The bot-mode mecha's left arm exploded free from the torso as HoundDog's tracers tracked across its flight path. The pilot punched out just in time as the mecha exploded. Skinny and HoundDog were moving too fast to do anything but plow right through it and hope that their SIFs and armor plating held. Debris pinged and rattled against their mecha, but they zoomed through the fireball to the other side, taking up the tail of the third enemy fighter. A blue-green DEG blast off of the nine o'clock of the enemy mecha ripped through it, blasting it to pieces, too.
"Splash one for me," First Lietenant Dana "Popstar" Miller confirmed her kill over the net.
"Good shooting, Popstar. Let's keep pushing downward, Saviors." Skinny pitched back over and continued her acceleration to the deck.
Chapter 10
October 31, 2388 AD
Sol System
Orlando, Florida
Saturday, 6:05 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time
"Goddamned if that ain't a sight I'd never thought I'd see in my lifetime," Jawbone commented on her aerial view of the large mechanized spider-thing that had only moments before burst through the line at the entrance gate of Disney World's Magic Kingdom. Dinosaurs, fairies, aliens, scarecrows, wolfmen, and an array of fantasy characters scattered about the spider-thing, attacking it if they could, but mostly running from it.
"Stay frosty, marines, and keep Main Street clean," Heehaw reminded the marines over the net. "Guns, guns, guns." He went to his DEG to burn down a velociraptor that was trying to crawl atop the big, black, mechanical arachnid.
The spider-thing, also known as Bravo India Lima Seven One One Six, or BIL for short, had a body that consisted of two sections. A smaller, rounded head section, which carried the sensors and control systems and looked as if it could carry a couple of passengers, had a forward-looking, armored windscreen and two armored side windows. Its head looked more like the modified control turret of a tank than anything else. The rearward section was more boxy in shape and had no windows. It was also armored to the maximum and looked like a garbage-heap hauler on military steroids. There were mechanisms that ran beneath the spider's rear compartment that suggested that it could dump that compartment over like a dump truck. There was also an armored door on the rear of it that looked as if it could lower like a ramp or open as an iris.
BIL had once been a lost AI garbage hauler in the reclamation facility of Mons City on Mars. Then Senator Moore and his family had stumbled across him and asked him for help in escaping the attack on the city during the Exodus. BIL had proven so useful that day and Deanna had liked him so much that Moore had bought the vehicle. He had it cleaned from top to bottom, and then upgraded and retrofitted it with armor, structural integrity field generators, hoverfield generators, sensors, and a plush interior environment system that rivaled only a space tourist cruise liner's quarters.
In essence, Alexander had tricked BIL out as only a good ol' boy from Jackson, Mississippi, could. Since Moore had been elected president, it had been a common sight to see the First Family cruising in BIL instead of a more conventional presidential limousine—a sight that had caused an enormous number of White House–oriented redneck jokes and a boost in the restoration and tricking out of old, beat- up utility AI vehicles. BIL had even been the guest of the popular vehicle-enthusiast show Rides of the Stars.
BIL! We need to get out of here now! Moore thought to his personal transport.
Yes, Mr. President, I am indeed on my way. Although, my progress is being impeded a bit at the moment, BIL responded. Moore could see him raised up on several of his back legs and swatting at velociraptors as they attacked him. BIL was so armored that the AI bots of the theme park were little more than heavy flies to him. They could barely even be considered pests.
Well, quit worrying about those damned things and just bull rush through them. Go back to hover. The marines can deal with the bots.
Yes, sir.
The mechanical spider retracted its legs and levitated on the Meissner hoverfield. BIL accelerated forward, not bothering to dart around the AIs. His overarmored, bulbous head crushed through any of the smaller bots that got in his way. The marine's mecha also bounced around him, giving him cover. Several times flying dinosaurs made kamikaze attempts at BIL but with little effect. They were either burned down by the FM-12s, or BIL extended an appendage and swatted at them.
The gigantosaurus lumbered down the end of Main Street near the castle between the path to BIL and the path to Storytime with Belle, where the First Family were holed up. The gigantic, reptilian beast flung its tail rapidly into the side of BIL and snapped at him with its jaws. The impact of the dino's tail into BIL pushed him over sideways and disoriented the hoverfield generators. Several marine bot-mode mecha dropped in on top of the AI dinosaur, chewing away at it with guns and mechanical hands.
