ATLAS 2 (ATLAS Series Book 2) (33 page)

Precious cargo in hand, we ducked into the hallway.

At last we had a break from the gunfire—the walls of the hallway were mercifully made of concrete instead of glass. The emergency bulbs seemed dimmer here, probably because the hallway had less natural light flowing in from outside.

“Chief, do you read, over?” I sent on the comm.

Nothing.

We proceeded toward the nearest elevator.

I hit the “up” button with the grip of my 9-mil, just in case the emergency power actually supplied the elevators. The triangular button didn’t light up, of course.

I turned toward the stairwell, but there was no way the glass container would fit through the slim doorway.

“We’re going to have to port it up the elevator shaft,” I said.

Two figures abruptly burst through the stairwell door. They had their pistols trained on our heads.

I almost shot them on reflex.

“Dammit.” I lowered the 9-mil.

Bender and Hijak lowered their own weapons.

“There you freaknuts are!” Bender said.

Tahoe and I rested the container on the floor.

Bender glanced between the container, the stairwell, and the elevators, and apparently came to the same conclusion as I had because he waltzed right up to the elevator.

“Going up?” Bender jammed his gloved fingers into the gap between the twin doors, and pried the metal plates apart. It was a good thing these doors were of traditional design. The irising style of the newer models would’ve been a bitch to wrench open.

Hijak approached the elevator shaft. “Looks climbable.” He pointed o
ut the pipes running along the three walls—conduits containing electrical wiring, plumbi
ng, and whatever else the robot engineers had decided to bake in. He glanced at me. “What do you think?”

I made a quick calculation with the help of my aReal. The quarters were too tight for jetpack use, but there was just enough room for all four of us to crawl along the walls of the shaft while porting the container.

“It’s not going to be easy,” I said.

“We didn’t sign up for easy.” Bender aimed his 9-mil into the shaft and with several quick shots he cut the six carbon-fiber cables.

I heard a screeching noise some distance below—probably the sound of the elevator cab’s governor device engaging. It would clamp down along the vertical rails of the shaft and halt the cab.

With the cables now severed, Bender leaped inside, landing against the left wall. He wrapped his gloves around a pipe and turned toward me. “We’re gonna rock this shaft, baby!”

Hijak jetted to the right side. “Let’s do it.”

Tahoe and I shoved the glass container into the opening. It was a tight fit. The far end started to dip, but Bender and Hijak flowed forward inside the shaft, stabilizing the container.

“Got it?” I said.

“Yeah!” Hijak grunted.

Bender laughed. “Suck it up, caterpillar.”

“Name’s Hijak, bro.”

“Whatever, caterpillar.”

The Chief might be making them work together, but that didn’t mean Hijak and Bender actually liked each other.

Once the cargo was in place, I squeezed past the small gap between the container and the shaft, using the pipes and other small footholds for purchase, and joined Bender on the left wall. Tahoe did the same, positioning himself beside Hijak on the right.

We turned on our helmet lamps and proceeded up the shaft under exoskeleton-enhanced power.

I could hear Bender’s ragged breathing beside me. He was a big man, with a lot of extra muscle weight to lug around. Still, he wasn’t the only one who struggled, pressed up against the wall like that. The added weight of my jetpack fuel canisters certainly didn’t help me, and my arms burned from the effort, despite the aid provided by my jumpsuit.

Since we could use only one hand to climb while gripping the container, the four of us had to devise a unified strategy. Before releasing my hold on the pipe in front of me, I set my boots at an angle to the shaft, and pressed my upper body against the container. Once I had purchase, I released the pipe and reached higher, shifting my weight away from the container and pulling myself upward.

I set up my aReal to transmit a visual cadence to the others; it sent a green light the exact moment I shoved against the container, and ensured all four of us performed the movement in unison—otherwise the container would’ve swayed back and forth as one side pressed into the other. I also voiced the cadence as we went: “Press. Heave! Press. Heave!”

We made good time, considering we had to climb five stories one-handed. Even so, it was a draining, personal struggle for us all. Tahoe especially. Even though he had three gunshot wounds, he didn’t flag, or voice one word of complaint.

