Rocket explosions broiled around Dern. He weaved through a barrage untouched, rolled and rebounded to his feet with bracelet arm extended. Plasma bursts discharged from the bracelet stabbing into three TVVs. The vehicles went up in sheets of flame and molten alloy.
Dern leapt dozens of feet in the air, switching his bracelet’s setting to anti-personnel. He swept his arm back and forth and fifteen criminals death-danced amid a fatal shower of particle clusters.
A rocket clipped his right arm turning what would have been a flawless landing on his feet into a spinning tumble. Tungsten shells exploded against his suit, keeping him momentarily pinned to the ground. He unleashed a plasma beam, destroying a fourth TVV, and shot upward as a storm of tungsten savaged him. He gritted his teeth in pain. The shell impacts felt like chunks of hot lead slamming into bare skin. A red warning bar beamed across his view.
His suit in its down grade mode was not designed for battle conditions. Power levels were plummeting with each hit it absorbed, and his plasma bracelet was nearly spent. A rocket struck him square in the gut and the force of its impact combined with the resulting blast knocked him backwards thirty yards.
He needed to withdraw, but not before he took a final shot…
Tunnal roared his frustration. He went through three clips firing his Viper at the highly elusive former SD bastard. He had no way of telling if his shots hit their mark, amid the thousands of projectiles being hurled at a single individual. He ejected the empty clip and quickly inserted a full one. A rocket struck the armored man and the explosion threw up gouts of smoke and dust.
Tunnal ran forward, gun pointed ahead, straining to get a glimpse of Lowtower through a dusty haze. At that point he realized he had ventured too far from the others, that he was isolated, thus making him a very inviting target. He glimpsed movement in the haze, catching a man size shape with an arm raised in his direction.
Pure instinct drove Tunnal’s reaction. He dove left just as a blade of plasma rippled above him, bathing his body in a heat bath hot enough to singe clothing and skin. The ground behind him erupted in a blazing plume where the beam struck. Tunnal lay face down, smarting from the pain of first degree burns. He still held his Viper and swung it in front of him fully expecting to be roasted by a follow-up blast. The smoke cleared and he saw that Lowtower was gone.
Dern ran as fast as his suit’s power servos could deliver. Armor power levels continued to decline. He ignored the blinking warning readings on his display. He already knew he was in bad shape. If he didn’t stop to allow his suit’s vital functions to recharge and mend some of the damage, it would shut down. On the other hand, stopping too soon would allow his pursuers to over take him. Dern kept pushing it, covering much ground in loping strides, gambling that he could make it to the canyon up ahead before his suit succumbed to catastrophic failure.
Explosions large and small nipped at his heels. A file of rockets zipped over his right shoulder spiking his path in fiery founts. Then came silence, save for labored breaths through his respirator.
A cliff lay up ahead. Beyond that a canyon network stretching across half a continent.
Dern approached the edge at full speed and leapt off, tapping into his remaining reserves to activate his repulsers. It was a 500 foot drop.
Power flows ceased during the last 40 feet. His repulsers winked out and Dern plunged unceremoniously to the bottom, deflecting off a slope in the canyon wall before hitting the ground at a flailing roll.
Five hours crept by. The rust tinted sky above darkened to a foreboding blood colored hue with the encroachment of nightfall. The bottom of the canyon was covered with stalactite shaped rock outcroppings, overhangs, boulders and small craters. Many of the outcroppings loomed so tall they could have been mountains in their own right. Patches of vegetation dotted the canyon bottom. Sturdy sprigs in all their hideous glory, sprouting from ground that looked more like gravel than any soil capable of producing plant life. Cave entrances existed at various points along the cliff rockface.
Dern ducked into one of those caves immediately after his short and bruising freefall.
As much as he wanted to find Alita and the remaining sleeper ship crew, extreme necessity dictated he lay low for a while and let his suit recharge.
Hours later, the recharge completion bar on his display blinked. While regenerates did the best they could to repair the extensive damage to his suit, they could only do so much. He missed his SD support techs. They would have had him patched up in less than an hour. There were other things about the past he missed…more than he cared to admit. A quiet posting as a lawman on Ceres 3 would have forever lain to rest those violent stirrings that had plagued him since his departure from the service. Recent events reawakened that monster inside him and he feared it would never be contained.
He conducted a diagnostic. The results were not encouraging. Seven ruptured micro servos, degraded impact repellants from upper back to midthigh, thirteen burnt out relays, faltering power boosters, and a weapons bracelet operating at 73 percent capacity.
Not encouraging at all. But he would work with what he had.
He slipped out of the cave, embarking on a quest to find his friend.
