'Eject, eject, eject!' he shouted while pulling the handle. The mecha twisted against the exploding components, giving it a roll. The cockpit shot free from the upper torso of the mecha, and his couch was launched into space, groundward. Boulder grunted against the g- load of the ejection seat and tried to catch his breath. He managed to force his eyes to focus just in time to see the ground rush up at him at over a hundred meters per minute. He hit head first, snapping his spine and crushing his head almost instantly. The numbers game had beaten him. He had beaten the two Gnats that were on his tail, but three Stingers from out of the blue got to him before Burner could get back to help.
'Fuck!' HoundDog tensed his body as the ejection chair slammed across the ice-hard surface of the planetoid. He could feel the chair creaking as it rolled and tumbled to a stop, throwing up dust and ice particles behind him and leaving a wake floating gently in the light gravity, casting odd rainbows with each flash of light coming from the myriad violent blasts all around him.
He quickly began unstrapping himself from his seat and pulling himself out of the multimillion-dollar g-seat. Several rounds of enemy fire stirred up dust and flung showers of splintered rock and metal around him. The splintered debris zinged against his armored g-suit. The g-suits were nowhere near as bulky and protective as an AEM's suit, but they did offer a downed marine some protection from the environment and minimal protection against shrapnel.
'You'd better move your ass, marine!' a voice buzzed in his helmet as his AIC tuned him to the AEM tac-net. The blue dot that was associated with the voice popped in place about ten meters behind him, near a pile of girders and other metallic refuse from the facility's construction. The name with the blue dot said Second Lieutenant Paul James.
HoundDog crawled behind his chair, keeping his body as low to the ground as he could, and then started digging out the HVAR and survival gear. There was an extra ammo case in the kit as well, and he snapped it to his waist harness and turned toward the blue dots nearest him. Out of the corner of his right eye, he caught a glimpse rushing toward him, and his mindview painted several red dots basically on top of him.
Four enemy infantrymen pounced all around him, firing at the AEMs on the other side of the rubble pile. Only one of them was paying him any attention, and the type of attention he was paying, HoundDog didn't really enjoy. Railgun rounds splashed all around him and were tracking right for him. HoundDog rolled to his left over onto his back and then kicked his heels against the surface, tossing him upward into a backward handspring. As he rolled through the handspring, he gripped the HVAR in his left hand, firing freestyle into the enemy soldier. The low-gravity acrobatics had imparted a considerable amount of angular momentum to HoundDog, but he was a mecha pilot and understood the physics of his situation quite easily.
HoundDog rolled himself into a tight ball to increase his spin rate which enabled him to hit the ground on the other side of his handspring, rolling like a ball. He tumbled through a couple of front rolls until he managed to turn upright and spring forward, using his momentum to slam into the back of one of the enemy troops charging the other marines. HoundDog was first to his feet, firing his rifle full- auto into the back of the soldier's head, and then he bounced with all his strength for the cover of the rubble pile.
'
'No. I'm good.' HoundDog rested with his back against the wall of the foxhole, holding on to his rifle with a deathgrip.
'Samuels. Welcome to our little hellhole.' Second Lieutenant James offered the pilot his right hand while firing his rifle over the edge of the redoubt with his left. Several other AEMs lined up along the edge of the refuse materials and nodded at HoundDog, but none of the marines took their eyes off the advancing line of enemy troops or their fingers off their triggers.
An RPG hammered against the rim of the foxhole about twenty- five meters down the line, sending two AEMs flying backward across the planetoid's surface in a white and orange ball of expanding vapor. The explosion spread out in a sphere of hot gas but was mostly dissipated by the time it reached HoundDog.
'We can't hold this position for long if we don't get backup,' the sergeant shouted. Another wave of enemy troops bounced into the open toward them.
'I'm not armored up like you guys, but I'm an extra gun,' HoundDog offered. He rose up over the edge and fired several rounds. The targeting system in his rifle transmitted a yellow X in his DTM mindview that overlaid his vision. The X crossed the armored enemy troop several times, and each time, HoundDog let a burst of automatic railgun fire loose at him. After a few tries, the rounds tore through the armor of the soldier's chest plate, ripping out through his back. 'Seein's how my mecha was blown all to hell, I've got nothing else to do, Sarge.'
'Oorah, sir,' Aldridge replied.
Chapter 21
October 31, 2388 A.D.
Orlando, Florida
Saturday, 7:39 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time
The Starhawk pulled over the Hall of Presidents and hovered about twenty meters above the ground. Alexander picked Calvin Dean up in his arms and then jumped out. His jumpboots kicked the ground with a thud. He promptly set the cameraman beside him and drew his railgun. The Starhawk pulled quickly away from the amusement park's airspace.
'You okay, Dean?' Moore asked through his open visor. Old AEM habits died hard.
'Yes. Shit, that was a thrill!'
'Well, start broadcasting and stay alert. If I tell you to take cover, you do it.' Moore had not asked the reporter to come along with him. In fact, he had contacted ENN to get a live-feed hookup to his suit. But the crazy action reporter begged Moore to let him come along. Alexander had emphasized the danger, but that didn't seem to matter. And Dean and Gail Fehrer had been really good to Moore, so when the reporter had asked him to consider this 'calling in his last favor,' Moore had to accept. Well, he didn't have to, but he did anyway.
Several AI presidents met them and led them to the interior of the Disney World exhibit. They were led down the hallway through the theater and into an employees only area behind the White House interior facade. By Abigail's estimate, the body count should be at over thirty by now, but at least now it would stop. Of course,
