Trail of Evil - eARC Read Online Free PDF

dissipating cloud in the low gravity. Before Warboys could turn to finish off the bot, Warlord Three landed, feet first, onto the torso of the bot, smashing the metaphorical piss and other fluids out of it.
    “Thanks, Three,” Warboys said.
    “No problem, One. We’ve got your back.”
    Warboys spun just in time for two other bot tanks to dive for him. In a judo roll, he took the motion of one and tossed it aside, but the other caught him mid-back and splayed him out toward the surface. Debris flew thirty meters high and began to create a cloud of slowly settling dust in the light gravity. Warlord Three dropped his cannons and loosed several rounds into the bot tank, sending it flailing backwards and throwing dust and debris into a long slow falling arced trajectory. The dust cloud surrounding the battle continued to get thicker and thicker. Warboys briefly hoped it wouldn’t cause an issue for sensors. Almost as soon as he hit the ground he rolled over to find another tank in bot mode kicking him in the face and landing directly on him.
    “We’re kickin’ up so much dust that you can’t see shit, One!” Warlord Seven said over the tac-net.
    “Stay on the QM sensors and IR. The dust is too much for eyeballs,” Warlord One replied. He pushed up from the surface as hard as he could with his forearms, tossing both him and his attacker upward, off the surface. Warlord One spun with an elbow, crashing into the side of what the head of the tank should be. But with these robotic tanks it was hard to say where the controls were. The blow had little discernable effect on the bot.
    Warboys continued to sling elbows, kick and knee at every opportunity, fire his cannons, and roll as best he could, but the enemy tank in bot mode was relentless, and he couldn’t seem to shake it from his back. Warboys could hear metal creaking and groaning against the strain, and he was afraid that his tank wouldn’t take it much longer without popping seals and other important mechanical components, like himself for instance.
    “One, you’ve gotta shake that one on your tail! You’re beginning to lose plasma from your rear thrusters!”
    “No shit, Two! Tell me something I haven’t figured out yet! Somebody shoot this son of a bitch off my back! Where are you Three?”
    “Negative, One, we might hit you!”
    “So?” Warboys rolled and still couldn’t shake the bot. “I don’t give a damn! Shoot this son of a bitch, that’s an order! I don’t care if you hit me, one of us is gonna have to have some relief!”
    Warboys could see in his direct-to-mind virtual battlesphere that Warlord Four rammed into both of them in tank mode and forced them into a hill just ahead of them. That was all the relief that Warboys needed. He rolled with the momentum and turned within the grip of the bot, slamming his armored tank fist into the inner workings of the enemy tank, pulling it closer too him.
    “Guns, guns, guns,” he said with a grunt as his cannons fired a burst of rounds into the bot tank at point-blank range blowing it apart and scattering debris and orange plasma about them in each direction, the glowing cinders of metal leaving a slowly falling lazy “M” traced out from where they had been. Warboys bounced to a stop as his thrusters and propellantless drive attenuated the momentum to something controllable.

Chapter 4

    November 3, 2406 AD
    27 Light-years from the Sol System
    Thursday, 11:15 AM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

    “Roger that Air Boss!” USMC Colonel Caroline “Deuce” Leeland commander of the USMC FM-12 Strike Mecha squadron the Utopian Saviors said over the command circuit. The Saviors was only one of two squadrons left over from the old Sienna Madira crew. The other was the Navy squadron Demon Dawgs. They had been an Ares-T squadron but Moore had decided to go with all FM-12s for maintenance simplicity on the long deep space mission. There had been a lot of retraining for the squids and retooling and