One Good Soldier

by Travis S. Taylor

  "Guns, guns, guns!"

  Enemy cannon fire from his other side knocked him to the ground. Mason tried to roll his mecha over onto all fours and then up. Then he caught a quick glimpse of four of the Robots bouncing with HVARs firing just over his head. Warboys could see that one of them was Colonel Roberts himself. The AEMs kept firing anti-tank rounds from their suits, mixed in with continuous HVAR fire. Warboys bear-crawled out of their way as best he could and then came up into a trot toward the tank to his right.

  The Robots and the odd-numbered Warlords had made it almost all the way up the river to the intersection of two other rivers in front of the governor's mansion before they had been discovered. Six tanks and a dozen AEMs had bounced underwater for nearly a half hour until they reached a dam that blocked their path. Their original plan had been to just lock through it, but they couldn't convince the AIC guarding the locks to cycle without a visual confirmation of a ship. No matter what they tried, they couldn't get the water level to fill the dam's lock so they could just swim through the dam. So the Robots had done what they do best. They crawled out of the water and took the fucking dam, which was a mixed blessing. Now they could cycle the lock, but there was no need because they had gotten in a shoot-out with a guard unit stationed to protect it. They alerted the other Arcadian National Guards that the AEMs were there, and then a squad of tanks and enemy infantry were on top of them in no time. There was no need to hide the Warlords at that point. Especially as Arcadian tanks started rushing the AEMs at the dam. The shit got thick very quickly, and the Warlords were getting pounded. They pounded back even harder.

  The AEMs dove for cover as a bot-mode enemy tank with a missing leg tumbled to the ground where Mason had been knocked down. First Sergeant McCandless rushed out from the other side of the downed enemy mecha and tossed a grenade into the shattered cockpit, then dove for cover as it exploded.

  "Thanks, Marines!" Warlord One said as he returned the favor and went to guns on the tank running for cover behind them. "Guns, guns, guns!"

  "Warlord One, Warlord One! Colonel Warboys, are you okay?" Warlord Five rushed to the side of his leader and turned his back to him, laying down more cover fire with his DEG to give Warboys time to regain his composure.

  "I'm all right, Five. We've got to get these AEMs to the mansion before those tanks ahead close us in! Let's keep moving north, Warlords. Faster! Let's move it! Let's pave the damn road."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Ramy! Get your AEM asses moving. If that squad of enemy tanks beats us to the front lawn, we'll be totally outnumbered and surrounded, and there ain't no way you're gonna get in there."

  "Roger that, Colonel, the Robots are moving!"

  Warlord One looked at the battlescape in his mindview and realized that the Warlords were not going to be able to outrun the enemy squad of tanks, but the AEMs might. It was a race through a closing gauntlet that they would just have to by God endure. The only thing he could do was to push against the enemy line as it closed around them, slowing them down enough to give the marines a chance. "Goddamn it, we have got to move! Lay fire on that enemy line, Warlords, with everything you have."

  "Oorah, Colonel."

  The AEMs spread out in front of the tank squad, bouncing in zigzags, firing their HVARs and anti-tank grenades as fast as they could manage. Warboys knew this was the last play of the game and the clock had run out on him. He had to push the marines through. The Army had to get the marines to the objective! Even if that meant that the Army was going to be surrounded and have to fight to their last breath once they got the AEMs where they needed to be.

  Goddamn that support from on high would go good about now! he thought.

  Roger that, Colonel. The air boss claims it is only seconds away, his AIC replied.

  Hope we last that fucking long!

  "First to fight for the right," Warboys started humming. And then he started singing to himself in a barely audible tone over his open tac-net tank channel. As his mecha's legs moved so fast they were a blur to the human eye, he pounded across the terrain, picking off targets with every bounce. "Guns, guns, guns!" he shouted. "And to build the nation's might, and the Army goes rolling along!"

  "Guns, guns, guns, motherfucker!" Three shouted as he fired at a tank in the closing line. The enemy tanks from the rear were crossing the river faster than water pouring from a bursting dam.

  Mason could see the tanks to the west going to bot mode to keep up with them, and the tanks to the north had beaten them. The enemy vehicles were in tank mode and firing DEG plasma bursts through the scattering AEMs and the six Army tanks. Mason pushed on as the railgun fire got thicker.

