“Oh, come on! JUST GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK!”

Kayden was really pissed right now. Since waking up in that underground surgical-theater-like room to find out that he did not have any remaining personal memories and that he was some kind of ‘lab rat’, he had always had to be on the run from or even fighting Skynet’s killer robots, one after the other. He had been under the constant fear and danger of losing his life since the time he had awakened.

He had not been given even a single break to get his bearings and really think about his situation.

A crackling sound came from the steering wheel and woke Kayden up from his anger-filled thoughts. When Kayden looked at the steering, he realized that he had squeezed too hard on the steering and had twisted it a little.

Flustered, Kayden took a quick glance towards Serena to check whether she had seen what he had just done to the steering wheel.

Kayden released a sigh of relief when he saw that she was busy staring at the image of the HK-Aerial in the camera feed.

‘Keep calm, Kayden. Keep calm. Breathe in… exhale….’ Kayden thought, trying to restrain his anger. ‘There’s nothing else to do except to continue trying to escape like we have been doing. This HK-Aerial won’t be any different from the rest.’

Unfortunately, their enemy this time was very different from all the other HKs that they had previously gone up against.

The HK-Aerial was fast.

So fast that the HK-Aerial had only needed a few seconds for the it to cross most of the distance separating it from Kayden’s truck. It then flew at a lower height from the ground, maintaining a distance of about 10 meters from behind the truck.

Through the camera video feeds, Kayden could see that the large plasma cannon on the HK-Aerial had started to swivel around and position themselves in order to get a lock on and aim at the truck.

“Fuck! Come on! Can’t you guys give a suspected enemy a warning shot or something first before switching over to a more permanent solution?” Kayden screamed at the camera feed in exasperation.

“Hey! Calm down! We can survive this as long as we don’t lose our cool. This is especially important for you. You have the most important job of driving us out of this mess.”

“Keep calm. Okay, I hear you. Fuck! Okay… okay. Alright. This time I’m calm… I’m calm. Fuck! Kayden, empty your mind. Calm… calm….” Kayden took deep breaths in rapid succession as he tried to calm himself down.

Serena smiled at him, and Kayden felt that his angry antics must have looked so ridiculous right now.

She continued, “You did a very good job earlier with your driving skills when those Moto-Terminators were chasing us. Just keep doing that and trying to avoid the truck getting hit by any plasma cannon shots, and we will be good. In the meantime, I will try to shoot back at the HK-Aerial, and hopefully, I will get in a lucky shot and disable it somehow.”

Kayden nodded.

Serena opened her door and repeated her hanging-on-from-the-door move.

“Something to take note. There will be an interval of time between the HK-Aerial’s plasma shots when the HK-Aerial is charging up its plasma cannon. And there is a brief interval between when the HK-Aerial aims and when it finally shoots which you can take advantage of.” Serena’s voice reached Kayden from outside.

“Thanks, and noted!”

 When the HK-Aerial had first appeared on the camera feed, a bunch of data on HK-Aerial, contained within Kayden’s neural net processor’s memory archive, had appeared on his HUD. There was data about HK-Aerial structural components and its basic capabilities.

But so much data was displayed on his HUD, and due to his inexperience at reading the data, he did not know which part of the data would be helpful for his current situation and the ones to focus on. So, Kayden greatly appreciated Serena’s suggestion.

Still frequently glancing at the camera feed as he drove the truck to speed along the road, Kayden saw that Serena had started to shoot at the HK-Aerial, but all of her plasma shots missed the target. Whenever Serena tried to aim at the HK-Aerial, it would fly further away from the truck, either flying higher, flying to the sides or even slowing down abruptly in order to put some more distance between itself and the truck.

But even though Serena had not managed to hit the HK-Aerial even once, Kayden was still a bit satisfied with her work. Due to Serena shooting, the HK-Aerial was not having an easy time at aiming and getting a lock on the truck.

Suddenly, the HK-Aerial slowed down, increasing the distance between it and the truck, before flying around to position itself on the driver’s side of the truck. The HK-Aerial had finally figured out the same thing that the Moto-Terminator from before had also figured out. That Serena would have a much more difficult time shooting at a target positioned on the driver’s side of the truck.

“It has moved over to your side! I can’t get an easy shot anymore! Prepare to evade its plasma cannon shots!” Serena’s shouted from outside the truck.

“I can see that!” Kayden replied.

“I will keep trying to shoot at it. Unlike the small Moto-Terminator, the HK-Aerial is a large aircraft, and so, I can still shoot at it even if it has now positioned itself on your side of the truck. Though it won’t be as easy as before, and I doubt whether I can even hit it at all.

With the HK-Aerial now in a more relaxed attacking position, Kayden knew that their situation had taken a turn for the worse.

Kayden saw a bright light appear at the nozzle of the HK-Aerial’s plasma cannon.

“Fuck it! Everybody hang on tight!”

Kayden steered the truck to swerve hard to the right.

BOOM!

A bright ray of light flashed down from the HK-Aerial’s plasma cannon, flying close by Kayden’s truck window before striking the road in front of the truck. The plasma cannon shot blew up fragments of the road into the air, creating a large porthole in the road.

“Whoa! That… was… dangerous!” Kayden stuttered as he steered the truck to avoid the newly created porthole in the road, a shiver running down his spine.

Looking at the large hole in the road behind them through his camera video feeds, Kayden realized that he needed to make sure that the truck was not hit by even one of the HK-Aerial’s plasma cannons. He was not sure whether the truck’s armor was built to handle that amount of punishment. Besides, even if the truck was not completely destroyed by the plasma cannon shot, his human passengers — and maybe he, himself, included; he wasn’t sure about the limits of his body’s durability — would most likely all die if the HK-Aerial’s plasma cannon shot successfully struck the truck.

