Trail of Evil - eARC (3 page)

With her hand now sticking down through the hole and an artificial intelligence death-bot gripping it, she felt the suit give way, and pulled back as the organogel sealed over a stump where her hand used to be. The limb was severed halfway up her forearm. She pulled her sidearm with her left hand, firing several rounds into the hole. Adrenaline pounding through her veins like battery acid, she stomped another bot with her jump boots while doing her best not to look at where here hand used to be.

“DEATHRAY, GET US THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!” she screamed.

Candis, we gotta do something! Go full scans, give me a Red force tracker on this shuttle!

Roger that, Jack.

In Boland’s mind appeared a three-dimensional view of the shuttle which showed that they had at least twenty of the spider-bots crawling around on the structure and within the shuttle itself. The Blue force tracker showed that Sergeant Ridley was down completely, with very weak vital signs. The suit was the only thing keeping him alive. Lieutenant Rackman was already severly wounded. Dee showed casualty status, and Gunny James, Army Specialist Adams, Corporal Hawkins, and Petty Officer First Class Hansen were showing out of ammo and extremely elevated vitals.

DeathRay looked through the systems on the shuttle for something that would help, and then one of the bots disappeared from the Red force tracker. Then a second disappeared from the tracker.

Candis! Are we being spoofed?

Negative, DeathRay. That’s Nancy.

You damn right it is.

Penzington, you’re a sight for sore eyes!

Get in closer, Boland, and I’ll clean you off!

Jack flew the shuttle in as close to the top of the hangar surface as he could, as he saw across the sky the glint of an armor suit somersaulting, headed toward the ship, arms outstretched, holding a rifle, firing nonstop. Then there was a thud
against the hull, and the blue force tracker showed another soldier had joined their mix.

Nancy rushed across the surface of the shuttle, dispensing of the bots with her hypervelocity rifle rounds. It would take two to three rounds for each bot. That was something she knew would have to change. Holding on with one hand to the surface of the shuttle, she swung over the side and through the open door, drop-kicking one of the spider-bots that had crawled up the back of one of Jack’s teammates. She could see that the four conscious troops were doing the best they could. One of them was down completely and one of them—Dee—was fighting one-handed.

Nancy pulled an EMP grenade from her vest and said, “Everybody hold your breath and cover your ears!” She popped the grenade and it blew a hole through the back of the shuttle as a large clank! and thud! vibrated throughout the little ship rattling her teeth nearly out of her skull.

The EMP scattered across every surface and every system, blowing them out. Jack’s team was frozen in their suits, but the spiders were dead, too. Another byproduct of the EMP grenade was that it wreaked havoc on the electrical systems of the shuttle knocking out the structural integrity fields. As soon as the fields went down the cabin depressurized.

Nancy blew the escape panel from the back of her suit, dropped her helmet, and crawled to the hatch opening, slamming the door shut while holding her breath. She hit the emergency pressurization panel and could feel oxygen rushing in. It was clear to her that for whatever reason the bots had built the shuttle to accommodate humans. The few seconds of vacuum left her slightly lightheaded and dizzy but she shook it off and used adrenaline to push her through it.

The shuttle repressurized continuously as air leaked out every tear and hole the battle had created. Nancy hoped there was enough air in the system to keep the pressure up until she could kick the SIFs back on. She shivered and shook her head to clear it as she dragged herself to the cockpit, where she grabbed the controls out of Jack’s frozen hands. Nancy slapped the cockpit door switch, sealing it off from the rear and therefore maintaining pressure. She dropped into the copilot seat and took over piloting the shuttle in the nick of time. The small spacecraft was on a collision course with the
Sienna Madira’s
starboard side. She pulled back on the yolk and stepped hard on the right rudder throwing the shuttle into a hard right upward bank. The bottom of the shuttle missed a radome tower by millimeters.

“Damn, that was close,” she said as she grinned at DeathRay.

