Chapter 3
February 19, 2407 AD
U.S.S. Sienna Madira
Target Star System
700 Light-years from the Sol System
Monday, 1:47 P.M. Ship Standard Time
“Nav! Change the hyperspace jaunt coordinates to the ones you are receiving now!”
“Got it, sir!”
“Seven seconds, General!” the XO shouted. “Mission clock at six minutes, forty-three seconds.”
“Go, Nav!” Moore gritted his teeth as the purple whirling vortex spun up in front of them just in time. The Madira couldn’t sling-forward or snap-back because, as the Ghuthlaeer had warned, the QMT systems were nonfunctional, but the FTL hyperspace jaunt system worked just fine. Seconds later the maneuver placed them in reality space at almost the mirror-image location of where they had been facing off with the Chiata battleship. The bow of the supercarrier pointed directly at the system’s bright yellowish-green star, and the tilted blue-green planet to starboard and on the port side slightly aftward was the giant, menacing Chiata behemoth that looked like a cross between a giant mechanical sea snail sans the shell and a porcupine on steroids. The giant tuning-fork weapon jutted from the top of the ship, looking almost like a caricature of the sea snail’s antennae—a giant, deadly, mechanical, alien, scary-as-hell caricature. Alexander hoped and prayed they could manage the “hit and run” tactic and “chip away at the stone” until they broke the behemoth’s back. And then they could worry about the next one. And the one after that. And the one after that. But first things were first.
“I’ve got the target acquired, General!” Lieutenant Commander Lisa Banks, the new Weapons Deck Officer, shouted through her open faceplate. All of the crew had their helmets on, Buckley reaction e-suit shields operational, and their visors up. Alexander was no different as he commanded from the oversized captain’s chair on the bridge of the bot-built supercarrier. His mindview of the battlescape was filling the air about his head with red and blue dots and energy curves and battle tactics, statistics, and weapons inventories. He made mental notes on the blue dot in the aft section of the ship where Sehera was, and the one he could now see moving wildly and erratically through space in the thick of battle. Dee would take care of herself, but if he had to sway the tide of the engagement to help her odds, he most certainly would.
“Well, don’t waste time telling me about it, Lisa! Fire at will, goddammit! Put energy on the target before it can hit us!” Alexander ordered. He’d been through this before with the Chiata and knew that even fractions of a second meant life and death.
“Twenty-nine seconds, General!” The XO started the jump clock over. It was the ominous thirty seconds until the damned Chiata targeting system could work out a solution and bring to bear the “zig-zagging blue beams of death from Hell,” as the veterans of the Alpha Lyncis battle called them. The clock was projected throughout the ship on every display and through every AIC direct-to-mind to all crew including the mecha jocks, tankheads, and ground pounders. “Mission clock at seven minutes.”
The Expeditionary Fleet had QMTed into the system only seven minutes prior, and it hadn’t taken more than a matter of seconds before the Chiata had an armada of the giant beast ships engaging them. The planet that the Expeditionary Fleet materialized near on their final QMT jump was the nexus of activity in the system according to all sensor sweeps. In other words, the jump had apparently dropped them right into the middle of an alien hornets’ nest. Even though they had caught the aliens unaware, the fleet had managed to poke the hornets enough to piss them off. The alien ships were on them like a swarm at their maximum FTL speeds of about seventy-five times the speed of light.
The long, misshapen dull-brown metal alien sea-snail starships were covered with spires that looked like tuning forks, stretched out into space halfway between the bow and midsection, with the largest of the tuning forks running from the middle of the ship all the way out the front, giving it the appearance of antennae. The smaller forks laid down anti-aircraft and missile-defense fire. It was the large forks jutting forward that spat the zig-zagging blue beams of death from Hell.
“General, I’m picking up a huge EM buildup around the main tuning fork spire!” the new Science and Technology Officer, USN Commander Tori Snow reported. The entire bridge crew except for Firestorm and Moore had died in the last engagement. Moore had managed to put together the best crew he could and train them in the short period of time since. “According to records it is similar to ones seen before as they malfunctioned. I think it is about to blow, sir!”
