The Tau Ceti Agenda s-2

by Travis S. Taylor

  Boulder toggled to bot mode, spinning left then right to avoid the cannon fire from behind him. Burner had pushed on ahead after the lead Gnat, leaving him for the two on their six. Going to bot and then kicking the HOTAS in reverse was enough of a wild negative g-load that Jason regurgitated bile into his helmet. The organogel quickly started absorbing it, and the suit started pumping adrenaline and other stims into his system to compensate.

  One of the Gnats passed by his mecha and clipped Boulder's arm with its tail fin. The impact sent the bot-mode mecha spinning even wilder. His already-spinning head and churning stomach were aggravated by the blow. Jason stomped hard on his left upper pedal to slow the spin, and then he jammed the HOTAS against the forward stop, thrusting the mecha in a vector along an axis from toe to head, which happened to be horizontal with the planetoid's surface. He pulled the DEG sights into his mindview and shot from the hip at the two Gnats as they took positions on Burner's tail. The QMs locked on to the fighter that had clipped him, and Boulder squeezed the trigger.

  "Guns, guns, guns," he said. The sensors pinged a missile lock on the other, and Boulder was preparing to fire fox three when his Bitchin' Betty started bitching.

  "Warning, weapons lock. Warning, radar lock from enemy targeting system."

  "Fox three!" He fired only milliseconds before tracer rounds from a formation of Stingers that had been stalking him ripped through the torso of his mecha. "Oh, fuck!"

  The rounds continued to cut into his mecha, sending a leg of the bot exploding off into space. Then secondaries exploded from power systems being ruptured. Boulder quickly assessed his plane's health and realized it was a goner.

  Eject, eject, Jason! his AIC warned him.

  "Eject, eject, eject!" he shouted while pulling the handle. The mecha twisted against the exploding components, giving it a roll. The cockpit shot free from the upper torso of the mecha, and his couch was launched into space, groundward. Boulder grunted against the g- load of the ejection seat and tried to catch his breath. He managed to force his eyes to focus just in time to see the ground rush up at him at over a hundred meters per minute. He hit head first, snapping his spine and crushing his head almost instantly. The numbers game had beaten him. He had beaten the two Gnats that were on his tail, but three Stingers from out of the blue got to him before Burner could get back to help.

  HoundDog, prepare for impact in five, four, three, two, one.

  "Fuck!" HoundDog tensed his body as the ejection chair slammed across the ice-hard surface of the planetoid. He could feel the chair creaking as it rolled and tumbled to a stop, throwing up dust and ice particles behind him and leaving a wake floating gently in the light gravity, casting odd rainbows with each flash of light coming from the myriad violent blasts all around him.

  He quickly began unstrapping himself from his seat and pulling himself out of the multimillion-dollar g-seat. Several rounds of enemy fire stirred up dust and flung showers of splintered rock and metal around him. The splintered debris zinged against his armored g-suit. The g-suits were nowhere near as bulky and protective as an AEM's suit, but they did offer a downed marine some protection from the environment and minimal protection against shrapnel.

  "You'd better move your ass, marine!" a voice buzzed in his helmet as his AIC tuned him to the AEM tac-net. The blue dot that was associated with the voice popped in place about ten meters behind him, near a pile of girders and other metallic refuse from the facility's construction. The name with the blue dot said Second Lieutenant Paul James.

  HoundDog crawled behind his chair, keeping his body as low to the ground as he could, and then started digging out the HVAR and survival gear. There was an extra ammo case in the kit as well, and he snapped it to his waist harness and turned toward the blue dots nearest him. Out of the corner of his right eye, he caught a glimpse rushing toward him, and his mindview painted several red dots basically on top of him.

  Four enemy infantrymen pounced all around him, firing at the AEMs on the other side of the rubble pile. Only one of them was paying him any attention, and the type of attention he was paying, HoundDog didn't really enjoy. Railgun rounds splashed all around him and were tracking right for him. HoundDog rolled to his left over onto his back and then kicked his heels against the surface, tossing him upward into a backward handspring. As he rolled through the handspring, he gripped the HVAR in his left hand, firing freestyle into the enemy soldier. The low-gravity acrobatics had imparted a considerable amount of angular momentum to HoundDog, but he was a mecha pilot and understood the physics of his situation quite easily.