Chapter 3

November 3, 2406 AD

27 Light-years from the Sol System

Thursday, 11:15 AM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

The standard mission was always, “The recon team hits the objective in search of leads to any other quantum membrane teleportation addresses or hidden bases that were remains of the Martian separatist movement.” Mainly, the only things left were outposts that the crazy AIC Copernicus had created, probably completely unknown to his host, the terrorist leader Elle Ahmi. And history would never reveal the true nature of the American history during the civil war between the United States of the Sol System and the Martian separatists. Only a handful of trusted, senior officers and family members related to the former President Moore—and now-reinstated U.S. Marine Corps General Moore—knew what had happened. And the orders were that it would remain that way forever.

One of the few trusted soldiers in the inner circle of the U.S.S.
Sienna Madira
’s senior crew was Army Brigadier General Mason Warboys. Warboys had brought along with him the Warlords, the top hovertank unit in the entire U.S. military. And as standard procedure, once the recon team had been inserted, then as diversionary tactics, the Armored Environment Suit Marines and the Army Tank Squad were dropped—and let loose hell—with the intent of mopping up any extra resistance forces and totally wiping out the existence of any automated threats.

The AEMs had ridden on top of the tanks after deployment from the
Madira
all the way to the surface, as was the usual procedure. It was a technique that Warboys and one of the senior Marines had come up with years ago at the battle for Kuiper Belt station.

Warboys’ tank hit the surface of the planetoid with a soft crunching sound. He quickly transformed it to bot mode and drew up a phalanx line with the rest of the Warlords, running in a V, directly into the enemy line where the Army and Marines were drawing heavy fire. There was very little gravity on the planetoid, so the computer systems and the AICs onboard the hovertanks had to make up for the overexaggerated motion with the propulsionless drive and thrusters. Sensors showed a well of artificial gravity several kilometers up but the computers would take care of all that without having to bother the tank drivers.

“All right, Warlords. This is Warlord One,” Warboys said. “Stay tight on me, and let’s push a hole through these bots so that the Marines can spread out and make sure none of them get past us. And keep an eye on the strafing runs from above. Duck and cover as you see fit.”

“Roger that,” was the resounding response from the Warlords. “Fuckin’ hoowah, One!”

Warboys looked at the scene in his direct-to-mind display of the battlefield and could see hundreds of red targets in any direction he looked. They were several klicks from where the recon team had been inserted, and he hoped that at least some of that excitement the Warlords could draw toward themselves. Warboys pounded across the surface with his DEGs on auto, firing at any threats from above, and his cannons taking out any surface threats. The planetoid’s automated defensive systems were mostly small, unarmored robotic threats, little bots with weapons but not much in the way of armor. It didn’t take a whole lot for a hovertank to squash them, Warboys thought, but they were still deadly if their cannon fire were to come through the hull plating and hit the cockpit, something that he’d seen on the last drop. Fortunately the automated bots weren’t that good at fighting. Nobody had quite figured out why that was, because they ought to be just as good as, if not better than, the humans.

“All right, Warlords, let’s bring hell,” Warboys thought out loud.

“Warlord One! Warlord One! This is Warlord Six.”

“Go, Six.”

“I’ve got some big movement just over the horizon.”

“Roger that, Six. I see it in the QMs. I’m going to infrared. See if it has a heat signature.” Warboys replied.
Hmm,
he thought to himself.
What’s this? Something new?

Running a full scan on it, sir,
his AIC replied into his mind.
The signature is quite large. Very similar to that of a tank.

No shit,
Warboys thought.

Bringing up a full electro-optical view now, sir.
The image of the new automated threat appeared in his mind and was almost an exact copy of a Martian separatist hovertank.

“Son of a bitch!” Warboys said out loud. “Warlords! Warlords! We got something new! Looks like the bots have built themselves some tanks! Be alert and be ready to go, and here they come! Fan out! Fan out!”

The Warlords spread out. Warboys turned back to hovertank mode and increased speed to drive straight through the line of bot tanks approaching them. And they were approaching fast. At over 70 kilometers per hour in tank mode, Warboys pounded through the line, crashing into one of the bot tanks’ legs. Sparks flew as the metals scraped against each other and Warboys was thrown forward with a jolt.

