Kill Before Dying (Tau Ceti Agenda Book 5)

by Travis S. Taylor

  “There’s no way evac is getting through this fucking murder factory!” Dragon added while grunting through maneuvers. That was all too familiar to Delilah as she was currently grunting and biting her TMJ bite block because of her own high-gee flying. “We’re stuck here to fight this out.”

  “Don’t worry, the Maniacs ain’t going nowhere! The mission clock shows the Hillenkoetter wave should be here soon. Reinforcements are on the way. We have to make it that long and we hold out for evac then. But I agree we need to find cover until the reinforcements arrive.”

  “Reinforcements, hell! By the time they get here they’ll be replacement forces,” Colonel Slayer replied.

  “Shit!” Delilah blinked and winced as the continuous purple plasma balls of AA fire from the ground rippled her shields and jostled her pretty damned hard. Had she not had her bite block in her mouth she might have bitten her tongue off. Jawbone stomped the upper right pedal and pulled back on the HOTAS, yawing and pitching at the same time. The maneuver put her under spine-crushing pressure, but she breathed through it and then toggled her fighter mode mecha over to bot. “Fox two!”

  Delilah’s mecha transfigured to bot as the missile screamed across the top of the tankheads into the AA gun escarpment. The infrared guided missile locked onto the heated bores of the alien anti-aircraft systems and drove home. The warhead exploded, scattering the guns to bits of rubble, and several red and green blurs careened from the explosion in several directions at once. The disruption in the entrenched weapons fire gave several of the AEMs on the ground all the opening they needed to rush through the line and lay waste to the remaining enemy within by popping grenades and spraying hyper-velocity rounds about.

  Delilah bounced the mecha’s armored feet against the surface as she serpentined through the tankheads, firing her guns and blasting away at any ground targets of opportunity. As the mecha bled off speed, a rooster tail of dirt and debris was flung high behind her, arching across the surface. Along her path she practically clipped an alien ground troop from behind, enabling the tank it was taking position on to take it out. Delilah continued to roll through and back up to her feet in a flurry of motion, still with way too much forward momentum to come to a controlled stop. But she didn’t want to stop anyway.

  “Warning! Enemy radar targeting lock detected! Warning! Enemy radar targeting lock detected!” her Bitchin’ Betty chimed.

  “Shit!” Delilah threw the HOTAS full forward and stomped her thrusters against the ground, rolling forward in a judo roll and then leaping over one of the Slayers’ hovertanks parkour style. The bot-mode tank tracked in behind her, firing its mammoth nose-mounted gun and the shoulder mount DEGs at the porcupines that were closing in on Delilah’s six. The lead alien porcupine closed in and managed to avoid the tankhead’s cover fire. Delilah didn’t have time to reconfigure her mecha, so she fired her thrusters at full, pushing the bot-mode fighter up and straight at the porcupine and firing her guns. “Guns, guns, guns!”

  “Fox three!” her wingman, First Lieutenant Sara “Coffee” Ames pounded the alien fighter with an air-to-air missile that tore through it, causing it to spin out of control into the battlefield just short of several more AEMs. The groundpounders finished it off.

  “Great shot, Coffee!” she shouted through her bite block as she gasped for breath, very relieved.

  “Colonel, I’d sure appreciate it if you’d quit using yourself as bait like that, ma’am.”

  “You just be there to catch the fish and it won’t matter. I owe you one, Coffee!” Delilah replied.

  “Yes, ma’am! Watch your three-nine line!”

  “I’ve got ’em.” Jawbone had time and speed now so she toggled back to fighter mode. The bot flipped upside down, rolling through the transfiguration to a fighter plane, causing her stomach to somersault.

  You’ve got plenty of energy to match trajectories. Her AIC posted red and blue flight paths in her mindview.

  Right there. I’m too close for missiles but perfect to close on guns. She highlighted one of the combat solutions playing out in her mind. Optimize me for that engagement!

  Roger that, going to wide area targeting and guns.

  “Guns, guns, guns!” Delilah fired the mecha’s larger cannons and continued to hold the trigger down as orange racquetball-sized plasma incendiary rounds plowed into the porcupine’s shields, overpowering them, and then into and through the alien fighter’s structure.