  HoundDog rolled himself into a tight ball to increase his spin rate which enabled him to hit the ground on the other side of his handspring, rolling like a ball. He tumbled through a couple of front rolls until he managed to turn upright and spring forward, using his momentum to slam into the back of one of the enemy troops charging the other marines. HoundDog was first to his feet, firing his rifle full- auto into the back of the soldier's head, and then he bounced with all his strength for the cover of the rubble pile.

  "Semper fi, marine!" Sergeant Flick Aldridge grabbed the downed pilot by the arm and dragged him over the pile of junk they were using for cover. "You injured, sir?"

  "No. I'm good." HoundDog rested with his back against the wall of the foxhole, holding on to his rifle with a deathgrip.

  "Samuels. Welcome to our little hellhole." Second Lieutenant James offered the pilot his right hand while firing his rifle over the edge of the redoubt with his left. Several other AEMs lined up along the edge of the refuse materials and nodded at HoundDog, but none of the marines took their eyes off the advancing line of enemy troops or their fingers off their triggers.

  An RPG hammered against the rim of the foxhole about twenty- five meters down the line, sending two AEMs flying backward across the planetoid's surface in a white and orange ball of expanding vapor. The explosion spread out in a sphere of hot gas but was mostly dissipated by the time it reached HoundDog.

  "We can't hold this position for long if we don't get backup," the sergeant shouted. Another wave of enemy troops bounced into the open toward them.

  "I'm not armored up like you guys, but I'm an extra gun," HoundDog offered. He rose up over the edge and fired several rounds. The targeting system in his rifle transmitted a yellow X in his DTM mindview that overlaid his vision. The X crossed the armored enemy troop several times, and each time, HoundDog let a burst of automatic railgun fire loose at him. After a few tries, the rounds tore through the armor of the soldier's chest plate, ripping out through his back. "Seein's how my mecha was blown all to hell, I've got nothing else to do, Sarge."

  "Oorah, sir," Aldridge replied.

  Chapter 21

  October 31, 2388 A.D.

  Orlando, Florida

  Saturday, 7:39 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

  The Starhawk pulled over the Hall of Presidents and hovered about twenty meters above the ground. Alexander picked Calvin Dean up in his arms and then jumped out. His jumpboots kicked the ground with a thud. He promptly set the cameraman beside him and drew his railgun. The Starhawk pulled quickly away from the amusement park's airspace.

  "You okay, Dean?" Moore asked through his open visor. Old AEM habits died hard.

  "Yes. Shit, that was a thrill!"

  "Well, start broadcasting and stay alert. If I tell you to take cover, you do it." Moore had not asked the reporter to come along with him. In fact, he had contacted ENN to get a live-feed hookup to his suit. But the crazy action reporter begged Moore to let him come along. Alexander had emphasized the danger, but that didn't seem to matter. And Dean and Gail Fehrer had been really good to Moore, so when the reporter had asked him to consider this "calling in his last favor," Moore had to accept. Well, he didn't have to, but he did anyway.

  Several AI presidents met them and led them to the interior of the Disney World exhibit. They were led down the hallway through the theater and into an employees only area behind the White House interior f
açade. By Abigail's estimate, the body count should be at over thirty by now, but at least now it would stop. Of course, Alexander wasn't really sure that the damned bots were going to let the civilians go once he had surrendered. He had an ace up his sleeve for that, he hoped.

  "Okay, Calvin. Stay back and out of the way and keep safe. And put this in your pocket and hold on to it." He handed the cameraman a small device about the size of a wristwatch without the band and then pushed him back away gently with his armored left hand. Presidents Garfield and Truman led them to a backroom past a line of dead bodies, all with what seemed to be head wounds from a railpistol. "Murdering . . ." He bit his tongue, realizing that what he was saying was going out across the country.

  "Alexander Moore." The AI Sienna Madira rose from a workbench when they turned into a shop room. The AI looked as much like the former great president as she did herself. The likeness startled Alexander at first.

