The flooded lower gantries of Mining Rig Omega became a tiered arena of tearing metal, spraying high-pressure oil, and moving thunder.
Grimm hit the dark water at full sprint, his three-hundred-and-fifty-two-pound body slicing through the surface like an armored black torpedo. The dense black glass bone spurs lining his spine and shoulders flared with deep-violet gravity static, carving a water-flow channel through the five-meter-deep shallows.
Ahead of him, the lead Mark-IV Iron Goliath Walker was still attempting to winch Titus toward the toxic discharge water chutes. The pilot inside the sealed silver-steel cockpit saw the black hound charging through the foam and slammed the control joystick forward. It swung the walker’s left tiny rail-gatling down to track the target.
BZZZZZZT.
A hail of high-speed heavy dark metal rounds chewed through the water, throwing up geysers of crushed spray. But Grimm was not moving along a predictable high-speed arc. With every stride against the underwater dark rock shelf, Grimm shifted his heavy local gravity mass. It curved his sprint in sharp, ninety-degree vector cuts that caused the gatling fire to chew harmlessly into the stone behind him.
In less than three seconds, Grimm closed the distance.
He didn’t strike the armored chest or the shielded cockpit. Grimm possessed the cold and exact hunting beast instincts instilled by hundreds of hours of body cutting-open alongside Arthur Vance. He knew exactly where a clockwork biped’s skeletal strength failed.
