Lunarly: A Fire Sale Classic

Jackie - Radiation Grenade

Jackie

"Radiation Grenade"

       A week.  One whole week without an arm.  Jackie had not heard from the Saint or any other Angel since the night after the hit.  Her reimaging data was kept at Angel headquarters so she could not get the reimage done anywhere else.

       She liked that arm.  Useful for doing many things.  While she had been trained to use her legs and feet as a replacement when doing a number of activities such as eating, drinking, drawing, mechanical work, and jigsaw puzzles, it was tiresome.  She wanted her left arm back.

       It was the better arm for so many things, and not just for fighting.  Sure, it was better at throwing stuff and aiming a pulse dissolver, but it was also good at the little things, like doing origami or using chop sticks.  She missed it.

       Origami would give her something to do.  The last Jackie heard from the Saint was that night after the hit, and he had only sent her a brief Mind Message:

       "Dark side, await further instructions."

       Well, she had been dark siding it for a week, and no further instructions.  She had picked out an abandoned warehouse to be her hiding spot.  Completely empty.  The space was wide open, except for the small backroom at the end, which was where Jackie spent most her time.  She could see anyone that entered the warehouse from the backroom, and if someone did come, there was a padlocked back door that led out to the street.  And since she was in the abandoned warehouse district of Cranoon, she had little to fear from a casual passerby.

       On the eighth day of her solitude, around lunchtime, the fight started.  She heard an explosion just after a hearty breakfast of Food Paste.  She hated that stuff, but it was the only food she could find.  Back at Angel headquarters, they had exotic food such as fruits and vegetables, meat and sometimes they even got sushi.  That was Jackie's favorite.

       When she got outside, she saw the first blast was a radiation bomb several thousand feet above the moon's surface.  She spotted a couple Backlash class fighters scooting about, but she could not spot their target.

       Next to her warehouse was an old observatory, built when the moon still attracted tourists.  Now, the only people coming to the moon were traders and rich people going to the dome fights.  There was a spiral staircase going up the observatory tower, a dozen flights that Jackie climbed in as many seconds.  At the top there was one binocular set that looked like it still worked, but it was facing south, instead of northeast where the action was.  She ripped it out with one foot and arm, and placed it in the right direction.  It would have been so much easier with another arm. . .

       Another explosion, this time she saw what had dropped the radiation bomb.  A silver woman flying through the air.  Silver hair, a completely metal body, could it be a full cybernetic?  Jackie had never seen a full cybernetic, only heard about their existence on Earth and seen a couple pictures on the comp.  Never had she heard of a full cybernetic on the moon.  What kind of new force was this?

       A beautiful specimen of modern technology, Jackie had to admit.  The silver body of the full cybernetic was glistening, even after getting riddled with bullets by a backlash.  Her hair was a slightly different shade of silver and whipped around just like the real thing..

       She took down one of the backlash fighters with a pulse blast from her arm, and then detonated her main power supply, igniting the radiation from the two radiation bombs she dropped earlier.   A radiation based explosion held all the colors of the spectrum, plus a couple new ones that hurt the untrained eye.  It was one of the most marvelous explosions Jackie had seen in a long time, probably since that supernova she had witnessed through the Big Bad Telescope in Exparite ten years ago.