The apatosauruses and the T-rex joined the action and pushed several of the Magic Kingdom architectural sights around the presidential limousine. BIL extended all eight of his legs and skittered up the back of one of the apatosauruses, just as the tyrannosaurus tried to bite at him. With spiderlike agility, BIL sprang out of the way, causing the giant carnivore to bite into the Apatosaurus's back. BIL pierced through the head of the T-rex with two of his rear legs. The laser systems driving the holographic eyes of the robot malfunctioned and erupted with blue flames pouring from the eye sockets of the dinosaur. It rose blindly and on fire with a monstrous roar and then fell over sideways, its internal circuitry fried and dead.
BIL managed to right his hoverfield system through internal diagnostic and self-repairing systems and hovered underneath the gigantosaurus and around several of the stegosauruses to the redoubt at Storytime with Belle. He hovered in front of the Secret Service's line and landed on his legs.
BIL then pitched his rearward section like a dump truck about to dump its load. The rear iris door opened like a dilating pupil.
"Move, move, move!" Alexander grabbed his daughter in a bear hug and made for the rear of the presidential ride. Sehera flanked their daughter while various members of the security detail filled in around them.
They raced into position underneath the open iris, and then BIL dropped the compartment as close to the ground as he could get it, allowing the president and the First Family to scramble up into the seats of the vehicle. Alexander took Deanna by the hand and slung her upward toward a seat to his right, and she caught it with her other hand and dragged herself over the back of the chair and strapped herself in.
By the time he was sure that Dee was belted in, Sehera scrambled up the aisle between the seats beside them and started double- checking the restraints on her daughter.
"I'm in, Mom!"
"Just hold on, baby." Sehera patted her on the head and then plopped into the cushioned synthleather seat beside her, snapping the three-point harness system around her.
"Thomas, are we all in?" Moore scrambled to the seat in front of his daughter that faced a control console and screen. He sat back into the chair and snapped in, while illuminating the screen with sensor data.
"We're in, sir! Go, go!"
"BIL! Close us up!" Moore shouted.
The iris door spun shut, and armor slammed into place around it. The passenger compartment tilted back up and over and locked into its normal position with a loud metal-to-metal reverberation that Alexander felt deep in his bones.
Abigail, expand the DTM for me. I want to see out past the parking lots and all the way to the interstate, Moore thought to his AIC.
Yes, sir. The virtual view in Moore's mind expanded out more than ten kilometers farther than where it had been. He could see the marine mecha overhead, careening about in combat with the flying robots of the park, and could tell that the combat zone ended somewhere just south of the Animal Kingdom and east of Typhoon Lagoon, near Interstate 4.
The Magic Kingdom appeared to be the northern border of the conflict zone. There were red dots on the ground marching north on World Drive by the hundreds. Epcot was o
ne big red blob. Epcot Center Drive, East Buena Vista Drive, and the Osceola Parkway were all solid red. There were blips of red scattered throughout the park's property between the actual theme parks and hotels. In short, they were surrounded and outnumbered and in the middle of some bad karma.
"BIL, go north!"
"Yes, Mr. President." The AI turned toward the castle and began skittering in that direction on eight legs for a few seconds, and then the hoverfield generators kicked in.
The mechanical spider's legs retracted just as the heel of the gigantosaurus crashed down nearly on top of them. BIL barely managed to evade the crushing reptilian foot by turning the vehicle up sideways and banking in a hard turn to the left. Although BIL had missed being crushed underfoot by a mechanical replica of the largest creature that ever walked the Earth, his maneuver flew him directly into the path of a similarly faux, twenty-meter-long, rapidly swinging reptilian tail of an apatosaurus.
"Holy shit! Look out, BIL!" Clay shouted.
