Read Trail of Evil - eARC for Free Online

tracers from her cannon. She didn’t get it, but she hoped she’d gotten its attention as she rolled through the flip coming down on the surface for her next bounce. She still had a lot of momentum to bleed off. She slammed and skittered into the surface, throwing a rooster tail of dust behind her that flickered like glitter confetti at a rock concert in the dim lighting from the distant star. The occasional explosion added a strobe effect making the rooster tail all the more impressive. As she continued through her bounce, several small flying bots swarmed in her direction. Deuce reached out with her left hand and pounded one of them into the ground. She swatted at another as if it were nothing more than an menacing fly. Her giant mechanized hand hit the thing sending it whirling off in a corkscrew spiral, flinging sparks in all directions. She kicked the ground with her thrusters and arced upward over an outcropping of rocks.
    “Fox Three!” Goat shouted. A mecha-to-mecha missile screeched past her on the left. The purple ion trail from the missile tore into the tail of an AutoGnat moving in on her three-nine line from the nine o’clock position. The enemy fighter’s tail exploded, throwing it into a mad spin. It was put out of its misery by the secondary explosion when it slammed into the planetoid’s surface.
    “Great shot, Goat!” Deuce said to her wingman.
    On several of the bounces she had to adjust her landing position with thrusters in order to avoid landing on one of the hovertanks. They were busy enough fighting as it was. They most certainly didn’t need to worry about blue-on-blue from an FM-12.
    One of the hovertanks was pinned down by three enemy tanks just to her right. She had bled off her momentum now and was in full control of her trajectory. She bounced down behind the tank, standing back to back with it briefly. The combined firepower of the tank and the bot-mode fighter was enough for the two of them to overpower the enemy bots. Deuce targeted one of the enemy hovertanks as it rushed them. The thing looked like an old Separatist droptank she had fought during the war. Deuce knew how to fight Seppies.
    “Deuce, I’m bleeding off speed,” her wingman said over the net. “I’m about a half a klick behind you coming in hot.”
    “Great, Goat! I see you in the DTM. Cover my topside as I help out this tankhead.”
    “I’m on it, Deuce.”
    “I’ve got your six, Deuce,” the tankhead said over the net. Deuce could feel his cannons shaking the ground as he fired. She backed right up against the rear of the tank and stood her ground. Deuce checked her DTM for the nearest targets. “Fox Three!”
    The missile released into the enemy tank charging her, scattering it into exploding orange bits that expanded away from them in an oblong blob of glowing shrapnel. Deuce turned to her left just in time to grab the turret of a tank-mode enemy bot. She spun aikido style, using the tanks momentum to fling it past her. The tankhead behind her, Warlord Four according to her DTM, leapt into the air and landed atop the tank stomping through its automated canopy.
    “Gotta run, Warlord Four.” Deuce fired her propellantless boot thrusters and kicked upward rolling forward as she toggled the mecha back to fighter mode.
    “Thanks for the help, Deuce!” Warlord Four responded.
    “Anytime!” she replied. “Goat, quit goldbricking and get your ass over here on my wing!”
    Okay, Bobby! Get me some targets. She said to her AIC
    There are plenty available ma’am.
    Several yellow dots surrounded the Utopian Saviors in every direction. They currently were in an upside-down bowl engagement with the bot fighters. The bots were staying close to the surface and using the planetoid to cut the fighting sphere in half. Normally, that made it easier for the FM-12s to mix up modes and fight, but right now being on the surface was getting in the way of the tanks and infantry. They needed to get the bot fighters off the