“On screen, STO!” Moore ordered. It was déjà vu all over again. The spire was cracking all about the base and upward through the center between the tines, with big blue arcs jumping from tine to tine like the alien structure was about to engage the primary weapon, but then orange and red plasma ejected out around it in all directions, just as they had seen in the past in the Alpha Lyncis battle.
The spire exploded. The space around the alien vessel was filled with a mix of blue arcs and red and orange plasmas, and with the force of a small tactical gluonium bomb, an extremely intense high-energy gamma ray burst fried systems throughout the alien ship, sparking off and spreading secondary explosions longitudinally up the ship until one final huge blast threw pieces of the multiple-supercarrier-sized alien vessel into its nearby companion swarm ships, breaking through parts of the exterior armor of its closest wingman.
“Nineteen seconds!” Firestorm shouted. “I’ve got fire crews being called to the lower hangars and the outer hull tubes, sir.”
“Stay on it, Sally,” Moore told his XO.
“Damn right, sir! Seventeen seconds!”
“Gunner! Target the damaged area of the second ship with everything!” Alexander turned to the ‘Bosses.’ “Air Boss, are my fighters deployed yet?”
“Aye, sir!” Commander of the Air Wing USN Captain Patrick “Nosedive” Krieger responded. “The Dawgs and Maniacs are laying down cover for the ground pounders as we speak and the Saviors and the Archangels are mixing the ball like hell! No reports of pukin’ deathblossoms yet.”
“Ground Boss, report!”
“Roger that, General!” Commander of the Ground Combat Mecha Group Army Brigadier General Geri “Killjoy” Ibanez replied. “The Dragon Slayers have dropped to the planet with the Juggernauts riding piggyback. The hovertanks are smashin’ and trashin’ and the AEMs are bringing Hell, sir. So far there has been less ground resistance than we expected.”
“Damn good, keep them moving on the ground away from the population centers.”
“General Moore, CDC!” the voice of the officer in command of the Combat Direction Center called in through the bridge command net.
“Go, CDC.”
“Sir, all ten ships from the Fleet are in their pre-described non-Keplerian orbits about the planets over the preplanned target continents. Each ship reports drop tanks deployed and fighters in the mix. Admiral Walker is getting hit the hardest, sir! The Thatcher has already taken several blue beams and the forward DEG batteries are down,” the CDC reported.
“Keep on it, CDC. I want the fleet moving with random jaunts and if we see it is too thick for any of our teams anywhere I want to know about it before it happens. Game clock is ticking, people. We’ve got to hold to the plan as long as we can.”
“Aye, sir!”
Abby, you stay on top of it.
As always, sir.
Give me a Fleet view zoom-out and keep me apprised of Walker’s status. I don’t want to lose the Thatcher in the first quarter of this game!
Roger that, sir, Abigail replied in his mind.
“General, Admiral Walker is hailing us,” the communications officer stated.
Shit.
Yes, sir. I think from her status readings she is sidelined.
Shit. Moore hated taking his most trusted and experienced naval officer out of the mix so quickly.
“Open the channel, lieutenant.” Moore nodded in her direction.
“Aye, sir.” The young comms officer turned to her console. “On screen, sir.”
“Fullback, my stats tell me you’re getting pounded to Hell and gone.” Moore could see the very large intimidating figure of Admiral Sharon “Fulback” Walker before him. There were alarms sounding in the background, and a fire crew was diligently working on a flaming panel behind and to the left of her.
“Yes, General. I believe I’ve drawn the short end of the stick. My CHENG tells me that I can either jaunt or fire the DEGs, but not both. All we can do is make a decoy of ourselves and jaunt about.” Walker sounded disappointed but calm.
