Kachina
Chapter 1 – Shot Down
"Bruce! Take the wheel" Trakker ordered, unbuckling his seatbelt. "I'm going to stop that thing myself. And watch out for Mayhem. He's closing in on us."
Sato slid across the cab into Thunderhawk's driver's seat as Trakker fell out of the open doorway. The jet's course dipped momentarily as the change was made, but leveled again as Sato's hands closed on the wheel.
"Spectrum Hanglider! On!"
Trakker's entire body flared with energy discharge as the power of his mask slowed his fall to the ground, allowing him to glide gently downwards. The halo around him glowed brightly against the dark grey storm clouds creeping forward from the west.
"Heads up, Rax. One of them's coming right for you," came Mayhem's staccato voice over the radio. Through Switchblade's yellow windshield he could see one of the M.A.S.K agents descending straight toward the sonic drill below. The jet rocketed onwards, curving away to the south, back towards the canyon and back toward where Vanessa was attempting to escape, Gator in hot pursuit.
Trakker concentrated on his landing, coming down inside the fence of the installation. Shark pulled up on the opposite side of the fence and Baker hopped out, looking for a quick way through or over the fence. The locked gate hindered through and the coils of barbed wire atop the fence hindered over.
Dagger, standing guard over the installation atop the shorter canyon wall, began firing at her. As the blasts struck closer and closer, Baker dove for cover behind some large sandstone boulders.
"Watch it!" Rax snarled. "You might hit the drill." From the central control booth perched atop stilts next to the sonic drill he could see everything, including the grey-dressed MASK agent headed through the maze of pipes toward him.
"I won't. I'll be careful." And in his carefulness he managed to hit the chain link fence, blasting open a hole large enough for Baker to run inside.
Mayhem's hand fell to the missile control panel, targeted Thunderhawk, flipped open the display, and released two tracking missiles. "That ought to stop him."
Hunter's voice crackled over the intercom. "Mayhem's just launched two missiles at Thunderhawk."
"Thanks Brad. Taking evasive action now." Immediately the red car began to swerve lower, it's flight path veering right and left.
"Do what you can, Bruce. I'm going after that device before they can get it fully powered up."
"Will do, Matt." Even in the heat of battle, his voice was always calm. And then less than a minute later came a statement with a little less calmness to the tone. "Direct hit to the engine," Sato announced. "I'm going down."
"Hang in there, Bruce." Trakker's voice came back. "Dusty, anything you can do?"
"I've got him, Matt," called Baker. She stopped running toward the control booth to assist Trakker, but now braced herself against a hefty pipe and began tracking Thunderhawk's descent. "Aura! On!"
The bubble of repellant energy materialized just underneath Thunderhawk's path, slowing the car and bouncing it a bit higher.
Thunderhawk came down in a long arc toward the installation, a furious plume of black smoke belching from the rear jets. Sato fought the controls, trying to keep the vehicle from plummeting straight down, and with some luck and a couple of nudges from Baker's aura, he was able to crash into the river a few yards short of the cliff. The cold water engulfed and immediately extinguished the engine fire, but also threatened to drown the occupant. The river here was deep enough to cover most of Thunderhawk—only a few inches of air being left in the top of the cab. At least his mask was water-resistant for a few minutes of submersion. "Seatbelt off!" Sato commanded, but the seatbelt did not unlatch. He reached down into the cold water and found the release button. He crawled from the cab, surfaced underneath one of the wings, and looked about.
The flash of a laser cannon filled the sky above him, followed by the sound of the weapon being used against rock. At the sloping edge of the canyon above, he could see Dagger in the gunner's cockpit, firing blasts at the sheer wall opposite—the one towering over Thunderhawk.
Sandstone blocks began to tumble from above, splashing down into the river all around him. The laser's aim moved lower, blasting continuously at a large horizontal seam between the layers of sandstone. Sato's throat tightened as the huge mass of rock above the seam began to shift. Dodging falling boulders was not going to be enough. "Lifter! On!" Halos of light shot forth from his mask, hitting the cliff face and spreading around the enormous block that Dagger was attempting to dislodge. As the rock tipped forward Sato could suddenly feel the weight of the sandstone above him. What did it weigh? A hundred tons? A thousand tons? All he knew was that Lifter would not hold up long against the mass above him. He had to get away. He had to get out of the path that gravity had chosen.
Keeping a hold of Thunderhawk, he moved around to the back of the car, hooking on where he could find purchase with his hands and feet. The swift river currents threatened to drag him away. And then came the first twinge of burnout, that demand for energy tapped not from the mask's battery, but from his own body. It pulled subtly at first, but drew progressively stronger as the battery began to falter. Quickly he realized that his best option for escape would be to let the river carry him out of the way.
Looking downstream and positioning himself for a clean launch, he readied himself to let go. "Lifter's about to burn out. I'm going to swim for it."
"Get as far as you can before you shut off. That rock is huge!" called Baker.
Dagger, seeing that the agent in the water was keeping the rock from falling, aimed his guns at the agent below. Blasts shocked the water around him, and Sato let go, realizing it was now or never. As the river began to take him away, Lifter began to fail—the sensation of heat filling his mask, the battery indicator flashing frantically, the strain of keeping Lifter operational growing by the second.
The river dragged him away, his feet bumping along the riverbed, then suddenly falling away beneath him as he was pulled into a deeper section of water. The battery's beeper screamed in the throes of death and he terminated the beam. The canyon wall, a grand monolith of red sandstone perched above the river for thousands of years, suddenly roared and crashed down, crushing Thunderhawk and splashing up an huge wave of displaced water. He turned to face the downstream route just as the wall of oncoming water hit him.
"Bruce!" came several voices at once over the radio.
The turbulent water tumbled him over again and again, banging him against the sandy riverbed and into submerged boulders. After one hard knock his mask began to take on water. Eventually he was able to right himself and let the current carry him along, but here the canyon was narrower and there were no banks to land on. "I'm alive still" he announced.
"Bruce, hold tight,"came a garbled voice, but he could not tell whose.
He had fallen behind the huge surge and was able to keep upright, but the time in the cold water had started him shivering.
"I'll get to shore as soon as I can."
There was no response, save for a crackle of static.
"Can anyone hear me?"
Again a crackle of static.
"Anyone?"
He tried to find the bottom of the river with his feet, but could not.
"If you can hear me, I'm all right. I just have to get to land. I'll have to meet you downstream."
And at that point the current dragged him across something underwater, something sharp and painful.
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Continued in Chapter 2 : Out of the River
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M.A.S.K. and all related concepts, characters, worlds, and events are property of DIC Enterprises, Inc and Kenner Toys. Original characters and story elements are property of E. Potter, writing under the pen name of Miratete.