Free Noble V: Greylancer by Hideyuki Kikuchi Page B

will be cannon fodder if you lower your ship’s field.”
    “Yunus.” Greylancer muttered the name of his subcommander. “I can’t be bothered to
     turn the field on and off. Only those that can need follow.”
    Robots armed with shoulder-mounted blade-launchers flanked the Noble and fired.
    Greylancer dropped the field and reached for his lance.
    He swung the massive weapon, and several explosions erupted in the vacuum around him.
     When the blades traveling at supersonic speed made contact with the lance, the convergence
     of the two opposing forces disintegrated the blades. Blue electromagnetic waves and
     ash scattered everywhere.
    At what speed was such a feat possible? With what force? How do you track each blade
     and strike it down, Greylancer?
    A rain of black arrows fell from the inky sky. The robots faithfully executed the
     legendary Earthian tactic for slaying vampires, only their arrows traveled at thirty-four
     kilometers per second.
    Greylancer stood against each and every arrow shot at him. How exquisite, how awesome
     was the flash of his lance. And the arrows reversed their courses.
    The arrows shot through the robots’ faces, heads, and torsos, and felled one robot
     after the next, tendrils of blue lightning lashing out from their failing bodies.
    Before he realized it, Greylancer was alone in the skies.
    There were metal walls to the right and left of him that cascaded down like waterfalls
     into the darkness below. He could not see bottom, as the chariot’s console was not
     registering a measurement.
    At the outset of the attack, Noble chariots had released nano-sized sensor insects
     to gather information on the base.
    Greylancer’s target was the energy core. The chariot’s computer system was supposed
     to guide him there based on the intelligence gathered by the sensor insects.
    The console projected in the the air read:
    Distance to target converted to Noble measurement: 24,986 floors down.
    More enemy aircraft approached. They numbered over a hundred. An object resembling
     a sphere with a stabilizer mounted on it unleashed a storm of blades and stakes.
    The chariot repelled the attack and, powered by its ion engines, dropped in a straight
     line into the abyss at seventeen kilometers per second.
    The g forces crushed Greylancer’s face and nearly tore away his hair.
    Countless red lights blipped on the console, in radar-mode.
    Here they come . Greylancer’s wind-twisted lips curled all the more. He was smiling.
    The enemy dispersed.
    After downing the blizzard of blades and stakes head-on, Greylancer rapped his knuckles
     against the handrail.
    “Let us go somewhere they will not expect.”
    The robots repositioned themselves just as their computers directed, their formation
     aligning with how Greylancer routinely engaged multiple enemies. They placed unqualified
     trust in the analysis the computer extrapolated from an unfathomable number of scenarios.
    But a full-frontal charge—
    An impossibly long lance came at the robots from an impossible angle and plunged into
     their power units.
    The lance laid waste to the aircraft too, sending them spiraling down as if they were
     chasing after a foe that had momentarily broken through the line.
    This destruction, brought about by Greylancer’s dreadful design, wrought even more
     devastation on the OSB.
    The aircraft plummeted right into the path of the OSB infantry’s counterattack. The
     volley of blades and stakes struck and bounced off the falling, flaming aircraft,
     virtually shielding Greylancer from the brunt of the attack. The chariot’s antigrav
     field went back up and filled with air.
    “Distance to target?”
    The answer flashed across the console. No change .
    Greylancer furrowed his brows, seemingly confused by the computer’s answer. Whether
     a hundred thousand floors or a million floors below ground, at this speed he should
     be upon the energy core by now.
    “What is it—a space warp?”
    Negative. The target is