"Watch what you say about my daddy!" Deanna kicked at the cameraman's shin with her jumpboots. Sehera had to hold her zealous daughter down or she might have hurt the poor bastard.
"Like father like daughter," Sehera explained to the big sergeant guarding them.
"I see." Sergeant Clay Jackson just thought this was the weirdest day he'd ever had as an armored e-suit Marine.
Lieutenant Colonel Mason Warboys and the Warlords were without their sensors and the view from inside an M3A17-T was somewhat obstructed, so the tank squad commander had ordered his troops to all go to bot-mode for better visuals. Warboys maintained a constant bombardment from his DEG into the Seppy drop tanks' line and went to the smaller but more rapidly aimable forty-millimeter gun on top of the DEG turret for in close and rapidly maneuvering targets. The forty-millimeter gun usually ran in anti-artillery and anti-missile mode, but with the sensors jammed they were not very effective on incoming ordnance. So, Warboys had put the guns to use manually under his DTM control. While in bot-mode the turret-mounted railgun looked like a half-dome head atop the bot's cockpit with the barrel sticking out for a nose.
"Shit! Guns, guns, guns!" He fired the main gun across the hillside at a rushing tank mode enemy vehicle. A bright blue-green pulse of energy separated the turret from the main body of the enemy tank. Running headlong at the exploding enemy mecha, Warboys jumped over the fireball and on top of the mecha's wingman, which was transfiguring to bot-mode. Warboys rammed the fist of his heavily armored tank into the transfiguring enemy vehicle and punched through to the inner workings of the linkage between the torso and the right arm. The force of his punch broke through the linkage system. Sparks and steaming black and red hydraulic fluids spewed from within it. Warboys grabbed at the arm from the enemy tank, ripped it free, and then jammed it through the cockpit, running it through the pilot and mecha.
"Colonel, on your six!" Warlord Seven burned a blue-green DEG bolt across the sky just behind Warboys, taking out a tank that had caught the lieutenant colonel unaware.
"Thanks, Seven. Damned Seppy jamming, we need our sensors!"
"You got that right, Warlord One."
"Warlord One, it looks like the Seppy bastards have figured out that their tanks are sitting ducks and are all going bot," Warlord Two noticed. "We gonna get that help anytime soon?"
"Just keep pounding at the fuckers relentlessly, Warlords! Whether we get help or not, we kill as many of these Seppy motherfuckers as we can until there ain't a one of us left. Got it? The U.S. Army Tank Command Warboys' Warlords don't need no goddamned gyrenes to bring hell!" Warboys had to go to guns and fired blindly behind him as he ran and leapt toward an outcropping for cover.
"Hooah! Colonel!"
"One, you've got two on you trying to get you in a crossfire!" Warlord Six saw the two Seppy tanks trying to sandwich their leader and trap him at the edge of the gorge, leaving him with no place to go but Hell.
"Shit!" Warboys continued to fire the forty-millimeter behind him blindly. Without sensors all he could do was shoot and hope for a hit. He scanned to his right and caught a glimpse of the mecha glinting in the Martian sunlight as it slowly dropped behind the mountain. So Warlord One turned his gun toward the general direction of the glint and fired.
"Guns, guns, guns!"
Enemy cannon fire from his other side knocked him to the ground. As Warboys tried to roll the mecha over onto all fours and then up he caught a quick glimpse of two armored e-suit Marines and two civilians with HVARs firing just over his head. They dove for cover as a bot with a missing leg tumbled over the colonel's tank and on top of them. The Seppy drop tank fell only a couple of meters on the other side of Warlord One. The lava rock gave the AEMs and civilians just enough cover to keep from being squished. One of the Marines, a private, rushed out from under the mecha and tossed a grenade into the cockpit and then dove for cover as it exploded.
Warboys pushed himself up to his mechanized feet and strode back over the dead enemy bot and backed away from the gorge. With a quick shake of his head, a deep breath, and a fast prayer, Warlord One turned back across the Martian battlefield to find more anti-American Separatist motherfuckers to send home to Jesus.
"Warlord One, Warlord One! Colonel Warboys, are you okay?" Warlord Two rushed to the side of his leader and turned his back to him, laying down more cover fire with his DEG giving Warboys time to regain his composure.
