7.c.ix.
Commander
Credit skirted another corner on the surface of the maze and found himself
looking down a long, straight pathway.
At the far end loomed The Crash, bellowing and beating its chest with
the bloodied torso of an overused day trader.
Commander
Credit let loose with a piercing war cry and then screamed, “I’m gonna cancel
your ass you huge pile of shit!”
He cocked a
lever on his cybernetic arm and charged.
The Crash roared and thundered across the ledge. Seismic shudderings pulsed through structure
of the maze. Commander Credit fired a
steady stream of platinum card’s at the monster’s face. A few bounced off, but the majority stuck
like porcupine quills in a curious dog’s muzzle. The Crash swiped at the cards, ripping them
from its face, the uprooted blade edges black with sticky tar-blood.
And then they
were upon each other.
The Crash
tried to charge through his opponent, but Commander Credit leaped up and off
the edge of the maze, fired a small barbed shaft from his mechanical arm. There was a thick cable that connected the
barbed shaft to the interior housing of his arm. The other end jabbed deep into The Crash’s
shoulder.
Commander
Credit activated a toggle switch on his mechanical arm sending a pulse of
electrical current through the cable.
The voltage was minimal and had not direct effect on The Crash, but it
activated several pneumatic pistons within the barbed shaft and caused the
housing of the shaft to expand fifteen to twenty-three percent in size. Commander Credit gripped the cable of the
variable-hook and used his momentum to swing out over the trench and back onto
the maze ledge, landing behind the enraged creature. He punched a PIN number into a keypad on his
arm and a sharp, magnetic strip popped out, running like a blade from his elbow
to his wrist. He slashed at The Crash’s
exposed ankles. Spurts of thick, greasy
tar burst from severed Achilles. The
man-creature howled, toppled forward, and slid across the pathway where it
teetered on the edge of the trench and almost fell into the labyrinth. Its mammoth hand slapped and locked onto the
wall across the void, halting its descent.
Thick fingers dug in, splintering the hard material.
Commander
Credit leapt forward, slashing. His
black magnetic strip slicing into The Crash’s exposed foot.
The hulking
creature clamped its legs together, its knees snapping shut on Commander Credit
like a rat trap. There was a popping
sound and all the air went out of Commander Credit’s lungs. His mechanical arm was pinned up against his
neck, the magnetic strip blade and the gold and platinum ordinance inside, now all
but useless.
“You…”
Commander Credit wheezed.
The Crash
tightened its leg vice.
“I’m…” and
again he couldn’t utter an additional word.
He needed a good quip here.
Something defiant and snarky.
Something to show that he had met death and was spitting in its
eye. But he couldn’t even gasp, or
wheeze, let alone be clever.
The world
turned grey.