Immediately he toggled the tank to bot mode and rolled over headfirst, coming up in a forward flip onto one knee. He instantly brought his shoulder-mounted cannons to bear behind him at the bot that he’d just clipped in the leg, targeting weak points at joints and the head. Warboys had fought the hell out of the Martian Seppy tanks for years and he was good at it. These bot tanks didn’t seem to respond much differently. It was almost as if they had watched old battle data and copied the Seppy maneuvers and tactics.

The purple plasma balls spread out from his cannons, exploding on impact at the joint just below the left hip of the bot tank. The leg blew apart in a shower of debris and shrapnel and what appeared to be various fluids required to keep the bot tanks functional. The droplets and fragments spread out into a rapidly dissipating cloud in the low gravity. Before Warboys could turn to finish off the bot, Warlord Three landed, feet first, onto the torso of the bot, smashing the metaphorical piss and other fluids out of it.

“Thanks, Three,” Warboys said.

“No problem, One. We’ve got your back.”

Warboys spun just in time for two other bot tanks to dive for him. In a judo roll, he took the motion of one and tossed it aside, but the other caught him mid-back and splayed him out toward the surface. Debris flew thirty meters high and began to create a cloud of slowly settling dust in the light gravity. Warlord Three dropped his cannons and loosed several rounds into the bot tank, sending it flailing backwards and throwing dust and debris into a long slow falling arced trajectory. The dust cloud surrounding the battle continued to get thicker and thicker. Warboys briefly hoped it wouldn’t cause an issue for sensors. Almost as soon as he hit the ground he rolled over to find another tank in bot mode kicking him in the face and landing directly on him.

“We’re kickin’ up so much dust that you can’t see shit, One!” Warlord Seven said over the tac-net.

“Stay on the QM sensors and IR. The dust is too much for eyeballs,” Warlord One replied. He pushed up from the surface as hard as he could with his forearms, tossing both him and his attacker upward, off the surface. Warlord One spun with an elbow, crashing into the side of what the head of the tank should be. But with these robotic tanks it was hard to say where the controls were. The blow had little discernable effect on the bot.

Warboys continued to sling elbows, kick and knee at every opportunity, fire his cannons, and roll as best he could, but the enemy tank in bot mode was relentless, and he couldn’t seem to shake it from his back. Warboys could hear metal creaking and groaning against the strain, and he was afraid that his tank wouldn’t take it much longer without popping seals and other important mechanical components, like himself for instance.

“One, you’ve gotta shake that one on your tail! You’re beginning to lose plasma from your rear thrusters!”

“No shit, Two! Tell me something I haven’t figured out yet! Somebody shoot this son of a bitch off my back! Where are you Three?”

“Negative, One, we might hit you!”

“So?” Warboys rolled and still couldn’t shake the bot. “I don’t give a damn! Shoot this son of a bitch, that’s an order! I don’t care if you hit me, one of us is gonna have to have some relief!”

Warboys could see in his direct-to-mind virtual battlesphere that Warlord Four rammed into both of them in tank mode and forced them into a hill just ahead of them. That was all the relief that Warboys needed. He rolled with the momentum and turned within the grip of the bot, slamming his armored tank fist into the inner workings of the enemy tank, pulling it closer too him.

“Guns, guns, guns,” he said with a grunt as his cannons fired a burst of rounds into the bot tank at point-blank range blowing it apart and scattering debris and orange plasma about them in each direction, the glowing cinders of metal leaving a slowly falling lazy “M” traced out from where they had been. Warboys bounced to a stop as his thrusters and propellantless drive attenuated the momentum to something controllable.

Chapter 4

November 3, 2406 AD

27 Light-years from the Sol System

Thursday, 11:15 AM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

“Roger that Air Boss!” USMC Colonel Caroline “Deuce” Leeland commander of the USMC FM-12 Strike Mecha squadron the Utopian Saviors said over the command circuit. The Saviors was only one of two squadrons left over from the old
Sienna Madira
crew. The other was the Navy squadron Demon Dawgs. They had been an Ares-T squadron but Moore had decided to go with all FM-12s for maintenance simplicity on the long deep space mission. There had been a lot of retraining for the squids and retooling and software upgrades to enhance the FM-12s. They were more versatile and capable than ever before.

