ATLAS 2 (ATLAS Series Book 2) (29 page)

We wouldn’t, of course. According to the briefing, our platoons were to provide bounding overwatch for one another. We would remain separate the entire mission, even once the High-Value Target was captured.

“Bounding overwatch,” Bomb muttered, obviously thinking about the mission, too. “You think they even know what that
is
?”

“Of course they do,” Lui said. “Just because they’re Sino-Korean doesn’t mean they don’t grasp basic small unit tactics. You think it was coincidence they kept trying to overwhelm our flanks during the Geronimo ambush?”

“Those were crack units,” Bomb said. “They sent their best out to that planet. Wouldn’t you if you planned a mission eight thousand lightyears away? But these guys? Come on.”

“They’re good enough, don’t you worry,” Chief Bourbonjack said. “The SK brass knew we’d send MOTHs. That means they sent their best, too. The SKs don’t want to look bad. And neither do we, coincidentally. This is an important mission, boys. Don’t go messing it up on account of your mistrust of the SKs.”

I sat back against the bulbous black rock that encased the building beside me and prepared myself for the long wait.

Some hours later, a green dot abruptly appeared on my HUD map, to the west.

Then another.

A third.

My platoon brothers stirred.

“See that?” Trace said.

The HS3s were returning.

Red dots started to appear, too, clustered at various points throughout Shangde City: the last known recorded positions of enemy units.

A flashing blue dot appeared as well, this one inside a warehouse-like building near the center of the city.

The High-Value Target.

The entire region around it swarmed with red.

“Doesn’t look good,” Fret said.

“Chief,” TJ said. “I’m only reading six HS3s. Looks like we lost the others.”

The Chief nodded slowly. Then he glanced at me and said, “Rage, Cyclone: prepare the package for jetpack portage.”

I slid the nylon cord from my shoulder and secured the locking carabiner on one end to my utility belt, then fastened the opposite carabiner to the container’s handle. Tahoe did the same on his side. This way, if either one of us dropped the container while we jetted from building to building, the three-meter-long cord ensured it wouldn’t fall too far. Assuming the cord didn’t drag down whoever had dropped the container, too.

I exchanged a glance with Tahoe through the two plates of glass that separated us. He looked determined. We were going to port this container through hell if we had to. And with all those red dots swarming the HUD map, it looked like that was precisely what we were about to do.

“TJ,” Chief Bourbonjack said. “Did we get visual confirmation on the target?”

“I’m reviewing the vid feed as we speak,” TJ said. After a moment, he shook his head. “No, Chief. The HS3s couldn’t get close enough. All we have to go on is the MAC ID. Which can be spoofed.”

“Do you think it’s spoofed, TJ? Your gut instinct.”

“My gut instinct?” TJ tightened his lips. “It’s real. There wouldn’t be so much red around the target, otherwise.”

The Chief nodded. “That’s good enough for me. Facehopper, take the platoon out.”

“Got it, Chief.” Facehopper turned toward us. “Bender, compute a trajectory to our target. I want the path with the least amount of horde activity. Mark out overwatch spots for Dragon and Alfa.”

A few seconds later a blue trajectory appeared on my HUD map. The curving lines passed between the buildings, with flashing overwatch waypoints positioned along the way.

“Done,” Bender said.

“Relay the trajectory to Dragon,” Facehopper said. “Ghost, Trace, and Skullcracker, provide moving overwatch of the advance. You choose the hides. We’ll be playing leapfrog with Dragon as we advance, and if possible I want you to cover their positions, too. We meet at Waypoint Chicago, across the street from the warehouse containing the High-Value Target. Understood?”

“Yes, sir!”

Ghost, Trace, and Skullcracker activated their jumpjets and vanished onto the rooftop of the building beside us.

“Trajectory relayed to Dragon,” TJ said.

Across the street, the entire platoon of SKs abruptly launched skyward and moved out.