  “What’s our play, Colonel!” USMC Captain Yariv “Blue” Sandeep asked over the Maniacs’ channel on the tac-net. “The Madira is pulling out all the ships from the first wave and we can’t make it back up through the ball in time.”

  “I say we do what the CAG always does,” one of the other Maniacs added.

  “Yeah, we go in there and kill all those fuckers!” another one grunted. “Works for DeathRay.”

  “Yeah, well, Blue Force Tracker shows the Angels loaded on the bus.” The banter on the tac-net continued through high-gee maneuver grunts and shouts.

  “All right, Maniacs, knock that shit off and listen up! We’re stuck here for now, but the second wave is coming. Until that time we stay here and we keep killing the alien bastards ’til there’re no more to fucking kill. You don’t have permission to die until all the killing is done!” Delilah responded, her Florida accent ever present in her speech. “The tankheads and AEMs are sitting ducks without us. We ain’t leaving them. Track all your energy curves toward the ravine at the location I’m forwarding to you. We cover the ground teams, keep the porcupines in a low top bowl, and bring hell with maximum ferocity at maximum velocity!”

  “Roger that!” Blue responded.

  “Ooh-fuckin’ rah! Ma’am!” one of the other Maniacs replied.

  “Major Sellis, our right rear stack is getting spread too far apart!” Sergeant Major Tommy Suez alerted the ranking officer on the right side of the phalanx the Juggernauts were doing their level best to push through the Chiata ground troops that had dropped to the surface between them and the ravine ahead and about four more klicks away.

  “Roger that, Top. See what you can do to help with that, will ya?” Sellis replied. “I’m in the middle of some serious shit right now.”

  Aren’t we all, he thought.

  You sad that right, Tommy, his AIC replied to him.

  “Yes, sir! Do you need help, sir?” Tommy asked. His DTM battlefield view showed the AEM major’s blue dot surrounded by several red ones, but the major was moving like a blur in the DTM view. He was holding his own and then some, but Tommy had enough experience in combat to see what was going on. The horde was doing its best to lead the major and whoever would follow him into a makeshift killbox. A dropped AA escarpment and several alien tankships were just behind them, and in the general direction the major was being drawn, blue beams were tearing through the large conifer-like alien trees. Their phalanx was getting spread too far out on the right, and near the point of the spear, the Major was in danger of drawing the right half of the AEMs into some really bad shit.

  DTM this to Colonel Jones, Jackie, Tommy thought to his AIC.

  Done. What are we going to do, Tommy?

  First things first, he thought while firing on the move. Several of the Chiata amorphous red-and-green-blur ground troops whizzed about and between the separation in the V-shape the AEMs were pushing. But Tommy wasn’t about to let them get through their formation and then come knocking on the backdoor. No, he wasn’t going to let that happen.

  “Oh, hell no,” he muttered to himself.

  Tommy kicked his jumpboots hard, firing the thrusters, jumping him up and over the line just ahead of Colonel Jones at the spear’s point and slightly left of Major Sellis and several others further back on the stack.

  “Top! What the hell are you doing?” Colonel Jones shouted over the groundpounder tac-net.

  “I’m killing two birds with one stone, sir,” he replied. Then he popped several of the shoulder-mounted grenades into the fray a few tens of mete
rs in front of him and dropped to a knee as he laid down several bursts from his rifle. The hypervelocity rounds ripped through the grenade explosions leaving tunnels of blue ionized trails in the orange and white fire and debris cloud. Tommy had chosen his targets precisely and each of the grenades hit home on large trees, bursting them into splinters at their trunks and causing them to fall across their path to the right. This cut the Chiata’s path to the killbox off, or at least made it more cumbersome to travel through. As a side effect of the trees falling, the AEM’s phalanx formation was forced to slow on the right side and to turn their vector left into the point of the spear. This tightened the V-shape and closed the ranks in tighter.

  “Major Sellis, watch your backside!” Top heard Rondi Howser’s voice over the net, and turned in time to see the master gunnery sergeant in mid-leap over one of the Chiata and onto the top of another one taking up position on the major. Howser applied incendiary rounds liberally to the situation, popping one of the red and green blurs like a water balloon. Tommy looked at the overall formation of the team and at the aliens’ killbox. And he got an even bolder idea.

