"The U.S. Navy will take care of us," the little fat man that Deanna had stuck her tongue out at earlier replied. He stuffed chips in his mouth through the open visor and then sipped at a Mons Light.
"Hear, hear! To the Navy!" Rod and Vince held their beer bottles up in toast.
"Though I prefer the Air Force," Rod replied as he tilted his bottle again and took a swig.
"Yeah, you were in for what, six weeks," his coworker goaded him.
"Hey, it was a medical." Rod tried to think of a better comeback, but taking another swig from his beer was the best he could manage.
"Suit yourselves." Senator Moore didn't really care for the extra baggage of tourists and drunks anyway. "We're going."
Reyez, Alexander, and Sehera packed the gliderchutes under Reyez's instruction. Alexander had made hundreds of jumps decades ago, but these were new civilian systems and he was smart enough to listen to an expert when he had one. Reyez carefully inspected the four packs and harnesses and ran through a quick explanation of how to guide them. Then there was a brief uncomfortable moment where Reyez was afraid to ask who was tandem-flying the child. In Reyez's mind, there was no question that he was the only person in the group qualified to do that. Alexander caught on to the apprehension and squelched it immediately.
"Deanna rides with me," he said.
"Sir, are you sure you can handle that? I've jumped with thousands of kids in tandem before," Reyez protested.
"Listen to the man, Alexander," Sehera warned. She didn't talk that often but when she did it was always with the authority of a woman who wouldn't take no for an answer.
"No. I've got hundreds of jumps into a helluva lot worse situations. I'll take her. She's my daughter, I'll be responsible for her," he said in a tone that clearly stated the topic was no longer up for discussion. Deanna looked back and forth at her parents and never said a word. Alexander wasn't certain his daughter really grasped the magnitude of the predicament they were in and of that he was glad.
"Okay. Let me go through the tandem harness with you, at least?"
"Absolutely." Alexander smiled a diplomatic grin. "Then let's get on with it and get the hell out of here."
"Kootie, lay down cover fire on that tank!" Sergeant Jackson shouted. The Seppy drop tanks were moving into flanking positions on the north and east sides of the driving circle. They had been staying in the smoke cloud that was being sucked from the city as cover but for some reason several tanks were hovering through the interstate system southward out of the smoke. Some were in bot-mode running. The tanks were more vulnerable that way, but much more maneuverable. Occasionally, one of the tanks would fire defilading fire backward into the cloud. Every now and then one of them would fire a mecha-to-mecha missile back into the smoke as well. It was obvious that this handful of Seppy drop mecha were running from something and they had not expected to run into a team of U.S. Marines.
"Got it, Sarge!"
"Sergeant Jackson?" the second lieutenant called over the QM wireless.
"LT?" Jackson turned the aiming and trajectory sighting computer on the Seppy drop mecha in bot-mode running behind several city buildings trying to get a flanking shot at the Marines. Sergeant Jackson's sighting system chimed and turned red on his visor screen as he depressed the trigger of the HVAR. Hypervelocity railgun rounds chewed the buildings up as they tracked across the mecha's path, intercepting it at the joint where the legs meet the tank canopy. The left leg of the mecha gave way with a white-hot plasma-spewing explosion that in turn caused the mecha to tumble forward canopy-first.
"Sarge, I can see more than a dozen or so drop tanks between our north and east flanks. We are so outnumbered here. I think we're gonna have to make a run for it," Second Lieutenant Washington said.
"Sir, let's go over 'em!" Private Packer offered. She jumped twice, bounced up the side of a building, and then across a side street to the top of a building to the left, all the while tracking an enemy tank with her HVAR. The arm of the mecha flew off in a shower of sparks and began spewing hydraulics as the railgun fire tracked through the now weakened armor of the canopy and punched through the pilot.
"Packer, goddamnit, get your narrow ass back down here!" Corporal Shelly ordered her.
Packer flipped backward off the building onto a lower one and then zigzagged from one building to the next until she bounced a few meters to the right of Kootie and then slid prone into a cover firing position and continued laying down cover with Kootie. The sergeant smiled and just shook his head left and right.
"LT, that ain't necessarily a bad idea. What if we go through 'em? They appear to be running from something." Jackson offered.
"Well, we can't stay here for long." The rubble pile that the lieutenant was using for cover unexpectedly exploded, throwing debris and shrapnel around him at deadly velocities. A metallic shard about a half meter long with concrete still attached at one end penetrated his left leg midway between the knee and hip. The leak-seal layer of the esuit closed off around it before his air could leak out and before he lost too much blood.
"Jesus, fucking, goddamned, shit!" The lieutenant was flung backward onto the center lane of the driving circle in the open and was overcome by the hot searing pain in his leg. He screamed madly and flailed wildly like a fish out of water flopping on the ground for a second or two longer.
Thomas! Second Lieutenant Thomas Washington! Return fire! Second Lieutenant Thomas Washington return fire! his AIC screamed in his mind. Studies had shown that an authoritative voice using the full name and rank tended to snap soldiers out of panicked behavior. Theories were that it was conditioning learned in basic training listening to the barking orders from drill sergeants. Whatever the reason, it worked.
"You motherfucker!" The second lieutenant pulled his HVAR up and depressed the trigger, releasing a full auto spread. The wound nearly throwing him into shock had affected his aim and he wasn't hitting any critical points of the tank, but it was enough to force the mecha to take evasive action.
"Lieutenant!" Packer leapt from her cover position forward and somersaulted in mid air above the mecha. She fired the HVAR directly downward at near point blank range into the tank. The tank stopped moving and grew quiet before Packer ever bounced to ground on the other side of it. Just as her jumpboots hit the ground she was cut in half by a forty millimeter cannon round from the mecha's wingman. The cannon round passed through her stomach, taking out most of the vital organs of her abdomen. The malfunctioning e-suit tried to seal the wound but the gaping hole was just too large.
"Oh God . . . " she whispered through blood-soaked lips. Her life signs went dead and her blue force tracking signal converted to a fatal casualty location and her AIC set up a downed soldier beacon transmission to the CMTOC.
"Goddamnit!" Sergeant Jackson bounced in serpentine trajectory to the second lieutenant and swept him up as he landed beside him. With a continuing bounce he managed to dodge cannon fire and roll the two of them behind the iron statue of Sienna Madira in the middle of the driving circle. Jackson struggled to hold the lieutenant down while he grabbed the pain injection from the lieutenant's right breastpack. He unsheathed the needle, slid back the armor plate on the lieutenant's neck and jabbed the needle in. With a hiss and a click the pain medication rushed over the lieutenant's body. The sergeant tossed the needle aside, slapped the neck armor back down, and rolled his back to the statue, preparing to fire.