"Welcome to the neighborhood, Poser," Warboys added. "Let's go to work, Warlords."
The Warlords spread out across the surface of the planetoid in tank mode, going to active ping on the QMs and looking diligently for any sign of a target that they could smash the hell out of. The sensors generated a resonant signal across the local quantum surface and watched for precisely timed and gated return oscillations. Each ping from each tank was then extrapolated back, as so-called multi-path data. The AICs in return built up a three-dimensional map of the battlescape from the data.
The battlescape was full of red dots that were rapidly closing the gap to the M3A17-Ts. Separatist Orcus drop tanks were spreading across the surface of the Oort facility like ants after someone had kicked over the anthill. Warlord One forced the tank at maximum velocity, which was well over three hundred kilometers per hour in that gravity, with every intention of stomping any ant or hill of them he came across.
His mecha bounded over the edge of a steep escarpment and plunged down the side of the jagged surface about forty meters to the bottom of the cliff, tossing ice and rocky debris on the way. Several of his tankheads followed him. He toggled the bot-mode control, flipping the tank in a backward roll into an upright bipedal position. The large forty-millimeter cannon turret rested atop the torso of the bot where a head might be. The barrel of the large cannon looked as if it were an oversized, yet deadly, proboscis protruding from it. He ran the tank fast, pounding the giant armored feet into the planetoid and flinging a rooster tail of ice and dust particles behind each step. Had there been enough sunlight, rainbows might have danced around the debris, but at about one light-year from Sol, the only lighting was coming from artificial sources and weapons fire.
Give me the full battlescape, Brenda.
Yes, sir. The AIC expanded the colonel's virtual sphere, giving him a complete view of the battlescape on the surface and above them in a hemisphere with a two-hundred-kilometer radius. The algorithms running against all of the sensor-system data identified more than two hundred red dots and a little less than half that in blue dots, all within the hemisphere. Of course Warboys knew the battle plan and realized that the number of blue dots was going to increase by nearly one hundred times that in the next pass that the supercarrier made over them. Until then, the tankheads had to move swiftly, knocking out every target they could find along the path to the interior of the teleporter pad.
"All right Warlords, as we move to the line, I want everybody holding off on any long-range shots. They know we're here, but we don't have to let them know how aggressive we are until the last minute." Warlord One continued in a hard run with giant bounds over crevasses, metal framework, rubble, and the general construction of the facility site. He had yet to need to fire but was beginning to warm up to the idea.
"All right Dawgs, just like in the playbook, nice and frosty. Let's spread out and cover the pounders and tankheads. Watch for those Stingers." Poser pushed her VTF-32 Ares-T fighter at top speed toward the incoming red dots. Her wingman, Lieutenant Junior Grade Cory "Skater" Davis, held tight to her starboard wing. The snub-nosed, fighter-mode Navy mecha dropped to less than two hundred meters off the deck of the Separatist facility.
"Poser, this is Punchout. My QMs are showing more than thirty Stingers! This is gonna royally suck!"
"Roger that, Punchout." Poser paused and analyzed the DTM for the Warlords and for the AEMs. They were still ten or twenty seconds from engagement range. If the Dawgs timed it right, they could hit the line of the enemy a few seconds before and confuse the living shit out of the enemy ground forces with some well-placed air-to-surface ordnance. Then the Dawgs would be totally enveloped by the enemy air support. But, hell, that was all part of the plan.
"Hooyah! Fox, Fox Three, Fox One," Poser announced, letting fly a free flier, a QM-locked, and a heat-seeker missile. The three missiles spread out in front of the Dawgs and split off in three different directions. The free flier hit the deck into the line of Orcuses, while the other two detonated into chaff and countermeasures from the Gnats and Stingers approaching head-to-head. "Fire at will, fire at will, fire at will," she added.
The Navy and the Separatist mecha mixed up into a serious furball with the VTF-32s. Several of the Dawgs released missiles or strafing fire into the Orcus line on the ground, giving the groundpounders and the tankheads cover.
"JavaBean, JavaBean, watch your six!"
"I've got it, Tarzan. Guns guns guns."
"All right, Skater, let's take 'em to the deck all the way!" Poser ordered her wingman.
"Roger that!"
Wendy nosed over into a dive into a trajectory that led through the southern boundary of the teleport towers, strafing continuously. Her wingman followed suit. The directed energy bolts and the railgun pellets chewed up the surface of the facility, throwing ice, dust, and metal slag into ballistic trajectories along their path.
"Okay Warlords, there's your path. Good luck. We got you covered up here."
"Hot fuckin' damn, it's thick out here!" First Lietenant Timothy "Goat" Crow shouted over the Saviors' tac-net channel. The catapult field tossed the marine squadron's fighter-mode mecha from the supercarrier right into a hornet's den of Seppy Stingers and AA fire.
"Roger that," Skinny replied, checking her rearview to see that the last of her group had made it out of the ship in one piece. The six mecha, her attack group, scattered around her randomly in a very, very, very loose definition of the word "formation."
Alan, calculate me some options for getting to the deck as close to the southwest apex of the facility as you can, she told her AIC.
Yes, ma'am, Lieutenant Alan Five Five Foxtrot Echo Echo Alpha One Seven replied. He set about wargaming from the QM and lidar sensor data and from the red and blue dots transmitted from the Madira's CDC. In a few milliseconds, Alan had calculated several trajectories for the Saviors, and in a millisecond more, he had picked the optimal one and displayed the "ball" in Connie's DTM mindview.
Great, Connie thought. "All right, Saviors, follow me, and let's hit the fuckin' deck. Maximum velocity . . ." She paused for a response.
" . . . with maximum ferocity!" the Saviors replied.
Skinny pitched her fighter-mode mecha downward until the Oort object filled her forward field of view and slammed the HOTAS against the forward stop with her left hand. The engines of the mecha whined lightly and spun up to full acceleration. AA tracers passed by her canopy several times, and then tracers from the right side on her three-nine line ripped across the space just in front of her nose.
"Warning, radar lock is being acquired. Warning . . ." her Bitchin' Betty chimed.
"Skinny, we've got three Stingers trying to pounce on us from our three o'clock angels ten!" her wingman, Second Lieutenant "HoundDog" Samuels, warned.
"Shit! Bank left, HoundDog!" She pushed the stick hard left into a tight turn, instantly creating an increase in the gravity upon her body and mecha by a factor of nine.
Tracer fire tracked behind the two mecha but couldn't lock them up. Their turn was tighter than the Seppy Stinger pilots seemed to want to manage. The three enemy planes pulled into a slightly wider bank but were still close enough to make very near misses from their guns. Skinny checked her rearview mirror as well as her DTM, and her wingman was right with her. The two of them had trained formation combat tactics for years and were about to put their expertise to the test.
"Ugghh! HoundDog, let's show these Seppy bastards who's boss," Skinny yelled at the top of her voice. She yanked the stick as far left as it would go for a split second and pulled the throttle back a bit. Then she kicked her right lower pedal and slammed the HOTAS back to the right side. The mecha made an even tighter left bank and slowed slightly as it bled off energy. Then it rolled over in a split-S into a tight right turn as the enemy Stingers overshot them. The maneuver put more than eleven times the force of gravity on her, due to the extreme acceleration, but at the same time, it put her staring up the tailpipes of the three enemy planes.