'Yes sir, Burner?' Lieutenant Jason Cordova replied to his boss over the optical net.
'I want you, Ace in the Hole, One Night, Bama, Epoxy, and BullNutz on the ground in eagle-mode and covering the AEMs.' Burner trotted across the Martian soil in bot-mode beside Boulder, each with two Marines riding on their shoulders. The bot-mode mecha could hold a pace of over eighty kilometers per hour on solid ground in one full Earth gravity. On Mars they could better that by about twenty percent. Of course, in fighter-mode the FM-12s could reach escape velocity of most of the planets in the system and they were equipped for short-range space combat. Each mission had its own speed requirements. This particular mission required finesse not speed. Burner checked his passive sensors systems and the active LIDAR and saw no signs of Seppy Gomers. They had been lucky since they left the dome and had been alone as they crossed the lower desert drop of the southern foothills of Olympus Mons. The AICs that had linked together across the city had warned that the majority of Seppy activity was located between the domes and moving mostly toward the main dome. This far south seemed to be of little interest to them. However, one thing that bothered Burner was that the Seppies had been jamming their sensors all day. There could be drop tanks just over the hills and they would never know it until they were on top of them. Burner didn't like running blind, but it beat sitting around with thumbs up your ass and blind.
'Got it, Burner.'
'Washington, I want your AEMs on the ground bouncing underneath Boulder and company, got it?'
'Yes sir,' Washington responded, eager to get on with this mission.
'Lieutenant, you keep pinging away with your QMs for any activity. Jammed or not, we might get that encryption downloaded from the fleet at any second and I want to know if our sensors start working,' Burner ordered the AEM leader.
'Affirmative, Colonel.' Washington switched over on his NCO channel and touched base with Clay. 'Sergeant, you stick with Kootie. Keep the private out of trouble. However the VIP shows up, let's get to them quick and move out quick. And keep your QMs pinging.'
'Yes sir, Lieutenant.' Sergeant Clay Jackson was ready to get this mission over with as well. It had been a losing battle since the start and he was ready to make something positive out it.
'Okay AEMs,' the second lieutenant QMed his personnel. 'I know it's a lot of fun joyriding on this here fine Marine mecha but we need to quit goldbricking and start earning our pay.' Washington pulled his HVAR up in front of his visor and checked the weapon. He was ready to go. 'Sergeant, you and Shelly take the left flank. Kootie, you're on me. We stay low and under the Killers.'
'Oorah, sir!'
Washington pushed himself up to his feet, balancing on the barrel turret of the shoulder-mounted forty- millimeter cannon of the striding bot-mode FM-12. Before the running mecha's bouncing could throw him off balance Washington did a backflip off the giant robot and bounced to his feet on the Martian soil, bringing his left knee down as he impacted the red soil. The immunobooster and the pain meds must have worked well, because other than feeling a little clammy on the forehead, Washington was a new man. He was a heartbreaker and a goddamned life taker. He was an armored e-suit Marine!
Sergeant Jackson, Corporal Shelly, and Private Kudaf followed the second lieutenant's lead. The four Marines bounced at more than seventy kilometers per hour in the open desert. Running downhill helped too. The Martian soil of the mountainside consisted of pebbles no larger than a marble embedded in red granular dust. There were occasional outcroppings of millennia-old lava boulders but they were few and far between. The AEMs and mecha bounced faster downhill kicking up a rooster tail and dust trail of gray-red Martian regolith.
The rendezvous with the VIP and evac was on the south side of the mountain, a good piece downhill from the south borough dome. It had to be more than fifty or sixty kilometers south and east of the main dome where the senator was coming from. Unless they could fly or had commandeered some sort of transport it was difficult to see how they would make it to the rendezvous in time. But the AICs had contacted each other and assured the Marines that the rendezvous was on schedule and going to happen.
The AEMs Shelly and Kudaf leaped from Boulder's mecha in long separating arcs. Shelly's arch landing just left of the second lieutenant and Kudaf's slightly behind the sergeant. As the AEMs hit the ground bouncing, Boulder's FM-12 transfigured itself from a full-sprint running robot to an eagle-mode mecha. The g-forces from the mecha transfiguration process had to be one hell of a ride for the mecha pilot. Five other of the sleek killing transfigurable fighting machines pulled into close formation overhead only a few tens of meters above the bouncing AEMs. The wings of the mecha were only a few meters apart from each other.
Lieutenant Colonel John 'Burner' Masterson's mecha stayed in bot-mode and was flanked by two fighters on his left in bot-mode and three on his right. The bot-mode mechas serpentined down the mountainside and took giant leaps from side to side over each other in a concert of confusing patterns designed to disrupt mecha-to-mecha radar-guided missiles. Behind and in front of them were six of the FM-12s in fighter-mode.
In fighter-mode, the stealthy profile of the Mars red camo painted fighter plane resembled many of the iterations of the old joint strike fighter concepts crossed with a more modern, turned-up wingtips and dual tail fins design. Above and below the empennage of the fighter were the forty-millimeter cannon turrets and below the nose cone was attached the DEG. Just above the DEG and below the forward sitting canopy of the fighter were small canards that resembled meat cleavers.
The Marines were coming to the rendezvous at a full run and with guns blazing. So far they had encountered no resistance on the southern side of the mountain. The Marines hoped it stayed that way. But if it didn't, like any good squadron of Marines, they were ready to bring hell.
Chapter 14
1:21 PM Mars Tharsis Standard Time
'Well, Fireman's Apprentice King, just what the flyin' fuck were you thinking. If we were to pop out of hyperspace into a high-g situation, which by the goddamned way we are likely to with there being six, count them, six, motherfuckin' Seppy rust buckets just waiting out there for a fight, with the coolant fluid bladder structural integrity field on nominal what do you think would happen?' Hull Technician Third Class Joe Buckley berated the young enlisted man in front of him. HT3 Buckley had given the young ignorant fool the task of making battle ready the coolant flow systems, but fortunately the hull technician had taken the time to double check the apprentice's