“Casualties are starting to run up on you, Sharon. Pull your ground teams in and get out.” Moore looked at the hole in the line that losing the Thatcher would make. He would have to make adjustments to the attack plan. An entire continent of the planet would be uncovered. But from the battle statistics, that continent looked like it would be the most troublesome anyway and would need a much larger force than a single supercarrier to hold it.
“Sir, we can still be of some use to you bouncing about to confuse the alien targeting systems.” The admiral almost pleaded to stay.
“No. We’ll make do. Pull your people, jaunt to QMT range, and lick your wounds. If you get yourselves back in order, feel free to come barreling ass back in. I’m sure we could use any help we can get.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sounding the recall and retreat now. Without QMTs it will take several minutes to pull back my fighters and ground teams.”
“Get what you can and have the rest retreat to other ships or support other ground engagements. But do not get the Thatcher destroyed.”
“Understood, sir. Good luck, General! Thatcher out.”
“Godspeed, Sharon.”
Sir, I calculate that it will take over ten minutes to retrieve seventy percent of the Thatcher’s flight and ground teams, Abigail warned him.
Who is closest to her?
UM61 Alpha03, sir. Captain James 92601, Abigail replied in his mind.
Open a DTM link between Fullback, the clone captain, and myself.
Done, sir.
Captain James. Fullback.
Sir.
James, you are to cover Fullback’s retreat and take on any of her teams that she cannot manage to evac. The two of you work out some leap-frogging FTL jumps and get it done. Sharon, I want you out of here in two minutes. Understood?
Roger that, sir, James answered.
Thank you, General, Walker’s voice sounded in his head.
Admiral, don’t worry about the crew you have to leave behind. As soon as the Hillenkoetter drops in I’m putting her on top of them, Moore thought to them. Captain Penzington can help cover your retreat as well.
Aye, sir.
The gunner continued directing the red and green beams from the DEGs of the Madira II across the next target. The beams tracked across into the open wound of the Chiata ship. The cannon spires on the side facing them were mostly wiped out by the explosion of the first one. It was the Madira versus the local swarm of three Chiata ships nearest the northern pole continent region of the planet. At Alpha Lyncis the three enemy ships would have easily been enough to overpower the Sienna Madira II. But that was before Moore had figured out the random FTL jumping tactic, and to top it all off, the new and improved Buckley-Freeman shields were holding solid. Whatever upgrades the CHENG had made after getting the note from the Ghuthlaeer CHENG seemed to be helping for the moment.
“Give me a missile in there and don’t let up on the DEGs!” Moore ordered.
“Aye, sir!” the gunner replied. Alexander could see in his DTM battlescape the blue track of a gluonium-tipped missile as it rocketed out from the ship and corkscrewed about the DEG beams all the way to target. As he looked out the viewscreen and saw the missile visually, the DTM tracks overlaid in his mind the energy curves and probability of hitting the target. The missile vanished into the burned-through armor and then the probability of hit went to one hundred percent as it exploded on the interior of the alien ship. The Chiata vessel bulged like a bowl of instant popcorn in the center then popped at multiple orifices from the overpressure. The ship was separated into halves as secondary explosions finished it off.
“Nine seconds! Mission clock at nine seventeen.”
Then a blue beam zigged from out of nowhere, it seemed, and slammed into the aft barrier shield. Moore felt the jolt but, unlike at Alpha Lyncis, this time he and his crew were fully armored and strapped in and wearing their helmets.
“That was a solid fucking wallop, Sir,” Executive Officer USMC Brigadier General Sally “Firestorm” Rheims shouted. “But we were ready for the bastards this time!”
“She’ll hold. She’s a good solid ship,” the Chief of the Boat Chuck Sowles added from his COB’s chair behind the captain’s chair and to the left. Alexander had lost his COB on the last mission. He’d hate to lose this one. Sowles had been in the Navy for more than a century. The man just liked to be in space. Alexander had found him on a long-haul cargo cruiser at Tau Ceti. The man was originally from Biloxi, Mississippi, which was another thing that Alexander liked about him.
