"Coming, DeathRay?" the president asked. Jack could tell from the expression on the president's face that he was talking to his AIC.
"In for a penny . . ." Jack sighed under his breath and pulled out his own railpistol, stepping onto the pad. "Wild horses and a repulsor tugship couldn't keep me away, Mr. President."
"But sir!" the CW protested.
Even as the CW was shouting for the techs to cut power to the pad, Jack heard the president quietly say, "Any time now, Abby—"
The room flashed, and Jack could hear that frying-bacon sound again. The next thing he knew, they were standing in the penthouse of the Seppy Capitol Building, looking up through a big hole in the ceiling. Dee stood just in front of them with a bewildered expression on her face.
Chapter 26
July 1, 2394 AD
Ross 128, Arcadia
Friday, 3:44 PM, Earth Eastern Standard Time
"Goddamnit! They know where we are!" Colonel Mason Warboys and the odd-numbered Warlords had their M3A17-T hovertanks in bot mode. The mecha splashed out of the water at the foot of the dam and into the enemy tanks with a vengeance even though they were outnumbered a little more than two to one.
"Watch out, One! Guns, guns, guns!" Warlord Three shouted.
"Shit! Guns, guns, guns!" Warboys maintained a constant bombardment from his DEG into the Arcadian tanks' line as they advanced on them and went to the smaller but more rapidly directed forty-millimeter gun on top of the DEG turret for in-close and rapidly maneuvering targets. The forty-millimeter gun usually ran in anti-artillery and anti-missile mode. Warboys had put the guns to use by giving his AIC control of them and telling her to shoot any enemy thing it felt necessary to shoot at. While in bot mode, the turret-mounted railgun looked like a half dome head atop the bot's cockpit, with the barrel sticking out for a nose. Below the tank torso two large metal feet thudded into the soil, squishing up mud and the underlying vegetation.
"There's another one targeting you, One! I got him. Fox Three!" Mason saw an anti-mecha missile scream out from Warlord Seven and twist out in front of them toward an enemy tank. The enemy tank dropped backward and fired his countermeasures, setting off the missile just in time to save his ass. Mason didn't like that.
"Stay on him, Seven! Guns, guns, guns!" Warlord One fired his main gun across the river at another rushing tank-mode enemy vehicle. A bright blue-green pulse of energy separated the turret from the main body of the Arcadian M3A16 tank. Mason turned and leaped across the river, running headlong at the exploding enemy mecha. As he jumped over the fireball and on top of the tank beside it, he rammed his heavily armored fist into the enemy vehicle and punched through to the inner workings of the linkage between the torso and the right arm. Infantry railgun fire spitapped against the armor plating of his tank, and a couple of larger rounds shook him violently. He looked up in time to see a third tank dive-tackling him.
"Watch out, One!" Warlord Five shouted. "Guns, guns, guns!"
Warboys could see the glint of a DEG blast digging into the back of the bot-mode tank that had tackled him. He rolled over, stood and stomped into the back of the enemy tank. The force of his foot stomping into the mecha broke through the armor plating. Sparks and steaming black and red hydraulic fluids spewed from within it. Warboys grabbed at the main gun turret on the dead enemy tank, ripped it free, and then tossed it like a hammer thrower at the enemy tank-mode tank chasing after Five. The turret bounced into the second tank, knocking it sideways just as it fired. The blow caused it to fire a DEG blast into the dam by accident. A crack formed in the dam, and water started pouring through it. Warboys spun to his knee, firing his main DEG through the pilot of the enemy mecha. Five fired his guns just over the colonel's shoulders at another target.
"Colonel, on your six!" Warlord Three burned a blue-green DEG bolt across the sky just behind Warboys, taking out a tank that had caught the colonel unaware.
"Thanks, Three. Son of a bitch, we are outnumbered here!"
"You got that right, Warlord One."
"Warlord One, it looks like the Seppy bastards have figured out that we are here," Warlord Nine noticed. "We gonna get some help anytime soon?"
"Just keep pounding at the fuckers, 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. Just like that time on Mars! Got it? We've got to punch a hole through here and get these jarheads to the mansion!" Warboys had to go to guns and fired blindly behind him as he ran and leapt toward an outcropping of rocks for cover.
"Hooah! Colonel!"
"One, Duck!" Warlord Five shouted. Mason saw two Arcadian tanks trying to sandwich him and trap him at the edge of the river.
"Shit!" He took off running in an orthogonal direction while he continued to fire the forty millimeter behind him blindly. His AIC tracked on to one of the tanks with the auto-cannon and slowed him down some. He scanned to his left and caught a glimpse of the mecha glinting in the red light of the setting sun as it slowly dropped behind the hill to their left. The governor's mansion was less than a kilometer in front of them up the river, and the enemy tanks were heading them off in that direction, too. There were tanks behind them, to their left and right, and they were trying to get in front of them. 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. Mason tried to roll his mecha over onto all fours and then up. Then he caught a quick glimpse of four of the Robots bouncing with HVARs firing just over his head. Warboys could see that one of them was Colonel Roberts himself. The AEMs kept firing anti-tank rounds from their suits, mixed in with continuous HVAR fire. Warboys bear-crawled out of their way as best he could and then came up into a trot toward the tank to his right.
The Robots and the odd-numbered Warlords had made it almost all the way up the river to the intersection of two other rivers in front of the governor's mansion before they had been discovered. Six tanks and a dozen AEMs had bounced underwater for nearly a half hour until they reached a dam that blocked their path. Their original plan had been to just lock through it, but they couldn't convince the AIC guarding the locks to cycle without a visual confirmation of a ship. No matter what they tried, they couldn't get the water level to fill the dam's lock so they could just swim through the dam. So the Robots had done what they do best. They crawled out of the water and took the fucking dam, which was a mixed blessing. Now they could cycle the lock, but there was no need because they had gotten in a shoot-out with a guard unit stationed to protect it. They alerted the other Arcadian National Guards that the AEMs were there, and then a squad of tanks and enemy infantry were on top of them in no time. There was no need to hide the Warlords at that point. Especially as Arcadian tanks started rushing the AEMs at the dam. The shit got thick very quickly, and the Warlords were getting pounded. They pounded back even harder.
The AEMs dove for cover as a bot-mode enemy tank with a missing leg tumbled to the ground where Mason had been knocked down. First Sergeant McCandless rushed out from the other side of the downed enemy mecha and tossed a grenade into the shattered cockpit, then dove for cover as it exploded.