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

thought.
    Yes sir, Abigail acknowledged. That’s her.
    With one last leap, as the blue dots seemed to freeze in place—except for one, which his DTM link was now showing as Penzington—he dove head-first toward the opening of the erratically flying shuttle. But the shuttle’s path was too erratic, and he skittered across the top instead of hitting the doorway. He reached for a handhold with his left hand, and instead of grabbing, he simply punched through the hull of the vessel, grabbing onto superalloys as they sheared and cracked and creaked against the weight and strength of the suit. Moore finally got purchase on a chunk of metal and stood upright, tearing away at the hull and then stomping through, landing on top of one of the battlebots, who had a claw at the throat of a Marine inside the ship.
    Moore looked forward and saw the transparent flight cabin door closed. Through it was Penzington at the helm, not in her suit, and his suit systems immediately projected his blue dot into her DTM blue force tracker through her AIC. He noted her suit standing frozen near the hatch with the escape rear panel blown out. Penzington didn’t say a word to him. She kept flying the vessel, the general was confident that she would keep the shuttle flying knowing that Alexander Moore was in the back, kicking ass.
    “Why is everybody frozen?” Moore said.
    Penzington set off an EMP that shut down the suits as well as most of the bots. The atmosphere integrity is barely holding as the SIFs are not back online yet.
    “That explains why the cockpit hatch is closed,” he said out loud.
    The EMP had stopped the overflow of bots that had been on the ship, but the bots outside continued to fly to the ship and enter it. For some reason they were hell-bent on stopping the shuttle. But they didn’t know that they’d come to play with Alexander Moore. And they sure didn’t realize that they’d been picking on his little girl. Alexander was about to bend Hell and maybe even break it loose.
    Moore moved like a whirling dervish and a Tasmanian devil combined, on immuno-boost and stimulants, spinning and punching, and kicking and throwing, and firing the HVAR with precision so as not to hit any of the frozen soldiers on board the ship. The erratic flight path the shuttle was taking made it more difficult to balance so Moore didn’t bother with that. Instead, he bounced from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling of the little shuttle’s rear bay. The walls of the craft began to show the strain of the fight with tears, AEM suit fist-sized holes and boot impressions scattered about.
    Abigail, is there not any way you can reboot these suits?
    I’m working on it, sir.
    Penzington, get us inside the hangar bay of the Madira !
    Goddamn right, sir! I’m workin’ on it. Hold on back there!
    The ship banked and bounced, throwing Moore left and right. But Moore used each motion as a deadly blow toward any of the encroaching swarm of battlebots.
    Abigail, how about some air support? Or maybe some ground support? Where are the Warlords?
    The general is overwhelmed at the moment, sir.
    Goddamn it, Moore thought. Move this thing, Penzington!
    Moore kicked the last of the bots out the door, but more were approaching. He dropped into the doorway on one knee, firing bursts as needed, as well as loosing grenades and flares from the shoulder mounts on his suit.
    Spitap! Spitap! Spitap! The HVAR sounded non-stop.
    I’m gonna run out of Goddamn ammo!
    Abigail immediately threw into Alexander’s mind that there were weapons about the ship that weren’t being used. Moore didn’t even think about it. Instead, instinctively, as his HVAR counted down to zero rounds, he reached behind him with his left hand, picking up the weapon highlighted in his mind.
    Your suit’s getting low on grenades, too, sir.
    How are we doing on rebooting the troops?
    The suits will come on in a moment. They have the automatic safety mechanisms that shut them down when our own EMP