“Hold or not, COB, she’s getting the shit kicked out of her,” the XO replied.
“Where did that one come from?” Alexander turned to the STO.
“General Moore! CDC!”
“Go, CDC!”
“We have seven more ships that just dropped out of hyperspace, sir!”
The ship rocked hard forward and vibrations rang throughout it like the inside of a bell. Alexander gripped his chair tighter and thought through the battlescape mindview. All of a sudden the Madira, specifically, was terribly outgunned.
The bastards know who’s in charge? he thought. Are my naval tactics that transparent to them?
It would appear so, sir, Abigail agreed.
How long until the Hillenkoetter team arrives? he thought almost rhetorically. The mission clock highlighted in his DTM view almost as soon as he thought it.
Seven minutes and forty-one seconds, sir.
Might as well have said forever.
“Shit,” Alexander Moore hissed through his gritted teeth as the ship was thrown forward again by another zig-zagging blue beam of death from Hell. It was going to be a long seven minutes and forty-one seconds.
“CHENG to CO!”
“Go, Buckley!” Alexander held to his chair tighter as it continued to shake.
“Sir, the port side DEGs are venting coolant into the exterior hull tubes and we’ve lost both batteries on that section. Worst of it, sir, is that the coolant leaks have shorted out the structural integrity field generators there. If the shields go, that hull plating isn’t gonna hold up to fratricide debris, not to mention one of those damned blue beams!”
“Get me those DEGs back up, CHENG!” Alexander clutched his fists and focused on the DTM battlescape view. The new influx of enemy battleships was turning the tide against his first attack wave. If more enemy reinforcements appeared they would be in serious trouble. Alexander had to rethink his strategy, but there was little time to think. He barely had time to react.
“Aye, sir! But you need to be aware, if we get a feedback pulse from the damaged DEGs, it’ll blow every breaker in the hyperspace vortex projector. We’ll be dead in the water, sir!” Buckley explained.
“Fix it, Joe! Fix it!” Alexander didn’t have time for explanations and excuses. They were in the thick of it and he needed his guns. “COB, see if you can reroute some fire teams to the forward DEGs to help with the CHENG’s team.”
“On it, Captain!” The COB replied.
“More fire teams are on the way, Joe!”
“Sir!”
“Ten seconds, General!” Firestorm shouted from her station. “Looks like the bastards are trying to flank us and force us into a damned bowl on the planet!”
“Nav! Jump us now!” Alexander watched as the spin-up cycle for the vortex projector counted in his head. They were cutting it too close. Then, out across the bow zigged and then zagged a brilliant blue beam. Moore watched as the vortex of whirling purples, pinks, and blues of Cerenkov radiation flashed against the changing structure of space and time before the ship. Just as the Madira stretched forward into hyperspace, the blue beams of death from Hell tore into the port side. The alien horde motherfuckers knew just where to hit him!
“Shit!”
* * *
“Shit!” Deanna Moore shouted through the mouthpiece between her clenched teeth as the brilliance of the continually firing zig-zagging blue beams of death from Hell filled the ball with overwhelming irradiance. The illumination reflected off the hull of the Madira seemed to Deanna to be looming far too close to the planet’s upper atmosphere for her liking. But that was the least of her worries presently. “DeathRay, get that motherfuckin’ porcupine off my ass!” Dee grunted through the high-gee-force maneuver as her FM-12 mecha somersaulted forward, transfiguring from fighter to bot mode, all while her AIC drove the plasma cannon targeting and tracking system to the limits trying to lock onto the Chiata porcupine-shaped fighter that was on her ass. “Guns, guns, guns.”
“Fox three!” DeathRay’s voice cut through the mecha tac-net. The mecha-to-mecha missile zipped past her cockpit, damned near ricocheting off it. Dee winced at the glare from the hot plasma and ion stream pouring from the missile’s propulsion system. As the missile exploded against the shields of the alien fighter, fragments of the warhead housing and orange and white plasma exploded, shifting the alien craft’s vector as its shield rippled and shimmered but didn’t burn out. “I got ’em, Apple1. Guns, guns, guns! Just feint over and go to fighter and kick the HOTAS hard on my signal.”