The tail of the beast smashed into the armored limousine, rupturing and tearing bioplastic, metal, and synthskin from the AI dinosaur with a shower of sparks and fiber-optic cabling. The tail of the apatosaurus massed over two tons, and the impulse of the impact transferred energy into the mechanical spider like a baseball bat does to a baseball in a grand-slam swing. The limo massed several tons and held a lot of inertia itself to be overcome, but the hoverfields reduced the mass, and the hit sent BIL and his occupants careening across the amusement park, crashing right through the main spire of Cinderella's castle.
The heavily armored presidential limo passed through the façade like a laser scalpel through hot butter, at first leaving an almost cartoon-like hole in the shape of a spider behind. But the castle spire could not withstand the loss of structural integrity. Euler buckling under its own weight began, and the tower collapsed down upon itself into its very own footprint. The failing of the structure generated integrity loss in the rest of the castle façade, and the surrounding spires crashed and toppled like dominoes one after the other around the center. When the dust cleared, the icon of family entertainment that had stood for centuries was nothing more than a pile of rubble.
"Oh my God, BIL!" Dee cried out as the vehicle tumbled through the air out of control. "We're gonna die!"
"Not to worry, Miss Dee. Just hold on."
"You heard him, sweetheart. Hold on!" Alexander reiterated to his daughter, and white-knuckled the armrests of his own seat.
BIL, give me a status DTM, Moore thought to the AI.
Little if no damage, sir. BIL extended his legs to stabilize their trajectory and add lift to the vehicle. The extending legs absorbed some of the angular momentum of the wild spin, the way an ice skater slows down by extending their arms. The hoverfields kicked in at maximum, and he propelled himself as fast horizontally to the ground as he could. As they approached the ground, BIL used his legs as shock absorbers to supplement the hoverfield generators. Their inertia was greater than both combined could overcome, but the impact with the pavement just outside the north wall of the Magic Kingdom was far less than the armor and the SIFs could handle. Though I cannot fly, sir, I can indeed hover and bounce.
Good job, BIL. Now get us the hell out of here!
Yes, sir.
"Jawbone, Jawbone! Did you see that! We've got to stay on top of that vehicle and give him cover!" Heehaw ordered. He had just gone to eagle mode and was darting underneath the legs of the gigantosaurus as the presidential limo smashed through the castle. The FM-12 looked most like a fighter plane in eagle mode, but with legs and arms. The legs ended in three-toed claws, while the arms were human-like. The main gun was gripped firmly in the left, and Heehaw was hammering away directed energy blasts at the surrounding fairytale menaces.
"Roger that, Heehaw! I'm on them . . . fox three!" Jawbone responded as she closed in on a pteranodon with a mecha-to-mecha missile. The missile twisted across the morning sky around a flying carpet and hit home between the shoulder blades of the flying dinosaur. "Okay, Saw, pull out on me, and let's stay on top of that mechanical spider!"
"Roger that, Jaw! Guns guns guns," Saw replied.
Jawbone gripped the HOTAS stick with her right hand, diving the fighter-mode mecha through the engagement zone closer to the deck. She pulled back on the HOTAS with her left hand, cutting the power and allowing gravity to pull her through the dive. At the bottom of the gravity well and just before the no-return point, she slammed the HOTAS forward with her left hand and yanked back with her right. The mecha pulled up through the dive at full throttle near maximum speed for the vehicle at over two thousand kilometers per hour. Shock waves formed on her wingtips, tailfins, and nose, leaving four very loud sonic booms behind her. Saw pulled in supersonic formation behind and slightly to her port side. None of the amusement park hovercars could hold that type of velocity and were left far behind, and the mecha closed the gap on the presidential limousine in seconds.
"Okay, Saw, bleed it off!" she told her wingman as she cut the throttle. Then the Bitchin' Betty chimed at her just as the plane slowed and boomed through the sound barrier.
"Warning, warning. Anti-aircraft fire!"
"Oh shit, Jaw!" Saw's plane rocked its wings and then pitched over nose-first and dove.
"Goddamn it, Saw, don't dive into the fucking AA!"
James, burn that AA, wherever the hell it is! she thought to her AIC.
Got it!
