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through the armor, whirling mere inches away from his face. His flesh, skull, and brain were seconds from splattering all over the cockpit.
    "Let's see how you like it." Scott sneered as he punched the last button. His heart was hammering, adrenaline searing through his bloodstream...and now he'd made his last play.
    The lights and displays in the cockpit flickered and went out. The fusion power plant in the bowels of the Mark VI roared, and the armor rumbled violently. All around him, he heard a loud, sizzling crackle and hum.
    Suddenly, the Red's blades stopped spinning and shot back toward the slits they'd cut. One popped right out, while the other twisted and caught on the edge of the slit. It pulled hard, working its way free--then snapped off the stem on which it was mounted and clattered down into the bowels of Scott's armor.
    " Now we're talkin'." Scott braced himself against the cockpit couch and waited for what was coming. He'd fought fire with fire, charging his armor with streams of electrical current from the power plant, turning his Battlenaut into an electromagnet. An electromagnet with the same polarity as the Red Battlenaut.
    Since two magnets with the same polarity repel each other, the two Battlenauts could no longer stay locked together. With a loud clang, Scott's armor shot away from the Red and crashed to the dusty ground.
    "Yeah!" Scott scrambled in the cockpit, redirecting power from his Battlenaut's skin to the rest of its parts. The lights quickly came back up, and the control system rebooted. His helmet visor flickered back to life in a matter of seconds.
    Just in time for him to see the Red stomping toward him.
    Scott pounded the keypads and worked the stick, fighting to get his armor back on its feet. Servos hummed as he got the Mark VI to sit up, then roll to one side and brace itself with both gauntlets on the ground.
    Meanwhile, the Red kept coming. Scott saw it march closer on his visor's video feed, even as he rolled his own armor onto its knees.
    "Come on!" His Battlenaut lurched its upper body erect. Scott hammered buttons, and it drew up one knee, planting its right foot firmly under it.
    He felt the ground shake as the Red stormed closer. Why it hadn't already opened fire, he couldn't guess.
    Wrenching the stick, he focused the armor's power on the right leg, trying to push up and bring the other foot forward. Once he had both feet flat under him, he'd have the leverage to get the whole unit standing again.
    But would he have time to finish the maneuver? The Red's footsteps were getting closer, its image growing larger in the visor video feed.
    Scott smelled burning metal and plastic. Servos whined, the armor wobbled...and the legs locked up. The right leg got stuck halfway up, leaving the left foot jammed toe-first in the dirt, unable to flatten and fully extend the leg above it.
    Cursing a blue streak, he fought the controls...and then it was too late. Proximity alarms squealed, and the Red Battlenaut suddenly towered over him.
    Scott ground his teeth and scowled. Looking past the visor, he saw gleaming red metal fill the blast-tempered glass of the forward viewport.
    It wasn't about getting on his feet anymore. The best he thought he could hope for was to take advantage of the Red's close range and unload everything he had.
    Is that what Bern would do? Scott took a deep breath, then released it through his teeth. Hell, yes.
    He counted to three, then played the keypads, quickly bringing every onboard weapon to bear on the Red looming over him. Without pausing, he keyed the system-wide fire command, letting everything loose at once.
    Slugs poured up from his guns, bracketed by crimson streams of laser energy. Sonic blasts rippled out of his emitters, and the full complement of missiles leaped from their racks.
    The Red took every bit of it without flinching. When the smoke cleared, it was still standing over him, shiny and unmarred as ever.
    "Flux me ." Scott's voice was soft in the