“Ground pounders need some cover,” she replied. “Saviors are on it. Deuce out.”

Deuce, toggled over to the fighter wing tactical net and brought the full battlescape DTM into her mind. The Utopian Saviors all showed blue and fully capable. Deuce looked the battleview over in her mind for a brief second and zoomed in on the planetoid surface where the AEMs and tanks had landed. There was a swarm of AutoGnats, as the mecha jocks called them, buzzing the shit out of the ground pounders. The AutoGnats were very similar in appearance to the old Separatist Gnat fighting mecha but they were run by AI and made much more harrowing g-loaded turns. On the other hand, they were not very creative and good mecha pilots usually tore them up.

“Listen up Saviors! The ground pounders are getting lit up from above. We need to get in there and pull those AGs off of them and get them up into a ball. Just like the last two missions!” Deuce briefed her team.

“Same shit different star system,” her wingman Major Timothy “Goat” Crow said. The two of them had been flying together for a couple of decades and he seen some bad days together during the Separatist War.

“Oo-fuckin-rah, Deuce!” Captain Shawna “Golfbag” Fernandez added.

“Alright. Form up on your wingmen and dive. Let’s hit fast in fighter mode and target as many as we can on the first run through. When you hit the deck, mix up with them in bot or eagle as you need to. Let’s see if we can pull their attention away from the tankheads. And then we’ll pull them up into a ball and take the bastards out. Maximum velocity with maximum ferocity Marines!” Deuce threw the HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick) control forward with her right hand and slammed the throttle all the way to the stop with her left. The armored fighter pitched nose down at the planetoid. The star field was blotted out by the dull gray of the frozen rock and the occasional metallic glint from the bot base. Deuce could see flashes all across the surface where the fighting was going on. From the looks of it the AEMs and the tankheads were having a busy day.

“Deuce, we’re going in hot!” her wingman shouted.

“That’s the plan, Goat!”

Warning! Surface approaching rapidly. Pull up. Pull up.
the Bitchin’ Betty chimed.

Deuce waited until the last second to kill some of the throttle and pitch up. She barrel rolled over as she pinpointed several of the bot fighters in her DTM.

“Mix it up, Saviors!” Deuce shouted. She noted the location of her wingman just to the right and behind her. He was flying in hot but not as fast as her. He’d be able to cover her six.

Warning! Collision imminent! Pull up. Pull up,
the Bitchin’ Betty continued.

“Oooohh . . . fuckin’ . . . rah!” Deuce grunted through the gees as she toggled the control marked “F.” The armored fighter plane rolled right and pitched forward as giant mechanical arms and legs rapidly unfolded from within it. Deuce somersaulted into a full run as her thruster boots slammed into the planetoid’s surface. The maneuver generated enough of crazy spinning acceleration that she had to choke back bile and squeeze her abdominal muscles until they nearly burst just to keep from blacking out.

She rolled judo style across the surface to use up some of the extra momentum she was carrying. The bot-mode mecha bobbed, weaved, and bounced like an Olympic hurdler fighting a karate match. The impact of the surface against her mecha made vibrations that translated into the cockpit as earsplitting pinging, clanking, thudding, and screeching sounds as she continued.

“Guns, guns, guns!” She shouted as she pointed the cannon in her right mechanized hand at an AutoGnat that was strafing overhead. She flipped over several hovertanks engaged with enemy tanks beneath her. She tracked the enemy bot fighter across the sky with orange tracers from her cannon. She didn’t get it, but she hoped she’d gotten its attention as she rolled through the flip coming down on the surface for her next bounce. She still had a lot of momentum to bleed off. She slammed and skittered into the surface, throwing a rooster tail of dust behind her that flickered like glitter confetti at a rock concert in the dim lighting from the distant star. The occasional explosion added a strobe effect making the rooster tail all the more impressive. As she continued through her bounce, several small flying bots swarmed in her direction. Deuce reached out with her left hand and pounded one of them into the ground. She swatted at another as if it were nothing more than an menacing fly. Her giant mechanized hand hit the thing sending it whirling off in a corkscrew spiral, flinging sparks in all directions. She kicked the ground with her thrusters and arced upward over an outcropping of rocks.

