Sousuke understood her fear. After all, she was in a robot hand as high as the tip of a telephone pole, being swung violently about as the robot ran nearly forty miles per hour. Chances were good that anyone would be afraid.
But there was nothing she could do but ride it out.
"Don't look down," she coached herself, trembling. "Wait! What about everyone else? We can't just leave them here."
"Right now, we are the ones in the most danger. My comrades will come for them."
"Comrades?"
"The rescue squad." Even though he said it confidently, Sousuke was not sure whether it was true. Even though he did it to save Kaname, getting into combat before the rescue operation was a colossal mistake. True, he managed to dig up an AS, but still…
Pursuit was a near certainty. Sousuke and Kaname were not in any less danger than before.
Sousuke's Savage jumped over the base's perimeter fence, busting through a thicket and across a wide highway.
Right about then, an alarm sounded in the machine.
"Missile warning at four o'clock."
A guided missile from the back!
Simultaneously turning and shifting Kaname from the path of danger, Sousuke fired the two Vulcan machine guns mounted on his mech's head.
In one second's time, eighty bullets struck the missile, which exploded in midair.
Without wasting any time, Sousuke continued to charge toward the woods in his Savage.
It was a bumpy ride, but there was nothing anyone could do about that. The barrels of the machine guns were no more than a foot or two from Kaname's head. If Sousuke hadn't abruptly moved her to the side, the muzzle flash—the flames that spew from the guns—would have burned her, and the sound would have burst her eardrums.
"Ah, ahhh!" Apparently still unaware of what had transpired, Kaname stiffened and clutched the AS even tighter.
"Be patient. Just a little longer until we get clear."
Kaname couldn't bring herself to respond. Huddled in the hand, she looked small, pale, and afraid.
Regardless, Sousuke was impressed. He expected a typical girl to be screaming her head off and thrashing to free herself from the hand. But Kaname didn't even have any complaints as the mech pushed through the shrubs, kicking up dirt.
He checked, but he saw no one following him. No response on optical or infrared sensors.
It was most unusual.
Something just
He reached the bank of a river, but just as he started to cross…
A sniper shot came from downstream—at his two o'clock, a completely unexpected direction.
Reacting instantly, Sousuke dodged, and the orange-colored shells grazed the machine and obliterated several nearby trees.
Right away, a grenade made an arc through the air. Sousuke identified it as a high-powered bomb with a blast radius of about one-hundred fifty feet. Even if his AS could survive an explosion like that, Kaname, vulnerable and exposed, certainly would not.
"Damn!"
Before the grenade came down in front of the Savage, Sousuke turned his back to it to shield Kaname from the blast.
On the grenade's impact, the Savage lost its lower right leg from the knee down. Unable to balance, Sousuke toppled into the river, flinging Kaname through the air.
She screamed as she splashed into the river.
"Chidori!" yelled Sousuke, bringing the mech up on its remaining appendages.
At that point, Sousuke noticed that the grenade round was completely intact. It had not exploded because its fuse had been removed. It was secondary gunfire that took off his leg; the grenade was just a decoy to get him to stop moving!
Kaname's face broke the surface, and she let out a lungful of air.
"Chido—" began Sousuke, until three well-placed shots struck his Savage's right arm and flank, stopping the crawling machine in its tracks. He lowered the mech.
"Lower right arm damaged," warned the AS. "Control lost. Main condenser: complete loss. Condenser: output falling."
"Crap!"
A lone AS emerged from the darkness. It was silver and different from the others at the base.
Although the AS was roughly three hundred yards away, it closed the gap frighteningly quickly.
From his Savage's prone position, Sousuke lifted the AS rifle and returned fire, but it was a completely ineffective act. He couldn't even brace himself while taking the shots.
The enemy fired, too. Methodically, the enemy took one shot at a time, as though conserving ammo. Really, all Sousuke could do was lie there and hope not to get hit.
"Main sensor: lost. Fire outbreak in latissimus dorsal actuator."
