The thrusters on Buster Gundam's back and its other attitude-control nozzles fired at full power simultaneously, sending the machine into a near-limit rapid roll down and to the right through the void.
The instant it left its original position, a plasma beam burst from behind a massive chunk of warship armor wreckage, grazing through the space where Buster Gundam had been hovering.
Dearka had just begun to breathe a sigh of relief when the image on his main monitor made his pupils contract sharply.
The high-energy plasma beam, which should have traveled in a straight line, twisted direction bizarrely in the vacuum without any physical mirror to reflect it. The beam traced an unbelievable curved arc, like a venomous snake clamped tightly onto its prey, closing in on Buster Gundam's cockpit again along an incredibly vicious trajectory.
"Boom!"
Even though Dearka made another emergency evasive maneuver, the warped beam still swept brutally across Buster Gundam's right shoulder armor.
The violent impact made the cockpit's warning lights flash red wildly. The outer casing of the right shoulder missile pod melted under the extreme heat and erupted in a series of small explosions, scattering metal fragments and thick smoke through the void.
"Are you okay, Dearka?!"
Michel's anxious shout came at once. Blaze Gundam made a sharp turn in midair, its Beam Rifle and electromagnetic cannon immediately aiming at the dark region from which the beam had come, attempting to lock onto the ambusher.
"Yeah... cough, cough. Just a graze. What the hell kind of weapon was that..."
Dearka gasped heavily in the cockpit, cold sweat instantly soaking through the lining of his flight suit. His hands gripped the controls tightly as he rapidly checked the instrument panel. Fortunately, the damage was mainly limited to the additional right shoulder armor and external