Jawbone yawed and pitched her mecha over and accelerated out in front of her wingman into a wide, corkscrewing dive. The DEGs burned bright green blasts into the swamp surrounding the Bonnet Creek Golf Club and Resort. The back nine of the resort was quickly set ablaze from the energy bolts. Railgun fire continued to pulse upward from several small yachts on Bay Lake, and Jaw could tell that Saw finally went to guns. But it was too late for her rookie wingman. The SIFs of his mecha could no longer take the direct assault line that he was taking and gave in to the impact of the forty-millimeter railgun rounds. Where whoever owned those yachts managed to get forty-millimeter AA guns was a big question, but to Saw and Jawbone, it was a seriously moot fucking question.
The rounds pierced through the nose of the mecha first and then peppered the wings, ripping through the main spar. Several of the rounds passed through Saw's legs, completely separating his left leg at the hip joint and passing into the underside transfigure mechanisms of the mecha. His g-suit sealed off around the wound and immediately began pumping painkillers and adrenaline into his system, as his left leg fell bloody and limp against the pilot's couch. He bit down in pain on his mouthpiece, and the painkillers flooded his body and relieved the searing in his left side enough for him to remain coherent.
"Get out of there, Carl!" Jawbone screamed over the net.
"Aaarhh," Saw screamed to clear his head. Reaching up with his right hand and letting go of the HOTAS, he pulled at the eject handle. "Eject, eject, eject."
The canopy popped, throwing the lieutenant clear from the failing mecha. AA railguns continued to rip away at the craft, tearing through the armor because the structural integrity force fields had been depleted. The wings and the empennage tore free as rest of the mecha was reduced to debris, and then the power plant ruptured into an orange and white fireball. The force from the exploding mecha sent the ejection chair reeling. The autonomous thruster system kicked in and damped the ride, allowing the gliderchute to pop. By this time, the g-loading and the trauma to the young lieutenant junior grade was too much, and he lost consciousness as his chute drifted with the morning Florida winds.
"Goddamn bastards!" Delilah continued to corkscrew toward the lake, burning through two of the yachts to the water beneath them, which was apparent by the puffs of steam spreading out from around the sinking and exploding ship. Several more yachts continued fire, but Jawbone's mecha was too low and fast to get hit by the slow point and track algorithms of the AA cannons.
She tugged the HOTAS back to her stomach with her left hand and toggled the
bot mode with her right pinky. The transfiguration at her present speed stalled her, so she kicked down on the right upper foot pedal to add some rudder in order to slip her into the mode change easier. The fighter-mode mecha rolled and then pitched forward into a tumble that left the FM-12 standing upside down in bot mode. The DEGs continued to blast during the entire maneuver.
James, go auto on the cannons, I've got the DEG!
Roger that, ma'am.
The bot flipped upright with the forty-millimeter railgun cannons atop each shoulder of the FM-12 strike mecha, firing in rapid auto while holding the DEG like a rifle at the hip with the left mechanical hand. Blue-green energy bolts danced across the lake as the bot splashed into it. Water and steam spewed around each DEG blast. Just as the plane submersed completely underwater due to the momentum of its falling trajectory, Jawbone could see through the QM sensors that a blast of directed energy had hit home on a third yacht, causing it to explode violently.
Take that, you sorry motherfuckers.
Oorah! her AIC replied.
The mecha finally hit bottom several tens of meters deep and damned near sunk in the muck at the bottom. The bot bumped into an alligator, stirring it and likely scaring it out of its few reptilian wits. The three-and-half-meter-long, green and brown reptile bumped into the cockpit snout-first and stared right at Delilah and then turned and swam in a frightened hurry in the opposite direction from the mecha.
"You better swim away, you motherfucker," she grunted, and then chewed at her mouthpiece for a burst of air.
Jawbone kicked at the yaw pedal and worked the HOTAS until she was swimming, or more accurately, flying under the water. The QM sensors pinged the lake and painted red dots where the boats with AA cannons were located on the surface above her. At full throttle, she pushed her mecha upward through the bottom of one of the yacht's fibercomposite hulls, sweeping the DEG back and forth like a sling blade. She trashed and thrashed through the yacht, somersaulting upward at half throttle and then cutting the power at the peak of her arch, rolling backward, flipping over feet-down, and crashing through another yacht.
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