  "Let the civilians go."

  "Not just yet." The AI held up a medical diagnostic tool and waved it in front of his face. "Very well. You are indeed Alexander Moore. Your persistence, perseverance, and tenacity are quite impressive."

  "I'm not here to impress you. Let the people go."

  Abigail, are you ready yet?

  Almost have it, sir. Keep her talking.

  Hurry the fuck up.

  Yes, sir.

  "I said, let them go." Moore held the muzzle of the HVAR against the bot's forehead. "Now!"

  "Of course. That was our bargain." The AI turned from Moore, paying no attention to the railgun in its face. "The prisoners are free to leave if they wish."

  Robot presidents released their grasp on several people who were next in line to be executed. Frightened beyond coherent thought, a handful of them weren't sure what to do. Moore was.

  "Run. Go now!" he shouted at them and amplified his voice with the suit's external speakers. That was enough to snap them out of their fear—at least enough for them to run. "Go to the exit on Main Street U.S.A."

  "Now you come with me," the AI president said.

  "Wait. Not until I know that every last human is clear of the parks."

  "There is no need for that, or time."

  "What do you mean, no time? I'm not budging until I know you have freed all of the hostages. I have all day." Calvin Dean remained quiet but kept his camera pointed at the two presidents, one an AI likeness and the other an inactive one in a marine armored e-suit.

  Abigail reported to Moore, I have the QM hopping frequencies that the AIs are using to control the bots. I can jam them whenever you are ready. Be advised that the AI will probably send the detonate signal as the jamming goes into place. As soon as they overcome the jamming, the bomb will go. Abigail had realized from the start that Ahmi must be using similar code as she did on Mars with the AI kitties. The AI used wireless QM-spread spectrum broadcasts to control the robots' control algorithms. There was no hardwire between them. This was a wireless hack, and Abigail had figured out how to jam it by finding the frequencies that the hack was using.

  The Tyler?

  It's ready when we are, sir.

  Good girl.

  "Follow me. We have to go."

  Now Abigail!

  Yes, sir.

  Abigail toggled the QM broad-spectrum transmitter in Moore's suit on. The spectrum had been tailored to the spectrum-hopping sequence that the AIs were using, and when it kicked on, the noise floor of the band went through the roof nonlinearly. The signal-to- noise level increased so much that the AIs lost wireless connectivity with the robots. Moore reached into his carry pack and dropped one of the transceivers on the ground, leaving a second one in his pack with him. He grabbed the Sienna Madira bot around the torso and opened a channel to the U.S.S. John Tyler, in hover orbit above them.

  "Mobile One to CO Tyler. Beam us up!"

  "CO Tyler. Copy that, Mobile One."

  "What the . . ." Calvin said as a bright white light snapped and crackled around them, sounding like frying bacon. A split second later, the three of them were standing inside a chamber that looked like the inside of a spaceship. There were AEMs standing with their weapons drawn, and a Navy captain was there just in front of them.

  "Welcome to the U.S.S. John Tyler, Mr. President." Captain Ronald Westerfield held out his hand. Moore shook it. Dean captured all of it on live feed to ENN.

  "Thank you, Captain. We only have a few seconds before this thing regains control of itself and detonates this bomb. I suggest we beam it out into space somewhere."

  "Right. Nav," he said, looking to no one in particular.

  "Nav here, sir."

  "Emergency jaunt to one hundred thousand kilometers."

  "Aye, sir."

  "Now, if y'all will just move aside from the teleporter pad, we'll take care of this thing," the captain said.

  October 31, 2388 AD

  Oort Cloud

  Saturday, 7:39 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

  "CO, CDC!"

  "Go, CDC," Captain Jefferson said. "What now?"

  "Sir, we're getting that same electromagnetic disturbance buildup near the rearward battle cruiser."

  "Understood." Jefferson knew there was nothing he could do about it but hoped that DeathRay had a plan, somehow. The Madira was dead. The engines had taken such a beating that it was going nowhere for a long time. The CHENG had managed to divert any new power to the forward SIFs and to the DEGs, but that was failing every other minute. And any minute now, that battle cruiser was about to teleport to Earthspace and destroy Luna City.