  "Proud of all we have done, fighting till the battle's won, and the Army goes rolling along!" He'd found his voice, and let out a full-throated roar. Twice he leapt over AEMs so as not to squish them under his mechanized feet, and each time he went to his DEG or his auto-cannons to take on an incoming anti-tank missile or another tank. He locked onto two tanks with his lidar and QMs and went to anti-tank missiles.

  "Fox three! Fox three!" The two missiles spiraled out through the air, leaving purple and white glowing ion trails in the twilight. The missiles crossed paths about seventy meters out and went in opposite directions into two different tanks. The tanks blew out at the turrets almost simultaneously. Then all the tankheads joined him.

  "Then it's Hi! Hi! Hey!"

  "Fox three!"

  "The Army's on its way . . ."

  "Guns, guns, guns! Goddamn, I'm hit!"

  "Count off the cadence loud and strong!"

  "Take that, you Seppy assholes!"

  "Warlord Seven is down, Colonel!"

  "For where'er we go,"

  They charged into the sea of enemy tanks.

  "Shit! Three, watch your ass!"

  "Guns, guns, guns! Five's hit!"

  "You will always know . . ."

  "Look out, One!"

  Mason could see the AEMs bouncing just ahead of them . . . and ahead of the closing enemy line to the north. The marines were only meters from the mansion. The Army had done its job.

  "Fox three!"

  As they were engulfed by enemy tanks, the remaining Warboys' Warlords bellowed, ". . . that the Army goes rolling along!"

  Chapter 27

  July 1, 2394 AD

  Ross 128, Arcadia

  Friday, 3:45 PM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

  "Break left, Goat! Climb, damnit, climb!" Lieutenant Colonel Caroline "Deuce" Leeland yanked the HOTAS left and back and clamped her teeth down on her mouthpiece, thirsting for that shot of stims to hit her system. The compression layer of her armored g-suit crushed against her at over nine gravities. Her grunts, muscle squeezes, breathing techniques, and rapid cussing were barely enough to keep her from tunneling out. She stomped both right pedals and spun her mecha around with a one-hundred-and-twenty-degree yaw, and then she added some pitch and roll that let her track across the bowl at the remaining Gnat. Her radar tracking X went from green to yellow then to red, and a tone sounded in her mind and in the cockpit. "Guns, guns, guns!"

  The DEG locked on, and a wash of blue-green directed energy ablated armored hull plating off the right wing section of the enemy fighter that was on her eight o'clock. As the hull ablated away, plasma burst out of the fighter and then flashed bright as if it hit something that burned hotter. Then the beam cut into the power system and the enemy plane burst open into a million pieces along its trajectory. Deuce didn't have time, and she didn't really give a shit, to look if the pilot ejected or not.

  "Warning, enemy targeting radar detected! Warning, enemy targeting radar detected!" The voice of her Bitchin' Betty rang through the cockpit.

  "Deuce, we've got to pull out of this climb or we're sitting ducks!" Goat warned her over the pilot's tac-net channel.

  Deuce's vision spun as she yawed back around into a dive, and then she killed the throttle briefly and stepped on the left upper pedal to yaw her around not so abruptly. Once her fighter was fa
cing downward, looking at the enemy supercarrier, she pushed the throttle all the way down. She held her line toward the ship as both AA fire and tracers from a bot-mode mecha on the hull of the ship continued to try and lock her and Goat up.

  "Shit! Watch the AA, Goat!" she grunted and tossed her mecha into a barrel roll over Goat's line. Bile rushed up her esophagus, and her stomach retched a bit, but she managed to force it down.

  "Warning, enemy targeting lock imminent. Warning, enemy targeting lock imminent!"

  "Look out, Deuce!" Popstar shouted as she and Jawbone strafed through the line of fire, but both of them missed the enemy bot. It did confuse the thing's radar briefly.

  "Fox three!" Goat shouted. His missile went wide of the bot but hit the AA box, knocking it out.

  "Shit! I'm locked up!" Deuce jinked and juked and did everything she could as she saw a missile fire out of the bot's torso missile tubes. "Fox three! Fox three!" she shouted as the unlocked missiles jumped out in front of her. She tracked the tailpipe of her own missiles with the upper and under forty-millimeter cannons. "Guns, guns, guns!"