“Fox Three!” Goat shouted. A mecha-to-mecha missile screeched past her on the left. The purple ion trail from the missile tore into the tail of an AutoGnat moving in on her three-nine line from the nine o’clock position. The enemy fighter’s tail exploded, throwing it into a mad spin. It was put out of its misery by the secondary explosion when it slammed into the planetoid’s surface.

“Great shot, Goat!” Deuce said to her wingman.

On several of the bounces she had to adjust her landing position with thrusters in order to avoid landing on one of the hovertanks. They were busy enough fighting as it was. They most certainly didn’t need to worry about blue-on-blue from an FM-12.

One of the hovertanks was pinned down by three enemy tanks just to her right. She had bled off her momentum now and was in full control of her trajectory. She bounced down behind the tank, standing back to back with it briefly. The combined firepower of the tank and the bot-mode fighter was enough for the two of them to overpower the enemy bots. Deuce targeted one of the enemy hovertanks as it rushed them. The thing looked like an old Separatist droptank she had fought during the war. Deuce knew how to fight Seppies.

“Deuce, I’m bleeding off speed,” her wingman said over the net. “I’m about a half a klick behind you coming in hot.”

“Great, Goat! I see you in the DTM. Cover my topside as I help out this tankhead.”

“I’m on it, Deuce.”

“I’ve got your six, Deuce,” the tankhead said over the net. Deuce could feel his cannons shaking the ground as he fired. She backed right up against the rear of the tank and stood her ground. Deuce checked her DTM for the nearest targets. “Fox Three!”

The missile released into the enemy tank charging her, scattering it into exploding orange bits that expanded away from them in an oblong blob of glowing shrapnel. Deuce turned to her left just in time to grab the turret of a tank-mode enemy bot. She spun aikido style, using the tanks momentum to fling it past her. The tankhead behind her, Warlord Four according to her DTM, leapt into the air and landed atop the tank stomping through its automated canopy.

“Gotta run, Warlord Four.” Deuce fired her propellantless boot thrusters and kicked upward rolling forward as she toggled the mecha back to fighter mode.

“Thanks for the help, Deuce!” Warlord Four responded.

“Anytime!” she replied. “Goat, quit goldbricking and get your ass over here on my wing!”

Okay, Bobby! Get me some targets.
She said to her AIC

There are plenty available ma’am.

Several yellow dots surrounded the Utopian Saviors in every direction. They currently were in an upside-down bowl engagement with the bot fighters. The bots were staying close to the surface and using the planetoid to cut the fighting sphere in half. Normally, that made it easier for the FM-12s to mix up modes and fight, but right now being on the surface was getting in the way of the tanks and infantry. They needed to get the bot fighters off the surface and up into space so the ground pounders could do their jobs.

The bots were numbering in the several tens at least. Currently, Deuce had seventy-seven flying enemy tracks but at least fifteen of those were tiny. The only threats to an FM-12 were fighter-sized and her AIC had presently highlighted fifty-two of them. There were ten Saviors.

The Saviors were bouncing and skittering across the surface in a mix of fighter, bot, and eagle modes doing their level best to pull the bot fighters from their strafing runs to engage them.

Okay Bobby, give me some energy curves and flight path solutions.

Affirmative.

Almost instantly several of the red dots had yellow targeting Xs pop over them and red flight paths twisted off in every direction. Goat’s blue dot was right on her wing just behind her three nine line at the four o’clock position and their trajectories were laid out in blue. Deuce banked her fighter toward the nearest enemy target that was moving away from them, with hopes of jumping onto its six o’clock.

“I’ve got lock on that one, Deuce!” Goat said. “Fox three!”

A mecha-to-mecha missile twisted out in front of them leaving a blue ion trail as it chased the enemy fighter. The bot plane clearly detected that it had been locked on and was taking evasive action. It rolled over and then pitched a complete one hundred eighty degrees so that the nose of the fighter was pointed back at them. It went to guns immediately, taking out the missile.