Hijak worked in a marching song from Basic between my own vocal cadence.

“Everywhere we go-o,” he said.

“Press. Heave!” I said.

“Don’t be going and singing garbage from Basic,” Bender said.

“Everywhere we go-o.” Hijak tried again.

“Press. Heave!” I said.

Tahoe answered. “Everywhere we go-o.”

“People wanna know-o.”

“People wanna know-o.”

“Who we are-r.”

Bender shook his head with a grimace, but finally joined in.
“Who we are-
r
!”

“So we tell them.”

“So we tell them.”

“We are the Navy!”

“We are the Navy!”

“Press. Heave!”

When we reached the top of the shaft, I maneuvered with difficulty to the ledge in front of the sealed doors. Both of my hands were fairly numb at this point from lack of circulation, and my arms burned from lactic acid buildup.

During the drop, I’d reviewed the designs of several Shangde City buildings. The SK engineers here had a preference for rooftop-opening elevators, and this one would likely prove to be no different. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

I heard the “rat-a-tat” of sporadic gunfire beyond the doors, and hesitated.

“Rage, what the hell, man?” Bender said. “Open the doors before our arms fall off.”

I quashed my misgivings and forced myself to pry the twin plates of metal apart.

As expected, the elevator opened right onto the office tower’s rooftop terrace.

I swept my eyes over the area, taking in the situation.

The entire platoon was still up here. Most of the men lay prostrate along the rooftop edge closest to the warehouse, where the High-Value Target resided. They peered into their weapon sights at targets I couldn’t see from my current location. Rooftop superstructures provided various fallback positions. Skullcracker was one of those watching their backs, and he gave me a two-finger salute.

The Chief’s voice came over the comm. “About time you boys showed up.”

“Hey, Chief,” I said.

I grabbed the foremost handhold on the container and helped slide it onto the rooftop. Above the container, some of the dangling elevator cables had curled up, but now they fell back into the shaft, making a sound like a whip. Had to be careful around those—errant, swinging carbon-fiber cables could cut off heads.

“You good?” Bender said, stepping past the container to take in Tahoe and me.

“Yeah, we’re good,” I answered.

Hijak and Bender rejoined the platoon.

I removed the cord that linked me to the package, and I went to Tahoe.

Exhausted, he was seated with his back to the container.

I unlatched his blood-splattered boot before he could stop me.

“No time,” Tahoe started to protest. “Help the others.”

I ignored him. “Your blood pressure is dropping.”

I twisted his boot to the right. When I removed it, a gush of blood swilled from the rim.

I examined his foot.

His big toe was shot right off. Blood spurted from the wound in regular pulses.

“Well, guess I won’t be joining the ballet anytime soon,” Tahoe said.

“Why would you want to join the ballet?”

“What do you think? The chicks, of course.”

I fetched his suitrep kit. “Don’t worry, ballet’s still open to you. The doc will print you a new toe.”

“Just like he printed you a new arm?”

“Yeah. Just like that.” I wrapped a tourniquet around the ankle to halt the blood flow, then I loosely wrapped a bandage around his severed toe. The inside of the bandage was coated with Mister Clot, which would impart quite the sting when I tightened it.

Tahoe winced in anticipation. “Wonder what other body part he’ll swap out on me?”

“Your vagina, bro,” I said.

He laughed, and I used the moment to tighten the bandage extra hard.

His laugh quickly turned into a howl of pain. Tahoe bit into his glove, muffling the sound.

I removed the tourniquet, and when I was satisfied that the toe bandage was holding, I twisted his boot back on, finished with the leg.

Ignoring his protests, next I unscrewed his glove and arm assemblies, then patched his secondary gunshot wounds.

When that was done, I replaced the assemblies, leaving his jumpsuit intact.

“You’re good to go,” I said. His blood pressure was markedly improved. He probably could’ve used a plasma volume expander IV, but he would live. “Need some morphine?”

Tahoe shook his head.

“All right, no morphine.” I turned toward the platoon. “I’ll be right back.”

“You think you can convince someone else to lend me their jetpack?” Tahoe said.

“And make them miss out on all the fun of porting the container? Don’t think so, bro. Sorry.”