  “Colonel Jones! Is there any chance we could get the tankheads to lay down a line of fire behind the AA guns up ahead?” he asked his superior.

  “Why’s that, Top?”

  “Look at the landscape, sir!” Tommy quickly transmitted his DTM view to the Colonel. “A line of fire there would drive a wedge between the first drop wave and the second, cutting them off from each other. Then they’d only have two choices. One, move parallel to that line and parallel to us or, two, they’d have to turn and come through us.”

  “Okay, Tommy. I see that. Then what?” Tommy wasn’t sure why the Colonel couldn’t see what he was driving at, but he was busy at the point of the spear. So he’d just have to lay it out for him.

  “Well, sir, either way they’ll have to go where we want them to. If they decided to turn on us and they get through, the tankheads are right behind us and the Maniacs are atop them. We’d have them surrounded. If they go along the line of fire then they are headed right toward the edge of the ravine and there the Maniacs can shoot them like fish in a barrel!” Tommy ducked and winced as the green blur of a tentacle or pod or whatever the hell it was wrapped around his helmet. Instinctively he grabbed at it, but when he did, another amorphous shape twisted around his left gauntlet and up his arm.

  “Top, look out!” Both Master Gunnery Sergeant Howser and Major Sellis bounced on top of his position, firing rounds on full auto into the alien creature. Tommy fell backwards from the impact and instinctively did a back handspring kick-over that failed because the alien had itself wrapped around his legs. But where the alien had gone wrong was leaving Top’s hands free.

  Tommy popped his shoulder-mounted grenade tube open and fired one at point blank into the Chiata ground troop. The spiny, amorphous armored blur wrapped itself around the grenade and spit it out its backside just as it detonated. The creature’s barrier shields flickered against the explosion and failed. At that point, Tommy gripped it with his armored hands and strained with all the might of the powered armor. The alien screamed and writhed in what could only be described as pain.

  “Hold on, Top!” Howser bounced just beside him, slamming her HVAR into the side of the creature as she popped off several hypervelocity rounds into what might or might not have been the thing’s head.

  “Damn.” Tommy felt the thing go limp in his hands and continued to tear it apart and throw it off of himself. “Thanks.”

  “No time for that. We’ve got to keep moving.” Major Sellis bounced between the two of them onto a knee, never ceasing fire the entire time. The automatic hypervelocity rounds zipped from the rifle with the tell-tale spittap, spittap sounds of the rounds breaking the sound barrier as they were accelerated down the bore of the weapon. The major rose to his feet, firing behind Tommy, and then bounced over backwards, firing into what was left of the tree canopy above them. One of the Maniacs screamed overhead in fighter mode, firing missiles just ahead of them, and several of the Slayers were closing around their position. The remainder of the AEMs were filling in as well, staying in their phalanx formation as best they could.

  “Right. Sir, we need to push these bastards against that hill line there as the tankheads start dropping fire on them.” Tommy explained his plan.

  “Yeah, I agree, Top. Colonel Jones is ahead of us on it!” Sellis replied and pointed at their squad commander. The USMC Colonel was riding atop a hovertank that was cutting through the enemy line at over one hundred kilometers per hour.

  “Follow me, Juggernauts!” Colonel Jones ordered them.

  “Ooh-fuckin’-rah!” Howser shouted.

  “Damn right, sir!” Tommy almost smiled.

  Chapter 7

  February 19, 2407 AD

  The “Ball” nearest the U.S.S. Sienna Madira II

  Target Star System

  700 Light-years from the Sol System

  Monday, 2:05 P.M. Ship Standard Time

  “Spandex! Spandex! Watch your North Pole! You’ve got two porcupines gonna lock you up!” DeathRay shouted at the young Navy Lieutenant Junior Grade Gregorio “Spandex” Muniz. The kid was known for taking a beating but staying on his wingman tight, like Spandex running tights. Unfortunately, his wingman, USN Commander Sondra “Brains” Edwards had been killed in action only moments before while trying to cover Spandex’s approach on the hangar just after the General had recalled them. Spandex had to abort, and had it not been for DeathRay mixing it up in the ball as a floating partner, both of them would have been lost.