  Her tracers tore through the ass-end of her mecha-to-mecha missiles just as the enemy's missile began spiraling up at her. Her two missiles exploded into a fireball, confusing the enemy missile, which lost lock and spun out of control through the plasma in front of her. Deuce rolled her fighter, and the enemy missile tumbled centimeters past her. She yawed herself one hundred and eighty degrees and tracked the tumbling missile with her cannons, blasting it out of the sky. She pitched back over to orient her nose back into the line of travel and was now cockpit-to-cockpit with Goat as they barrel-rolled around and around each other.

  "Guns, guns, guns!" Goat shouted. "Shit, Deuce, we're coming in too fast!"

  "Prepare for QMT in five, four, three, two, one," the air boss's AIC voice chimed in Deuce's mindvoice.

  "About fucking time!" Deuce killed her throttle and banked left and suddenly had a brief view of the inside of a ship and then was in very thin atmosphere about twenty kilometers directly above the Arcadian governor's mansion. Her blue-force tracker showed several other mecha all around her at safe distances, popping into space. Several were already at full throttle toward the engagement zone below. Then Goat spun into existence beside her with sparks flying from his mecha. From the looks of it, he had tried to go to bot mode and something had taken the left arm of his mecha off. His DEG gun was nowhere to be seen.

  "Shit! Look out, Deuce!" he shouted, but the air boss AIC had put him in at a safe distance. Unfortunately, it hadn't brought him in fast enough to prevent that Seppy fighter from getting him. His plane was out of commission.

  "Toggle to fighter, Goat!" she shouted at him. The bot rolled over and tucked its legs in and expanded its wings, spinning into a fighter-mode mecha. The thin atmosphere was enough for the control surfaces to kick in and dampen out his spin.

  "Shit! I've lost my DEG, and I've got systems going out everywhere!"

  Jawbone popped into space nearby, and then Popstar. Deuce started counting up the Utopian Saviors and sending them a signal to form up on her through DTM.

  Bobby, get the message to all the Saviors as they QMT in.

  Aye, ma'am.

  "Do you still have SIFs and propulsion?"

  "No SIFs, but I have propulsion."

  "Shit, you're out of the game, Goat. They should've teleported you out first!" Deuce said it before she could stop herself. Hell, she knew that "should'ves" never do anybody a damned bit of good. "All right, Goat, you can't go back to the Madira from here. So you need to find a safe place on the ground to hang out and see if you can stay out of trouble."

  "Damnit. Sorry, Deuce."

  About that time another FM-12 spun in out of control. It was Skinny's wingman, Captain Michael "HoundDog" Samuels. The FM-12 was in eagle mode in a three-dimensional spin, and his tail section was spewing plasma and his cockpit venting air and smoke.

  "I'm hit, I'm hit!" HoundDog screamed with real pain and fear in his voice. The right tailfin of his plane blew off and a fireball started to form. "Eject, eject, eject!"

  HoundDog's ejection seat cleared the fireball of his exploding mecha. The plasma and debris tossed his chair into a mad, freely falling whirl. In full gravity now, his seat started to plummet. When the sensor found enough air pressure, it would pop his chute. Unfortunately, he would land right in the middle of the fight below.

  "Hang on, HoundDog!" Deuce dove her fighter over and straight toward the ejection seat. She hit the mode toggle, pulling into eagle mode. As she pulled up into an even free fall with HoundDog, she backed off her throttle to match his speed precisely and then reached out with her right mecha hand and grabbed the chair gently. "I got you."

  "Goat, I've got a mission for you now!" Deuce arced back out of the free fall and leveled off. "Get HoundDog down and check on his wounds. Form up on me and take him. HoundDog, you with me?"

  "Barely. I caught something in my abdomen. My suit sealed it off, but I don't feel too good," Hounddog replied. She did a quick check on his vitals. They were stable enough. Deuce had seen a lot worse come out okay, if they got medical attention soon enough. She wasn't sure why the Madira hadn't QMTed him up to sickbay, unless the medi-AIC doing triage had a whole lot more wounded in worse shape than HoundDog. From the looks of the way things were going in space, Deuce was pretty sure that was the case.

