Both of them were so focused on interpreting the scanner’s readings that they missed an alarm from Gipsy’s defensive sensor package. When the first volley of plasma missiles streaked past them, they jumped, instinctively flinching away from the paths of the missiles. But they weren’t the target. The missiles exploded across the wall of the factory, destroying it and bringing down the whole face of ice and rock. Whatever evidence the factory might have contained, it was blasted to atoms now, and buried under a million tons of mountain.
Gipsy spun around to see Obsidian Fury looming out of the blizzard.
With a snarl, Jake leaned forward in his Drift cradle, pushing Gipsy Avenger into a charge. The last time he’d seen Obsidian Fury, he’d been scared, uncertain, still wondering if he’d done the right thing getting back into a Jaeger.
Now he was feeling only one thing: the overwhelming vengeful need to beat Obsidian Fury into the ground and find out who was inside. Mako was going to have justice.
Obsidian Fury slowed Gipsy down with a missile barrage, but they kept charging. Alarms sounded in the Conn-Pod, cataloguing damage to Gipsy’s systems. “Get him off his feet!” Lambert shouted.
Jake roared a battle cry and sprang up in the Drift cradle. Gipsy Avenger leaped forward, tackling Obsidian Fury and skidding across the ice. Still locked together, the two Jaegers slid over the edge of a crevasse.
In the fall, they separated. Gipsy unleashed her chain sword and Obsidian Fury answered with its twin plasma saws. They struck at each other as they slid and bounced down the steep bed of the crevasse, neither landing a damaging blow in the confined environment.
First Obsidian Fury and then Gipsy Avenger smashed through a wall of ice at the bottom of the crevasse, tumbling through onto a large ice floe in the shallows off the coast. The floe rocked as Obsidian Fury got to its feet first. The deep orange light in its chest emplacement glowed suddenly brighter, and Gipsy Avenger barely got her chain sword up in time to deflect the blast of Obsidian Fury’s particle beam. The sword scattered the beam’s force in ribbons of energy that flared between them and brought bursts of steam from the ice floe.
“Systems are overloading!” Lambert shouted over the wail of alarms. The chain sword wasn’t designed to absorb energy, and soon the feedback would destroy it—probably along with Gipsy’s arm. “We gotta get out of here!”
To where? Jake wondered. An idea struck.
He reared up and drove one fist down. Gipsy Avenger did the same, smashing a hole through the ice floe at her feet. Gipsy dropped down through the hole, disappearing into the black water. Inside the Conn-Pod, Jake and Lambert reeled, trying to hold Gipsy’s balance as she sank. The water was deep enough to cover them, and as they landed on the bottom, Jake could feel Lambert in his head wondering what the hell they were going to do now.
“Wait for it,” he said. Above, the hole in the floe was a bright glow against the dimmer background of the heavy ice.
A shadow appeared in the brightness: Obsidian Fury, looking down through the hole. “Now,” Jake said.
Gipsy Avenger fired its own missile volley, straight up through the hole. Each missile was programmed before it left its launch tube, to go up through the hole… and then straight back down, to explode on the ice around Obsidian Fury’s feet.
As the explosions sounded in the water, Gipsy leaped up from the sea floor, powered by maneuvering jets built into her lower legs. She surged up through the enlarged hole as Obsidian Fury crashed down. Gipsy caught Obsidian Fury before the rogue Jaeger could regain its balance, driving it back up through the ice and pounding it as they rolled.
But Obsidian Fury reacted quickly, absorbing the first blows and wrestling Gipsy down. The plasma saws appeared again, ready to impale Gipsy Avenger.
Jake stayed calm. They were never going to win a straight-up fight with Obsidian Fury. The last encounter had taught them that much. They had to keep surprising it. The drop into the ice had given Gipsy a chance to do some damage. Now Obsidian Fury thought it had Gipsy down, and it was time to spring another surprise. “Plasma cannon now?” he said.
“Hell yeah!” Lambert thrust out his left hand, and Gipsy Avenger’s left hand rearranged itself into a plasma cannon. The blast rocked Gipsy Avenger back, and sent Obsidian Fury flying back across the ice floe to land on its back, trailing smoke.
Gipsy Avenger rose, deploying her chain sword again. Obsidian Fury got up, but not as fast as it had before. They were doing some damage. Obsidian Fury charged, brandishing its plasma saws—only when it redeployed them, they multiplied into a storm of whirling blades on each arm.
“Oh shit,” Jake and Lambert said in unison. Gipsy Avenger’s armor plating wasn’t going to stop those saws for long. But Jake was already watching the nuances of Obsidian Fury’s stances. He remembered the fight in Sydney. If Obsidian Fury did what it had done last time, there would be an opening.
Obsidian Fury shifted its weight to slash one of its plasma saws at Gipsy Avenger’s head, the move triggering an alert from the combat-readiness program built into Gipsy Avenger’s sensors. Yes. They had seen this before.
And the answer was… “Follow my lead!” Jake cried out.
Gipsy Avenger was already ducking as they saw Obsidian Fury begin the move. Sidestepping under the incoming plasma saw, they struck out with the chain sword as Gipsy Avenger slid along the ice, tearing open Obsidian Fury’s torso. Obsidian Fury
