"Fox three!" Goat shouted. His missile went wide of the bot but hit the AA box, knocking it out.
"Shit! I'm locked up!" Deuce jinked and juked and did everything she could as she saw a missile fire out of the bot's torso missile tubes. "Fox three! Fox three!" she shouted as the unlocked missiles jumped out in front of her. She tracked the tailpipe of her own missiles with the upper and under forty-millimeter cannons. "Guns, guns, guns!"
Her tracers tore through the ass-end of her mecha-to-mecha missiles just as the enemy's missile began spiraling up at her. Her two missiles exploded into a fireball, confusing the enemy missile, which lost lock and spun out of control through the plasma in front of her. Deuce rolled her fighter, and the enemy missile tumbled centimeters past her. She yawed herself one hundred and eighty degrees and tracked the tumbling missile with her cannons, blasting it out of the sky. She pitched back over to orient her nose back into the line of travel and was now cockpit-to-cockpit with Goat as they barrel-rolled around and around each other.
"Guns, guns, guns!" Goat shouted. "Shit, Deuce, we're coming in too fast!"
"Prepare for QMT in five, four, three, two, one," the air boss's AIC voice chimed in Deuce's mindvoice.
"About fucking time!" Deuce killed her throttle and banked left and suddenly had a brief view of the inside of a ship and then was in very thin atmosphere about twenty kilometers directly above the Arcadian governor's mansion. Her blue-force tracker showed several other mecha all around her at safe distances, popping into space. Several were already at full throttle toward the engagement zone below. Then Goat spun into existence beside her with sparks flying from his mecha. From the looks of it, he had tried to go to bot mode and something had taken the left arm of his mecha off. His DEG gun was nowhere to be seen.
"Shit! Look out, Deuce!" he shouted, but the air boss AIC had put him in at a safe distance. Unfortunately, it hadn't brought him in fast enough to prevent that Seppy fighter from getting him. His plane was out of commission.
"Toggle to fighter, Goat!" she shouted at him. The bot rolled over and tucked its legs in and expanded its wings, spinning into a fighter-mode mecha. The thin atmosphere was enough for the control surfaces to kick in and dampen out his spin.
"Shit! I've lost my DEG, and I've got systems going out everywhere!"
Jawbone popped into space nearby, and then Popstar. Deuce started counting up the Utopian Saviors and sending them a signal to form up on her through DTM.
Bobby, get the message to all the Saviors as they QMT in.
Aye, ma'am.
"Do you still have SIFs and propulsion?"
"No SIFs, but I have propulsion."
"Shit, you're out of the game, Goat. They should've teleported you out first!" Deuce said it before she could stop herself. Hell, she knew that "should'ves" never do anybody a damned bit of good. "All right, Goat, you can't go back to the Madira from here. So you need to find a safe place on the ground to hang out and see if you can stay out of trouble."
"Damnit. Sorry, Deuce."
About that time another FM-12 spun in out of control. It was Skinny's wingman, Captain Michael "HoundDog" Samuels. The FM-12 was in eagle mode in a three-dimensional spin, and his tail section was spewing plasma and his cockpit venting air and smoke.
"I'm hit, I'm hit!" HoundDog screamed with real pain and fear in his voice. The right tailfin of his plane blew off and a fireball started to form. "Eject, eject, eject!"
HoundDog's ejection seat cleared the fireball of his exploding mecha. The plasma and debris tossed his chair into a mad, freely falling whirl. In full gravity now, his seat started to plummet. When the sensor found enough air pressure, it would pop his chute. Unfortunately, he would land right in the middle of the fight below.
"Hang on, HoundDog!" Deuce dove her fighter over and straight toward the ejection seat. She hit the mode toggle, pulling into eagle mode. As she pulled up into an even free fall with HoundDog, she backed off her throttle to match his speed precisely and then reached out with her right mecha hand and grabbed the chair gently. "I got you."
"Goat, I've got a mission for you now!" Deuce arced back out of the free fall and leveled off. "Get HoundDog down and check on his wounds. Form up on me and take him. HoundDog, you with me?"
"Barely. I caught something in my abdomen. My suit sealed it off, but I don't feel too good," Hounddog replied. She did a quick check on his vitals. They were stable enough. Deuce had seen a lot worse come out okay, if they got medical attention soon enough. She wasn't sure why the Madira hadn't QMTed him up to sickbay, unless the medi-AIC doing triage had a whole lot more wounded in worse shape than HoundDog. From the looks of the way things were going in space, Deuce was pretty sure that was the case.
"I'm on you, Deuce. Ready for handoff in three, two, one, drop," Goat told her. Deuce let go of the chair, and it gently fell into Goat's remaining mecha hand. Then Skinny popped into space.
"HoundDog, HoundDog, where are you?" Skinny shouted over the net.
"I'm here, Major," he replied.
"Shit, Marine, I thought I'd lost you," Skinny said. After a brief pause, she added, "You need to hit the immunoboost soon."
"My suit is handling it."
"All right, Saviors, listen up," said Deuce. "Several of the other squadrons are popping in and are starting to form up. We're all here minus Goat and HoundDog. Skinny, old girl, looks like you're with me."
"It'll be just like old times, Deuce!"
"Let's hit the deck and help out the tankheads. Use the DEGs as often as you like, but conserve the ammo on the cannons. Don't know about all of you, but my counter is getting pretty goddamned low. Blue-force tracker shows a small group of marines and tanks making a push to the governor's mansion. Let's help them A-S-fucking-A-P. Maximum velocity with maximum ferocity, Marines!"
"Oorah!"
Fish was glad as hell to get out of that space ball. It was too one-sided with Seppy Gnats and Stingers. They were every-fucking-where. Her squad had been whittled down to seven out of the initial ten. Those were very bad numbers for the Gods of War. Lieutenant Commander Penika "Hula" Moses was dead. Lieutenant Junior Grade Geoffrey "Fireball" Julias was out of commission with critical wounds. And Lieutenant Commander Charles "Stinky" Allen was barely managing to keep his plane in the air. He was also carrying Fireball's ejection chair with him.
She could see in her DTM that the Saviors and the Dawgs had taken some casualties, too. The Dawgs had suffered the worst, losing half their squad.
"Deuce, Deuce, this is Fish."
"Go, Fish."
"We're forming up, ready to help out. I see you're on the way down. We'll be right behind you."
"Roger that, Fish. Looks like Poser is the senior of you squid pilots."
"I heard that, Deuce!" Poser's voice chimed in. Fish could see her in the DTM, forming up near the Gods of War.
"Take her cues, Fish," Deuce advised her.
"Roger that, Deuce," Fish acknowledged.
"Poser, Fish, we need to clear out the enemy line on the south side of the governor's mansion and hold it. And, Fish, the fight is on the ground there for now, but you need to be my eyes skyward."
"Understood, Deuce." The FM-12s the Saviors flew were more suited to close-in fighting on the ground and other surfaces, like carrier hulls. The Ares-Ts were designed for top cover and fighting in open space, but that didn't mean that ace Navy aviators couldn't fight on the ground as well. That was the main reasoning for Navy procurement officials to decide on a new Ares model that could transfigure into bot mode.