ATLAS 2 (ATLAS Series Book 2) by Isaac Hooke Read Free Book Online Page A

three deep breaths.
    One.
    Two.
    Three.
    I leaped backward and engaged the autopilot.
    The jetpack brought me to the designated position in midair, and held me there.
    I aimed and let off two quick shots, moving the barrel between targets—
    The bulletproof glass perforated twice beneath my powerful armor-piercing rounds—
    I scored two successive head shots. The privateers died without even knowing what hit them.
    “Tahoe, the upstairs hallway is clear,” I transmitted as I soft-landed on the courtyard below. “I say again, the upstairs hallway is clear!”
    “Proceeding to main targets,” Tahoe returned, rather stiffly.
    When I got upstairs, I hurried down the hall to Tahoe, who was crouched beside the financier and privateer captain.
    Two empty syringes lay on the rug beside him—Tahoe had injected the antidote into each man.
    It hadn’t helped: neither of them was breathing.
    Tahoe was attempting to restart the heart of the financier. Blood poured from Tahoe’s shoulder wound and onto his jumpsuit as he worked, but he ignored it, staying focused on the resuscitation.
    He glanced up in despair at my approach.
    “We’re too late,” he said.

    We confiscated all the computer equipment we could and returned to our jury-rigged privateer ship, the Royal Fortune , via the MDV (Moth Delivery Vehicle). After passing through the airlock and de-suiting, we were ordered directly to the briefing room.
    Ghost and Tahoe bid us good luck and headed to the Convalescence Ward to get their shoulder wounds treated. I almost wished I was injured too, just to avoid the epic chewing out I knew the Lieutenant Commander was going to give the rest of us.
    “Lóng Xiōng had the bank codes of every privateer he funded stored in that tiny bundle of neurons known as his brain,” Lieutenant Commander Braggs said. He was the officer in charge of Alfa and Bravo platoons, MOTH Team Seven. He towered over us from his position at the front of the room, and though he was fifteen years my senior, he still had a full head of thick, brown hair. His face was mostly hard, angular planes, like the chisel-work of some Olympian statue. Speaking of Olympian, he had the body of an athlete despite his rank, and often joined us for PT (Physical Training).
    “With Lóng Xiōng’s cooperation,” the Lieutenant Commander continued, “we could’ve identified those privateers at the ID level, and had our cyber attackers seize all their assets and shut them down without ever having to Gate into SK space. With one blow, we could’ve bankrupted half the privateers in the region, leaving them without any money to pay their crews. But now we’re back to square one.
    “What a debacle. Team Seven is supposed to harbor the best of the best. We’re supposed to be the ace up Big Navy’s sleeve. The Commander-in-Chief knows that if he has a mission whose success is critical, he can rely on us. Well guess what? He can’t rely on us anymore. You failed. You’re not the best. Not now. And you’re not going to receive the most pivotal missions. Other task units are going to get called in a whole lot more, and we’ll be the ones given the drudge work.
    “Well done, people. Bravo Zulu. I hope you’re proud of yourselves. I really do. What part of our warrior credo—‘failure is not an option’—did you not understand? Because failure is not an option . And yet you failed. You better damn well hope the data we recovered from Lóng Xiōng’s computer systems contains the IDs and bank codes of the privateers he funded. And you better damn well hope we can decrypt that data in the first place. Now get the hell out of my sight.”
    We returned to the berthing area of the ship and did our best to prepare ourselves for the long voyage back.
    Wasn’t fun. The mood was abysmal throughout the platoon. None of us liked to fail a mission.
    I couldn’t help but feel it was my fault. Firstly, because of my hesitation when faced with a woman target, a delay that had