"Shit! Guns, guns, guns!" He fired the main gun across the hillside at a rushing tank mode enemy vehicle. A bright blue-green pulse of energy separated the turret from the main body of the enemy tank. Running headlong at the exploding enemy mecha, Warboys jumped over the fireball and on top of the mecha's wingman, which was transfiguring to bot-mode. Warboys rammed the fist of his heavily armored tank into the transfiguring enemy vehicle and punched through to the inner workings of the linkage between the torso and the right arm. The force of his punch broke through the linkage system. Sparks and steaming black and red hydraulic fluids spewed from within it. Warboys grabbed at the arm from the enemy tank, ripped it free, and then jammed it through the cockpit, running it through the pilot and mecha.
"Colonel, on your six!" Warlord Seven burned a blue-green DEG bolt across the sky just behind Warboys, taking out a tank that had caught the lieutenant colonel unaware.
"Thanks, Seven. Damned Seppy jamming, we need our sensors!"
"You got that right, Warlord One."
"Warlord One, it looks like the Seppy bastards have figured out that their tanks are sitting ducks and are all going bot," Warlord Two noticed. "We gonna get that help anytime soon?"
"Just keep pounding at the fuckers relentlessly, Warlords! Whether we get help or not, we kill as many of these Seppy motherfuckers as we can until there ain't a one of us left. Got it? The U.S. Army Tank Command Warboys' Warlords don't need no goddamned gyrenes to bring hell!" Warboys had to go to guns and fired blindly behind him as he ran and leapt toward an outcropping for cover.
"Hooah! Colonel!"
"One, you've got two on you trying to get you in a crossfire!" Warlord Six saw the two Seppy tanks trying to sandwich their leader and trap him at the edge of the gorge, leaving him with no place to go but Hell.
"Shit!" Warboys continued to fire the forty-millimeter behind him blindly. Without sensors all he could do was shoot and hope for a hit. He scanned to his right and caught a glimpse of the mecha glinting in the Martian sunlight as it slowly dropped behind the mountain. So Warlord One turned his gun toward the general direction of the glint and fired.
"Guns, guns, guns!"
Enemy cannon fire from his other side knocked him to the ground. As Warboys tried to roll the mecha over onto all fours and then up he caught a quick glimpse of two armored e-suit Marines and two civilians with HVARs firing just over his head. They dove for cover as a bot with a missing leg tumbled over the colonel's tank and on top of them. The Seppy drop tank fell only a couple of meters on the other side of Warlord One. The lava rock gave the AEMs and civilians just enough cover to keep from being squished. One of the Marines, a private, rushed out from under the mecha and tossed a grenade into the cockpit and then dove for cover as it exploded.
Warboys pushed himself up to his mechanized feet and strode back over the dead enemy bot and backed away from the gorge. With a quick shake of his head, a deep breath, and a fast prayer, Warlord One turned back across the Martian battlefield to find more anti-American Separatist motherfuckers to send home to Jesus.
"Warlord One, Warlord One! Colonel Warboys, are you okay?" Warlord Two rushed to the side of his leader and turned his back to him, laying down more cover fire with his DEG giving Warboys time to regain his composure.
"I'm all right, Two," Warboys replied. "We've got AEMs and civvies back there. Let's push away from them! And see if we can't clear out an extraction LZ."
"Yes sir."
The tank mecha squadron was holding their own but they were extremely outnumbered and would soon be overwhelmed. But Warboys had a plan. Actually, it was Burner's plan but it was working well so far. And, goddamnit all to hell, even a jarhead like Burner did have a good idea every now and then. As long as his tanks could last long enough to bait the Seppy mecha into the trap.
"Warlord Five, watch your six. There's two drop tanks about to crawl up your ass!" Warlord Four warned his wingman.
"Now, Warboys?" The commander of the Marine FM-12 squadron beckoned. His Marines were ready to go to work and their trigger fingers were way past itchy.
"Not yet, Burner! Not yet!" Warboys scanned across the Martian landscape and noted that the majority of the tanks hadn't engaged them just yet. They had thirty or forty continuously engaging them but there were hundreds of them taking up position on the hill. Warboys, and his AIC, ran scenarios in his mind trying to figure out how to bring the enemy tank mecha closer in so the Killers could rise up and surprise the living shit out of them. He did have an idea. A dangerous idea. A courageous idea.
"Warlords, form up on me and we're going to rush the Seppy line!"
"Yes sir!"
"Hooah, sir!"
"Burner, get your gyrene ass ready!"
"DeathRay, I know it's hot. But we've got word that the senator's family including a little girl is in the LZ," Vulcan argued with the Ares pilot.
"It's too goddamned hot, Vulcan. I repeat. Too. Goddamned. Hot! No, and that is an order." DeathRay yanked the HOTAS left and rolled sideways to let a Gomer's missile flare by just beyond his cockpit.
That was fuckin' close.
Too close. If Jack went, Candis went with him and she didn't want to die any more than her human counterpart did.
"What's that sir? I can't hear you. You're breaking up a bit! DeathRay, I'm sending in an evac now!" Vulcan replied.
"Shit!"
"Angels, anybody want to volunteer to rescue a little girl from a firefight?" Lieutenant Junior Grade Seri "Vulcan" Cobbs asked over the rescue-net.
"Vulcan. Yo-yo. Angel Seven will go if somebody'll take our wing!" Ensign Bobby "Yo-yo" Jones replied.
"Ok, Yo-yo. You're on my wing. Let's get on the deck and stay fast and stay low," Vulcan ordered. Vulcan turned to look back at her gunner, Flight Gunner Petty Officer Third Class Sammy Jo Tapscott. "FG3 get ready to start laying down fire."
"Yes, ma'am!"
The two SH-102 Starhawks pulled away from the rest of the Angels' orbit and went to maximum descent toward the red planet beneath them. Vulcan brought the search and rescue vehicle to the edge of its flight envelope and continued to push the throttle forward. The two ships slammed through the Martian atmosphere, heating up the noses of the boxy rescue vehicles from aerodynamic friction. Klaxons and the "Bitching Betty" started blaring through the cabin.
"Warning. Approaching maximum g-load limit. Warning. Enemy targeting systems detected. Warning. Surface collision threat. Warning . . . " the "Bitching Betty" announced.
"The deck is coming up fast, Yo-yo. We'll flatten out and full-throttle to the evac," Vulcan ordered.
"Right behind you, ma'am." Yo-yo gritted his teeth and hoped his gunner was strapped in. Otherwise, he was having a shitty day. And from the threat alarms sounding in the cabin, it was about to get worse.
"DeathRay, DeathRay. Vulcan."
"Go Vulcan."
"If you can give us cover that would be nice. We're slamming air and about to make a run at the evac!"
"You sure about that, Vulcan?!"
"Roger that, sir! You can court-martial me if we survive."
"Good luck, we will plow the row a little for you." Goddamn Vulcan, he thought.
Senator! Fleet Angels Search and Rescue dropping in from orbit in thirty seconds! Abigail informed her counterpart.
About goddamned time!
"Second Lieutenant Washington!" Moore said over the QM almost at a scream to sound over the HVAR spitap spitaps, fighters careening overhead, and the mecha explosions and collisions.
"Yes, Senator?"
"My AIC has confirmed two SARs vehicles incoming. Can you spread the word to the tanks to give them cover?"
"There!" Joanie Hassed pointed out the two dust trails streaking across the edge of the escarpment.