Kayden checked the camera feeds again, and what he saw dashed his hopes.

Having missed its first attempt at destroying the truck, the HK-Aerial was now repositioning itself for it to release another plasma cannon shot while also making small adjustments in its flying to avoid Serena’s feeble attempts to shoot at it her side of the truck.

And as if to add insult to injury, Serena plasma rifle suddenly stopped firing plasma shots with only some clicking sounds reaching Kayden’s ears when she pulled the plasma rifle’s trigger.

“I’m out! My plasma rifle is out of isotope! Pass me the other plasma rifle!” Serena shouted.

“Okay. Here, take it—"

Kayden had grabbed the last remaining plasma rifle from the truck’s dashboard and was about to hand it over to Serena, but he saw that the HK-Aerial had taken advantage of the break in Serena’s shooting, and it was about to release another plasma cannon shot, so he dropped the plasma rifle back on the dashboard before returning his hands to the steering wheel and swerving the truck to the left in order to avoid the second plasma cannon shot.

The second plasma cannon shot struck the road behind them, just a little more than a meter behind the truck. The force of the explosion lifted the truck’s rear tires off of the road, and Kayden had to fight hard at steering the truck in order to not lose his control of the truck and crash it.

Kayden managed to successfully maintain his control of the truck and not crash the truck, but he was afraid that he would not be able to handle anymore plasma cannon shots from the HK-Aerial.

“Here, take it and try to distract the HK-Aerial!” Kayden shouted, grabbing the last remaining plasma rifle from the dashboard and throwing it to Serena.

“Got it!” Serena said.

‘HUD, give me information about HK-Aerials!’ Kayden thought.

The data — the same as the ones he had previously seen that he already seen about HK-Aerials — appeared on his HUD. He quickly scanned through the data, but he could not immediately see anything that he could use to turn his currently bad situation around.

Serena had resumed shooting at the HK-Aerial, but like before, she was mostly just been a nuisance to HK-Aerial and making it more difficult for the HK-Aerial to get a lock on the truck. But Serena would most likely exhaust her plasma rifle power source and run out of isotope before she was able to cause any significant damage to the HK-Aerial.

‘We really need a more powerful weapon right about now.’ Kayden complained in his mind.

Kayden searched through his HUD’s data on HK-Aerial for anything he could use to his advantage.

“Come on! Give me something! Anything!” Kayden muttered under his breath.

The HK-Aerial had managed to get another lock on the truck even amidst dodging Serena’s plasma shots. Kayden was not sure whether he would be able to evade the next plasma cannon shot, and even if he could survive the truck’s destruction, he hated the thought that he was about to fail to fulfill his promise to the former prisoners.

But just then some new words appeared on Kayden’s HUD.

[HK-AERIAL’s PLASMA CANNON SHOOTING DATA ACQUIRED…]

[ANALYSING HK-AERIAL PLASMA CANNON SHOOTING DATA…]

[ACTIVATING TRAJECTION PREDICTION MODE…]

[TRAJECTORY PREDICTION MODE ACTIVATED]

Suddenly, several pointers or marked spots appeared within Kayden vision field. The pointers marked the various spots where the HK-Aerial’s next plasma cannon shot would most likely hit. Attached to the pointers was information about the percentage probability of likelihood for the plasma cannon shot to actually strike each and every one of the marked spots.

Whenever Kayden observed the HK-Aerial shift its position or aim, the spots that the pointers had marked would be also be adjusted and their percentage probabilities would change to reflect it. This prediction ability seemed to work by taking in data through Kayden’s senses before analyzing it in his neural net processor in order to make the predictions.

When the HK-Aerial was about to shoot another plasma cannon shot, Kayden knew that there was a 90% chance of the plasma cannon shot striking the door at the back of the truck. And Kayden was ready for it.

Kayden stepped down hard on the accelerator. The truck lurched forward, and a few seconds later, a beam of plasma flashed down from the HK-Aerial.

BOOM!

The road several meters behind the truck exploded.

‘It worked!’ Kayden thought.

“Good Job!” Serena said, still trying to shoot at the HK-Aerial.

The HK-Aerial readjusted its positioned and aimed at the truck again.

‘In front of the truck. 87% probability.’ Kayden thought.

BOOM!

Kayden had figured out that the HK-Aerial intended to shoot at the area in front of the truck so that Kayden would drive the truck into the resulting explosion. So, Kayden braked suddenly before steering the truck to the side of the explosion and driving around it.

In addition to dodging the plasma cannon shots, Kayden then began to drive the truck in such a way that he would often place the HK-Aerial within an easier aiming zone for Serena to better attack it. And Serena made use of this opportunity to pester the HK-Aerial with plasma shot and distract it even more.

The pursuit went on along the road with Kayden’s truck running away from an HK-Aerial and strangely and even miraculously managing to evade all of the HK-Aerial’s plasma cannon shots and with Serena shooting at the HK-Aerial while hanging on to the side door.

As Kayden drove the truck to skillfully and successfully dodge plasma cannon shot after plasma cannon shot, his excitement mounted. He finally noticed something that he had not noticed earlier during the pursuit. He finally realized that the skill with which he drove the truck had been gradually increasing.

The weirdest thing was that his driving skill seemed to have suddenly been boosted to such a high level that he had begun to feel like the truck was part of his body. The truck was now able to move according to his intentions to such an extent that Kayden felt almost that it was reacting to his mind’s intent before he even turned the truck’s steering wheel.

“It feels almost like I have become ‘one with the truck’.”

 

*****

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