“Damn.”

It was just like Tahoe—even though he was shot multiple times, he still wanted to do his part to complete the mission.

I crouched between the rooftop superstructures, and when I neared the edge of the building, I dropped and low-crawled the rest of the way. I assumed a position beside Facehopper.

He didn’t even spare me a glance: he was too busy aiming through his sights and firing.

I held my rifle to eye level. “Sit-rep?”

“Not good,” Facehopper said. “We came to the aid of the pinned SKs. Now we’re pinned, too.”

Through my scope I gazed at the rooftop of the twelve-story warehouse across the street below. The elusive High-Value resided inside the tenth floor of that building, according to the last known position transmitted by the HS3s.

An empty shuttle pad dominated the middle of the warehouse’s roof. Beside the pad was a sealed freight elevator, useless without power. Various superstructures ate up the remaining rooftop real estate, offering cover to Centurion snipers. There were twenty-four of those combat robots on the rooftop alone, according to the red dots on my HUD map. About a third of them seemed to be shooting at us, while the remainder were gathered on the leftmost side, aiming down at Dragon platoon, whose members were pinned on the fourth and fifth floors of the building adjacent to ours.

Unlike the office building I was on, the warehouse didn’t have many windows. Maybe two or three per floor. Centurions fired from some of those windows, but the majority of the remaining combat robots were distributed throughout the glass-walled buildings around us. Roughly half of those combatants seemed to be firing up at us, while the rest focused on Dragon platoon.

On the street twenty stories below, Centurions and ATLAS mechs also fired at Dragon platoon, but not at us—we were out of range. I saw an alien slug down there, bashing Dragon’s building so fervently I had the impression the behemoth was trying to mate with it. The building itself was curiously free of the black, caking substance that sheathed so many of the other structures.

Crabs launched from the backside of the slug in droves, and clambered up the building, but Dragon platoon mowed them down the moment they reached the fourth floor.

I briefly wondered why none of the street-level ATLAS 5s used their jetpacks to ascend the twenty floors to our rooftop, and I decided either the mechs realized they would be far too exposed during such a long jump, or they didn’t have enough jumpjet fuel.

I did see one ATLAS 5 make a jetpack leap into the fourth floor of the adjacent building. Right into the heart of Dragon platoon.

I wouldn’t want to be a member of that platoon right about now.

“Requesting permission to go in and help them, sir,” Lui sent.

“Negative,” Chief Bourbonjack said. “Protecting Dragon is secondary to our main objective. Besides, I’m sure the elite members of Dragon can handle one little ATLAS mech. We have our hands full up here as it is.”

“What a mess,” I said. “We should just call in an air strike. Orders be damned.”

“Believe it or not we already tried,” Facehopper said. “The interference is off the scale here. Despite our high elevation, we can’t get through to the Raptors. Our comms aren’t worth a bloody damn.”

Tahoe unexpectedly low-crawled to my side. Somehow he managed to grip the stock of his weapon with his injured hand.

I could only shake my head at his courage as he peered into the rifle and let off a shot.

Beside him, a few paces to the left, I noticed portions of the rooftop had crumbled away entirely. We’d taken heavy rocket blows there.

“They stopped firing rockets?” I asked Facehopper.

“They tried serpents for a while,” he answered. “Until they realized the rockets couldn’t hit us, not while we’re up here and they’re down there.”

I was still gazing at the crumbled portion of the rooftop. It was like a giant mouth had taken huge chunks out of the building. I could see twisted sections of rebar extending from the gaps like the spindly legs of a dead spider. The rebar tips were dissolved right off. “Looks like their rockets hit pretty hard to me.”

“That’s not rocket fire.” He indicated one of the higher superstructures behind me, where the concrete was smashed near the top. The damage was moderate, but nowhere near the level of destruction at the edge of the rooftop. “
That’s
rocket fire.”

Confused, I returned my attention to the missing portions of the roof. “Then what the hell did that?”

“The alien.”

“The alien?”

“Don’t worry, he’s focused on the SKs. Won’t fire unless we piss him off.” He let off a shot. “There he is. See him?”