I have an idea. Adjust the protocols and teleport Dee to the pad when I get there. Fink and I can keep an eye on her there.
Very well, ma'am.
As she rounded the corner to the pad, there was Fink in a full-body armored e-suit. His helmet was off and tethered over the shoulder as marines typically do while in an atmosphere. Ahmi looked at him curiously.
"Expecting trouble, General Fink?"
"Always, ma'am. That's why I'm still alive."
"It's just around the corner here," Dee said.
"All right." Alexander held up his armored hand. He and Sehera had redonned their AEM helmets and were both flanking their daughter. The other two in suits were behind them. DeathRay and Nancy kept their backs to the walls as they slunk through the hallway of the Seppy leader's house.
"It should be right—" Dee vanished right in front of them.
"Not again!" Moore lurched forward to grab her but got nothing but air.
"Are we too far from the penthouse, you think?" Sehera asked.
"I don't think so," Nancy replied in a low voice, almost a whisper.
"What the hell!" They heard Dee's voice no more than five meters around the corner. "Goddamned Fink, I'm gonna fucking kill you!" There was the sound of a struggle, and two railpistol rounds fired.
"I don't think you are in the position to kill anyone," Fink said.
"Fuck you," Dee said again, followed by more scuffling sounds.
"Stop it! Now! We need to get out of here." There was no mistaking that voice. It was Elle Ahmi. "On the pad, both of you!"
"Hold up!" Moore whispered, motioning them back against the walls. "We rush together in three, two, one, go!"
Chapter 30
July 1, 2394 AD
Ross 128, Arcadia
Friday, 3:46 PM, Earth Eastern Standard Time
"We go in three!" Colonel Roberts motioned to the rest of the Robots. The AEM squad had made it all the way through the tank line and across the front lawn of the governor's mansion. They were presently taking up a position outside the flower garden in a cover position behind some very large limestone and granite flowerpots. There seemed to be nothing more than a handful of infantry holding the mansion position. None of the enemy infantry were in suits. They had body armor and helmets, but a generation old and not powered. On the other hand, there were probably a hundred of them. There were only nine marines, and one of them had a hole where one of his knees used to be.
"Sir, we're ready on the east side," Gunnery Sergeant Tommy Suez reported. The squad was split into two by the driveway of the mansion. Tommy, Sergeant Hubbard, Corporal Bates, and PFCs Howser and Willingham were holding up behind a large ceramic fountain, across the driveway from the colonel, the second lieutenant, Top, and Corporal Cross.
"Good. Okay, Marines, in three, two, one, go!"
"Oorah, motherfucker!" Howser yelled as she bounced up and over the fountain, firing her HVAR from the hip into the Arcadian infantrymen. She bounced down and continued to run at over thirty kilometers per hour.
"Serpentine, Howser!" Tommy warned her. He zigged and zagged through the railgun rounds that were leaving purple ion trails all around him and fired his own weapon. A few times, he pumped grenades from the launcher in his forearm. The grenades lobbed out about fifty meters or so into the barricades and razor wire, exploding with a deafening report and flinging dirt and debris and body parts across the lawn.
"Take that, you motherfuckers!" Bates yelled. He ran at the suit's top speed, never letting off the trigger of either his rifle or his grenades. He crossed the fifty meters or so between where they had been and the barricades at the steps of the mansion in seconds. PFC Howser bounced in right beside him. The two of them were practically back-to-back behind the barricades, pumping railgun rounds out as fast as they could.
Tommy bounced fast, but a bit more cautiously. He could see the colonel, the lieutenant, and Top doing the same as they bounced in from his right. There was always a trap, or a second tier of troops, and they were trying to see if they were drawn out by the first round of AEMs that broke through the line. Tommy's caution had been well placed.
There were snipers in the trees and on the second floor of the roof that started peppering away at the AEMs with larger-caliber railgun rounds. Tommy picked them up in his peripheral vision as soon as they started firing. He tracked the ion trail back up through the air to the treeline and dove sideways, returning fire on them.
"Snipers on the second floor balconies and in the treeline to the east!" Tommy shouted.
"Roger that, Gunny!" Top replied.
"I got 'em," Second Lieutenant Nelms shouted. Tommy could see the lieutenant turn his bounce path and go top speed toward the trees. Railgun rounds chewed up dirt all around him, but the lieutenant just kept on running toward the trees.
"I have the second-floor sniper," Colonel Roberts said. He bounced up and tossed about ten grenades at once into all the second-floor windows.
"They're gonna need a shitload of new windows after that," McCandless called out as she pumped out railgun rounds to cover them.
Tommy had the best angle on the lieutenant's path, so he hunkered down behind a row of statues near the barricade and fired nonstop into the trees. The lieutenant bounced into the tree canopy and vanished from visual, but Tommy could still see him in the QM and IR sensors. Then the canopy exploded, and the sniper fire stopped. The second lieutenant was blasted out of the trees like a rocket, and he rolled and tumbled to a stop just south of Tommy.
"You okay, LT?" Tommy asked him.
"I'm good, Gunny. Keep moving."
"Yes, sir, LT!" Tommy bounced to his feet and over the barricade and joined in the rest of the squad as they mopped up the rest of the Arcadian infantry and security detail guarding the door—most of those poor bastards didn't have any weapons serious enough to do the AEMs real harm, unless they were willing to drop grenades into their own laps. And Ramy's Robots certainly weren't going to give them time to figure that one out.
They moved in closer to the door, and Bates popped it with a few rounds then kicked it open. They stepped back, then carefully charged in like a bunch of damned rhinoceroses—armored rhinos with big fucking guns and HE.
The interior hallway and foyer of the mansion had been blown to shit from all the grenades. The AEMs scanned the room and quickly cleared the first floor.
"So, if I were a control room to an orbital QMT facility, where would I hide?" Colonel Roberts asked.
"Not sure, sir." First Sergeant McCandless shrugged her armored shoulders.
"Well, Top, let's figure it out ASAP."
"Yes, sir."
"Sir, my QMs are reading a dead spot behind that wall," Tommy said. His sensors had plotted a three-dimensional map of the house in his head, but there was a spot just beyond the far wall that was blank. That meant his sensors were blocked.
"You know the only thing that can block the QMs, Gunny?" Nelms asked with a smile that Tommy could see through his visor.
"Uh, no training on the physics of QM tech, LT."
"Well, Gunny, SIFs are the only known tech that stop the QMs. You can jam the electronics and fool them, but if they are working right, the QM sensors can see through anything but structural integrity fields," the lieutenant informed them.