Four fighters who had been advancing to attack Bjorn suddenly froze, their eyes staying on the blood-soaked Viking standing before them, his warhamr resting casually on his shoulder, his grin wide and feral. His posture, the confidence radiating from him, made the obscuron’s n reconsider their approach.
And then, as if so unspoken agreent had passed between them, they turned and started to retreat.
Bjorn’s grin faded, replaced by a look of genuine disappointnt. He sighed, the sound deep and exaggerated, his shoulders sagging slightly as if he had just been told the most boring news imaginable.
"Why die like cowards, eh?" he shouted after them, his voice carrying across the battlefield with that thick Viking accent. "Now you would be a failure even in death!"
He shifted his grip on the warhamr, the muscles in his arms flexing as he adjusted his stance, and then he hurled the weapon forward with so much force that the air itself seed to crack from the velocity.
The hamr spun through the air, end over end, a blur of tal and blood, and it struck the nearest fleeing soldier square in the neck.
The impact was perfect! The hamr did not just hit..., I an, hitting was too soft a word to use: it cut!
The force behind the throw was so overwhelming that the weapon tore clean through flesh and bone, severing the man’s head from his body in a single, brutal motion.
The head went flying, tumbling through the air in a spray of blood, and the body collapsed forward, headless, the legs still twitching from residual nerve impulses.
The other three soldiers ran faster, their fear pushing them to sprint with everything they had, their weapons abandoned, their only thought to get as far away from the Viking as possible.
But Bjorn only laughed.
He whistled sharply, and his robotic horse responded imdiately, its chanical legs pounding against the ground as it surged forward. It started closing the distance between him and the fleeing soldiers in seconds.
As the horse thundered forward, Bjorn bent low, his arm reaching down toward the ground. His fingers closed around the handle of his warhamr, which had embedded itself in the dirt after tearing through the first soldier, and he yanked it free without slowing down.
The remaining three soldiers were almost at the edge of the battlefield now, their lungs burning, their legs aching, their minds consud with the desperate hope that they might sohow escape.
They did not.
Bjorn’s horse caught up to them in an instant, and the Viking did not even bother swinging his hamr. He just let the horse do the work.
The chanical beast trampled over the first soldier, its heavy hooves crushing the man’s spine with a sickening crunch.
The second soldier tried to dodge, throwing himself to the side, but the horse adjusted its trajectory with cold precision, and its legs ca down on the man’s chest, caving in his ribs and puncturing his lungs.
The third soldier stumbled, his foot catching on a piece of debris, and he fell forward just as the horse’s rear hooves ca down on his skull.
The sound was wet and horrible, a combination of breaking bone and bursting tissue that made even so of the nearby fighters wince.
Bjorn brought his horse to a sudden halt, the chanical steed skidding slightly in the dirt before coming to a complete stop.
He dismounted smoothly, his boots hitting the ground with a heavy thud, and he stood there for a mont, surveying the carnage he had just created.
Then he reached into his inventory and summoned a war axe, the weapon materializing in his free hand with a shimr of light. Now he was holding two weapons, the warhamr in his right hand, the axe in his left, and both were stained with blood.
He summoned his helt next, the segnted tal plates sliding into place around his head, the visor locking shut with a faint hiss. The helt was styled like the rest of his armor, with curved horns that swept back from the sides and a T-shaped visor that glowed faintly with internal circuitry.
And then, fully ard and fully armored, Bjorn turned and stord back toward the enemy lines, his weapons raised, his voice rising in a battle cry that echoed across the entire battlefield.
For the leader of a city—basically a nation, or sothing close to it—wasn’t he taking a trendous risk doing this? He was the head of New Helios, the person responsible for thousands of lives, the one who made the decisions that kept his people safe. And yet here he was, charging into battle like a common soldier, risking his life in a fight that could very easily kill him if sothing went wrong.
Or was he risking his life at all?
The truth was, Bjorn’s armor was made of one of the strongest and thickest materials on the planet Mars. It was forged from a rare alloy that was incredibly difficult to find, sothing that only existed in specific regions of the wastelands and required specialized equipnt to refine. The material could resist an absurd amount of damage: kinetic impacts, energy blasts, extre temperatures, all of it barely made a dent.
With that armor on, Bjorn was basically indestructible.
A sword aid at his neck would not penetrate. A bullet to the chest would be absorbed by the plating. Even explosives had trouble breaching the reinforced layers. His legs, his stomach, his arms, every part of him was protected by armor that could withstand more punishnt than most weapons on Mars could dish out.
So no, he was not risking his life. He was as safe as hell.
And he knew it.
Which was exactly why he fought the way he did: reckless, aggressive and completely fearless. Because he could afford to be.
———
Riven was having a pretty good ti on her part of the battlefield.
Her ability (Predictive Combat Awareness) allowed her to sense incoming attacks before they happened, giving her a split-second window to react and adjust her position. It was not quite precognition, not in the mystical sense, but it was close enough.
Her brain processed environntal cues faster than a normal person’s, picking up on subtle movents, shifts in stance, the faint sound of a weapon being raised, all of it combining into an instinctive sense of danger.
A bullet fired from behind her, aid directly at the back of her head, should have killed her instantly.
But Riven ducked.
She did not even think about it. Her body just moved, dropping low, and the bullet whistled past where her head had been a fraction of a second earlier.
She spun, her pistol already raised, and fired a single shot at the soldier who had tried to kill her.
Her pistol was old-fashioned, at least by Martian standards. It looked almost primitive compared to the sleek plasma rifles and kinetic weapons that most fighters used. It was kind of techy compared to the firearms back on Earth, but compared to what everyone else on Mars was wielding, it seed almost quaint.
But appearances were deceiving.
The bullets were explosive. And they were endless.
Riven did not have to worry about reloading. She did not have to buy new ammunition. The weapon’s internal systems generated rounds on the fly, using so kind of advanced fabrication tech that Riven had never fully understood but deeply appreciated.
She aid at one soldier, her finger tightening on the trigger. There were three more soldiers standing directly behind him, clustered together, weapons raised.
Riven fired.
Boom!
The explosion was imdiate and devastating. The bullet struck the first soldier in the chest, and then it detonated, the blast expanding outward in a violent sphere of fire and force. The soldier’s body disintegrated, torn apart by the explosion, and the shockwave slamd into the three soldiers behind him, sending them flying.
They did not get back up.
All four of them, dead. Just from shooting one person.
Riven grinned, ejecting the spent casing from her pistol even though the weapon did not technically need her to, and she moved on to the next target.
Crazy stuff!
Reviews
All reviews (0)