  "Captain, the Blair has tossed her load, and our fighters are all now in the mix. It's pretty even fighter-to-fighter, but with the battle cruisers and the hauler for support, that can't last long," the air boss said.

  "Ground isn't much better, sir. The line is a stalemate, for now."

  "All right, just hang in there people. We're just getting started." Captain Jefferson white-knuckled his chair in anger. There had to be something that could turn the tide.

  "Helmsman, keep that damned Seppy rust bucket between us and that mass driver no matter what it takes," Captain Walker ordered. The Blair continued to be hammered by the hualer and the battle cruisers. The enemy forces seemed to realize that the Madira was down for the count and were focusing on the Blair instead.

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Captain, the aft SIFs are at ten percent, and the forward deck SIFs are at nineteen percent. And they are dropping." The STO looked out the window at the giant Seppy ship just above them, firing at near point-blank range into the forward hull of the the supercarrier. The SIF fields rippled opalescent blue with each new hit. "I say we divert the DEGs to the SIFs and go to missiles and cannons only."

  "Too close for missiles, STO," the XO warned.

  "CHENG! Where is my goddamned jaunt drive?"

  "Still working it, Captain. There's just too much power drain from the SIFs. We might be able to manage one jump in a minute or two, but that would put us as dead as the Madira is."

  "Understood. That's better than sitting here getting the shit kicked out of us. Do it!" Fullback slapped her chair arm.

  "Captain." Bill took a sip from his coffee mug.

  "Yes, COB."

  "This reminds me of that time on Mars where we put all the SIFs forward and rammed a hauler. That worked out, sort of."

  "I seem to remember some serious casualties from that, Bill. Us included," Sharon replied.

  "Yes, ma'am. But that was a hauler. There are other smaller ships around here we could ram."

  "That's not a bad idea, COB," Commander Brasher replied from the XO's station. "We could ram through one of the battle cruisers and then jaunt free for a few minutes and make some repairs."

  "Shit." Sharon had never wanted to use another supercarrier as a battering ram as long as she lived, but Navy captains didn't always get what they wanted.

  The crackle and pop of the white light stopped and Robert's Robots, minus a few including the major, found themselves i
n an identical room as the one they had been in, which was filled with a giant mass driver system. But this room was full of people scurrying about operating the railgun. Most of them were extremely surprised by the sudden teleportation of a handful of Armored E-suit Marines.

  "Shit! Move, Robots!" Noonez shouted. His mask dropped in place about as automatically as his HVAR pulled up and started firing.

  "Look out, Pagoolas!" Sergeant Nicks pushed him to the ground behind a pallet lifter and then bounced behind one of the railgun bullets, all the while firing her rifle from the hip.

  "Get the fuck down or shoot, Bates!" Tommy stood his ground firing his rifle in full auto. Yellow Xs filled his visor and his mindview, and he swept his HVAR around, spitapping rounds at every one of them. The hypervelocity automatic railgun fire streamed across the room, leaving light purple fluorescent tracks in the atmosphere where the superfast pellets ionized air molecules in their paths.

  "Cover the exits, Suez!" the lieutenant shouted.

  "Got it, sir!" Tommy bounced his jumpboots against the floor, tossing him across the cavernous room to the double doorway on the other side, and landed on a fleeing man in a pair of gray coveralls. He kicked the doors at the center a little too hard, and they burst off their hinges flying across the anteroom into an elevator shaft opening at the other side. There was nobody there, so he turned with his back to the doorway and kept picking targets to take out.

  A few tens of seconds later and there were no Separatists kicking or screaming. The AEM unit had taken them all out. The Seppies hadn't expected a ground unit to infiltrate that deep into their facilities. Tommy ignored the carnage and went straight to work, looking over the big gun's instrument panels. Not that he was a rocket scientist. But a gun was a gun. And Tommy knew guns.

  "Where are we?" PFC Bates asked.

  "My guess would be the moon planetoid. That's where the computer said all the crew for the mass drivers had gone. They must've used that miniature version of the big teleporter like we just did. Wonder why they only have one crew for two guns?"