“What in the
hell
?” Chief Bourbonjack said. “We were supposed to go first.”

Dragon platoon crested the rooftop of their own building, then leaped onto the next building. I noticed the latter members among them ported a glass container similar to our own. It seemed they intended to capture the High-Value Target before us. If that happened, we’d be forced to listen to a secondhand, filtered version of the interrogation.

“Should we provide overwatch, Chief?” Facehopper said.

Chief Bourbonjack frowned. “They’re still in range of the comms, but they’re not answering. So that’s a negative on the overwatch. I believe we have a race on our hands. We move, and we move now! Take us out!”

“Understood.” Facehopper turned toward the rest of us. “Follow tight!”

“Damn SK traitors.” Hijak wore an I-told-you-so expression on his face.

Facehopper launched skyward, leaping onto the rooftop of the building beside me. One by one, the rest of the platoon followed. Everyone wore extra fuel canisters this mission. It increased our individual weight, but it was necessary if the platoon wanted to stay off the ground and avoid the alien hordes.

I wrapped my gloved fingers around the handhold on my side of the container, waiting for the others to complete their jumps. Because of our portage duties, Tahoe and I had the most fuel of anyone on the mission, topping out at five canisters each.

When everyone else had jumped, I glanced at Tahoe through the glass container. Like me, he was kneeling, with one hand wrapped around the handhold on his side.

He nodded.

The two of us leaped, firing our jets in sync.

Once Tahoe and I reached the rooftop, we proceeded after the platoon, bringing up the rear.

To conserve fuel, none of my platoon brothers fired their jets continuously. Instead, we used the strength-enhanced jumpsuits to increase the range of each jump. We’d leap off the side or rooftop of a building with the suits, and then let off a quick jumpjet burst, adding to our existing momentum. That small tactic alone tripled the jumpjet range.

I was the one in charge of calling out the jumping cadence for Tahoe and me. I’d also set up my aReal to transmit a visual cadence to Tahoe, sending a green light the moment I shoved off a building, and a violet light when I fired my jetpack.

“Contact,” I said as I reached the side of a building.

“Jump.” I pushed off.

“Thrust.” I fired a jet burst.

“Contact,” I said as my boot touched the ledge of the opposite building. “Jump. Thrust.”

“Contact . . .”

We had to compensate at times as one or the other of us got out of sync, but it was a simple matter of firing a stabilizing burst. In any case, Tahoe and I easily kept up with the rest of the platoon, and we made good progress toward Waypoint Chicago.

Motion drew my gaze to the left in midjump. I saw Trace, Ghost, and Skullcracker jetting between rooftops, shadowing us on overwatch. Good men.

TJ had sent the HS3 drones ahead of us to act as scouts, and according to them, Dragon platoon was still a half klick in the lead.

I kept to the trajectory Bender had drawn on the HUD map. It was actually a three-dimensional route, which my aReal overlaid onto my vision as a series of blue rectangles, creating a sort of wireframe tunnel for the platoon to follow.

According to my HUD map, the first horde of enemy units was quickly approaching. I kept glancing at the map, watching those closely packed red dots grow near . . .

One moment the platoon was leaping over the black-caked buildings of a quiet, empty street, and the next the ground veritably seethed with activity. Alien crabs and slugs crawled everywhere below, competing for space among the smashed vehicles and other former accoutrements of urban living.

I suddenly wished the buildings were higher, because the aliens became utterly berserk below—they were acting in what I had heard described as “hive defense” mode. Their mandibles chopped frenetically at the air, and their whole bodies gyrated as if in time to some hidden song. Fresh slugs poured from the holes in the black substance coating the lower halves of the buildings. Crabs leaped upward en masse as we passed, trying to pluck members of the platoon from the sky. Launching from the backside of a very big slug, a couple of crabs nearly succeeded.

Our stealth was now gone, but that didn’t necessarily mean that we couldn’t complete the mission. The HS3s were still flying ahead, ready to provide us with the latest updates on the High-Value Target’s position once we were in range.

