CO is never gonna go for this, he thought.
Maybe, Candis replied. But, it may be the only choice we have if we plan to take back the city and take out the Seppies.
Shit.
"Shit, that has got to fucking hurt, Second Lieutenant!" Kootie commented on the bloody piece of metal rebar hanging out of Washington's leg.
"Hell, Private, I didn't even realize it was there." Second Lieutenant Washington forced a grin that was almost lost on the private. The faint amber city street lighting was just barely bright enough to see through the tinting on the faceplate of the lieutenant's e-suit helmet. The atmosphere being sucked through the large gaping hole in the dome and the continuous addition of dust, debris, and smoke from the ongoing fighting had created a low-lying dense and very dark gray cloud system within the dome. Violent twirls, downdrafts, updrafts, and low-lying cloud scud fell just above the tops of the tall city buildings, blocking out all but the amber and neon artificial lighting of the burning city itself. Dust particles and water vapor fell in a low-gravity drizzle like a strange hybrid of rain, snow, and volcanic ash.
"Check it out, sir." Corporal Shelly nodded at a skyscraper down the street where a large metallic humanoid figure stood on top of it scanning the region with a DEG weapon held at the hip ready for action. The bot-mode Martian red camo mecha stood motionless like a stalwart metal statue with swiveling forty-millimeter cannons on each shoulder protecting the Marines below and seeking out potential prey. Unseen to the AEMs taking shelter in the alley street thirty stories below were the optical LIDAR scans and acoustic sensor sweeps the mecha's pilot ran continuously to monitor any Seppy activity. Passive sensor systems ran full sweeps as well.
"FM-12s," Sergeant Jackson added.
"Good. We could use as much support as we can get. We still need to get to the evac and support our VIP's evac. If he makes it there." The second lieutenant relaxed slightly.
Another FM-12 strike mecha in bot-mode dropped off a building just to the south of the one standing guard and transfigured itself as it dropped to the street level. Just as it reached street level the vehicle that had looked like a ten-meter-tall metal robot now looked like a space fighter with two metal feet reminiscent of a bird of prey's talons. Underneath the wings were arms with humanlike hands at the ready like those of a boxer or a martial artist. He held the main DEG in the left hand. The forty-millimeter cannons swiveled from a mounted position one under the belly of the bird and one on top just aft of the cockpit. If the armored bird and its cannons and DEG weren't enough fire-power, the row of missile launchers spread out across the bottom of each wing would make for a good backup.
The empennage of the sleek red camo killing machine was lined with Seppy flags and just under the cockpit was the name Lieutenant Colonel John "Burner" Masterson. Burner was the leader of Cardiff's Killers, the Marine-piloted FM-12 strike mecha squadron assigned to the now destroyed U.S.S. Winston Churchill.
The mecha landed softly with a slight metallic chunk kachunk. Its talons grabbed the pavement a few meters from the survivors of the AEM squad. The armored bubble canopy of the bird slid back and the pilot in a Martian camo flight armored e-suit catapulted upward from the pilot couch and then bounced carefully beside the AEMs. Cardiff's Killers had just pulled the squad leader and their NCO out of the frying pan. It had only taken the Killers a brief sweep through the Dome Circle district to wipe up the inferior Seppie drop tanks. Burner had taken out three of them himself. The local region was secured, for the moment.
Washington, Jackson, Kudaf, and Shelly took relaxed positions underneath the wing of the mecha. The aircraft offered them some shelter from the drizzle, though in the AEM suits the drizzle was only a nuisance to the faceplate view. QM and IR sensors could overcome the blurring by the water droplets on the faceplate quickly, but the human habit of getting out of the rain was a million years old or more and some instincts are hard to overcome. Burner nodded at the AEMs to remain at ease and picked out their leader as he joined him under his plane.
"Looks like that hurts, Marine." Burner noted the metal bar sticking out of Washington's left leg.
"Yes, sir. Like fucking hell, sir!" Second Lieutenant Thomas Washington replied. "But not near as bad as it would've if you guys hadn't showed up when you did. Thanks, sir."
"Yes, sir. It is a damned good thing Shelly and Kootie stumbled into you," Sergeant Jackson added with a thin-lipped smile. "We had them right where they wanted us."
"You don't look the best in the world either, Sergeant. We have a medic as one of our drivers maybe he can get you two fixed up." Colonel Masterson smiled at the beat-up soldiers and thought a command to his AIC. Angel, get Boulder over here.
Yes sir, right away. His AIC sent a call to First Lieutenant Jason "Boulder" Cordova.
"Just relax. We'll get you fixed up," Masterson said. "Now, just what in the hell were you two doing at Dome Circle, anyway. We were pushing an entire squad of Seppy drop tanks right into you."
"Well, that explains why they were running toward us but shooting backwards, sir," Sergeant Jackson commented. The mecha pilot just grunted and grinned thinly.
"We were deployed just after the Churchill went down, sir," Washington answered. "There is a Senator Alexander Moore in the main dome that we were sent to extract. Unfortunately, we got hit hard before we ever got started and ended up crashed in the south boroughs. Then shit started getting worse . . . sir. My AIC has kept on top of him, but . . . " Thomas looked up and down the street at the noise he heard in the distance uneasily fingering the safety on his HVAR, his empty HVAR, until he realized it was another FM-12 configuring itself into eagle-mode beside the colonel's bird. The canopy of the fighter slid opened with a low volume swish and a Marine holding a medic pouch leaped from the cockpit in a long slow arc and bounced off the side of a building across the street and then to the ground by Burner.
"I got a call that somebody was having a baby over here. Thought I'd pop in and see if I could help." Marine First Lieutenant Cordova kneeled down beside Washington and looked at the piece of bloody iron rebar protruding out of his left leg.
"Yeah, and I'm having serious labor pains, Doc." Washington grimaced and relaxed his grip on his HVAR completely.
"Call me Boulder and just hold on a sec." Cordova pulled an injector gun from his kit and plugged it into the seal layer on Washington's e-suit under the armor access port on the neck of the suit. "I'm gonna give you some more pain meds and I'm giving you a shot of immunobooster so your immune system can eat that metal out of your leg." Boulder pulled out a directed energy cutting tool and zipped through the protruding piece of metal like hot butter. The little pistol-shaped cutting tool sprayed out a focused green beam of light that cut the metal bar so quickly that it didn't have time to get hot. The metal rod exterior to Washington's leg fell slowly to the street pavement with an extended claaaaang. The organic gel layer of Washington's e-suit quickly covered the end of the metal bar and sealed off. Clean red armor plating hardened over the new readi-seal material as his suit began to heal itself.
"Is that it?" the second lieutenant asked.
"That's it. Oh, you'll run a high fever for a few hours until your immune system dissolves that bar in your leg, but the pain meds will keep that from being a problem. That side might be a little weak for another half hour or so, too, and you probably won't need any mineral supplements for a few days. Sometimes that much iron in your system will make you constipated for a day or two, but I'd say it beats the shit out having a metal bar sticking out of your leg. Otherwise, you are a killing machine, Marine." Cordova grinned.