Time Salvager (Time Salvager #1)(116)
Levin scanned their area to make sure none of the scattering engineers nearby were in danger. That momentary distraction, however, proved costly. Kuo had recovered from the surprise attack just enough to roll under Levin’s forward force and flip him over to the front nose of the collie, where he bounced off and fell onto the ground. He landed on his feet and retreated to the open space. He eyed Kuo as she took her time and casually followed, jumping off the ship and strolling to the center of the hangar. The two stalked each other like two predators going in for the kill.
Several squads of monitors ran into the hangar and quarantined the area, wrist beams raised. He wasn’t sure which of them they were aimed at; he was unsure of many of the loyalties in the agency these days. Still, this wasn’t a fight any of them should face.
“Stay back. Do not get involved,” he barked. “Clear the hangar.”
The glow of her exo was different from his: whiter, with a bluish tint, compared to his angry orange field, energy more electric and lines more jagged than the smooth curved arches of an auditor’s. Her shield also surrounded her in a sphere, unlike his, which hugged his skin. It offered her more protection while at the same time being more unwieldy and inefficient. Levin’s skin-shield, on the other hand, was much more maneuverable and power-conscious, but could not take as many attacks as Kuo’s shield.
Their expanded exo fields touched briefly and Levin immediately felt the surge-back of her field repelling his. He threw himself into the air and sprouted nine coils, expanding them out in all directions and then focusing them straight at her.
Kuo sprouted only one massive thick trunk that was as wide as she was tall. As his coils snaked around it, her trunk shot out toward him and somehow sucked his coils into it as if by some sort of magnetism. Levin threw himself to the side as her trunk punched the air where he had been moments before. He cut his connection with his coils and regrew another half dozen, pushing them into the ground to sweep up around her feet.
Kuo responded by leveling the ground she was standing on, and expanding a spherical barrier around her that melted the floor away. Every coil Levin shot out fizzled as it touched the white sphere with blue tints arcing and jumping across its surface. Her large trunk hammered down on him again, forcing him to take evasive maneuvers as he ducked and juked, trying to stay out of her range. She was pushing him further and further back, which would soon put her beyond the range of his own attacks.
Levin continued to dodge, waiting for an opening. He had dealt with exos of this sort before, commonly used in space battles where range and power were more important than finesse and versatility. Still, the levels of Kuo’s exos were far beyond anything he had previously encountered. The energy drain needed to generate the trunk had to be massive. Perhaps he could drain her levels and outlast her.
A sudden jolt from the side knocked Levin out of the air. His vision swam as the ground and sky switched places and the landscape became a blur of colors. He careened into one of the transports, smashing through the front portholes and into the cargo hold. Levin wiped the blood off of his chin. His exo had cracked from that last blow. He wasn’t sure how many more of those he could take.
He picked himself up and was knocked down again by pieces of the ship as it began to cave in on him, the metal walls buckling and crinkling as if balled-up paper. Levin steadied his exo and pushed himself upward, only to slam into Kuo’s trunk and fall back again. He tried once more, this time shooting to his left. Again, he was stopped by her energy field. The ceiling and walls continued to close in, and soon he was left with hardly enough space to stand.
Levin shot out a dozen small coils in all directions, probing for an escape. It seemed, however, that Kuo’s trunk had completely enveloped the transport, and she was intent on crushing him inside. He was trapped. He dropped to his knees as the ceiling came closer, frantically searching for a way out. What was left of the transport was shaking as its skeleton failed to keep its form. He placed his hands on the metal grating of the floor to steady himself, and stopped. He peered down at the flat ground beneath him. It would take a tremendous amount of levels but this could be his only chance.
Levin focused his remaining levels and concentrated them on a single point beneath him. He drove straight down into the ground, through the hull of the ship, into the dirt, rock, and underground piping. He descended six meters and burrowed eastward. One thing he knew about these trunk exos was that, due to the tremendous inertia created from their focused attacks, unless their wielder were fighting in open space, they required him or her to hold a solid base to ground the exos’s inertia and thereby maintain position.
He ascended right below Kuo and produced an eruption of earth as he struck her from underneath. She was so taken aback by the attack, her trunk disappeared. This was his chance. That last maneuver had sucked his levels down to 16 percent.
While she was disoriented, he rose into the air and dove straight toward her again, slamming into her with the hopes of piercing her shield for the kill. Her exo flared against his attack and, for a moment, seemed to crack. Then it held. He felt a burning sensation as her white field momentarily receded, then surged forward. It overwhelmed his shield and began to cover his body like a film. His nerves burned and his atmos screamed to his AI band that his body was frying. And then he was through her shield and past the perimeter. Levin reached for her, but suddenly found that he couldn’t move.
“Nice try, Auditor,” she panted. “You almost had me.”