Trail of Evil - eARC by Travis S. Taylor Read Free Book Online

the wild spinning motion of the maneuver put constantly changing g-loading on the pilot. It was a crazy, mad, three-dimensional spinning cacophony of death. It would cause the pilot’s inner ear to go apeshit crazy with a side of batshit nuts. The mecha would spin like a Tasmanian Devil, launching death and hellfire from cannons and DEGs in all directions. The maneuver was first designed around the Navy VTF-35 Ares fighters but as soon as the Marines saw it they knew they could do it in their FM-12s.
    The maneuver was the most mentally taxing and physically demanding thing a mecha jock could do. The pilot and AICs and the direct-to-mind linkages were required for such a maneuver to prevent blue-on-blue casualties. But over the past few decades of warfare in space there was no other mecha maneuver that was as effective against superior numbers.
    The spinning was usually more than the pilots could take and would force them to vomit violently from the inner-ear confusion. But most good Navy pilots could manage so it certainly was doable for a U.S. Marine! Any good Marine could take a little vomit in their e-suit helmet. Besides, the inner recycle layer of the suits usually absorbed the vomit in a few very long and smelly seconds.
    “Go Saviors! Start pukin’!” Deuce ordered. She toggled the deathblossom controls and the ship started pitching, yawing, rolling, lurching, and jolting in every direction possible. There was a whirlwind of targeting Xs spinning around her at blurring speed. The fighter’s cannons and directed energy guns fired almost continuously. The spinning and rapid direction changes put g-load changes on her at over ten Earth gravities. The stars spun by then the planetoid then the stars again and there were weapons firing all around her.
    Deuce followed the red force tracker numbers as they dwindled in her DTM. Reflexively, she bit the TMJ bite block so hard she thought she’d break a tooth or her jaw. She thought she was going to make it through the maneuver as the countdown clock in her mind showed nine seconds remaining in the maneuver. Then the retching started.
    “Marine mecha jocks ate their own vomit for breakfast and begged for more,” she recalled her flight instructor shouting at her the first time she attempted the maneuver more than thirty years prior.
    For Deuce, the vomiting didn’t bother her so much. It wasn’t even the retching and dry heaving being followed by the pressure suit squeezes and the high g-loading that took real presence of mind, fresh air, and vapor stims to overcome. It was the smell. She just hated the damned smell of supercarrier cafeteria eggs the second time around.
    Deuce watched the red force tracer in her DTM as the maneuver spun down. She knew it would take a few seconds on the other side of the maneuver to be worth a damn. The maneuver had lasted eighteen seconds. Studies had shown that any longer was too much on the pilots. It would be okay, Deuce knew the B-group wingmen would look after them as they recovered. The DTM red force tracker showed eleven bot fighters left. In eighteen seconds, five fighters had taken out well over thirty planes.
    Eleven bots to ten, now those are much better odds. She bit the water tube. The fresh water squirted into her mouth. She sloshed it around and swallowed it. When it hit her stomach she nearly heaved again, but she managed to keep it down.
    Yes ma’am! Great odds. Her AIC replied. Targeting Xs and priority engagement statistics popped up in her DTM. We still have work to do.

Chapter 5

    November 3, 2406 AD
    27 Light-years from the Sol System
    Thursday, 11:35 AM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

    Alexander Moore stood in his Armored Environment Marine Suit atop the forward hull of the Sienna Madira Expeditionary Starship. This was a super battlecruiser, formerly the flagship of the entire United States of the Sol System Navy. Now it had its own special expeditionary mission.
    As far as anybody else was concerned,