underneath the legs of the gigantosaurus as the presidential limo smashed through the castle. The FM-12 looked most like a fighter plane in eagle mode, but with legs and arms. The legs ended in three-toed claws, while the arms were human-like. The main gun was gripped firmly in the left, and Heehaw was hammering away directed energy blasts at the surrounding fairytale menaces.
'Roger that, Heehaw! I'm on them . . . fox three!' Jawbone responded as she closed in on a pteranodon with a mecha-to-mecha missile. The missile twisted across the morning sky around a flying carpet and hit home between the shoulder blades of the flying dinosaur. 'Okay, Saw, pull out on me, and let's stay on top of that mechanical spider!'
'Roger that, Jaw! Guns guns guns,' Saw replied.
Jawbone gripped the HOTAS stick with her right hand, diving the fighter-mode mecha through the engagement zone closer to the deck. She pulled back on the HOTAS with her left hand, cutting the power and allowing gravity to pull her through the dive. At the bottom of the gravity well and just before the no-return point, she slammed the HOTAS forward with her left hand and yanked back with her right. The mecha pulled up through the dive at full throttle near maximum speed for the vehicle at over two thousand kilometers per hour. Shock waves formed on her wingtips, tailfins, and nose, leaving four very loud sonic booms behind her. Saw pulled in supersonic formation behind and slightly to her port side. None of the amusement park hovercars could hold that type of velocity and were left far behind, and the mecha closed the gap on the presidential limousine in seconds.
'Okay, Saw, bleed it off!' she told her wingman as she cut the throttle. Then the Bitchin' Betty chimed at her just as the plane slowed and boomed through the sound barrier.
'Warning, warning. Anti-aircraft fire!'
'Oh shit, Jaw!' Saw's plane rocked its wings and then pitched over nose-first and dove.
'Goddamn it, Saw, don't dive into the fucking AA!'
Jawbone yawed and pitched her mecha over and accelerated out in front of her wingman into a wide, corkscrewing dive. The DEGs burned bright green blasts into the swamp surrounding the Bonnet Creek Golf Club and Resort. The back nine of the resort was quickly set ablaze from the energy bolts. Railgun fire continued to pulse upward from several small yachts on Bay Lake, and Jaw could tell that Saw finally went to guns. But it was too late for her rookie wingman. The SIFs of his mecha could no longer take the direct assault line that he was taking and gave in to the impact of the forty-millimeter railgun rounds.
The rounds pierced through the nose of the mecha first and then peppered the wings, ripping through the main spar. Several of the rounds passed through Saw's legs, completely separating his left leg at the hip joint and passing into the underside transfigure mechanisms of the mecha. His g- suit sealed off around the wound and immediately began pumping painkillers and adrenaline into his system, as his left leg fell bloody and limp against the pilot's couch. He bit down in pain on his mouthpiece, and the painkillers flooded his body and relieved the searing in his left side enough for him to remain coherent.
'Get out of there, Carl!' Jawbone screamed over the net.
'Aaarhh,' Saw screamed to clear his head. Reaching up with his right hand and letting go of the HOTAS, he pulled at the eject handle. 'Eject, eject, eject.'
The canopy popped, throwing the lieutenant clear from the failing mecha. AA railguns continued to rip away at the craft, tearing through the armor because the structural integrity force fields had been depleted. The wings and the empennage tore free as rest of the mecha was reduced to debris, and then the power plant ruptured into an orange and white fireball. The force from the exploding mecha sent the ejection chair reeling. The autonomous thruster system kicked in and damped the ride, allowing the gliderchute to pop. By this time, the g-loading and the trauma to the young lieutenant junior grade was too much, and he lost consciousness as his chute drifted with the morning Florida winds.
'Goddamn bastards!' Delilah continued to corkscrew toward the lake, burning through two of the yachts to the water beneath them, which was apparent by the puffs of steam spreading out from around the sinking and exploding ship. Several more yachts continued fire, but Jawbone's mecha was too low and fast to get hit by the slow point and track algorithms of the AA cannons.
She tugged the HOTAS back to her stomach with her left hand and toggled the bot mode with her right pinky. The transfiguration at her present speed stalled her, so she kicked down on the right upper foot pedal to add some rudder in order to slip her into the mode change easier. The fighter-mode mecha rolled and then pitched forward into a tumble that left the FM-12 standing upside down in bot mode. The DEGs continued to blast during the entire maneuver.
The bot flipped upright with the forty-millimeter railgun cannons atop each shoulder of the FM-12 strike mecha, firing in rapid auto while holding the DEG like a rifle at the hip with the left mechanical hand. Blue-green energy bolts danced across the lake as the bot splashed into it. Water and steam spewed around each DEG blast. Just as the plane submersed completely underwater due to the momentum of its falling trajectory, Jawbone could see through the QM sensors that a blast of directed energy had hit home on a third yacht, causing it to explode violently.
The mecha finally hit bottom several tens of meters deep and damned near sunk in the muck at the bottom. The bot bumped into an alligator, stirring it and likely scaring it out of its few reptilian wits. The three-and-half- meter-long, green and brown reptile bumped into the cockpit snout-first and stared right at Delilah and then turned and swam in a frightened hurry in the opposite direction from the mecha.
'You better swim away, you motherfucker,' she grunted, and then chewed at her mouthpiece for a burst of air.
Jawbone kicked at the yaw pedal and worked the HOTAS until she was swimming, or more accurately, flying under the water. The QM sensors pinged the lake and painted red dots where the boats with AA cannons were located on the surface above her. At full throttle, she pushed her mecha upward through the bottom of one of the yacht's fibercomposite hulls, sweeping the DEG back and forth like a sling blade. She trashed and thrashed through the yacht, somersaulting upward at half throttle and then cutting the power at the peak of her arch, rolling
