One Day on Mars

'Assuming a quarter AU per minute sir that would put them eight minutes out . . . shit!'

'CDC?'

'Sir, reports from Triton station and Luna show hyperdrive conduit signatures and we just lost the ships off the sensor nets! Sir.'

'Wire in a DTM alert to me of any new hyperspace activity near us, CDC! I need to know the instant they show up.' The CO scanned the virtual battlescape around his head and had Uncle Timmy run through a scenario or two, but never liked what he saw.

Timmy!

Aye?!

Alert the fleet that we've got three haulers and seven passenger-sized enemy craft in hyperspace, probably inbound for us. The CO looked up from his virtual world for a brief moment because the XO momentarily lost his balance owing to the ship listing hard to port from an enemy fighter crashing into the exterior hull plating just below the command tower.

Aye, sir!

 

'Holy shit, Bigguns!' Second Lieutenant Timothy 'Goat' Crow shouted in excitement. 'I've got sensors and there are Gomers everywhere!'

'Roger that, Goat. Offspring has sensors too!'

'Well, quit telling me about it, Marines, and shoot the fuckin' Gomers!' Bigguns ordered. Bigguns was running at a full trot turning left and right spraying at Seppy Stinger transfigurable mecha with her DEG and only occasionally going to missiles. At strafing range the guns worked better. Her FM-12 was now completely under her and her AIC's control and just became ten times more deadly.

'Shit!' she said, because the automatic avoidance surveillance system, which was more affectionately known as the auto-ASS, launched her into a forward flip over a communications dish mounted on the hull of the supercarrier.

The Seppy Stinger strafing her forced its way through the surface-to-air fire from the Madira and was hell-bent to go to surface and fight mecha-to-mecha. Bigguns tracked the incoming Stinger as it reconfigured itself to bot-mode and slammed into the deck of the supercarrier a few tens of meters port of her.

'We've got enemy mecha on the hull!' Bigguns warned over the net. 'Guns, guns, guns!' She tracked across the horizon at the thing, missing it as it ducked for cover behind an exhaust vent that jutted out of the deck. She cut the DEG off just in time to keep from blasting a hole in the ship herself.

This is gonna take some finesse.

Yes, ma'am! Her AIC started plotting possible trajectories for the enemy mecha.

'Bigguns! On your six!' Goat warned her.

'I got it, Goat!' She leaped backward through a full backflip over a second enemy bot-mode mecha that had dropped through the lines on top of her and went to missiles for it and guns for his wingman. 'Fox three! Guns, guns, guns. Take that, you Gomer motherfuckers!'

The first of the Stingers got off a round of mecha-to-mecha missiles that were tracking in on Bigguns' position fast at that short distance. The missiles arched upward from the mecha just as her guns took out the enemy fighter. As the missiles arched up and then back over they acquired a radar lock on Bigguns' FM-12.

'Fuck!' She rolled onto her back, firing at the incoming missiles with her DEG, and then up into a full run using ship structural features for cover. 'Eagle-mode!' she cried as the missiles twisted and turned around the structural outcroppings of the Madira's hull. The fighter rolled over into eagle-mode with the forty- millimeter cannons above and below the fuselage of the fighter and the DEG in the left hand. The main drive of the fighter now was capable of flying the vehicle at top speeds and to outmaneuver the missiles.

'Fuck!' the Marine captain grunted and bit down on her TMJ bite block hard as the fighter was thrown back and forth from incoming cannon fire. The armor and the SIFs held. Bigguns pulled the HOTAS back and pushed full throttle forward, sending the FM-12 into a full-speed high g-load climb away from the supercarrier and up into the enemy swarm of Gnats and Stingers. She pushed down on the right foot pedal and pulled up on the left one, throwing a hard yaw into her flight path so she could target with her DEG as well as her cannons. Bigguns picked up several bogies along her flight path and started locking on targeting sensors.

I have a trajectory solution, Captain! her AIC alerted her, and uploaded the vector to her DTM.

Got it!

Steady . . . steady . . . now!

'Fox three! Fox three!' Bigguns followed the trajectory and fired missiles at two different Gnats. As the Seppy Gnats exploded, the fireballs confused the missiles that were tracking her and detonated into the shrapnel fields left from the exploding enemy ships.

We're clear, Captain. Great flying!

Let's get back on the deck, shall we. Bigguns turned the FM-12 back into an extreme dive toward the Sienna Madira, and rolled it up hard as the deck approached.

Bot-mode! she thought, causing the fighter transfiguration software to cycle the linkage mechanisms in a whirling rolling and snapping action, leaving her FM-12 standing upright on the deck of the Sienna Madira as a ten-meter-tall armored mechanical warrior.

Jack! I'm cutting the wireless radio off and going hardwire UDP.

What?

Hold . . . there!