The difference between three hundred tons of moving hard dark metal and a single machine-grafted mortal was not a matter of courage. It was a matter of shifted weight.
The Iron Judicator Null-01 swung its main high-pressure fist across the upper narrow high walkway. Then, it displaced sixty cubic yards of freezing mountain air in a split second. The pressure wave alone stripped the rusted zinc coating from the overhead frame grating. It sent a hail of razor-sharp metal flakes whistling into the dark like canister shot. The iron mid-air cables supporting the span hummed with a terrifying, high-hum whine, weeping rust down into the void.
Unit Ren didn’t try to dodge.
There was nowhere to dodge. The narrow high walkway was three feet wide, suspended fourteen hundred feet above the boiling melted rock waste canals of Sector Four, with a sheer granite cliff face on the left and the roaring flank of the giant statue on the right. Below them, forty paces down the service ladder, Mira Vale knelt with both hands pressed against the bedrock anchor, her crystal-clear right arm sending nonstop waves of violet sound dampening through the mountain’s granite roots to prevent the entire overhead frame from tearing free.
