targets behind, beside, and above the fighter in most of the upper-rearward hemisphere. The other sat on the belly of the plane and covered the lower and forward sphere. Almost instantly, James locked multiple red-force tracking algorithms against several blue-force, identify- friend-or-foe codes and started firing away. The sky around the FM- 12 filled with forty-millimeter rounds, moving with relativistic energies into enemy targets. The codes were designed to disable the cannons when any civilian casualties or property damage might occur. The AICs had to modify the codes on the fly to enable them to shoot at roller-coaster rides. Spontaneity and improvisation were the two largest arguments for both marines and AICs.
The heavy railgun rounds fired from the mecha of the entire first group ripped through the morning air, leaving behind violet and blue fluorescing trails. Some rounds tracked out of site while others tracked into explosions where the rounds met their target's vital components. Power modules of the hovercars made a beautiful array of reds and oranges when an armored slug of nylon passed through them at two hundred million meters per second.
Whatever AI was controlling the overall attack for the amusement park rides was quick. It learned almost immediately new flight patterns to maximize the potential for collateral damage and adjusted the hovercoaster cars' flight paths accordingly. That mostly consisted of bringing them in lower and closer to the buildings of the amusement park.
The FM-12 pilots responded by flipping through mecha modes and dropping to ground, then shifting modes again and going back to air, and vice versa. Mixing up the modes helped add a confusing mix of convoluted multidimensional combat tactics, which was one of the original reasons for developing mecha in the beginning.
'Ungh! Watch out now!' Jawbone screamed, flexing her thighs and abdominals to their straining point. 'Guns, guns, guns.' She toggled the mode switch on the HOTAS, flipping the fighter plane upside down as it converted to bot mode. In midair and upside down, she fired the DEG from the hip and swiveled a full circle, like a break dancer spinning on her head.
'I got you covered, Jaw.' Saw followed suit going to eagle mode, and then he flew just ahead of her headspin, drawing fire and giving his wing leader the edge of being able to focus on offense for a brief moment. 'Fox three!' he cried.
'Great job, Saw!' Jawbone rolled the bot back through the transfiguration to fighter mode, pouring on the afterburners to gain a little bit of altitude following her headlong plummet. 'Your turn!'
Saw tripped the HOTAS to bot-mode and fell over like a crazed diver into a wild headfirst spin. This time, the bot spun in the other direction. Jawbone followed the flight pattern and jumped out just in front of his DEG track. The blue-green energy bolts blasted just a few tens of meters behind her into enemy targets; all the while, she drew fire from her wingman. Delilah would have smiled approvingly at the young lieutenant's performance had she not been choking down bile forced into her throat from the high-g corkscrew.
The forward group did its job of distracting and disrupting the strange air force of the no-fly zone. The second group of marines flew like a squadron of giant metal supermen, hell-bent on saving the day.
Captain Elliot grunted with the g-forces pressing him against the pilot's couch as the mecha rolled through a forward flip, dropping the FM-12 from the sky. The two three-clawed feet of the fighter clanged to the ground about twenty meters in front of the amphitheater where the president and his family were holed up. A quick survey of the environment led him to the realization that the president and his security detail were pinned down and surrounded in a small corner with only a short rock wall for cover. He would quickly fix that situation. Various fairy-tale creatures were charging their little redoubt and firing HVARs at them willy-nilly. How in the hell the AI-driven creatures had gotten so armed was a total mystery.
Heehaw marched his mecha between the president and the largest group of attackers, actually squashing under an armored foot an oversized white rabbit with a stopwatch, monocle, and railgun. The pavement and the robot gave way and crunched up under the mecha's feet. The marine captain pulled the directed energy gun in front of him with his giant left mechanized hand like a quick-drawing cowboy shooting from the hip and splashed the blue-green energy bolts over a wave of advancing fairy-tale robots. The burst from the DEG cut through the flimsy AI attackers, leaving them lying on the ground in pieces, sparks flying. He continued kicking and crunching others underfoot.
Several FM-12s landed nearby and converged on the amphitheater. In only a matter of seconds, the First Family was completely surrounded by giant armored bots flashing blue-green directed energy blasts in all different directions at the advancing line. To this point, the flying theme park rides had mostly been consumed by the first FM-12 group, but whatever or whoever was controlling them had shifted their modus operandi, and they started altering their flight patterns toward the mecha surrounding the president.
He shifted his mecha and grabbed at the wings of the attacking robot just as it passed in front of him. The large mechanized hands of the mecha caught the main spar of the right wing of the flying horse. Heehaw then spun two times completely around, converting the momentum of the beast into angular acceleration like an Olympic hammer thrower before letting the thing fly free into the side of the giant dome at Space Mountain. The flying horse collided back first into the dome, and then it shattered into sparks and a million pieces of debris and crushed through the roof of the complex.
'All right second team, give us some air coverage to the exit,' Heehaw ordered over the net.
'You got it, boss. Guns, guns, guns,' Jawbone replied. Her fighter- mode mecha spiraled and circled overhead and released several DEG bursts. Heehaw could hear secondary explosions in his external mic monitors. 'Boss, we've got the strangest damned air force attacking us you've ever seen. And there is a shitload of them converging on you!'
Just then, one of the hovercars finally picked the right vector and impacted directly into one of the fighter-mode FM-12s overhead. The composite triceratops hit the fighter plane's underbelly, where the left-wing spar met the fuselage. The impact did little damage to the heavily armored fighter plane, but the energy transfer forced it into an unstable, three-dimensional spin. The plane continued to spin wildly to the limits of its g-rating, and then it crashed through the Big Thunder Asteroid Mining Colony. The marine never ejected, and there was quite an explosion following the crash on the other side of the park.
'Motherfucker,' Heehaw muttered.
