The colonel felt a slight vibration as the engine started up. He couldn’t see the rear propeller building up speed, pushing the main rotor overhead, because the control program determined those details were unnecessary. However, the climbing rpm and thrust levels were displayed inside his visor. When the rotor reached liftoff thrust, Gabhart released the skid clamps and the gyroplane rocketed into the air.
It was like flying an armchair, but an armchair that with a stomach-dropping lurch climbed straight up to three hundred feet. On command, the chair tipped forward, giving the colonel a panoramic view of the terrain below. He located the running man without difficulty. As he banked to intercept his target, G-force pressed him deep into the contour seat. It was a max-speed dive. At the outer edges of his vision the surrounding landmarksthe ridge tops, the rock walls, the three-story structuresblurred, then stretched like taffy. Glittering taffy.
Gabhart could have just sat back and watched, letting the computer do all the work, but he enjoyed hands-on flying, especially in combat. Below him, a magnified, lone figure ran inside a superimposed red circle, the gyro’s kill zone. He tensed his left index finger inside the battlesuit glove and the circle shrank until he had the man’s right arm isolated. It was the arm that carried the projectile weapon. When the colonel relaxed the muscles of his hand, the fire control system had its target locked in. The circle bobbed up and down, up and down as the man pumped his arms, trying desperately to escape onrushing death from above.
AFTER HIS THIRD SHOT missed, Gore automatically chambered another live round. Eye pressed to the scope’s rear aperture, cross wires on his target’s black-armored chest, he tightened the trigger to the break point, then paused. He was rapidly losing confidence in the longblaster, and starting to get spooked by these muties, who made no move to duck for cover.
Where were Spadecrawler and Jones? Why hadn’t they backed his play?
Through the scope, he followed his chosen target as it walked over to the flatbed trailer and climbed up and into the weird black machine that sat on it. He stared, fascinated, as the bladed thing in back of the fuselage began to spin. Then the bigger-bladed thing on its roof began to spin, too. Gore had no idea what the machine was supposed to do, but he didn’t like the look of it one bit. He was about to put a bullet through its middle, just to see what would happen, when it jumped off its trailer and shot high into the sky.
At the sight, Gore panicked. Vaulting over low rubble heaps, he dashed for the base of the ridge, where the boulder fall could provide him some cover. He had crossed no more than one-third of the distance when he sensed the black thing swooping down on him from behind. He felt the terrible pounding of its blades against the air, felt the impacts inside his body and reacted by cutting hard to the left.
The flying machine swept over him, whipping up a cloud of dust. And as it passed by, a pencil line of green light from above cracked a smoking slit in the earth to his right.
For a second it didn’t even hurt. Gore felt a sudden sensation of extreme pressure, of constriction just below his right elbow, and something clattered at his feet. He saw the Steyr on the ground, his severed hand and forearm still gripping the forestock. Staring in disbelief at his brand-new stump, he smelled burning meat, then his elbow exploded in pain. Gore fell to the dirt, squealing.
Chapter Ten
“Kind of a piss-poor shot, isn’t he?” was J.B.’s comment after the cannie missed for a second time with the stolen longblaster.
Ryan squinted through one lens of his binocs. “It sure isn’t the rifle’s fault. At that range, he should be able to drive nails with it.”
“Our friends in black down there don’t seem to be much bothered by what he’s doing,” J.B. said. “Either that, or they’re scared stiff.”
“Don’t look scared to me.” Ryan said.
“Nah, to me neither,” the Armorer admitted. “More like they couldn’t give a rusty rad-blast.”