ATLAS 2 (ATLAS Series Book 2) (16 page)

“Uh, Facehopper,” I sent over the comm. I was stunned. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

“What is it, mate?” Facehopper returned.

“We got a problem.”

“Why? What do you see?” Facehopper would have known I was standing next to the sinkhole, thanks to his HUD.

“Things are going to be getting real nasty, real quick,” I said.

“Say again, Rage?” Facehopper sent.

Along the bottom of the tunnel, a long, glowing, liquid mass leisurely rippled upward, reminding me of a waterfall flowing in reverse.

“An army of Phants is coming out of the sinkhole.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Shaw

I
was running. Queequeg kept up alongside me.

A pack of eight hybears was in hot pursuit.

Apparently this pack had discovered the cairn I’d made from my earlier kill, and they’d tracked my scent all the way to the Forma pipe. I guessed as much, anyway, because it was either that or blind luck that they found me. Luckily, Queequeg had spotted them when they were far away on the western horizon, giving me time to flee.

I’d been running ever since.

I was using up my freshly charged battery at a horrendous rate, and though I had reached my top speed, the pack was still gaining.

Queequeg purposely kept pace with me, though he was capable of greater speeds. I kept telling him to run ahead, and that I was dead either way, but he wouldn’t listen.

Anyway, my problem was that there was nowhere to hide, not out here. No trees. No buildings. Just endless dunes of shale. There were some defiles in the cliff walls at the far edge of the valley, but they were too far away to reach in time.

I didn’t have a jetpack. Or a proper weapon. All I had was an alien mandible superglued to a rifle. Plus a knife.

In previous encounters, I’d faced more hybears than this of course, but that was when I had a fully loaded rifle. Ever since I’d run out of ammo, the most hybears I’d faced was two at a time, with Queequeg at my side.

Not eight.

I’d just have to wing it. Which was basically what I’ve been doing since I crash-landed on this planet.

I could hear the whoops growing closer behind me, sounding with greater frequency and enthusiasm.

I glanced at my oxygen levels, and despair washed over me.

What was the point of even trying?

It was over.

I had only an hour of oxygen left.

Why bother to fight?

I should just face the facts.

I was dead.

Might as well just give up.

I’d given it the good fight.

Tried my hardest.

It was pointless to resist further.

Still, it made me a little sad, knowing that I’d come all this way only to die in the end.

What a waste. Not just of my own limited time in the universe, but the time of all those who’d invested in me. Who’d seen the potential I had. The instructors. The officers. Captain Drake.

Rade.

He wouldn’t have given up.

He wouldn’t have given in.

He told me of the trials he’d endured during MOTH training. How people had quit around him left and right, but he had stayed firm through it all. He’d stayed the course. He told me he had resolved early on that he would become a MOTH, or die trying.

If you’re going through hell . . .

I was going to fight for every last ounce of life.

I was going to fight to the bitter end.

Believe in yourself, Shaw.

Because no one else is going to do it.

I chose the site where I would make my last stand. It was a rise, about thirty paces ahead and to the right, higher than the surrounding ground. A good spot to defend.

I swore that the price for my life wouldn’t be cheap. I planned to take down at least three of them before the end came. No matter what.

I swung down my rifle with its razor-sharp mandible attachment, and, as I crested the rise, I turned around to meet my foes. Queequeg continued on ahead, probably not even aware I’d stopped.

It was better this way. I didn’t want him to die, too.

Whooping with bloodlust, the pack didn’t slow. None of them were deterred in the least by the fur of their brethren glued all over my jumpsuit.

I swung my rifle-scythe down and got the leader of the pack as it came in.

The momentum of the blow left me vulnerable to the next two. The animals vaulted forward—

I sidestepped—

One hybear struck me.

The force of the blow sent me skidding backward across the shale, and the weapon flew from my grasp.

I landed on my side, with the hybear on top of me.