  “I’ve got ’em, DeathRay!” DeathRay could see the young pilot attempting to roll over into a Fokker’s feint, but he didn’t have the angular momentum needed on the pitch axis. Jack knew he’d have to cover the kid’s mistake or he’d be meat for the grinder. “Fox Three!”

  “Guns, guns, guns!” DeathRay shouted over his guttural grunts as he kicked the HOTAS full throttle and forward upwards through the ball, jinking and juking about debris, enemy AA fire, and porcupines trying to lock him up. At maximum acceleration he was being pushed into the seat at over nine bone-crushing, lung-collapsing gravities. A porcupine was doing its level best to match Jack’s energy vector just off his five o’clock and slightly beneath his flight path, but DeathRay wasn’t going to let that alien bastard stop him from saving the youngest member of the Archangels from impending death from alien assholes. He’d already managed to let Dee get herself shot down and had lost Brains as well. Two other Archangels were showing up as casualties in his DTM, but they were alive and already on the Madira. Jack hadn’t seen this much loss in his own squadron since the Separatist War and he sure as shit didn’t like it.

  “Warning! Enemy targeting lock imminent! Warning! Enemy targeting lock imminent!” the Bitchin’ Betty chimed in his cockpit.

  You have less than seven seconds, Jack! his AIC warned as energy vectors and trajectory alternatives popped up in his mindview. Red enemy trajectories spiraled and corkscrewed about his blue trajectory up to his current position in spacetime. Branching out from the “now” was a bifurcation of possible courses of action. Jack quickly found one he liked and adjusted the foot pedals, switches, and HOTAS to match it.

  Countermeasures, Candis! he ordered. Pop flares and jammers!

  “Aaaarrrrrrr, wooooot!” DeathRay grunted and rocked and rolled with the HOTAS, slamming it from side to side and from stop to stop. The lateral forces on his body were nearing intolerable and his internal organs jostled around with each extreme jerk, leaving internal bruises. His brain moved about in his skull, slamming into the brainpan with such force that he was lucky not to be concussed. He did see stars briefly though. “Spandex! Kick your boot thrusters full now! Toggle to fighter and get the fuck out of there! And drop some chaff!”

  “Warning! Enemy targeting lock! Warning, enemy targeting lock!”

  Three seconds, Jack!

  “Guns, guns, guns,” he screamed.

&nbs
p; Spandex’s mecha seemed to move sluggishly, as it had taken on multiple hits already. The two porcupines ripped down from the top of the ball head-to-head with Jack, and poor Spandex was the caught monkey in the middle. The porcupine setting up on Jack’s ass-end was closing and would fire before any normal human could do anything. But USN Captain Jack “DeathRay” Boland was anything but normal and was really fucking tired of his squadron taking losses.

  “Not. Fucking. Today!” he grunted against the acceleration.

  DeathRay threw his fighter into an orbiting spiral about the vector that the porcupine on his rear was taking, then he bit hard on the TMJ bite block, taking in a burst of oxygen and stimulants. That gave him the rush of strength he needed to reverse yaw so that his nose was facing the alien that had been on his six. Now Jack was corkscrewing backwards, upwards through the ball at full throttle and locked up by three porcupines at once. Spandex was almost clear at this point.

  “Fox Three! Fox Three! Fox Three!” Jack let loose three mecha-to-mecha missiles that he knew wouldn’t hit home, but it would buy him a fraction of a second and that was all he needed. Fractions of a second were small bits of eternity in a dogfight.

  Start pukin’, Candis! he shouted in his mindvoice to his AIC. He took in a deep breath, clenching his jaws around the bite block and his asshole on the seat. There wasn’t a muscle in his body that he didn’t squeeze as hard as a rock and hold.

  All guns and DEGs on auto target! Hang on, Jack! his AIC said. DeathBlossom clock at zero seconds and counting!

  The three missiles twisted out in opposite directions towards the Chiata fighters. The first one hit nose-on the fighter on Jack’s rear trajectory vector, now the direction his fighter’s nose was pointing. The missile exploded against the shields of the porcupine, slowing its pursuit only minimally. The other two missiles twisted about the alien countermeasures, but were taken out before they hit their targets.