much go apeshit while at the same time the ship was a spinning menace spewing death from cannons and DEGs in all directions. The spinning was usually more than the pilots could take and would force them to vomit retchingly from the inner-ear confusion. But most good Ares pilots could take a little vomit in their e-suit helmet and the inner recycle layer of the suits usually absorbed the vomit in seconds. The suits had been designed for just such emergencies. It was the retching followed by the pressure suit squeezes and the high g-loading that took real presence of mind to overcome. It would take them a few seconds on the other side of the maneuver to be worth a damn. But there was usually very little in the way of targets left following the eighteen-second maneuver.
'I'm with you, boss!' BreakNeck replied, following suit and throwing his Ares at max acceleration past the cover of JavaBean's pukin' deathblossom, and then initiated his own spherical cyclone of mad destruction.
'Roger that,' came the reply from a dozen more fighters from the Demon Dawgs, all rolling into the wild deadly spin maneuver.
'Ugh!' JavaBean grunted over the net as his ship lurched from the deathblossom into a normal flight approach toward the hauler.
Rabies vomited and wretched violently as his ship righted itself from the mad spin. The world around him went from a pounding rush of blood to his head and stars streaking madly around him—both real ones and ones that weren't there—to an abrupt jerk into normal flight mode.
'Goddamn, I love flying these things!' He puked into his facemask again. Now that the sensors were working, the eyeball obfuscation—puke on his visor—was no problem, as Rabies kept a full world view through his DTM virtual sphere display.
'Rabies, Rabies! This is Bigguns, copy?' Bigguns had led the remaining Marine FM-12s of the Saviors in a mad sprint with DEGs blasting away the blue-green energy bolts at the forward hull of the kamikaze Seppy hauler with hopes of getting on deck and maybe inside the thing to do some real damage to it.
'Roger that, Bigguns! Go!'
'Rabies, you think your Dawgs could give us some fuckin' cover? I'm takin' my Saviors for a stroll on the deck.' Rabies understood what she meant.
'You goddamned right we can, Saviors!' Rabies replied. 'Dawgs, Dawgs, converge on me and spread cover fire for the gyrenes. Do whatever you can to keep those Seppy Stingers and Gnats off their backs!'
'Gracias, Rabies!' The Marine fighting mecha squadron had gone to bot-mode and spread over the forward section of the ship like a small swarm of angry bees on an elephant, looking for a soft place to bite. And bite is just what they planned to do.
'De nada, Bigguns! Good hunting. We'll keep these motherfuckers off your ass, you just stop that fucking thing!' Rabies replied.
'We will!'
'Goddamned Seppy Gomer bastard!' Bigguns jumped upward into a forward rolling flip and twisted in mid-arch to go to guns to take out a Stinger in bot-mode that had made it through the Demon Dawgs perimeter. 'Guns, guns, guns!' she yelled.
The cannon fire from the Marine's bot-mode mechastrafed across the deck of the enemy hauler, throwing plasma jets and sparks as it tracked the enemy mecha across its zigging and zagging path behind bulkhead extensions and exterior hull cannon turrets.
'On your six, Bigguns!' Goat warned her. 'Fox three!'
The missile shot from Goat's mecha leaving behind a smoky purple and blue ion trail as it twisted and turned across the deck of the ship. The enemy mecha ran with three giant steps and vaulted itself upward. It rolled over into fighter-mode while its upper cannon fired away at the missile. The little mecha-to-mecha missile zipped in and out of the cannon fire with precise sensor-driven motion as the enemy mecha continued to fire on it. The enemy fighter-mode plane accelerated upward and away from the deck and then turned in to a steep dive at the hull at full velocity.
As the mecha rapidly approached the deck it rolled into eagle-mode, bringing its DEG to bear on the missile. The DEG detonated the missile before it could hit the enemy fighter but the force from the explosion tossed the mecha over onto its back like a turtle. The right hand of the eagle-mode mecha pounded to its side into the deck until it found enough of the loosened hull plating to grab and then it righted itself quickly and went to missiles.
Two missiles streaked from under the wings of the vehicle into the cannon turret that Bigguns and Beanhead were taking cover behind. The two of them dove their bot-mode mecha to the deck facedown for cover. Then Goat, Skinny, and Deuce ran across the exterior catapult deck to a cover position behind a large spherical radome. The enemy mecha continued to spread cannon fire, DEG blasts, and missiles.
'Shit, Bigguns! This Gomer bastard is good!' Goat said. The enemy eagle-mode mecha weaved in and out of the surface obstructions on the deck of the Seppy hauler faster than the bot-mode FM-12s could.
'Goin' eagle-mode!' Bigguns toggled the switch on the HOTAS and transfigured the standing mechanical robot beast into a bird of prey.
The view in the DTM virtual sphere of Bigguns' mind showed the dots of her squad and multiple red and blue dots overhead but the Seppy mecha that was causing them problems on the deck of the ship was skittering in and out of detection. It was using the radar multi-path clutter to ghost itself from her sensors.
'Fox three!' Bigguns fired a missile and then went full throttle toward the red dot with the DEG ablazing. The enemy mecha was distracted by the impending missile long enough to give Bigguns an edge on it. The DEGs of the enemy mecha detonated the missile just as the blue-green energy blast form Bigguns' mecha tore through the cockpit of the enemy bird of prey. The enemy mecha exploded in a bright red and white-orange fireball almost at the same instant that her missile had detonated. The two near simultaneous explosions blew out a hole in the hull plating where a bulkhead exterior door had been.
