“You think there’s something there we need to know about?”
“I think …” she paused momentarily, as she turned to look once more at a thermal imaging satellite feed she’d recorded earlier. It showed a small figure kicking the shit out the four ARAs of Delta Foxtrot Two. With a worried shake of her head, she gave a nervous sigh, “There’s something there … you ain’t going to want to know about.”
***
Frost was loping along at around thirty-five miles an hour, covering massive amounts of ground with each hundred-foot stride, when he saw the headlights through the trees. The car was moving along at a fairly slow speed, possibly not wanting to rouse suspicion with all the ZiPs in the area. That was definitely working in his favor. With the angle he had on it, and the rate he was moving, he was going to be able to intercept it and cut it off.
Things were finally working in his favor. If … this were the right car and the right byway. His gut instinct told him it was. Something inside him almost sensed the asset inside the vehicle. That sixth sense that could somehow, some way, detect a fugitive close at hand.
In just a few moments, it’ll be all over but the shoutin’!
He changed his angle of intercept slightly, as he grew closer, adjusting for the car’s actual rate of speed now. He was out of the small stand of woods and now moving across open ground. Up ahead, a line of posts, topped with soft, blinking orange lights marked the edge of the skyway right-of-way. A glance to his right revealed the lights of the hovercar moving toward him. It was going to be close but he was certain now he had them cut off.
Suddenly, in mid-stride, a small pine tree suddenly loomed out of the darkness in front of him. Instinctively, he drew back the left arm and came around with a backhand motion. The reinforced, hybristeel forearm splintered the yellow wood as easily as one might snap a twig, and the twenty-foot tree went flying off to his left, leaving only a shattered stump and the sweet smell of pine resin in his wake.
Two more strides and he was on the shoulder of the byway. Already, the hovercar’s headlights were illuminating the area in front of him. It was going to be close, but he knew now he beat them. Then, he was standing in the middle of the byway, atop the concrete ribbon embedded with sensors that guided and controlled the hovercars going to and from the subdivision to the nearest skyways access point.
That was the very reason he’d chose this route to cover. The other byway led to an access point further away and went thru another neighborhood. This made this escape route the obvious one, since it gave the fugitives a shorter trip into the city. But then again, if one thought like a fugitive, that would be all too obvious, especially to a veteran bounty hunter like Frost.
Frost was a veteran. And he did know exactly how outlaws thought. He also had a pretty good idea how Thomas thought. Or, at least he thought he did. Thomas would figure Frost was smart enough to know he would go for the obvious. He’d take the scenic route. He’d take his chances going the long way around. In fact, he was betting on it.
There was one little flaw in Thomas’ plan. He made the mistake of thinking he was smarter than Frost. He thought he would do just the opposite of what Frost anticipated him to do. He would fly in the face of conventional outlaw wisdom and go charging right out the front door, betting his life that The Man would be waiting for him around back.
Well, spacer, guess you outsmarted me. I was just too damned dumb.
He charged the spin cannon and fired off a three-second burst at the oncoming vehicle.
***
“What the hell?” Tex yelled out, as a large robotic looking figure stepped into the beams of the Skyliner’s LIT headlights.
Before Tiger could answer, there was a blur of muzzle flashes, as the cannon extending from Frost’s right arm whirred into action. High-velocity, twenty-millimeter cannon shells plowed up the byway just in front of the hovercar. Luckily, Tex had already applied the braking rockets, or the front end would have been laid open like a sardine can.
“Looks like we got us a Tin Man!” growled Tiger, using the nickname that the Luna rebels had given Guard troops strapped into the first “power-assisted mobile weapons platform.” They were primitive, latticed-framed hybristeel monstrosities, hydraulic-operated and battery-powered. They were used to storm heavily-fortified positions, targets conventional troops would take heavy casualties trying to secure.
They were very effective as shock troops, but they had weaknesses. The armor was heavily concentrated around the pilot’s midsection to protect vital organs, but the extremities were lightly protected. The hydraulic hoses and fittings were exposed and susceptible to being cut or shot out, rendering parts of the machine useless. But by far, the greatest weakness was one so simple, it was almost shameful; the fact that if they were ever knocked down, it took precious time for their pilots to get them stood back up. There was very little range of movement in these first mechas. It soon became obvious that the notion that their creations might not always remain vertical or fight on uneven terrain never crossed the conceited minds of the engineers and designers who brought them to life. The rebels used trip cables, magnetic mines, and grapple hooks very effectively. If a Tin Man went down, more times than not, he never got back up.
But the one Frost was mounted in was a far cry from those early, gangly models. Mecha units had come a long way in a few, short years. Ample amounts of
