One Day on Mars

Seppy drop tanks' line and went to the smaller but more rapidly aimable forty-millimeter gun on top of the DEG turret for in close and rapidly maneuvering targets. The forty-millimeter gun usually ran in anti-artillery and anti- missile mode, but with the sensors jammed they were not very effective on incoming ordnance. So, Warboys had put the guns to use manually under his DTM control. While in bot-mode the turret-mounted railgun looked like a half-dome head atop the bot's cockpit with the barrel sticking out for a nose.

'Shit! Guns, guns, guns!' He fired the main gun across the hillside at a rushing tank mode enemy vehicle. A bright blue-green pulse of energy separated the turret from the main body of the enemy tank. Running headlong at the exploding enemy mecha, Warboys jumped over the fireball and on top of the mecha's wingman, which was transfiguring to bot-mode. Warboys rammed the fist of his heavily armored tank into the transfiguring enemy vehicle and punched through to the inner workings of the linkage between the torso and the right arm. The force of his punch broke through the linkage system. Sparks and steaming black and red hydraulic fluids spewed from within it. Warboys grabbed at the arm from the enemy tank, ripped it free, and then jammed it through the cockpit, running it through the pilot and mecha.

'Colonel, on your six!' Warlord Seven burned a blue-green DEG bolt across the sky just behind Warboys, taking out a tank that had caught the lieutenant colonel unaware.

'Thanks, Seven. Damned Seppy jamming, we need our sensors!'

'You got that right, Warlord One.'

'Warlord One, it looks like the Seppy bastards have figured out that their tanks are sitting ducks and are all going bot,' Warlord Two noticed. 'We gonna get that help anytime soon?'

'Just keep pounding at the fuckers relentlessly, Warlords! Whether we get help or not, we kill as many of these Seppy motherfuckers as we can until there ain't a one of us left. Got it? The U.S. Army Tank Command Warboys' Warlords don't need no goddamned gyrenes to bring hell!' Warboys had to go to guns and fired blindly behind him as he ran and leapt toward an outcropping for cover.

'Hooah! Colonel!'

'One, you've got two on you trying to get you in a crossfire!' Warlord Six saw the two Seppy tanks trying to sandwich their leader and trap him at the edge of the gorge, leaving him with no place to go but Hell.

'Shit!' Warboys continued to fire the forty-millimeter behind him blindly. Without sensors all he could do was shoot and hope for a hit. He scanned to his right and caught a glimpse of the mecha glinting in the Martian sunlight as it slowly dropped behind the mountain. So Warlord One turned his gun toward the general direction of the glint and fired.

'Guns, guns, guns!'

Enemy cannon fire from his other side knocked him to the ground. As Warboys tried to roll the mecha over onto all fours and then up he caught a quick glimpse of two armored e-suit Marines and two civilians with HVARs firing just over his head. They dove for cover as a bot with a missing leg tumbled over the colonel's tank and on top of them. The Seppy drop tank fell only a couple of meters on the other side of Warlord One. The lava rock gave the AEMs and civilians just enough cover to keep from being squished. One of the Marines, a private, rushed out from under the mecha and tossed a grenade into the cockpit and then dove for cover as it exploded.

Warboys pushed himself up to his mechanized feet and strode back over the dead enemy bot and backed away from the gorge. With a quick shake of his head, a deep breath, and a fast prayer, Warlord One turned back across the Martian battlefield to find more anti-American Separatist motherfuckers to send home to Jesus.

'Warlord One, Warlord One! Colonel Warboys, are you okay?' Warlord Two rushed to the side of his leader and turned his back to him, laying down more cover fire with his DEG giving Warboys time to regain his composure.

'I'm all right, Two,' Warboys replied. 'We've got AEMs and civvies back there. Let's push away from them! And see if we can't clear out an extraction LZ.'

'Yes sir.'

The tank mecha squadron was holding their own but they were extremely outnumbered and would soon be overwhelmed. But Warboys had a plan. Actually, it was Burner's plan but it was working well so far. And, goddamnit all to hell, even a jarhead like Burner did have a good idea every now and then. As long as his tanks could last long enough to bait the Seppy mecha into the trap.

'Warlord Five, watch your six. There's two drop tanks about to crawl up your ass!' Warlord Four warned his wingman.

'Now, Warboys?' The commander of the Marine FM-12 squadron beckoned. His Marines were ready to go to work and their trigger fingers were way past itchy.

'Not yet, Burner! Not yet!' Warboys scanned across the Martian landscape and noted that the majority of the tanks hadn't engaged them just yet. They had thirty or forty continuously engaging them but there were hundreds of them taking up position on the hill. Warboys, and his AIC, ran scenarios in his mind trying to figure out how to bring the enemy tank mecha closer in so the Killers could rise up and surprise the living shit out of them. He did have an idea. A dangerous idea. A courageous idea.

'Warlords, form up on me and we're going to rush the Seppy line!'

'Yes sir!'

'Hooah, sir!'

'Burner, get your gyrene ass ready!'

'DeathRay, I know it's hot. But we've got word that the senator's family including a little girl is in the LZ,' Vulcan argued with the Ares pilot.

'It's too goddamned hot, Vulcan. I repeat. Too. Goddamned. Hot! No, and that is an order.' DeathRay yanked the HOTAS left and rolled sideways to let a Gomer's missile flare by just beyond his cockpit.

That was fuckin' close.

Too close. If Jack went, Candis went with him and she didn't want to die any more than her human counterpart did.

'What's that sir? I can't hear you. You're breaking up a bit! DeathRay, I'm sending in an evac now!' Vulcan replied.