“Shit! Watch the guns, Goat!” Deuce shouted. She yanked the HOTAS hard to the left and threw some yaw into it. She then stomped her right outer pedal and started crabbing in a corkscrew spiral as she added speed. The closer she approached the AutoGnat the more sideways she flew. “Bank out right, Goat!”

“Bankin’ right!”

Deuce added more throttle and the centrifugal force to her spiraling and crabbed trajectory was putting more than seven gees on her body. She grunted and cursed as the pressure layer of her e-suit squeezed her legs and abdomen. The red flight path of the enemy plane spiraled inwardly at her in her mindview and outside the cockpit the world spun madly. The blue and red trajectory lines finally intersected just ahead of them. Then the targeting X turned from yellow to red.

“Guns, guns, guns!” she shouted and continued to grunt through the g-load.

Bright orange and red plasma balls the size of racquet balls tore across the space between them and hit home on the AutoGnat’s right wing. The cannon fire burst through the structural integrity fields of the enemy fighter and then blew the wing free of the spar. Sparks flew in every direction as the added angular momentum of the impacting cannon fire sent it spinning asunder. As what would normally be the cockpit rolled over into view cannon rounds burst through it. The little enemy fighter exploded into a bright orange and white firestorm.

Deuce let off the foot pedals and let go the HOTAS briefly to let her mecha right itself. She quickly grabbed the stick and pulled it up and found her wingman in her DTM. Then her sensor alarms sounded and Betty started bitching.

Warning, enemy sensor lock detected! Warning enemy sensor lock detected!
The Bitchin’ Betty alerted her.

“Shit!” Deuce bit down on her temporomandibular joint (TMJ) bite block and took in a fresh burst of oxygen and stims while simultaneously pulling the stick back to her gut and pushing the throttle full forward.

“Fox three!” she heard Goat shout over the tac-net. She caught a glimpse of her wingman’s mecha scream by just behind her as he let the missile loose. The missile hit home this time taking out the AutoGnat that was locking her up.

“Great shot, Goat!” Deuce shouted.

As the rest of the Utopian Saviors pulled the enemy fighters upward and mixing up with them the chatter on the net picked up. Deuce did her best to keep up with the team in her DTM while at the same time doing her best not to get her ass shot off.

“Romeo! You’ve got one on your six!” Volleyball’s voice cut in.

“I’ve got him, Romeo!” his wingman Freak replied. “Guns, guns, guns.”

“Look out Freak! You’ve got a couple of them starting to form up on you.” Romeo replied. “Jesus it’s thick out here.”

“Got that right, Romeo. Damn AGs are like angry bees swarming and they ain’t sticking on their wingmen.” Golfbag added.

Deuce didn’t like it. The enemy planes were using a knew tactic on them. They had more of a hive or swarm attack plan rather than the standard wingmen divide and conquer approach. They were outnumbered more than five to one and didn’t have a lot of room between themselves and the surface. They needed to mix it up more and somehow put the enemy at a disadvantage. On the upside thier attack had been successful. According to the DTM battleview it looked like all the bot fighters had turned their attention from the ground pounders and were now targeting the Saviors.

“Alright Marines, we’ve gotten their attention.” Deuce announced. “Let’s pull them upward and away from the surface.”

“They have us outnumbered, Deuce. You have a plan?” Lieutenant Colonel Connie “Skinny” Munk asked over the net. Deuce could see her longtime friend’s blue dot in the DTM view but couldn’t make out her fighter. It was below her and underneath her wing on the left side.

Any Marine knew that when you were outnumbered you attacked. But what type of attack would be best. In the microsecond she had to consider her next move her mind was a flurry of memories of space battles and training sessions. She could only see one clear tactical approach and it didn’t make her happy.

“Yes. We get these bot bastards up in the ball. On my signal I want A-group to start pukin’ while the B-group covers our ass on the backend.” Deuce ordered. She hated to go to the pukin’ deathblossom so soon into an engagement, but the numbers were too much in the enemy’s favor and that is what the maneuver was for.