“Hurry it up!” Dee could see the trajectory curves of her fighter and the aliens’ fighter twisting about each other with red and blue traces in her DTM battlescape view. DeathRay’s Navy Ares VTF 33-T fighter jinked and juked through the trajectory plots in an almost discontinuous motion. As far as Dee could tell, DeathRay must have been holding the trigger down continuously as racquetbal-sized fireballs pounded at her pursuer’s hull. The sharp gee loads DeathRay was enduring to clear her six had to be enormous on the pilot, but that was what wingmen were for. Dee continued to twist and roll her mecha like a giant mechanical Olympic gymnast squirming over a fire ant hill. She looked straight through the bottom of her fighter via her mindview and could see the porcupine’s forward spires glowing blue and firing.
“Shit!” She grunted and squeezed her legs, buttocks, and abs as her neck muscles strained against the forces pulling her and pushing her apart. “Aaaaarrrr whooo uhnnn!”
“Warning, enemy targeting lock eminent. Warning, targeting lock eminent!” Her Bitchin’ Betty sounded and warning lights filled her DTM display.
“Now, Dee! Now!” DeathRay shouted. “Guns, guns, guns. Fox three! Fox three!”
Dee didn’t hesitate or take time to watch whatever the hell magic flying shit Captain Jack “DeathRay” Boland did. If she’d waited that fraction of a second it would have killed her. Instead her training and proficiency as a mecha jock prevailed. Dee slammed the throttle forward with one hand and the stick forward and right with the other. With her index finger on her left hand she hit the transfigure toggle as she stomped both of the upper left pedals with a tad of lower right pedal.
“Holy shit!” she shouted, and then grunted a guttural scream as the g-suit squeezed her legs, forcing the blood back into her torso. Dee flexed her core muscles and swallowed back bile as the negative nine gravities turned over and then threw her backwards with a positive twelve gravities for a brief instant as the nose of her fighter pointed straight at the alien ship. Her own nose had a slight red trickle of blood draining from it that the seal layer of her suit would quickly absorb.
Just as the blue zig-zagging beams began to leap from the porcupine fighter, Jack’s guns tore into the shields. A swirl of blues and greens flashed as the fighter’s shields failed. The cannon fire continued pouring into the side plating, making a weak spot for the mecha-to-mecha missile to paint with high explosives. The blue beam seemed to backfire for a brief frozen instant and then the alien ship erupted into a blue and orange ball of shrapnel and plasma. Dee’s fighter, now reversing its velocity vector, shot through the fireball and debris cloud, rocking and pinging from small impacts against the Buckley-Freeman barrier shields.
“On your six, DeathRay!” There was no time for Dee to catch her breath. She threw the HOTAS sideways and back and kicked in the throttle as she screamed past DeathRay’s fighter, only missing it by meters. The red and blue energy curves spiraled and corkscrewed in her mind but there were none that would converge in time for her to help Jack. Her energy vector was in the complete wrong direction and she’d have to make a hairpin turn as she just had. It was going to hurt but Dee was not going to allow Jack to have sacrificed himself to pull her ass out of the fire.
“Hold on, Boss!” USN Commander Karen “Fish” Fisher shouted through the tac-net. Dee could see Jack’s old wingman’s energy curve making a U-turn around an enemy porcupine and twisting with her wingman USMC First Lieutenant Wiley “Bridge” Cruise in a ballet spiral with two other porcupines on his tail. The mish-mash of energy curves and possible combat tactical scenarios of more than forty fighting mechas and what was running at the current toll of ninety-seven enemy targets twisted into what looked like a horrific spaghetti nightmare pulsating and entangled about space in her mindview. To anyone else it would have been an incredible overload of data that could simply shut the mind down. For anyone else it would have been overwhelming. But USMC Major Deanna “Apple1” Moore wasn’t just anyone.
