Both hands released her, and she realized she had been carried into the air—she dropped several meters, hitting the rocky ground hard.
She rolled to her feet, activating her LIDAR. She saw the wireframe representation of the four-armed attacker above her, hovering. He withdrew what looked like holstered pistols.
Rhea dashed forward and retracted the blade to begin a complicated series of acrobats meant to evade the coming energy blasts. They were movements from her previous life, replayed from a muscle memory she didn’t know she had. Around her, the air lit up as the glowing plasma bolts ripped into the ground.
She kept her eyes on Gizmo’s feed, using the drone to guide herself beneath and behind her attacker.
She landed, drawing her pistol as she spun around, and firing at her foe.
The plasma bolts lit up the night sky in turn, and her attacker dodged them using that jetpack of his. He returned fire, forcing Rhea to leap behind a nearby boulder for cover.
More fire came from the direction of the SUV as Will and the Wardenites opened fire. More plasma bolts came in from the other vehicles as the rest of the convoy joined in.
Via Gizmo’s feed, she watched as her attacker landed on the opposite side of the boulder and took cover.
Once more Rhea couldn’t resist a wicked grin.
She holstered her pistol and clambered up the side of the boulder, using her strong fingers to press fresh handholds, and when she was on top, she moved at a crouch to the edge, like a crab, and then leaped, somersaulting.
As she rotated in midair, she deployed the X2-59 and sliced down.
Her attacker tried to dodge, but was too late, and the blade dug into the jetpack.
The thing activated, perhaps of its own accord, sending her attacker skidding away across the terrain. Rhea was dragged along with him, since her X2-59 was lodged in the pack.
She finally managed to tear the blade free, and landed rolling on the rocky ground.
When she came to a halt, she stood up on one knee, and aimed at her receding opponent. But then something hit her in the side, hard, and she was lifted into the air.
The flyer had rammed her.
Her body had contorted, folding over the round tip of the craft. The pistol had been torn from her grasp by the severity of the impact.
Her right side was operational, but her left side seemed completely dead, the servos damaged beyond mobility. More than anything she wanted to shove herself away from the flyer. She wanted to get away from it. But she knew she couldn’t, not while she was airborne: the fall would only cause more damage.
You must mask your emotions in battle.
It wasn’t her voice, but the voice of someone she didn’t know. A memory.
With her working side, she pulled her body onto the upper edge of the craft. She started to drag herself along the outer shell, intending to find the cockpit, or the power center.
But before she got very far, the flyer reversed course rapidly and turned upside down, dumping her. She fell.
She hit hard. According to her accelerometer, she’d traveled eight meters. It felt like more.
She tried to get up, but the fall apparently caused her to lose all functionality in her already damaged right leg, so that now both the left and right were disabled. The only working limb was her right arm, which she used to crawl along the rock, worming her way forward. She could see the remaining SUVs in the distance, on the thermal band.
But apparently they didn’t know where she was, because they were fanning out in a search pattern.
So close.
Yet so far.
She glanced at her overhead map. All the dots had frozen. Had her comm node taken damage, too?
She amped up the range of her comm node to the maximum. The dots remained frozen.
“Guys, I’m here!”
Nothing.
She amplified her voice, and her next words echoed across the rocks: “Guys, I’m here!”
They certainly heard her, because the vehicles stopped. She was relieved when they started toward her.
But then she heard laughter behind her.
“They’re not going to reach you in time.” It was a deep, terrible voice. One she had never heard before.
“Please,” Rhea said. “I just want to be left alone.”
“We all want that.” She felt hard hands wrap around her neck. They squeezed and twisted.
Rhea clenched her jaw, cording her neck muscles. She knew it wasn’t going to be enough to save her. Hypoxia warnings flashed across her HUD.
She swung her right arm upward, intending to deploy the X2-59, but a thick boot struck her forearm, and slammed her wrist into the ground.
“Oh no you don’t,” her attacker said. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you. I intend to bring your brain in. Just relax and remain calm. Let the process unfold naturally. Disable the pain. Or better yet, shut down your brain entirely.”
Rhea continued to grit her teeth, struggling against the terrible rotations of those large hands. He was going to rip her head right off, and there was nothing she could do about it.
A flash came from the side, and her adversary released her.
“Let her go!” Chuck’s voice.
“Get down!” she heard Will say. The words were meant for Chuck, she thought.
Another flash came from above, sourced from her attacker.
“Chuck!” Renaldo said.
More flashes erupted from all sides. She heard the sound of energy bolts ripping into metallic skin.
And then her opponent dropped to the ground beside her.
Headlamps activated in a circle around her, courtesy of the SUVs that had driven up. They illuminated the metal chassis of her opponent, a chassis that was currently smoking. One of her attacker’s four arms had melted away entirely.
She saw his features for the first time. Like the Scorpion, he had a human face plastered onto a metal skull. But otherwise, she didn’t recognize him.
His lips were curled into a rictus of pain, and the bags underneath his left eye spasmed. A red froth formed around his mouth.
“I want to
