A leap across sixty feet of empty mountain air is not an act of faith for a machine. It’s a math of mass, end-post speed, and offering driving force.
When Unit Ren launched from the swaying narrow high walkway, the iron deck didn’t merely rebound. It snapped its western support cable with a sound whip-crack that echoed into the deep pit. Two hundred and eighty pounds of iron armature, hardened rubber, and charred flesh hurled through the freezing darkness, his broken left arm trailing behind him like a cut thick ship rope in a gale.
Torvald Crane had just raised his twin steam-cutter blades to decapitate Ren Vale. Just then, the machine struck.
WHAM!
The crash sounded like two cannons colliding muzzle-to-muzzle.
Unit Ren slammed directly into the back of Crane’s four-legged brass harness. The moving impact was so violent that the four air-powered spider-legs crumpled, their brass joints buckling and spraying boiling lubricating fluid across the mica plates of the soul metal tube. Crane shrieked—a high, digitized squeal of electronic terror—as his combat frame was crushed against the iron grating of the narrow high walkway.
“UNLICENSED CARCASS!” Crane screamed, his said clearlyupper limbs twisting around with blinding speed.
The twin white-hot cutter blades, spinning at eight thousand turns a minute, plunged directly into Unit Ren’s chest.
