Tyleen Hackworth crouched beneath a camouflage quilt on a thin slab of a ledge overlooking the canyon. Positioned precariously close to the edge, he felt not the slightest compunction about being mere inches from a 500 foot drop; a thousand if a strong wind shifted his trajectory and he fell into a particularly deep depression in the canyon floor.
He scoffed at the danger. As a former recon trooper he had operated in worse environments. Besides, Hooper paid damned well. Hackworth held a multi-spectrum bi-scope to his eyes and zoomed in on smoke drenched areas where the Shatter Busters struck. He pulled back the focus and panned a broader section of the canyon, stopping when he picked up movement a mile from the first Shatter Buster impact site. He zoomed in, adjusting the bi-scope’s night sight to scrub away layers of darkness.
A figure climbing up a cliff wall. The armored man.
Hackworth tapped the subdermal comm next to his ear. “I’ve got a sighting. Lowtower’s scaling a cliff.”
“Copy that,” Hooper responded. “Keep an eye on him.”
“Not a problem.”
Five miles away, Hooper and Tunnel exchanged satisfied glances from inside the administrator’s command TVV. “I said he’d either be buried or flushed out,” Hooper remarked casually. “I’ll settle for the latter.”
Tunnel shined a venomous gaze through the TVV’s front window. “Let’s just hurry up and smite this bastard.”
Hooper grinned wryly and reached over to the console, tapping a link. “Standby. Deploy on my word.”
The Skyguard pilot’s voice responded: “Acknowledged.”
Dern reduced his suit’s power before ascending the canyon rockface. He wanted his Flare-enhanced muscles to endure the bulk of his climb up the cliff wall. With his suit’s power levels at less than optimum, he counted on the energy he conserved making a difference later.
He moved quickly when he found protrusions or small depressions to grip. Patches of smooth wall forced him in lateral directions until he discovered more protrusions to propel him upward.
He finally reached the top and hoisted himself onto level ground. After elevating his suit’s power level, he embarked on an accelerated run across a rocky plain.
A low rumble, increasing in volume filled his audio. Dern recognized the noise and cursed his bad luck. The goons had him right where they wanted him. A wide-open target in the middle of nothingness. He increased his acceleration, but knew that would do absolutely no good. He should have planned better…
The Skyguard soared directly above the fast moving target, releasing a spread of four Shatter Busters. As the bombs’ noses tilted downward in screaming plummets, the Skyguard shot up toward the stratosphere with the velocity of a bullet.
Four retina-searing blasts lacerated the darkness below.
The Skyguard pilot checked his scanner. Readouts didn’t pick up any movement from the target. The pilot had no intention of doing a flyover to assess the target’s condition. Not with the target’s rep. Instead he sent a transmission to Hooper. “Man down. Repeat…man down.”
That’s exactly what Hooper wanted to hear. He contacted his people in Routh, demanding reinforcements….
Dern awoke flat on his back with a daylight sun glaring down on his inert form like a giant angry eye.
Flare washed away his disorientation and he rose to waist level, freezing when he found himself enclosed in a ring of TVVs, their turrets directed on him.
“No sudden moves, Lowtower,” an amplified voice commanded from one of the TVVs.
Dern focused on the TVV directly in front of him; the source of the voice.
“Get up slowly,” the voice blared. “Keep both arms at your side. You so much as raise that weapon of yours and we’ll fry you where you stand.”
His suit felt heavier than normal as he rose very slowly to his feet. A quick glance at his display told him he didn’t have enough power to juice up a talking doll. The bombs didn’t pulverize him, but one landed close enough to knock him unconscious, rendering his suit inoperable. A large freshly gouged crater forty yards to his left reminded him of his recent peril.
Two Scythes flew toward him from the canyon’s direction.
“Keep those arms down,” the voice reiterated.
Dern sighed hopelessly. He had a better chance of squeezing water from a pebble than discharging a plasma burst.
The Sythes hovered threateningly above, ready to douse him with missiles at the slightest pretext.
Dern stood rock still. He wasn’t in the habit of providing pretexts.
The side hatches on the TVV facing Dern retracted. Out emerged four individuals in heavy armor of polished tan. Each armored figure wielded a wide barreled rifle with combined, high-energy emitting, rocket-launch features. The type of weapon an unarmored person, even if Flare-enhanced, would have had difficulty holding.
Dern recognized the weapons. Tanner Duel App Blasters. Tanners, whether in rocket or high-energy mode, packed enough punch to cripple a battle tank. While Tanners were modern enough, the armor was obsolescent, dating back to the early years of Coalition existence some three centuries ago. Big, bulky, with little articulation, the Series A5 Active Mobility Suit was state of the art in its day. As the armored figures approached Dern with their stiff, plodding strides, he couldn’t help thinking how he would have run circles around them with each step they took.
That thought reminded him of his current disadvantage and he clenched his fists in anger.
The Suits halted twelve feet away and leveled their Tanners on him.
Dern unclenched his fists.
Two more occupants emerged from the TVV. Hooper and Tunnel.
“I appreciate your cooperation, Lowtower,” said Hooper, bringing his hands together in mock applause.
“I’m not interested in what you appreciate,” Dern retorted. “If you’re going to kill me, kill me.”
Hooper grinned, stroking his lustrous beard. “Tough talk. How fitting coming from an SD soldier. The famed elite of the elite.”
“Former SD. I’ve been a civilian for quite some time.”
“Yet, you can’t separate yourself from the armor, can you?” Hooper threw up a grand gesture. “Even in its reduced state.”
Dern said nothing. Maybe Hooper was right.
“Well, I have a solution to your problem,” Hooper stated. “Take the armor off. Be free of it.”
Stunned, it took several seconds for Dern to process the question before he settled on a decisive, “no.”
“I’m not surprised by your answer.” The crimelord raised a hand.
In reaction the hatches on three more TVVs opened and the sleeper ship crewmembers were shoved out onto the ground. Hooper’s thugs followed, kicking the downed prisoners. One thug grabbed Alita by the hair and jerked her head up. Another one placed a very large knife to her throat, its jagged edge snagging a piece of the sun. Alita’s eyes shimmered with an electric mix of fear and defiance. Then they locked on Dern and never wavered.
The rest of the crewmembers were lined up and forced to their knees. Hooper’s goons stood over them with assault rifles aimed at the backs of their heads.
“I don’t think I need to say anymore, do I?” Hooper asked, his gaze cold as an arctic frost.
With the message drilled in to him, Dern slowly pressed invisible releases on his arms and upper chest. Hyper dense overlapping plates covering his armor shrunk into invisible niches. The metallic inner layer reverted to a softer elastic material making it appear as if Dern were wearing a form fitting vinyl head to toe leotard.
He slowly unlatched the HIE and let it slide off his wrist onto the ground. Afterward, he pulled back the translucent mask that was his helmet and dropped it on the ground beside the HIE. He pulled a zipper that began at his shoulder, ending at his naval and stripped out of the armor, leaving it crumpled at his feet.
Most of the women in Hooper’s gang…and two or three of the men whooped salaciously at the sight of Dern’s mostly nude, well muscled physique.
He stood before this heavily armed procession, pared down to his shorts. Yet, he felt not a flicker of vulnerability. Rage loomed too large in his soul to accommodate anything less than the delectable urge to erase these cutthroats.
Alita lowered her eyes and Dern could practically feel waves of her despair pummeling him.
“There,” Hooper said with a sardonic smile. “That wasn’t so difficult was it?”
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