Those ferocious jaws bit at my face mask. Teeth raked scratches across the glass. One of the bear-like claws punctured my jumpsuit, tearing into the flesh of my upper arm. I grimaced in pain.

A breach alarm sounded in my helmet.

“Warning, suit integrity compromised. Warning . . .”

I lay on my side, and my back was shielded thanks to the rucksack, so I felt nothing as the animal’s other forelimb raked the area. I was never so glad for the extra burden of the sack as right then. My only worry was that the hybear would sever one of my backward-facing life-support lines.

The animal withdrew its claw from my upper arm. I winced in pain as the skin and muscle of my wounded shoulder bulged outward to seal the tiny suit punctures.

Before the hybear could strike again, I wrapped my hand around the knife at my utility belt and shifted sideways, pushing the animal off me with my strength-enhanced exoskeleton. I drew the knife and sliced the surprised hybear’s belly clean open in one smooth motion.

I scrambled to my feet as it rolled around in pain beside me. I was at a loss as to why the others hadn’t attacked yet.

Then I saw Queequeg.

Two dead hybears lay at his feet, and he was backing away from the remaining four, growling, his teeth misting with the green blood of his kills. He had a steaming wound just above his right shoulder blade.

Those four hybears had their backs toward me.

I sheathed my knife. Stepping forward, I scooped up my rifle-scythe and with it took the hind leg clean off one of the beasts that antagonized Queequeg.

The other three hybears swung around to look—

Queequeg launched forward, plunging into the rightmost hybear, and the two of them rolled down the rise.

The three-legged hybear struggled away.

That left me facing two.

I swung and jabbed at them with the rifle-scythe.

They backed away warily, snarling, flattening their manes.

I drew my knife, aimed, and threw.

The animal I’d targeted dodged, and as it did so I swung my rifle-scythe into its side.

The sharp blade passed clean through the lung cavity and emerged from the front part of the hybear’s chest, pinning the animal to the shale. Green steam gusted from the wound.

The other hybear came at me before I could withdraw the weapon.

Not letting go of the stock of my rifle-scythe, I vaulted to the other side of the injured animal, twisting the blade in its flesh.

I wrenched the weapon free, and used my momentum to swing at the remaining hybear as it leaped at me. I took its head clean off.

I turned toward the other writhing beast, and mercifully ended its life.

I dashed down the rise to find Queequeg finishing off the last one. He held the animal firmly to the ground, his jaws wrapped around its neck in his favorite killing posture. The legs of the pinned animal convulsed three times before it finally died.

Queequeg released the animal, glanced up at me to make sure I was uninjured, in his opinion, then nonchalantly started eating. A slight mist rose from different scratches all over his body, but otherwise he seemed fine.

I glanced toward the top of the rise, confirming that no more attacks were coming from that quarter, and then I collapsed to the shale.

I’d actually won. Incredible.

Of course it was entirely thanks to Queequeg, who continued munching away on his kill.

I’d let him feast, all right. For as long as he wanted.

I won . . . but that didn’t change the fact I still had less than an hour of O
₂
.

Was this really how it was going to end? Asphyxiated on my own toxic air, on a planet eight thousand lightyears from home?

Probably. But I was going to fight to the end. I’d promised myself that. For the whole hour, if that’s all I had.

My upper arm started to throb with renewed pain now that the threat of the moment had passed. I became aware of the breach alarm once more, which had continued to sound in my helmet all this time, unheeded, unnoticed.

I glanced at my arm: blood steamed from the small punctures where the skin and muscle underneath had swollen outward to seal the suit. The red steam came in pulses timed to my heartbeat.

According to the readout on my HUD, my hybear attacker had cut no major arteries or veins. Essentially a flesh wound. That meant I wouldn’t have to open up the suit with a SealWrap to apply a bandage underneath.

Still, the whole area underneath was swelling (and bruising) because of the pressure differential, and it would only worsen if I didn’t patch the suit.

I resignedly retrieved the suitrep kit from my cargo pocket and proceeded to patch the puncture. When I was done, the breach alarm ended.

