Deprived of his sight and stripped of his chemical cannons, Baron Korgan Rask was reduced to blind, panicked violence.
Inside the milky, molten tomb of the cockpit, the Baron swung the backup weapon levers in wild, uneven arcs. The Juggernaut’s rear chassis thrashed against the mud. Its heavy steel tail swept across the flat stone slabs like an iron flail. At the same time, its leftover intact tiny autocannon fired wild, unguided bursts into the sky.
BANG-BANG!
Tracer rounds ricocheted off the concrete walls of the ravine, chewing through empty mudbanks.
The machine’s three enslaved drake cores were screaming in total sympathetic deep ring, their mana output spiking into the critical red zone as Rask’s neural rig demanded impossible power from their dying tissues.
Arthur Vance stood twenty paces from the flailing chassis. His test monocle was locked onto the exposed underbelly of the vehicle.
“The drake cores are approaching heat runaway,” Arthur diagnosed. His voice flat with was cold and exact urgency. “If the mana channels rupture under this spark overload, the three cores will detonate in a nearby aether inward collapse. We have less than sixty seconds to sever the power signal bus and shut down the engine.”