"I'm all right, Two," Warboys replied. "We've got AEMs and civvies back there. Let's push away from them! And see if we can't clear out an extraction LZ."
"Yes sir."
The tank mecha squadron was holding their own but they were extremely outnumbered and would soon be overwhelmed. But Warboys had a plan. Actually, it was Burner's plan but it was working well so far. And, goddamnit all to hell, even a jarhead like Burner did have a good idea every now and then. As long as his tanks could last long enough to bait the Seppy mecha into the trap.
"Warlord Five, watch your six. There's two drop tanks about to crawl up your ass!" Warlord Four warned his wingman.
"Now, Warboys?" The commander of the Marine FM-12 squadron beckoned. His Marines were ready to go to work and their trigger fingers were way past itchy.
"Not yet, Burner! Not yet!" Warboys scanned across the Martian landscape and noted that the majority of the tanks hadn't engaged them just yet. They had thirty or forty continuously engaging them but there were hundreds of them taking up position on the hill. Warboys, and his AIC, ran scenarios in his mind trying to figure out how to bring the enemy tank mecha closer in so the Killers could rise up and surprise the living shit out of them. He did have an idea. A dangerous idea. A courageous idea.
"Warlords, form up on me and we're going to rush the Seppy line!"
"Yes sir!"
"Hooah, sir!"
"Burner, get your gyrene ass ready!"
"DeathRay, I know it's hot. But we've got word that the senator's family including a little girl is in the LZ," Vulcan argued with the Ares pilot.
"It's too goddamned hot, Vulcan. I repeat. Too. Goddamned. Hot! No, and that is an order." DeathRay yanked the HOTAS left and rolled sideways to let a Gomer's missile flare by just beyond his cockpit.
That was fuckin' close.
Too close. If Jack went, Candis went with him and she didn't want to die any more than her human counterpart did.
"What's that sir? I can't hear you. You're breaking up a bit! DeathRay, I'm sending in an evac now!" Vulcan replied.
"Shit!"
"Angels, anybody want to volunteer to rescue a little girl from a firefight?" Lieutenant Junior Grade Seri "Vulcan" Cobbs asked over the rescue-net.
"Vulcan. Yo-yo. Angel Seven will go if somebody'll take our wing!" Ensign Bobby "Yo-yo" Jones replied.
"Ok, Yo-yo. You're on my wing. Let's get on the deck and stay fast and stay low," Vulcan ordered. Vulcan turned to look back at her gunner, Flight Gunner Petty Officer Third Class Sammy Jo Tapscott. "FG3 get ready to start laying down fire."
"Yes, ma'am!"
The two SH-102 Starhawks pulled away from the rest of the Angels' orbit and went to maximum descent toward the red planet beneath them. Vulcan brought the search and rescue vehicle to the edge of its flight envelope and continued to push the throttle forward. The two ships slammed through the Martian atmosphere, heating up the noses of the boxy rescue vehicles from aerodynamic friction. Klaxons and the "Bitching Betty" started blaring through the cabin.
"Warning. Approaching maximum g-load limit. Warning. Enemy targeting systems detected. Warning. Surface collision threat. Warning . . . " the "Bitching Betty" announced.
"The deck is coming up fast, Yo-yo. We'll flatten out and full-throttle to the evac," Vulcan ordered.
"Right behind you, ma'am." Yo-yo gritted his teeth and hoped his gunner was strapped in. Otherwise, he was having a shitty day. And from the threat alarms sounding in the cabin, it was about to get worse.
"DeathRay, DeathRay. Vulcan."
"Go Vulcan."
>
"If you can give us cover that would be nice. We're slamming air and about to make a run at the evac!"
"You sure about that, Vulcan?!"
"Roger that, sir! You can court-martial me if we survive."
"Good luck, we will plow the row a little for you." Goddamn Vulcan, he thought.
Senator! Fleet Angels Search and Rescue dropping in from orbit in thirty seconds! Abigail informed her counterpart.
About goddamned time!
"Second Lieutenant Washington!" Moore said over the QM almost at a scream to sound over the HVAR spitap spitaps, fighters careening overhead, and the mecha explosions and collisions.
"Yes, Senator?"
"My AIC has confirmed two SARs vehicles incoming. Can you spread the word to the tanks to give them cover?"
"There!" Joanie Hassed pointed out the two dust trails streaking across the edge of the escarpment.
