Trail of Evil - eARC (10 page)

“Well, it won’t be long before they tear off the hatch I dogged down just a quarter of a kilometer behind us,” Gunny Suez replied.

“Maybe they won’t think of heading us off,” Davy added.

“You knew that was stupid when you said it, right?” Dee retorted.

“Attention! Deanna! Deanna Moore! Can you hear me?” buzzed over the intercom speakers.

“Uh, yes? Abigail is that you?”

“Yes. Hold for your father—”

“Dee! Where are you?” Alexander Moore’s voice came over the intercom.

“Daddy, uh, sir, Gunny Suez, Lieutenant Rackman, and I are in the lowermost and outermost corridor by the DEG conduits. We are about a klick from the midcorridor hatch.” Dee said between heavy breathes as she ran. “We think we’re surrounded by bots.”

“Are you armed or armored?”

“Gunny is in his suit and getting low on ammo. Rackman and I are not armored but we have blasters.”

“Understood. Shit, Dee, you move fast. You get to that hatch. You hear me! You get to that hatch. I’m coming! Gunny, you keep them fucking bots off my little girl!”

The intercom buzzed and went to static and then silent.

“Shit, they cut the intercom.” Rackman said.

“Let’s keep moving to that hatch,” Gunny Suez said.

Behind them came the screech of metal tearing away and then slamming to the deck. The hull reverberated with the sound of buzzsaws scratching against metal.

“We’re not going to make it. We need to find a way to hole up and fight these things off until help arrives.”

“My thoughts exactly, Captain Moore,” Suez replied.

Dee started looking around for some niche or something to hide in but the corridor was fairly straightforward with nothing but the occasional I-beam and conduit tube running here or there. Then a few meters up was another engineering cubby like the one that she and Davy had used as their campground. It wasn’t quite as big—it looked as if it was there to allow techs to get in behind the DEG power grid and conduct some sort of maintenance on it.

“Here,” Davy pointed. “We get in here behind the conduits and hold them off. At least this way they can only come at us from the front.”

“Good. It’ll have to do.” Dee said. She dropped to her belly and crawled under the large meter in diameter tubes into the cubbyhole. The niche was about two meters wide and ran a good five meters from floor to ceiling. Davy jumped up on top of the metal conduits and dropped in beside her.

“You shoot high and I’ll shoot low.” he told her.

“Sirs,” Gunny Suez turned to them, “I’ll stay out here and fight them off of you. If you two would be so kind as to keeping them off me as best you can, we might be able to hold out until backup gets here.”

“Right. Thanks, Gunny.” Dee looked at the Marine’s face through his visor. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She knew what she was thinking. She was thinking she was scared and vulnerable as hell.

The screeching and squealing grew louder.

“Here they come!”

Chapter 14

November 7, 2406 AD

27 Light-years from the Sol System

Monday, 5:11 PM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

“Alexander, do you hear that?” Sehera asked over the tac-net. So far it wasn’t jammed—at least in the hundred meters or so between them.

“Yes. There’s a fight up ahead, it sounds like,” Alexander replied. “Stay back until I see what it is.”

Two levels up from where Dee was, Alexander turned the main corridor into the central hangar bay to a sight he wasn’t expecting. The bay was full of bots, and tanks in bot mode were stomping around the hangar crashing into them and fighting them hand to hand.

Abby?

Comms are working, sir,
the AIC replied.

“Warlord One, copy?” Alexander said.

“General Moore?” Warboys’ voice came through. “Sir, I’ve got you on blue force tracker. You shouldn’t be in here.”

“Mason. My daughter is pinned down two decks below and forward about a klick. She has no armor and only a blaster. We have to get to her.” He replied.

“Uh, yes sir. Understood. Hold one—let me find a route,” Warboys responded. Alexander targeted a path across to the tank squad commander and bounced toward him taking out several bots with his HVAR, fists, and his boots along the way.

“These damned things are no match for tank armor, sir. But, we can’t move through the ship only in certain places,” Warboys explained. “We’re just too big.”

“Understood. Make a hole. We’ll fix the ship later.” Moore ordered.

“My thoughts exactly, General.” Warboys agreed. “You might want to cover your ears.”

Just as Alexander landed on the giant mechanized right shoulder of Warlord One’s bot-mode hovertank, the main cannon spun around and aimed at the deck. A large purple plasma ball flung from the muzzle recoiling the gun nearly a meter. The tank barely moved but the blast wave almost tore Moore loose. He managed to grab hold and stay on the tank.

Sparks flew and molten metal sprayed in every direction. As the smoke cleared Alexander could see a hole in the deck of the ship that was big enough for a tank to drop through, which they promptly did. He heard a deafening metal on metal clank as they landed on the deck below. The bot mode tank had dropped twenty meters to the deck of the next level slamming hard enough into the plating to leave huge indentions with its feet.

“Warlords Two and Four cover this exit and don’t let any bots get through it. I don’t want them coming up behind me and biting me on the ass!” Warboys ordered to his team.

“My wife is not far behind me, please see to her safety,” Moore added.

