By David C. Daoust
Still strapped into his Sky screamer as it lost power, Charles really didn’t get a good look at the expanding Ion Cloud until it was well past him- and he was dropping from the sky. The blood rushed from his face as he spun about in a plunge. Anti-grav vehicles, without power, were in no way built to be ‘aero-dynamic’. In fact, they tended to defy convention, as often as they defied physics. Considering an anti-gravity engine was pretty much a massive solid brick, a free fall tended to send the vehicle in the most ridiculously intense spins. He felt himself lurch, and thought his stomach might hit the reverse button.
Luckily, he kept his wits about him well enough to eject himself from the vehicle at the apex of its spin, kick himself free of the plunging contraption, and then pull the cord that hung from one shoulder. Just like his Mom taught him, all those years before.
Charles heard the twin canisters of compressed air suddenly release, powerlessly, from the core of the glider pack. The extremely lightweight, super strong material unfolded from the pack to form a surprisingly large glider, held ridged by a gaseous compound that solidified within the wings themselves as he’d released the rip-cord. He could not help but shout-out in victory as the glider caught the wind.
Still frazzled, heart racing from the experience, his mind rushed with excitement as he began his slow descent to the ground.
From the high vantage, he got a clear view of the action below. His discarded vehicle was not the only machine that had suddenly expelled power, and the mysterious blue cloud was a sight to behold as it took out droid and drone alike. All of which crashed to the ground, lifeless as the tiny bolts of lightning, that filled the air, passed over the area.
Charles slowly descended from the skies. He could not spot his brother or his Grandfather. He did spot, however, the sudden march of red soldiers that seemed to fill the ruins below. All began to spread out, those that located a downed battle drone, called in others, small groups of soldiers were all carrying chains, and large sacks of stakes. They must want to chain the things down,he thought. Charles mused that the rifles on their backs, were as powerless as his Screamer that lay shattered in the rubble below; this was a guess though, their high tech weapons looked a bit more complex than the rifles his Grandpa had taught him to shoot with. Though, Charles did note, they did seem to be a bit careful about not damaging the machines.
I’d smash their processing-cores in, and be done with’em, he thought to himself.
The soldier’s stratagem, however, did not come to fruition. Many of the Battle Drones began to power back up before the soldiers could even get started. The surprised soldiers scattered, pulled their rifles from their backs, and found cover. Charles felt like a sitting duck as the machines launched into the air. There was a good few moments, where he did not know what they were going to do, or which direction they were going to go in, gliders weren’t real nimble… not compared to a swarm of flying machines anyway!
Drones could be seen hovering, spaced evenly throughout the inner rubble of Grady, and then in perfect unison they all charged for the desert, in retreat.
Charles heard some gunfire as the Red Soldiers realized they were about to completely fail at their mission, his musings about whether or not the guns were still functioning after the ion cloud passed over head, clearly wrong. Charles could not do much more than hope that they weren’t aiming in his direction.
Once he was close enough to the ground he just ejected the glider from his back, and dropped into a roll as the lightweight wings crashed into a pile of rubble, it flipped about oddly as the contraption lost proper space to glide freely.The glider-pack was a one shot deal, once the compound solidified there was no ‘repacking’ it.
Charles suddenly found himself cut off from what was going on around him. He found himself in a mound of wrecked rubble and debris as far as the eye could see. The only structure left standing- was the massive Starport that had once been the town center.
Navigating this mess had been a lot more carefree from the skies, now he was stuck climbing through rubble, with only a vague notion of what direction Ratchet and Grandpa Haul had taken in their search for Vincent. Charles decided, before he’d suddenly found himself in freefall, to make a broad sweep of the area in the complete opposite direction of where his brother was searching, mostly in the hopes of saving time; to get his family back to the safety of home before whatever comes next… came next!
Too late.
It was as he began sliding down the side of crumbling brick and mortar that he heard the strange mechanical whirring and clicking of malfunctioning machinery. Charles followed the noise to spot one of the Battle-Drones, badly damaged, trying to push itself from the area. Clearly its ability to fly had been compromised, hobbling about on only three legs, as the other five dragged limp behind it.
Charles wasn’t sure what to do, wasn’t sure if the thing would be friendly or what. The teen just froze in his tracks as he tumbled the ideas around in his mind.
Suddenly he heard other people approaching.
The sight of Red Soldiers got him thinking he should hide the machine. Clearly they wanted to salvage the tech for themselves, which he decided may not bode well for those to blame for the drone strike; his family. Though realized hiding the massive malfunctioning spider drone was not practical in any way shape or form… he hastily stumbled down through the rubble some more and almost called the soldiers attention, all in the hopes of distracting them before they spotted the machine, though the darkness that suddenly surrounded him, interrupted any action as a chill ran down his spine. He glanced up at the skies to see naught but darkness. He heard the soldiers suddenly react to the darkness as well, and Charles ducked back behind debris.
Charles was wide-eyed, questioning reality, trying to figure out if it had all been a dream, though of it all, the Battle Drone itself, which had been making all that noise, suddenly collapsed under the weight of its own powerless body.
<<<So, it would appear I went with plan-B from last week. Though in truth, even when I was formulating the idea that one of the Hauls should be next, Charles the First wasn’t even on the table. So after all that weighing and debating… I went with something completely different! and, I kind’a-think that this belongs in Part1…eh… while I planned to have everything in Part2 be after the Solargate winked out, it seems I wasn’t quite done with that yet. Whatever… Ultimately, this project is an ongoing serial. I talk about compiling it, and organizing it, but that doesn’t really interest me yet. ty,DD>>>
