Trail of Evil - eARC Read Online Free PDF Page A

directly into the enemy line where the Army and Marines were drawing heavy fire. There was very little gravity on the planetoid, so the computer systems and the AICs onboard the hovertanks had to make up for the overexaggerated motion with the propulsionless drive and thrusters. Sensors showed a well of artificial gravity several kilometers up but the computers would take care of all that without having to bother the tank drivers.
    “All right, Warlords. This is Warlord One,” Warboys said. “Stay tight on me, and let’s push a hole through these bots so that the Marines can spread out and make sure none of them get past us. And keep an eye on the strafing runs from above. Duck and cover as you see fit.”
    “Roger that,” was the resounding response from the Warlords. “Fuckin’ hoowah, One!”
    Warboys looked at the scene in his direct-to-mind display of the battlefield and could see hundreds of red targets in any direction he looked. They were several klicks from where the recon team had been inserted, and he hoped that at least some of that excitement the Warlords could draw toward themselves. Warboys pounded across the surface with his DEGs on auto, firing at any threats from above, and his cannons taking out any surface threats. The planetoid’s automated defensive systems were mostly small, unarmored robotic threats, little bots with weapons but not much in the way of armor. It didn’t take a whole lot for a hovertank to squash them, Warboys thought, but they were still deadly if their cannon fire were to come through the hull plating and hit the cockpit, something that he’d seen on the last drop. Fortunately the automated bots weren’t that good at fighting. Nobody had quite figured out why that was, because they ought to be just as good as, if not better than, the humans.
    “All right, Warlords, let’s bring hell,” Warboys thought out loud.
    “Warlord One! Warlord One! This is Warlord Six.”
    “Go, Six.”
    “I’ve got some big movement just over the horizon.”
    “Roger that, Six. I see it in the QMs. I’m going to infrared. See if it has a heat signature.” Warboys replied. Hmm, he thought to himself. What’s this? Something new?
    Running a full scan on it, sir, his AIC replied into his mind. The signature is quite large. Very similar to that of a tank.
    No shit, Warboys thought.
    Bringing up a full electro-optical view now, sir. The image of the new automated threat appeared in his mind and was almost an exact copy of a Martian separatist hovertank.
    “Son of a bitch!” Warboys said out loud. “Warlords! Warlords! We got something new! Looks like the bots have built themselves some tanks! Be alert and be ready to go, and here they come! Fan out! Fan out!”
    The Warlords spread out. Warboys turned back to hovertank mode and increased speed to drive straight through the line of bot tanks approaching them. And they were approaching fast. At over 70 kilometers per hour in tank mode, Warboys pounded through the line, crashing into one of the bot tanks’ legs. Sparks flew as the metals scraped against each other and Warboys was thrown forward with a jolt.
    Immediately he toggled the tank to bot mode and rolled over headfirst, coming up in a forward flip onto one knee. He instantly brought his shoulder-mounted cannons to bear behind him at the bot that he’d just clipped in the leg, targeting weak points at joints and the head. Warboys had fought the hell out of the Martian Seppy tanks for years and he was good at it. These bot tanks didn’t seem to respond much differently. It was almost as if they had watched old battle data and copied the Seppy maneuvers and tactics.
    The purple plasma balls spread out from his cannons, exploding on impact at the joint just below the left hip of the bot tank. The leg blew apart in a shower of debris and shrapnel and what appeared to be various fluids required to keep the bot tanks functional. The droplets and fragments spread out into a rapidly