Senator! I've got the AI Kitty information from BIL.
And?
The AIK is a wireless AI that rides the Kitty robot and controls it through the wireless.
So?
Don't you see, sir . . .
At that moment a missile flared across the overhead and detonated not far from the other foxhole where his wife and daughter were. It was followed by enemy cannon fire and other missiles tracking onto the incoming evac ships. The SH-102 Starhawks yanked and banked as best they could and returned fire but it was too hot for them to attempt any type of landing. Cannon fire flared against the boxy Starhawks with splashes of metal sparks and fiery red plasma venting away as parts of the metal hull plates vaporized.
Over the side, Abigail! Tell the SARs to go over the side of the escarpment now!
Yes sir! I understand sir!
Warboys had pounded into the middle of the largest steady mass of Seppy drop mecha leading his Warlords into the valley of death. They were bringing more than they were receiving. Once they had fully engaged the enemy tanks in the full frontal attack it had thrown the Seppies off guard, briefly. The initial insertion through the line allowed them to do a lot of damage but as the enemy regained their composure it was quite clear that the Warlords were outnumbered with odds they could not overcome.
"Warlord Three is gone! Warlord Three is gone!" Warlord Seven cried over the tac-net.
"I'm hit! I'm hit!" Warlord Four spun over backward onto its back with a gaping hole in the right side of the mecha's torso. The cockpit vented atmosphere into the low pressure outside and the DTM interface inside the cockpit was blinking in and out. Viewscreens on the HUD went dark as electronics spewed sparks and began to smolder and then flame dully in the light Martian atmosphere. Warlord Four, Captain Salma Rodriguez, looked down at the gaping hole in her e-suit that ran from her abdomen to where her left leg and pelvis used to be as she bled out and coughed blood into her visor. "Oh Jesus . . . cough . . . oh fuck."
Vallery . . . self-destruct authorization as the Seppy motherfuckers overrun us, Warlord Four ordered her AIC.
It was an honor, Captain. I'll maximize the damage to them.
You too, Lieutenant. You were . . . a good friend.
Thank you, Salma. Are you sure you wish to self-destruct, yes or no?
Yes.
"Oh Jesus!"
"Warlord Four bought the farm! Shit! Guns, guns, guns! Lay some cover back here!" Warlord Two shouted as an exploding missile tossed him forward, nearly throwing him off balance. Warlord Two spun his mecha around just in time to go face-to-face with a botmode drop tank. He instinctively head-butted the mecha and pushed it backward with his right hand while at the same time sweeping its large mechanical legs with mechanized martial artistic brilliance. Warlord Two stomped through the Seppy drop tank's cockpit with a half ton mechanical foot before the poor enemy bastard had time to respond to being thrown.
"Retreat, Warlords! Retreat to the escarpment and scatter. Lay rearward cannon fire as fast as you can." Warboys did a backwards flip just escaping the grasp of an enemy mecha. He rotated his cannon rearward and blasted it as he ran away. His DEG at the hip cleared a path for his squad. Warboys ran serpentine through the enemy mecha firing his cannon and his DEG and when that wasn't enough, going hand-to-hand with the enemy mecha, ripping at them with the giant mechanized hands and feet of his vehicle.
"Fish, give those tankheads some cover on the north side! Demonchild, see if you and Hula and Stinky can't cover those Angels!" DeathRay dropped almost below ten meters from the deck to strafe the enemy drop tank lines, trying to draw some of the fire from the Warlords and to distract them from the evac ships. "Fox three!"
" . . . guns! Scratch four!" Fish exclaimed.
The problem with drawing fire was always that it meant you were trying to get more people to shoot at you. And at the moment there were plenty of Seppy Stingers and Gnats swarming and buzzing the sky trying to kill the Gods of War so that they didn't also need a bunch of surface dwellers pounding away at them too. But Warboys was in a fix! One of the downed M3A17s had just self-detonated, taking out several of the surrounding Seppies with suicidal efficiency, but that was just a sign that things were going to shit fast for the tankheads.
"Guns, guns, guns." Jack sprayed the DEG, again disrupting the tanks that were about to engulf Warboys. But the Warlords weren't giving up without some serious fighting. And the Gods of War were going to help out as best as they damned well could.