The oxygen warning light didn’t go out, however. Less than forty-five minutes left before I died of hypoxia.

Hypoxia. I remembered training for it back in flight school. Well, training to recognize the symptoms, anyway. There was a certain qualification where they took a group of us up in the unoxygenated cabin of a jetliner. We took turns taking off our breathers, and were given a simple set of instructions to follow involving a deck of cards. We’d pick a card from the deck, identify it, put it back, and repeat until hypoxic symptoms occurred, then put the breather back on. For the first minute or so, most recruits completed the instructions well. After that, things quickly went downhill. Our minds started operating mostly on automatic. I don’t remember my own session, as the formation of new memories was one of the first things to go when the brain was deprived of oxygen, but apparently I failed the first time. I kept showing the card I’d been previously ordered to pick from the deck, and I kept saying it was the ace of spades, even though I was repeatedly told to reattach my breather by that point. Finally my training buddy had to put my breathing mask on for me.

Who knows, maybe the oxygen indicator in my suit was wrong, and I’d already run out of O
₂
. Maybe my mind was operating on automatic right now.

Though if that were the case, I doubted I’d have the ability for such a lucid internal debate . . .

Queequeg, who had been busy eating, suddenly raised his head and started growling.

That was one of Queequeg’s faults. Though he was usually always on the alert, sometimes, when dining on a fresh kill, he could become oblivious to his surroundings. Twice before he’d let a hybear sneak right up to us unawares.

He’d done so a third time, apparently.

I noticed a darkness stretching across the shale beside me, originating from behind.

A rather tall shadow for a hybear . . .

I slowly reached for my rifle-scythe as Queequeg continued to growl.

The shadow shifted—

I made an all-out lunge for the weapon and spun around—

Meeting the eyes of a man in a black jumpsuit.

He held an automatic rifle of some kind, aimed right at me.

I heard Queequeg repositioning behind me.

“You tell your pet to stay back,” the man said in the thick accent of someone who spoke native Korean-Chinese. I couldn’t tell if he was military or civilian.

“Easy, Queequeg,” I said. “Easy. This is a friend.
Friend
.”

The growl Queequeg gave told me he knew this wasn’t a friend, but he remained still, thankfully. I didn’t want the animal to get shot.

“The two of you killed eight of them without a gun,” the SK said. “Very impressive. For a white devil.”

“You just stood by the whole time and watched?” I said incredulously.

He shrugged.

I glanced at the rifle. “It’s not even loaded, is it?”

He lifted the barrel toward my face mask. “Do you care to find out?”

I stared at him for a long moment. He was too far away to hit with my rifle-scythe, and by the time I retrieved and threw my dagger, he would’ve shot me in the face. No, this guy had me at his mercy.

As I continued to look at him, I realized his suit wasn’t just black, but he actually had shards of Geronium glued to it. All the better to blend into the landscape, I supposed. Using the aReal in my helmet glass, I tried to pull up the public profile associated with his embedded ID, but all I got was his ID number. He’d blanked his profile, then.

Queequeg continued growling.

“Queequeg,” I said warningly, glancing over my shoulder.

The hybear sat back. His ears were flattened, and his tail remained stiff. He definitely knew we were in trouble.

“You must teach me how to tame them, sometime,” the SK said. “I could use a
Chéngdān
pet.”

“What do you want?” I said.

The SK ignored my question. “You wear a nice suit. Very becoming. With all that fur, you could almost pass for one of the Chéngdān. Almost.”

I smiled sarcastically. “Yours is pretty sick too. Must have taken you a long time to glue all those rocks onto it. Can’t be good for your health, though. All the radiation, I mean.”

He grinned toothily, keeping his automatic rifle trained on me. “Radiation does not affect me.”

“You never said what you wanted.”

The grin faded, and he seemed angry. “Does everyone always have to
want
something? Maybe I am merely a Good Samaritan.”