CHAPTER TEN—FLASHING BLADE

“Whatever!” the mech driver said through his loudspeakers. “Well? Come get me!”

Snarling, Ichiro stepped off the porch and into the waterlogged grass.

“Be careful,” John said.

Ichiro said nothing as he stared at the mech, it’s thick legs and bulbous cockpit providing an intimidating front. Above the cockpit were rockets and on the arms large machine guns, some of them small enough to be effective anti-personnel weapons.

Had he been a samurai, perhaps Ichiro would have screamed as he charged the mech, but instead he moved silently save for his wet footsteps in the grass.

As he moved forward he heard John moved to the right, out of the way of the mech’s incoming fire as the driver opened up at Ichiro.

He dodged the bullets as they screamed past him and into the ground with thick thumps. As he neared the mech, the pilot moved, attempting to back away and maneuver out of Ichiro’s reach.

The sound of its hissing servos was loud as he moved up to the machine and jumped, flipped in the air and landed on the cockpit glass.

The driver attempted to wipe Ichiro off, but the mech was designed to hold weapons and to manipulate larger objects for climbing and shooting, not for delicate maneuvers, such as grabbing a man by the scruff of his neck and tossing him off the windshield.

A fatal overstep in this mech’s design.

As an assassin, Ichiro understood the design of this vehicle. It wasn’t that the mech was outdated, it simple was too large to have been designed for this style of combat.

“Get off me!” the driver commanded.

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Grinning, Ichiro said, “Do you still want me to come for you, killer?”

“Killer?” the driver asked. “I’m no killer. I am an Imperial Mech Driver! How dare you insult my honor, you traitor!”

“You are a killer!”

Ichrio hit the emergency cockpit button and then back flipped off the mech. The design was such to prevent mech drivers from being killed while trapped in their vehicles. The designers never intended enemy combatants to hit that button.

And yet Ichiro did.

“What!” the driver screamed as his cockpit opened by way of powerful pneumatic servos that could crush metal in the event that the door was bent shut. “You bastard!”

Ichiro lunged forward as the driver swiped his arm across the ground. He jumped, put his hand out and used it to vault himself over the mech arm and back onto his feet.

He ran, jumped and flipped forward in the air, his katana flashing. The driver screamed at his incoming fate.

Ichiro angled his katana blade forward while pressing his palm against the bottom of the hilt. The blade sunk through the mech driver’s chest and into his seat with a sharp cutting sound.

The man grunted heavily and made noises as he stared at Ichiro with wide eyes. He coughed once, blood gouting out of his mouth and over his chin.

Ichiro stood over the pilot with both of his sandals firmly placed on either side of the cockpit seal, his teeth gritted together so hard he thought they might shatter like glass.

He pulled out the sword, but the pilot made no sound of protest, as he was already dead and gone, his worthless pathetic spirit departed from his flesh.

Ichiro then unbuckled the dead soldier and grabbed his corpse by the scuff of the neck and hauled him out. He fell onto the wet ground heavily.

“Ichiro!” John said with astonishment. “I can’t… I can’t believe it!”

He turned to meet the gaze of his companion. “You better believe it,” Ichiro said, “because I’m taking this mech to rescue Harlan and Joji.”

Nodding, John said, “Yeah. Go—don’t wait for me.”

With a final salute, Ichiro turned and sat in the mech chair, but before closing the cockpit, he said, “Let’s meet back where we killed that first set of soldiers.”

“You got it,” John said. “Heading there now.”

Ichiro closed the cockpit, the sound of the heavy rain smacking against the windshield. In these torrential rains, the cloying summer heat evaporated, leaving one cold and shivering. The cockpit was otherwise very warm since the heater was on and the dehumidifiers activated.

He would be completely dry in a matter of minutes.

Putting his hands into the control sockets, he manipulated the mech into turning around in a growl of jets and hissing pneumatic servomotors.

“Now it’s time for payback!”