejandro tossed me three magazines. I loaded one, pocketed the other two.

More bullets whizzed past just above me.

It didn't make sense. Those Centurions rarely missed. I should be dead three times over.

Abruptly my vision was blocked as a crab ran right up to me—

It exploded. I glanced to my right to see who'd taken the shot that saved me.

TJ. He nodded when I met his eye, then he got right back to work.

I aimed through the scope, hunting the churning battlefield for the Centurion again. There, a flash of metal. I fired a few shots, clearing the crabs from my target, then aimed at the Centurion's center of mass and fired.

The robot flew backwards.

It got right up again.

That's right, you had to take out the CPU.

I aimed slightly higher, at the upper chest, right into the heart of that glowing blue mist...

I fired.