"Warlords, move!" Warboys fought like a madman to keep the tide of Seppy tanks off his Warlords but he couldn't retreat and fight efficiently without his sensors.
"Sir, on your left!"
"Look out, Warlord Two!"
"Fuckin' Seppy motherfuckers!" Warlord Two screamed. "Fuck you! Fox three! Goddamnit all to hell. Guns, guns, guns!"
"There's just too goddamned many of them, One!"
"Well, Burner I guess now's a good a time as any!" Warboys finally called his pal for help and the trap was sprung. Warboys just hoped that the surprise and the superior fire power of the Marine FM-12s would be enough to overcome the extreme numbers of the enemy.
"Now Reyez! Sehera! Go now! Go! Go! Go!" Major Moore stood up, firing the Seppy HVAR full auto to lay down cover at any enemy motherfucker that looked crossways at his little girl. He bounced and zigged and zagged across the lava stones, actually charging the oncoming rush of Separatist mecha. One unarmored retired Marine in a civilian e-suit with a commandeered Seppy HVAR that was running low on ammo charged an oncoming wall of enemy armored mecha. And for the moment he was a force to be reckoned with.
"Kootie, on your right!" Washington yelled over the QM. "Sergeant, give those civilians cover as hot as you can! Kootie, grenades!"
"Hold on, Dee! We're going for a ride!" Reyez Jones hugged the little girl to him and bounced out of the foxhole toward the edge of the cliff, never looking back. Sehera bounced in right behind him.
"Go go!" Sehera screamed.
"Keep the video going!" Gail Fehrer yelled over the sounds of the battle at her cameraman. "This is incredible!"
"Yeah, if it don't get us fuckin' killed!" Calvin replied from behind the AEMs in the foxhole.
"Roger that, Lieutenant!" Clay stood firing his railgun full auto and popping out the grenades from the underbarrel launcher as fast as he could action the slide. "You heard the lieutenant, Shelly!"
"Oorah, motherfuckers!" Shelly bounced up out from the foxhole over the ancient lava rock outcropping and rushed in to meet the senator. She was better armored and armed and could lay down more serious damage. The sergeant fell in behind them, pouring out grenade after grenade into the oncoming barrage of enemy tank mecha. The Warlords crested the ridgeline battered and bloodied and fighting hard as hell!
Reyez bounced one bounce away from the edge of the escarpment and tapped the ready switch on the gliderchute that he'd been packing since morning. He hoped that the little girl's mother remembered how to operate the chute system. With that thought he took a millisecond to look over his shoulder to check on Sehera. She bounced down beside hi
m almost at the same instant, running as hard as she could. Reyez might have been startled if he hadn't already been scared out of his mind.
"Come on!" she screamed at the man carrying her daughter and activated her gliderchute pack like a pro. Just as they crested the edge of the escarpment they bounced their jumpboots as hard as they could and the ground disappeared beneath them for at least a half a kilometer or more as they began to fall out of sight over the edge. Then a swarm of FM-12 strike mecha rose up around them.
"Shit!" Reyez had to roll his body sideways to avoid hitting the wing of one of the fighter planes. Anybody other than a base-jumping expert like Reyez would have probably hit the wing of the plane and been dead. As he rolled his body and arched his back he stared eye-to-eye with the mecha's pilot, who seemed just as surprised as he was. Reyez was so close he could read Lieutenant Jason "Boulder" Cordova underneath the fighter's cockpit. He pulled Deanna closer to him and it took him a second or two to stabilize his fall, but he wasn't concerned at all, for this was what Reyez did for a living!
"Wait on the chute, Sehera!" Reyez was now in his element. "Wait!" He held on to the little girl with both hands as hard as he could, squeezing her to him. He reached down and grabbed his belt carabiner and snapped it onto the little girl's e-suit harness.
The floor of the cliff began to loom upward at them. They had fallen well below the edge of the escarpment by hundreds of meters and were picking up speed. Even though the Martian gravity was only thirty-eight percent of that on Earth, just under four meters per second per second of acceleration was pretty appreciable and there was much less air friction to slow down their descent.
"Now!" Reyez shouted. He waited for Sehera's chute to open so that she would be a second or two above them and then he pulled his cord. The chute opened and jerked them to a slow drifting fall. Deanna squeezed the adrenaline junky hard to her.
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