One Good Soldier (36 page)

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 fighting 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.

"Fox three!" Skinny shouted. Her bot-mode mecha overshot Deuce slightly, but intentionally. Deuce could see her bounce to the ground, running and flipping over enemy mecha, slamming down on the Arcadian tanks with her armored feet as she did so. Deuce was right behind her.

"Guns, guns, guns!" Deuce washed the line with her DEG, blasting a tank off the back of Warlord Nine. After firing her mammoth handheld DEG, she turned and rammed the mecha's left elbow through the cockpit of a tank behind her. The enemy tank grabbed at her, pulling her backward and almost off balance. With right pedal and manipulation of the armature controls, she rolled off the enemy tank and took her bot through a handspring over the top of it, then tucked into one of her trademark judo rolls. She followed through the roll by putting the elbow of the forearm of the mecha down first and then the back, buttocks, legs, and then back up to her feet, firing away with the shoulder-mounted auto-cannons. Her DEG in her left hand waved back and forth, looking for targets to either shoot or smack.

"Warning, enemy targeting system is acquiring lock. Warning . . ."

Still a little dizzy from her roll, Deuce used her DTM targeting system, focusing on the vehicle that was targeting her. It wasn't a vehicle at all, but instead a mobile AA and anti-tank turret firing away at her. She kicked at two of the pedals on her left side and yanked the stick, sending the bot spinning like a figure skater.

She couldn't get a lock with her DEG, and she was way too close for missiles. She decided to go with the DEG anyway. "Guns, guns, guns!"

The DEG directed a plasma burst of energy that tracked across the AA box, burning away one of the barrels of the cannons. The missing barrel caused the box to misfire and explode on itself, destroying the box.

"Where are you, Skinny?"

"I'm behind you, Deuce." Skinny shouted over the net, and Deuce spotted her on the right and behind her. "Look out, Warlord Three! You've got one on your three-nine line!"

Deuce launched herself in the air with a giant leap, and she kept her mind on that damned tank. She rolled over at the crux of her jump and slammed feet forward into the upper torso of the bot-mode tank like a martial artist doing an aerial double frontkick. The two mecha clanged together briefly, but Deuce's forward momentum sent the enemy tank flailing over backward and through a middle-aged fir tree. The tree snapped off at the base of the trunk. Warlord Three pounced just in time to pick up the tree and stab it through the cockpit of the Arcadian mecha. Pieces of fir tree flew everywhere and erupted into flame in a ball of smoke and ash.

"Thanks, Deuce!"

"Welcome, Three." Deuce continued forward and out of the way as Skinny came in behind her, settling up to her mecha back-to-back fashion. The two of them scanned for more targets. There were plenty. It was more of an issue of which one to go after first.

"Two o'clock, Deuce!" Skinny shouted and pounced away toward another bot-mode enemy tank, her auto-cannons firing off forty-millimeter rounds as she launched over it in a full throttle leap. She pitched forward over Deuce's head, firing her DEG from the hip into the tank's wingman before it even realized what had happened. But the shot wasn't a kill shot, and the enemy wingman turned on Skinny and started to raise his cannon to track her.

"I got it!" Jawbone butted in as she landed on top of the bot, squashing the torso to the point that metal reached its elastic limit and gave way. The knees of the enemy mecha faltered, and one of the Army tankheads put a round through the cockpit of the thing just to be sure.

"That's what I'm talking about!" Jawbone said through the grunts and growls that the g-load had forced her into. "Popstar, watch your four o'clock, girl! Guns, guns, guns!"

"Great work, Saviors. Let's keep it frosty!" Deuce shook her head to clear the spins. More radar warnings pinged at her, and she tossed an oak tree down that she had been wielding in her right hand as a club. Cannon tracers passed by her on the left, and then something pushed her over. She started to fight back until she realized it was a blue-force vehicle that hit her.

"Look out, Marine!" Warlord One rolled off of her and onto his back, firing upward at two enemy tanks leaping on top of them. "Fox three, fox three!" He let loose two missiles that hit home dead center on the two tanks. They blew apart from the torso, scattering mechanical arms and legs in every direction.

"Thanks, Warlord One." Deuce rolled over and searched for her wingman in her DTM. Then she settled down and located the rest of the Saviors as they scattered around the Warlords. They needed a plan that was a little less random.

"Anytime, jarhead."

"Saviors, we need to fan out in a half moon, covering our flanks and leaving the moon open behind us to the north. That way we can work away from the mansion, giving the AEMs some cushion. Warlords, feel free to jump in there and give us what cover you can!"

"Roger that, Saviors," Warlord One responded over the net. "Get down, Nine! Guns, guns, guns!"

Three enemy tanks in bot mode came crashing through the trees. Deuce hit her thrusters, launching into a backflip. As her bot twisted over the scrambling Warlords, she pointed her DEG in the general direction of the Arcadian tanks. Her directed energy plasma bursts ablated some of the armored hull of the tanks, and her auto-cannons poked holes where the DEG didn't get. One of the tanks was crippled. The other two took on some damage but weren't out of commission.

Auto-cannons, Bobby!
she ordered her AIC.

Got it!
The AIC tracked the enemy tank on her left, but it was having a hard time locking it up.

"I got the third one!" Popstar burned it down in a mad charge, firing her DEG.

Deuce pursued the remaining wounded one, which then turned on her and one of the Warlords. The enemy tank tried to go to its DEG and shoot from the hip, but the Warlord grabbed the end of the barrel and tried to yank it away, which led to a tug-of-war between the two mecha. Their struggle was enough for Deuce to get the upper hand. She managed to get the end of her DEG pointed into the cockpit of the enemy mecha, and then she pulled the trigger.

Great move, Deuce!