incoming missiles with her DEG, triggered her electromagnetic countermeasures, burst some chaff, and then kicked her bot up into a full run using the ship's structural features for cover. 'Eagle mode!' she cried as the missiles twisted and turned around the structural outcroppings of the Seppy supercarrier's hull. Deuce's fighter rolled over into eagle mode with the forty-millimeter cannons above and below the fuselage of the fighter and the DEG still in the left hand. The main drive of the fighter now was capable of flying the vehicle at top speeds and to outmaneuver the missiles. But just as she jinked around an outcropping on the ship's hull and was about to go full throttle and out of the missile's lock, an enemy Stinger twisted overhead and exploded, throwing fragments in her path that slammed into her nose. The impact of the unexpected explosion tossed her eagle-mode fighter tail over nose toward a sensor-array platform just ahead of her, and the missiles still had her locked up. Twice she managed to soften her tumble by putting her hands down, but the fighter was spinning beyond recovery.
'Hold on, Deuce! Fox three! Fox three! Guns, guns, guns! I got you.' Jawbone's voice came through the net just as Deuce felt her eagle-mode mecha jerk into a completely different direction, throwing her against her restraints painfully.
Jawbone had dived in between Deuce and the incoming while letting loose two missiles. Just as the missiles pulled out from her mecha, she gunned them down herself, creating a fireball of hot plasma and shrapnel between their mecha and the enemy missiles. The enemy missiles exploded behind them, as Jawbone then used the momentum of her jump and the force from the explosion to carry her into Deuce's path to knock her free of the sensor array.
'Shit! What the—' Deuce attempted to shake her head clear, but her mecha still spun wildly. Jawbone held fast to the right leg and arm of Deuce's eagle-mode mecha with both hands of her bot-mode FM-12.
'Just hang on. I'm spinning you down. Letting go in three, two, now!' Deuce could see Jawbone's mecha breaking off and bouncing back down on the deck, firing its DEGs into some other part of the spaceship.
'Fuck!' The Marine lieutenant colonel grunted and bit down on her TMJ bite block again, this time even harder, as the eagle-mode fighter steadied itself out of the spin. The effect of the stims washed over her, boosting her energy level from beyond exhausted to just really fucking tired.
Then suddenly she was thrown back and forth from incoming cannon fire—the goddamned Gnat that she had missed had managed to stay on her through all the shit. The armor and the SIFs held as Deuce shook the previous second's mess out of her mind and accepted her current predicament. That was what mecha pilots had to do. Forget the past and watch the present.
She had a Seppy Gnat trying to lock her up as she was climbing up into the gray area between the supercarrier's bowl and the bigger engagement ball. The enemy version of the Navy Ares fighter barrel-rolled around her trajectory line, trying to get a good shot at her. And she had pulled so far away from her wingman that there was no way he would get to her in time to help. She was on her own.
Deuce pulled the HOTAS back to her stomach and pushed full throttle forward, sending the FM-12 into a full-speed high g-load dive toward the enemy supercarrier and back into the bowl. She left her stomach somewhere at the top of her direction reversal, and she had to choke the bile back down as best she could. Her suit soaked up the rest fairly quickly. She managed the vector reversal just in time, as she was about to slip into a swarm of Gnats and Ares-Ts going at it above her.
She recognized several friendlies whizzing by as she pressed downward into her dive. A U.S. Navy Ares-T in bot mode passed by her so close she could read the pilot's helmet. It said 'Poser.'
'Watch out, Marine! You've got a Gomer on your six!' Poser warned her.
'I see him, Poser!' Deuce replied. She pushed down on the right foot pedal and pulled up on the left one, throwing a hard yaw into her flight path so she could target with her DEG as well as her cannons. She was flying backward and upside down, facing the Seppy fighter accelerating into her flight path. She rolled the nose around, trying to keep the enemy in view.