“Understood, sir,” Warlords Two and Four replied.

“We need to move outward as best we can before we drop down to the next level. Shit!” Warboys said.

“What is it?” Alexander asked.

“I just lost all sensors. The bots are jamming me. We’re flying blind now.” Warboys said.

Alexander looked at the corridor. There was only one hallway large enough for a tank in any mode and it was behind them, in the wrong direction. The bay they had dropped to was the maintenance bay. There were several fighters and tanks and suits scattered about in work stations.

“Mason, we have to get down there fast as we can.”

“Well, sir, without sensors it is difficult to know what we can safely knock out of the way and what we can’t.” Mason had a point.

Abigail, search schematics of the ship and find me the route for knocking out a path to Dee.
If you need to get the CHENG online do it.

Sorry, sir, but there isn’t a safe path from here. The main directed energy gun power systems run through this section of the ship. I wouldn’t recommend it. Too bad we can’t get to the outside of the ship.

What do you mean?

There is only one level of vacuum hull between Dee and the outside as best I can pinpoint her location. And there is only one return power tube on the outer wall of the corridor they are in.

Shit! I’ll go on foot from here then.
Moore jumped down from the tank landing on the deckplate at full sprint.

“Thanks for the lift, Mason. Get back to your team.” he ordered.

“Sure you don’t want me to come with you, sir?” Warboys asked.

“No, go back and get my wife and keep her safe.”

“Yes, sir.”

Outside, sir! We could get a tank to Dee from the outside,
Abigail said in his mindvoice.

How long would it take to get a tank out there?
Moore turned down a dark hallway that was man-sized and looked for a down ladder to get to the next level below.

Too long,
Abigail replied.
Too bad we don’t have tank patrols on the outside of the ship.

That’s it! We do have mecha out there!
Moore recalled seeing the FM-12s from his viewport only moments earlier.

Of course, sir! I have a channel open now. For whatever reason the bots aren’t jamming the exterior.

Because we killed all the ones outside the ship!

“Lieutenant Colonel Strong! Jawbone! Jawbone! This is General Moore, do you copy?”

“Sir? Jawbone here. I copy.”

“Col, Dee is being overrun by enemy bots at the location my AIC is transferring to you now. She and another soldier are not in e-suits and I’m not sure I will make it to them in time.” Moore rushed through a tactic in his head. “Get there now! Bust through the hull and into the outer pressure corridor. As it depressurizes you will have seconds to grab her and Lieutenant Rackman before the vacuum gets them. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir! The Maniacs are on it,” Jawbone replied.

* * *

Joe Buckley Jr. had no idea how the bots were jamming the sensors from the front end of the ship, but what he did know was that the air handlers, power conduits, and cooling tubes were all functioning the way they should. What he also knew was that there were power fluctuations in the hyperdrive core that were emanating from somewhere outside the control systems in engineering. The damned bots were fucking with his engine and he didn’t like it.

“Benjamin! Did you see the fluctuations in the subspace field generators?” Buckley asked his second in command. His mind was swimming with charts, graphs, and hyper relativistic quantum membrane calculations. Commander Keri Benjamin had been with his crew for over a decade and she understood the
Madira
about as well as Joe did. She’d probably say even better.

“Roger that, Joe. Whatever the bots are doing to us in the forward end of the ship is creating the standing wave in the power conduits. It looks like it is coming from near the forward and starboard DEG batteries.” Benjamin tapped away at her control panel and made several blank face expressions and stared off into space as if she were conversing with her AIC.

“Get me a damned fire crew up there and a tech!” Joe ordered. If that standing wave continued to build up there was no telling what type of damage that would do to the hyperdrive conduit projector. If that thing went out the ship would be stuck in deep space for a very long time. They could always just snap back individually to Earth but Joe didn’t like the idea of leaving his first love abandoned in space.

“Roger that, Joe. Got a team on the way. Be advised that there is heavy fighting between here and there and it looks like the General is in the middle of it.” Benjamin replied.

Debbie,
he thought to his AIC.
See if you can get in touch with the General’s AIC and see what is going on.

She’s already in contact with me, Joe.

And?
Joe asked in his mindvoice.

It looks like the bots have overrun the outer hull corridor nearest the vacuum bulkhead under the DEGs. And, his daughter is stuck there unarmored. He is attempting to rescue her and others.

How?

He has ordered the Maniacs to attack that area of the ship and break her out from the outside in.

Shit! Cut the SIFs! If they start pounding on the hull there with the structural integrity field generators running they’ll start pulling power on the conduit. And that could drive up the rogue standing wave!
Joe thought for a second. If that standing wave drew more power to that end of the ship it could create a positive feedback loop that would go unchecked. It would be like throwing a chain across the leads of a high voltage transformer. An infinite current draw would be created and since the power supply couldn’t supply an infinite amount of current something would give, explosively!

“Keri, we’re shutting down the SIFs throughout the ship!” Joe ordered. “Find the spot where that damned power fluctuation is coming from!”

“Joe, with the SIFs down, the
Madira
will be vulnerable.” Benjamin replied.