  "I'm on you, Deuce. Ready for handoff in three, two, one, drop," Goat told her. Deuce let go of the chair, and it gently fell into Goat's remaining mecha hand. Then Skinny popped into space.

  "HoundDog, HoundDog, where are you?" Skinny shouted over the net.

  "I'm here, Major," he replied.

  "Shit, Marine, I thought I'd lost you," Skinny said. After a brief pause, she added, "You need to hit the immunoboost soon."

  "My suit is handling it."

  "All right, Saviors, listen up," said Deuce. "Several of the other squadrons are popping in and are starting to form up. We're all here minus Goat and HoundDog. Skinny, old girl, looks like you're with me."

  "It'll be just like old times, Deuce!"

  "Let's hit the deck and help out the tankheads. Use the DEGs as often as you like, but conserve the ammo on the cannons. Don't know about all of you, but my counter is getting pretty goddamned low. Blue-force tracker shows a small group of marines and tanks making a push to the governor's mansion. Let's help them A-S-fucking-A-P. Maximum velocity with maximum ferocity, Marines!"

  "Oorah!"

  Fish was glad as hell to get out of that space ball. It was too one-sided with Seppy Gnats and Stingers. They were every-fucking-where. Her squad had been whittled down to seven out of the initial ten. Those were very bad numbers for the Gods of War. Lieutenant Commander Penika "Hula" Moses was dead. Lieutenant Junior Grade Geoffrey "Fireball" Julias was out of commission with critical wounds. And Lieutenant Commander Charles "Stinky" Allen was barely managing to keep his plane in the air. He was also carrying Fireball's ejection chair with him.

  She could see in her DTM that the Saviors and the Dawgs had taken some casualties, too. The Dawgs had suffered the worst, losing half their squad.

  "Deuce, Deuce, this is Fish."

  "Go, Fish."

  "We're forming up, ready to help out. I see you're on the way down. We'll be right behind you."

  "Roger that, Fish. Looks like Poser is the senior of you squid pilots."

  "I heard that, Deuce!" Poser's voice chimed in. Fish could see her in the DTM, forming up near the Gods of War.

  "Take her cues, Fish," Deuce advised her.

  "Roger that, Deuce," Fish acknowledged.

  "Poser, Fish, we need to clear out the enemy line on the south side of the governor's mansion and hold it. And, Fish, the fight is on the ground there for now, but you need to be my eyes skyward."

  "Understood, Deuce." The FM-12s the Saviors flew were more suited to close-in fighting on the ground and other surfaces, like carrier hulls. The Ares-Ts were designed for top cover and fight
ing in open space, but that didn't mean that ace Navy aviators couldn't fight on the ground as well. That was the main reasoning for Navy procurement officials to decide on a new Ares model that could transfigure into bot mode.

  "Poser, you got the middle ground if we get Gomers. Otherwise, both of you take it to the surface dwellers." Deuce said. "We didn't do too good turning the tide up top, but we have to turn the tide down there."

  "Roger that."

  "See you in the shit. Deuce, out."

  "Demon Dawgs, Demon Dawgs, form up on the Gods of War! We are regrouping here," Poser announced.

  Fish and Poser went through the losses and started pairing off pilots with missing wingmen. They ended up splitting into six fighters in each group. Fish was still the designated squadron leader of the Gods of War, and Poser kept the Demon Dawgs.

  "Let's go shoot some tankheads," Poser ordered.

  "Roger that," Fish said. "Okay, Gods of War, here we go."

  "Look out, Warlord One!" Deuce dropped in first on the line, burning through three different tanks as she boomed overhead at treetop height. She passed the line at over nine hundred kilometers per hour causing the tall oaks to sway almost to the snapping point. "Guns, guns, guns!"

  "Holy hell, I'm glad to see you mecha jocks!" Warboys replied. The screaming fighters overhead were enough of a distraction to the enemy troops that the Warlords managed to take a breath, regroup, and fight their way back to their feet.

  "Fox three!" Deuce said as she rolled up into a long loop-over to bleed off some of her velocity. She hit the mode toggle as she came back around to the five o'clock position of her looping trajectory, going to bot mode. Skinny was right on her wing, following suit. The two mecha twisted and turned in midair like ballerinas.