Did I just dodge a missile? Adrianne thought to herself. She had little time to reason it all out. Whatever shot at her would shoot again. As much as she wanted to see what it was, stopping to look would be fatal. She had best run now and figure things out later.
Tree bark and branches fell where she had just been. She picked up the debris on her scanner. Just then she realized she was moving in a straight line away from something that was going to shoot at her soon. It had only been for a split second but that’s all it takes to aim. She activated Silent Blur’s wings and their rockets to sharply change direction.
As Adrianne was committing to the maneuver, her instincts kicked in again as she activated her Kin-Po and Aura talents. She was wearing a gravity suit similar to what the racers wore, but her maneuvers were just a little more intense and desperate than the suit was designed to handle. With her life on the line, even getting a little disoriented could be the end of her.
Blaster bolts followed her as she swerved behind a tree. Thankfully, the attacker could not keep up with her acceleration. The blaster fire trailed her hitting the tree a few times before it stopped.
Using Silent Blur’s wings again, she quickly whipped the ship around to a position fit for climbing. Metal claws dug deep into the tree as she scrambled up. It was a long shot, but just maybe she could shake it off her trail.
It almost worked. The attacker moved very quickly around the tree to get a good angle for a shot and found her. Adrianne saw something move and began to corkscrew up the tree to avoid the blaster bolts. It fired mindlessly as it tried to keep up with her climbing around the tree. Adrianne stayed ahead of it, but it was not easy. She was going fast enough to launch the ship off the tree. She had to use Silent Blur’s wing rockets to press Silent Blur against the tree as she climbed.
At this point, the attacker was having a hard time keeping up while shooting. It also showed little intelligence. It kept following the shortest path behind her instead of cutting her off. It had to be a machine.
The machine continuously fired and it continuously missed. At this point, she was surprised that the woods were not catching on fire. She was thinking of a way to end this impasse without getting shot down but couldn’t think of a solution. Her confusion increased when the continuous rain of bolt fire suddenly stopped.
She thought it was a trick at first. Then her short range motion tracker caught a parachute opening. Her motion sensors found the device in her data bank. Even without the data bank the device looked familiar to her.
It was a hover hunter, a small droid designed to search and hunt for a designated target. She knew them very well. She modified her defensive droids from them. They had exactly one missile and a short battery life. They had a cloak but the device was small enough that it avoided most scans. They were invisible unless you looked for their particular frequency.
They could be reused. Once the droid was retrieved, the missile could be reloaded and the battery recharged. Each droid had a camera and a tracking device so the gankers probably knew exactly where she was. They could surround her before she saw them.
Hunter hovers were very expensive to say the least. These gankers were very well funded. She had to be very careful to get back to Rubin’s Trail alive. Now that she knew the weapon of choice for her enemy. She searched for the frequency to allow her to pick up the little deadly drones.
She wasted no time stuck in the tree waiting for the blips to appear. She knew they had found her. She knew they would overtake her in the air. The best she could do is to run along the ground hoping to escape the danger.
And so, she jumped out of the tree towards the ground and let Silent Blur’s wings soften the fall. Heading west, she hoped to avoid any hover hunters they may have released from their ships to track her since the first one had failed.
The frequency scan was short. When the scan was over, she was in no way pleased with what she saw. Five cloaked hunter hovers in her vicinity and two cloaked ships circling directly above her.