More than one slug launched its ponderous body skyward in an attempt to bash us from the air. We had to alter our flight path, expending precious fuel to avoid them.

“Uh,” Manic sent over the comm. “I thought this was supposed to be the path of least resistance?”

“Blimey!” Facehopper sent. “The battle space changes in real-time, you know that, mate. Dragon stirred them up bloody good when it passed.”

“Speaking of our SK friends,” Manic transmitted. “It would appear they’ve found themselves in a bit of a pinch.”

On the HUD map I saw the green dots of the HS3s strung out ahead of us. The drones indicated Dragon platoon was roughly thirty meters from the warehouse, where the High-Value resided. And judging from the red amassing around them, the SKs were pinned pretty good.

“We’ll come to their aid,” Facehopper answered. “After we reach Waypoint Chicago as planned. We should be within sight of Dragon once there.”

The blue trajectory I was following abruptly updated as Facehopper made adjustments.

“Note course changes,” Facehopper sent over the comm.

Continuing to vault from building to building, my platoon brothers and I made the necessary course corrections, and we ended up in a side street that had much less horde activity.

Waypoint Chicago was just ahead, on the rooftop of a twenty-story building, one of the tallest we’d come across so far. I thought it was an office building of some kind, judging from all the glass windows. The warehouse holding the High-Value Target was just beyond it, though hidden from view.

One by one my platoon members pushed off from a smaller apartment complex. Each man landed on the upper portion of the office tower, using the concrete ledges spaced every three stories to make their way toward the rooftop in jumpjet spurts.

Tahoe and I brought up the rear, jumping the ten-meter gap between ledges like pros. We landed on each ledge at the same time, then jumped and thrusted simultaneously. Our stabilizing jets countered the buffeting winds, which were quite strong at this height.

The rest of the platoon vanished from view on the rooftop above.

Tahoe and I were almost there. Only three more ledges between us and the rooftop . . .

Just as we landed on the third ledge from the top, the weight of the container abruptly shifted.

Tahoe had dropped his end.

In that moment, time seemed to slow, and through the glass I saw the stunned expression he gave me.

Blood dripped from his hand, and I realized he’d been shot.

The container moved downward, pivoting around my lone grip.

The three-meter cord that secured Tahoe to the container had somehow become tangled around his jetpack, and as his side descended, the carbon-fiber cord sheered right through his fuel canisters.

The cord reached its three-meter limit, and hauled Tahoe over the ledge.

The bottom of the container smashed into the side of the building.

I was dragged over the ledge, too.

I lost my grip on the handle, and the three-meter-long cord connecting my belt to the container stretched out.

I activated my jumpjet in an attempt to slow my descent. The cord grew taut, making a sound like a whip. My belt strained against the jumpsuit, wrenching me downward.

I managed to land on a lower ledge. Balancing there precariously, I went down on one knee, and flattened myself against the window.

The winds slammed me, combining with the drag from the container to nearly tear me from the ledge.

The cord turned, and the glass container scraped against the window three meters below me. Tahoe in turn dangled three meters underneath that, at the end of his own cord. The wind tossed him about, and he kept spinning around. Blood dripped from his wounded hand. The next ledge looked to be about five meters below him.

Much too far.

I tried reeling in the cord. However, even with the enhanced strength of my jumpsuit, I couldn’t pull both Tahoe and the container up against the force of gravity.

I glanced down at the dizzying heights, steeling myself against the vertigo, wanting to fully gauge the situation. The crabs were swarming below, sensing an easy kill. Some of them had already started climbing the bulbous black substance affixed to the lower half of the office building. The substance ended about twenty meters below Tahoe.

I didn’t think the crabs could scale smooth glass. Still, with only a small ledge holding me up, and limited fuel in my jetpack, and a cord pulling down on me with the combined weight of Tahoe and a half-tonne container, I didn’t find that fact all too reassuring.