By the time he was sure that Dee was belted in, Sehera scrambled up the aisle between the seats beside them and started double- checking the restraints on her daughter.
"I'm in, Mom!"
"Just hold on, baby." Sehera patted her on the head and then plopped into the cushioned synthleather seat beside her, snapping the three-point harness system around her.
"Thomas, are we all in?" Moore scrambled to the seat in front of his daughter that faced a control console and screen. He sat back into the chair and snapped in, while illuminating the screen with sensor data.
"We're in, sir! Go, go!"
"BIL! Close us up!" Moore shouted.
The iris door spun shut, and armor slammed into place around it. The passenger compartment tilted back up and over and locked into its normal position with a loud metal-to-metal reverberation that Alexander felt deep in his bones.
Abigail, expand the DTM for me. I want to see out past the parking lots and all the way to the interstate, Moore thought to his AIC.
Yes, sir. The virtual view in Moore's mind expanded out more than ten kilometers farther than where it had been. He could see the marine mecha overhead, careening about in combat with the flying robots of the park, and could tell that the combat zone ended somewhere just south of the Animal Kingdom and east of Typhoon Lagoon, near Interstate 4.
The Magic Kingdom appeared to be the northern border of the conflict zone. There were red dots on the ground marching north on World Drive by the hundreds. Epcot was one big red blob. Epcot Center Drive, East Buena Vista Drive, and the Osceola Parkway were all solid red. There were blips of red scattered throughout the park's property between the actual theme parks and hotels. In short, they were surrounded and outnumbered and in the middle of some bad karma.
"BIL, go north!"
"Yes, Mr. President." The AI turned toward the castle and began skittering in that direction on eight legs for a few seconds, and then the hoverfield generators kicked in.
The mechanical spider's legs retracted just as the heel of the gigantosaurus crashed down nearly on top of them. BIL barely managed to evade the crushing reptilian foot by turning the vehicle up sideways and banking in a hard turn to the left. Although BIL had missed being crushed underfoot by a mechanical replica of the largest creature that ever walked the Earth, his maneuver flew him directly into the path of a similarly faux, twenty-meter-long, rapidly swinging reptilian tail of an apatosaurus.
"Holy shit! Look out, BIL!" Clay shouted.
The tail of the beast smashed into the armored limousine, rupturing and tearing bioplastic, metal, and synthskin from the AI dinosaur with a shower of sparks and fiber-optic cabling. The tail of the apatosaurus massed over two tons, and the impulse of the impact transferred energy into the mechanical spider like a baseball bat does to a baseball in a grand-slam swing. The limo massed several tons and held a lot of inertia itself to be overcome, but the hoverfields reduced the mass, and the hit sent BIL and his occupants careening across the amusement park, crashing right through the main spire of Cinderella's castle.
The heavily armored presidential limo passed through the façade like a laser scalpel through hot butter, at first leaving an almost cartoon-like hole in the shape of a spider behind. But the castle spire could not withstand the loss of structural integrity. Euler buckling under its own weight began, and the tower collapsed down upon itself into its very own footprint. The failing of the structure generated integrity loss in the rest of the castle façade, and the surrounding spires crashed and toppled like dominoes one after the other around the center. When the dust cleared, the icon of family entertainment that had stood for centuries was nothing more than a pile of rubble.
"Oh my God, BIL!" Dee cried out as the vehicle tumbled through the air out of control. "We're gonna die!"
"Not to worry, Miss Dee. Just hold on."
"You heard him, sweetheart. Hold on!" Alexander reiterated to his daughter, and white-knuckled the armrests of his own seat.
BIL, give me a status DTM, Moore thought to the AI.
Little if no damage, sir. BIL extended his legs to stabilize their trajectory and add lift to the vehicle. The extending legs absorbed some of the angular momentum of the wild spin, the way an ice skater slows down by extending their arms. The hoverfields kicked in at maximum, and he propelled himself as fast horizontally to the ground as he could. As they approached the ground, BIL used his legs as shock absorbers to supplement the hoverfield generators. Their inertia was greater than both combined could overcome, but the impact with the pavement just outside the north wall of the Magic Kingdom was far less than the armor and the SIFs could handle. Though I cannot fly, sir, I can indeed hover and bounce.
Good job, BIL. Now get us the hell out of here!
Yes, sir.
"Jawbone, Jawbone! Did you see that! We've got to stay on top of that vehicle and give him cover!" Heehaw ordered. He had just gone to eagle mode and was darting underneath the legs of the gigantosaurus as the presidential limo smashed through the castle. The FM-12 looked most like a fighter plane in eagle mode, but with legs and arms. The legs ended in three-toed claws, while the arms were human-like. The main gun was gripped firmly in the left, and Heehaw was hammering away directed energy blasts at the surrounding fairytale menaces.
"Roger that, Heehaw! I'm on them . . . fox three!" Jawbone responded as she closed in on a pteranodon with a mecha-to-mecha missile. The missile twisted across the morning sky around a flying carpet and hit home between the shoulder blades of the flying dinosaur. "Okay, Saw, pull out on me, and let's stay on top of that mechanical spider!"
"Roger that, Jaw! Guns guns guns," Saw replied.
Jawbone gripped the HOTAS stick with her right hand, diving the fighter-mode mecha through the engagement zone closer to the deck. She pulled back on the HOTAS with her left hand, cutting the power and allowing gravity to pull her through the dive. At the bottom of the gravity well and just before the no-return point, she slammed the HOTAS forward with her left hand and yanked back with her right. The mecha pulled up through the dive at full throttle near maximum speed for the vehicle at over two thousand kilometers per hour. Shock waves formed on her wingtips, tailfins, and nose, leaving four very loud sonic booms behind her. Saw pulled in supersonic formation behind and slightly to her port side. None of the amusement park hovercars could hold that type of velocity and were left far behind, and the mecha closed the gap on the presidential limousine in seconds.
"Okay, Saw, bleed it off!" she told her wingman as she cut the throttle. Then the Bitchin' Betty chimed at her just as the plane slowed and boomed through the sound barrier.
"Warning, warning. Anti-aircraft fire!"
"Oh shit, Jaw!" Saw's plane rocked its wings and then pitched over nose-first and dove.
"Goddamn it, Saw, don't dive into the fucking AA!"
James, burn that AA, wherever the hell it is! she thought to her AIC.
Got it!
Jawbone yawed and pitched her mecha over and accelerated out in front of her wingman into a wide, corkscrewing dive. The DEGs burned bright green blasts into the swamp surrounding the Bonnet Creek Golf Club and Resort. The back nine of the resort was quickly set ablaze from the energy bolts. Railgun fire continued to pulse upward from several small yachts on Bay Lake, and Jaw could tell that Saw finally went to guns. But it was too late for her rookie wingman. The SIFs of his mecha could no longer take the direct assault line that he was taking and gave in to the impact of the forty-millimeter railgun rounds. Where whoever owned those yachts managed to get forty-millimeter AA guns was a big question, but to Saw and Jawbone, it was a seriously moot fucking question.