Then, almost as soon as Dee’s mind acknowledged the mix of energy curves her training, instinct, and fighting brilliance converged on a solution almost at the same instant the super-quantum computing artificial intelligence in her head highlighted it. She pulled the throttle to a full stop and rolled and yawed her fighter mode mecha, then kicked in the burners. The two maneuvers slammed her forward with seven gees and then backward with nine gees and no telling how many somersaults her stomach took from the angular accelerations.
“Fish! Stay on your target!” Dee told her. “You and Bridge dance the dance. I need the diversion, and don’t worry, I’ve got your backside curves. DeathRay, you’re gonna have to feint as soon as Fish goes hot!”
“Guns, guns, guns!” DeathRay shouted. “I got you, Apple1. But I see what you’re planning and I don’t like it! The only way out of what you’re planning is to start pukin’! Your body is gonna be fried and out for precious seconds and we’re overwhelmed!”
“If I don’t, you and Bridge are toast! Just cover my ass on the back end!” Dee said. “Fox three!”
Dee loosed a mecha-to-mecha missile as she tore through the middle of Fish and Bridge’s energy curves, hoping to draw off at least one of the porcupines from Bridge’s tail. The enemy fighter that Fish had made the U-turn about had spun facing her and was firing the blue beams in her direction. Or at least that was the way it seemed. Those fucking zig-zagging death beams could turn on a dime so it was never clear where they were targeted. The missile spun about, juking and jinking through the enemy countermeasures until it hit home on the nearest porcupine on Bridge’s six. An energy curve from the edge of the ball cut across in front of DeathRay’s nose and a blue curve from one of the Utopian Saviors plowed the road behind it, zipping off her three-nine line at many kilometers per second of relative velocity. The mind-numbing data overload of the alien-paced space combat only exacerbated the physical pounding it was giving the pilots. There literally was no amount of push-ups or weight training that could prepare the human body for the toll mecha combat took. There was no more grueling a fitness program in existence, and that was why mecha jocks looked like they were chiseled from stone and harder than carbon neutronium.
As Dee rolled right, forcing the propellantless engines to the redline, she could feel a bit of tunnel vision fighting in at the corners of her field of view. But the violent rocking of her mecha as one of the blue beams rocked her forward shield snapped her out of it.
Hold on, Dee. Her AIC counted down her maneuver. Hold. Hold. Now!
Damn right! she thought.
“Now, DeathRay!” she shouted.
“Fox three!” Boland rolled over into the well-known Fokker’s feint as his fighter transfigured into bot mode. Simultaneously, he fired missiles and guns at the porcupine on his ass. The rapid ass-over-heels maneuver distracted the enemy on Jack’s six enough that Fish and Bridge spiraled about it, finishing it off and leading the enemy fighters closing on them into the perfect kill box.
“Fox three, fox three, fox three!” Dee loosed three mecha-to-mecha missiles as she twisted through the red and orange fireball that had been an enemy porcupine, keeping her fighter mode mecha pushing at top speed on the same vector, but yawing and pitching the nose of her mecha at targets that were closing on her teammates and opening up their blue beams of death. “Guns, guns, guns!”
Bree, tighten up my energy spiral on the second enemy fighter!
I’ve got it, Dee, her AIC replied. Sure you want to do this?
We’re committed at this point.
“Cover my ass, DeathRay!” she shouted as she toggled her fighter over to eagle-mode, took a huge gulp of air, and then she hit the DeathBlossom algorithm. “I’m pukin’!”
DeathBlossom clock spinning. One second and counting, her AIC informed her.
Instantly, the attitude control system accelerated her eagle-mode FM-12. The mecha looked like a sleek fighter plane with two giant cannon-wielding arms underneath and two clawed feet that housed propellantless engines in each. The mecha began to spin in random directions with wings, nose, tail, arms, and feet engines akimbo. Each handheld cannon fired a stream of well-targeted, racquetball-sized, armor-piercing gluonium-tipped exploding rounds, and the directed energy weapons burst precision pointed beams in every direction. The rotational accelerations and decelerations were far too great to fire missiles.