“Vulnerable to what? The damned bots are on the inside of the ship!”

Delilah rolled the FM-12 over into a straight vector for the coordinates that Moore’s AIC had given her. She hated attacking her own ship but she also didn’t want to see anything happen to the general’s daughter. Jawbone had met the first daughter after the Disney World incident during the Separatist War. Dee was only a little girl then. Since then, Dee had become a good soldier and a good pilot and over the years had become a good friend.

James,
she thought to her AIC.
See if you can get in touch with Dee.

No luck so far.

Keep at it.

“Alright maniacs I want Popstar and Jango, Stick and Freebird in eagle-mode ready to catch the soldiers if they fly out. I want Backlash and Barron in fighter-mode to cover them on the top side of the bowl. We’ll only have seconds to get them inside a cockpit once they are blown out.” Jawbone thought through how she was going to handle this. “Coffee, Blue and PotRoast, you stay on my side and let’s go to bot-mode and rip and tear!”

“Roger that, Jaw. Rip and tear!” Lieutenant Sara “Coffee” Ames replied.

“Affirmative,” Captain Yariv “Blue” Sandeep replied.

“Oorah!” Blue’s wingman 2nd Lieutenant Kathy “PotRoast” James added.

Delilah could see the hull of the ship coming up fast. Very fast. She toggled the fighter into bot-mode and rolled over feet first, firing her thrusters at max. The mecha slammed into the hull plating of the ship leaving mecha sized footprint impressions in the metal and throwing up blue plasma venting from the foot thrusters.

Jawbone made a quick mental check that her wingman was following suit in her DTM battlescape view. Coffee was on her wing and Blue and PotRoast was right behind her.

With a large armored metal fist she pounded into the hull of the supercarrier until a seam at a hatchway begun to tear free. Delilah pulled her DEG up and blasted the remaining seam welds and fasteners free. Coffee did the same. After several seconds of pounding and blasting an outer hull plate started to give way.

“Coffee, grab this side over here. Blue, get on the bottom side there.” Jawbone pointed a huge mecha finger at the plate. She then placed herself in position to get the best leverage she could on the multi-ton piece of metal plating and then gripped it with her mecha hands. Coffee and Blue did the same. “On three.”

“Roger that, Jaw.”

“One, two, three!” The three FM-12 bot-mode fighters heaved with all their mechanical might until the huge armor plating of the supercarrier screeched and groaned free. The mecha pilots continued to bend the plating upward and over until a large enough hole to pass through was created.

“Alright, come on. Blue, stay out here with your wingman and see if you can’t make this hole a little bigger.” Jawbone and Coffee dropped into place in the large vacuum bulkhead. Dee would be just on the other side of the hull plating just beneath them.

“You heard the boss, PotRoast,” Blue said over the net. “Let’s make this hole bigger.”

“Davy! Your right!” Dee shouted over the M-blaster fire. Just in front of them the top sergeant was flailing madly at an onrushing flood of bots. The AEM had long since run out of ammo and was wielding his HVAR like a club. Dee did her best to help keep the bots off the Marine but it was only a matter of time. The blaster would knock the bots down but it took two and sometimes three shots to completely disable them.

“There’s just too goddamned many of them, Dee!” Rackman said. “We need a better plan—ahhhh shit!”

Rackman screamed as the spinning saw from one of the bots Dee blasted sliced across his left shoulder leaving a huge gash. Bright red blood immediately began to pour profusely from the wound.

“Shit!.” Dee fired nonstop, but the metal bastards were like violent cockroaches with saws buzzing and snapping from every direction. Dee ducked behind the power conduit they were using for cover just in time. Gunny Suez spun up from beneath a pile of bots and stomped feet first into a bot just to the side of where her head had been. For the first time she got a close enough look at the AEM’s suit. It was torn to pieces and there were shrapnel fragments from the bots sticking out of it everywhere. Suez was in really bad shape and with a final bounce off the wall he went down. Dee didn’t see him get back up.

“Keep fighting, Dee!” Rackman shouted. “Keep fucking fighting!”

“There are too goddamned many of them. We need an EM grenade!” Dee said.

“Yeah. Or a goddamned miracle!” Davy grunted obviously in pain. “Duck, Dee!”

A metal appendage flung like a spear from one of the bots and pierced Dee’s stomach all the way through and clanked into the metal wall behind her. The rest of the appendage was attached to a bot, which just happen to have four other similar appendages that stabbed Dee through both shoulders and thighs. Dee screamed in pain and fired the M-blaster once more at a bot she could see from the corner of her eye. The bot was about to engulf Rackman’s head but Dee believed she got it in time.

Snap to, Marine! Deanna Moore!
Her AIC screamed in her mind.
Dee!

Dee wasn’t sure what happened next exactly, but she grunted as the bot that was stabbing her and about to bite her face off was pulled free by a large armored hand. Dee was certain she had seen Suez go down. Then there was the familiar spittapping of HVAR fire. The room lit up with hypervelocity rifle rounds and bots exploding. A single AEM was moving like a madman within the corridor so fast that Dee wasn’t sure if she was hallucinating or not.