The Tau Ceti Agenda

Warboys piloted the tank into the cylindrical tube and dropped it into place in the adaptor farings with a metal- to-metal scraping kreeechunk. The tube sealed behind them, leaving the mecha and the AEM in complete darkness. There were various vibrations and impulses that rang through the tube and then translated through the mecha to Ramy's suit. Again, it was quite clear that they were 'engaged with the enemy.'

'Warlord One in the tube and ready for drop!' Colonel Warboys announced.

The composite armored tube jettisoned out the underbelly catapult field like a missile. Roberts could feel AA fire slapping against the exterior hull of the thing and hoped like hell its SIFs would hold. Simultaneously, all ten of the drop tank tubes were thrown from the Sienna Madira into the battle at over four thousand kilometers per hour toward the surface of the Separatist teleportation facility. The flight of the drop tubes cut a ballistic trajectory through the AA fire and surrounding dogfights and would take several minutes. Needless to say, those several minutes were dangerous as hell and absolutely hair-raising. The drop was one of the things that made or broke the tankheads. The good tankheads just trusted the tubes and focused on their mission. The really good ones took those last few minutes to nap.

There was nothing they could do, so there was no need to fret about the harrowing environment outside their drop tubes. Hopefully, all the electronic, optical, and quantum membrane countermeasures would mask them. If those active countermeasures didn't help, there were three times as many drop tubes launched as there were tanks. The tubes were simply decoys and sensor-confusing chaff. On top of the CMs and the decoys and the chaff, perhaps the supercarrier blasting the hell out of the surface would help too.

'Okay, marines, sound off with harmony!' Roberts clicked over to the AEM tac-net and could detect all ten blue dots in his DTM. He started the AEMs off, almost on key. 'From the halls of Montezuma!'

'To the shores of Tripoli,' Lieutenant Johnny Noonez continued.

'We fight our country's battles,' Gunnery Sergeant Tamara McCandless belted with vocal affluence as well as volume.

'In the air, land, space, and sea.' Sergeant Nicks' blue dot blinked from com input in Roberts' DTM. Roberts continued to feel the drop tube being rattled with cannon fire and forced himself to pay it no attention.

'First to fight for right and freedom,' sang Corporal Vinnie Pagoolas.

'And to keep our honor clean.' Lance Corporal Tommy Suez's and Privates First Class Danny Bates' and Felicia Kent's blue dots blinked.

'We are proud to claim the title,' Privates First Class Sandy Cross and Makera Gray chimed in.

Roberts gritted his teeth against the jar of the tube retrofields firing and the demo blowing apart the tube, leaving them in open space with the ground rushing up at them extremely fast and enemy DEG bolts and railgun rounds zipping about. Roberts gave the command to pop the superconductor magnet free, and he pounded his jumpboots against the hull of the tank, launching him wide and clear of the mecha. He rolled in a forward flip, and then he finished the verse in tempo with the rest of Roberts' Robots, as they all slammed into the ground with their HVARs at ready and spreading out to cover the landing zone.

'Of United States Marines!'

Warboys checked his status as his mecha pounded into the surface of the Oort planetoid, scattering icy dust about as he did. He could see Roberts bounding away in the low gravity through his QMs in the DTM virtual battlesphere. The hoverfield of the tank activated, lifting it upward with a jolt, and the main cannon swiveled forward looking for ground targets. The DTM filled with red and blue dots way overhead, and there was a scattered group of blue dots rapidly approaching the Warlords from space. The Navy VTF-32s, he thought.

Roger that, Warlord One. The Demon Dawgs have deployed and are on approach to give us aerial cover, his AIC, Major Brenda Bravo One One One Mike Hotel Two, confirmed.

'Roberts, what's your status?'

'We're free and looking for cover.'

'Roger that. Take the predesignated vectors to cover behind the ridge to the south of the teleport pad, and we'll try to poke a hole in the defenses there for you jarheads to push through,' Warboys ordered.

'Got it, Warlord One. Thanks for the ride and good hunting, tankheads.'

'Warlord One, we've got movement in the forward grid, and I'm getting ATR readings of Orcus! The landing zone is hot! I repeat the LZ is hot!' Major Glenda 'Warlord Two' Freeman said over the net.

I've got it, Colonel. Looks like a squad of Orcus, and I've got several Stinger pings!

Roger that, Brenda!

'Warlords, AEMs, and Demon Dawgs on approach, be advised that we've got active sensor hits on Orcus tanks and Stingers. I repeat Orcuses and Stingers!'

'Roger that Warlord One! We'll do what we can to help out with those Stingers!' Lieutenant Commander Wendy 'Poser' Hill replied. Her callsign and rank popped up on Warlord One's blue force tracker display in the DTM as she spoke. He had met the pilot a few times on the ship, but he didn't really know her. All he really knew was that she had posed for some men's magazine. That didn't mean a damn thing to his present situation. On the other hand, he did know from general talk around the ship that other pilots trusted and liked her and that the CAG had given her nothing but walk-on-water reports. If DeathRay liked her—even though he was a flying squid—it was good enough for Warboys.

'Welcome to the neighborhood, Poser,' Warboys added. 'Let's go to work, Warlords.'

The Warlords spread out across the surface of the planetoid in tank mode, going to active ping on the QMs and looking diligently for any sign of a target that they could smash the hell out of. The sensors generated a resonant signal across the local quantum surface and watched for precisely timed and gated return oscillations. Each ping from each tank was then extrapolated back, as so-called multi-path data. The AICs in return built up a three- dimensional map of the battlescape from the data.

The battlescape was full of red dots that were rapidly closing the gap to the M3A17-Ts. Separatist Orcus drop tanks were spreading across the surface of the Oort facility like ants after someone had kicked over the anthill. Warlord One forced the tank at maximum velocity, which was well over three hundred kilometers per hour in that gravity, with every intention of stomping any ant or hill of them he came across.