Dee was thrown into her couch with the gee forces of the whirling madhouse. Her stomach tossed and lurched as she clenched her teeth down hard on her temporal-mandibular joint bite block, releasing stimulants and anti-nausea drugs into her system. Dee tracked the energy spirals and red and blue targets in her mind as the universe whirled around her at such a maddening pace that it was all her mind could do to track what was happening. The star field, the ball, the Madira, the planet below all blurred into a mosaic of red and blue traces and the targeting solutions pinged in her mind faster than the eyes could follow. The only way to keep up with the data was direct-to-mind.
Five seconds, Dee.
Even mentally, all Dee could manage was a grunt. But she did feel elation as explosions began to fill her blurred, whirling view and red targets blinked out of the battlescape. The DeathBlossom timer seemed to take forever to count down in her mindview. The longest any pilot, DeathRay of course, had ever managed to stay in the maneuver and come out on the other side of it still coherent was thirty-three and a half seconds, and that record was five seconds longer than any other challenger.
Thirteen seconds in! her AIC shouted in her mind as the guns and DEGs continued to fire at targets.
Keep firing until DeathRay, Fish, and Bridge are clear! Dee ordered her AIC.
Several times the cannons or DEGs hit targets but didn’t knock out the shields. But the DeathBlossom weakened the enemy in the ball enough so that one of the Archangels or Utopian Saviors could add insult to injury and finish them off. Dee’s fighting fury was helping. Whether it was working or not was unclear, but it was at least helping in the short term.
The maneuver continued to take an extreme toll on Dee as the average random gee forces topped as much as twelve gravities with occasional instantaneous spikes as high as fifteen. Dee calmed herself as best she could and held her abdominal muscles as rigid as hull plating with the structural integrity fields at max. Her core was strong but it was already beginning to ache as it was being expected to support more than twelve thousand kilonewtons of force on her body. Dee grunted and growled, forcing and willing herself to remain conscious and alert through the maneuver. Bile began to trickle upwards into her mouth and her nose continued to bleed.
Dee focused on the red dots in the battlescape DTM and watched as her maneuver continued to pound at them. She had managed to hit more than ten of them and personally take two of them out as the timer clicked over to twenty-one seconds into the DeathBlossom.
Dee was losing her ability to focus. The energy lines of the porcupines and the mecha started to blur and her mind was beginning to lose the ability to track. The laws of general relativity and universal gravitation weighed in on her as the high-gee maneuvers caused her perception of time to slow down. There was little she could do at this point other than ride out the maneuver as each of her arms was so heavy that moving them was almost impossible even in the pilot’s armored suit.
Then her ship bounced even harder than she’d ever felt in a DeathBlossom before, and her energy vector radically shifted off her planned course. The tell-tale signs of a zig-zagging beam passed in front of her maddening spin and several new red dots filed into her local battlescape view. The number of enemy fighters in the ball grew as the ball shrunk into a bowl. And the hell of it was that every one of those red dots was firing blue beams and missiles at her and her colleagues. Dee could see the rest of the Archangels scattering and doing their best to lay down cover for her as she approached the end of the maneuver. But she’d never been shot while in a DeathBlossom. Had it not been for her suit and the new Buckley-Freeman shields, she’d have been dead already.
Twenty-six seconds! Bridge is locked up, Dee and Fish can’t help him! her AIC warned.
Can we get him?
You can’t hold it that long!
I’ll hold it! Save Bridge! That’s an order.
“Dee, drop out!” DeathRay’s voice sounded in slow motion and Doppler-shifted toward bass tones over the gravity-shifted tac-net. “Drop out!”
Stay on it, Bree!
Thirty point seven seconds!
Dee’s abdominal muscles felt like they were on fire, exploding, and about to rip from her body from her breasts all the way to her groin, but she continued to squeeze them as best she could. Sweat, blood, and now bile poured from her. She clenched as best she could to keep from vomiting and heaving. The high-gee forces were the only thing keeping that from happening now. But Dee held on as she watched the energy curves of the enemy fighter on Bridge’s tail converge.
Thirty four point three.
Dee’s vision tunneled in around her and she could no longer hold her abdominal muscles tight. They felt as if they gave way. The red dot on Bridge’s blue dot faded out as Dee could feel the weight of the world lift from her body and time rushed in on her as rapidly as her stomach turned upside down and she heaved vomit into her faceplate. She wished she hadn’t eaten all day.
Dee choked and held her breath between heaves as best she could to keep the vomit and bile from getting sucked backwards up her nose and down her windpipe. She heaved again and was out of air. She fought back the urge to breathe. She fought hard as she lurched and heaved again. This time, nothing came out. Her stomach was empty. The organogel from the interior of her helmet filled in around her face and quickly absorbed the horrid-smelling bits. A fresh burst of oxygen and stimulants overpressured her helmet to the point that her ears popped.
Two seconds out, Dee! Major Moore! Major Moore, snap to! You’ve got to move, Dee!
“Apple1! Apple1! Dee!” DeathRay’s voice pierced the fog in her mind.
Dee had held her breath as long as she could, and let in a huge gasp. The rush of air and stims into her mouth and nose burned her blood-raw throat like acid.
“Dee! Feint! You have to feint now!”
“Warning! Enemy targeting lock. Warning, enemy targeting lock!” the Bitchin’ Betty chimed.
“Dee!”
Blue beams tore into her aft shields, tossing her spinning on a trajectory deeper into the upper atmosphere of the planet. The force of the atmosphere hitting her mecha at a relative velocity of over seven kilometers per second caused the superalloys to groan and creak from the strain. The transparent hull plating of her cockpit deformed in the middle, and spiderweb cracks scattered across it. Dee shook herself as the stims started kicking in. She toggled the bot mode switch, but nothing happened.
“Warning. Port engine failure. Warning. Port engine failure.”
Bree! Keep power to the shield generators and give me full throttle on the starboard drive! she thought.
With one engine firing, the mecha was extremely sluggish, but she managed to pull the spin from the blue-beam impact to something manageable. Manageable, yes. Controllable, no.
She hit the transfigure toggle again and still didn’t change to bot. Then she attempted to go to fighter mode, but she was stuck in eagle mode.
“Warning! Structural integrity fields at thirty-three percent. Propulsion system failure is imminent. Structural failure imminent. Warning reentry angle off nominal.”
“DeathRay! I’m hit bad. Lost an engine and scraping the atmosphere. I’ve got no trajectory solutions that get me out of the gravity well. I’m going down!” she explained. “Repeat. This is Apple1. I’m going down.”
“Eject, Dee!” Fish shouted. Dee thought of that for a brief instant, and just for sake of trying, hit the emergency snap-back button on her QMT wristband. Nothing happened. The quantum membrane teleportation system was nonfunctional in this system. “Eject, Apple1!”
“No good! I’m already venting plasma from reentry. I’m falling too fast at this point. I’m just gonna have to ride it out.”
Bree, get me some reentry solutions now! she thought.
Roger that, her AIC replied, as multiple landing solutions started plotting in her mindview. Few of them looked good to her.
That one! It is farthest from any population centers. Might be less uglies there. She highlighted one of the curves in her mind. Now, just keep us together long enough to crash!
“Sienna Madira, Sienna Madira, Apple1.” Dee called in her distress and activated her purple signal for the blue force tracker. “I’m hit and on a collision course with the planet. Projected coordinates being transmitted. I’m going down. Hope you can send an evac soon.”
“Roger that, Apple1. Search and rescue will be activated as soon as possible. It’s thick out there, Apple1. Lay low and we’ll get to you. Good luck.”