fists, faster and faster, right left, right left, right left, faster than the eye could follow.
A Bruiser rushed at him, and Brick smashed his fist right through the man’s breastbone, yanked out the still-beating heart, and stuffed it down the dying man’s throat, all in less than a second. Fist still bloody,he turned to strike another Psycho before the ripped-open Bruiser had quite fallen dead. Brick smashed every bone in his next target’s head: jaw, cheekbones, cranium flew to flinders all in one blow.
Bullets cracked into his shield, and it began to give out. He felt the protection slipping away from him, but he didn’t care; he was mad with bloodlust as he gripped a Psycho by the neck with hisright hand, another by the face with his left. With his right hand he squeezed hard, crazy hard, and caused the man’s blood to explode out of his eye sockets, making his eyeballs fly out with it; with his left, Brick dug his middle and index fingers squishily deep into the other Psycho’s eye sockets, got a grip, and ripped the front of the man’s skull off.
Those two Psycho soldiers fell, andhe smashed two more with fists slammed left-right to their sternums, then turned to another—
Who was pointing a very large-caliber weapon at his head? It was a Tediore Avenger, aimed at him from about a meter away.
Brick roared defiance, his bellowing kill rage echoing across the Borderlands as he prepared to rush the Tediore—and then his enemy fired.
The bullet struck Brick glancingly in theside of his head, gouging but not penetrating—still he kept moving, grabbing the Tediore’s barrel. And he used the weapon as a club to brain the gunman, and then the bloodied rifle slipped from his fingers.
Brick swayed . . .
And stared wildly around him . . .
And fell onto his back, toppling down like an ancient tree chainsawed at the base and crashing to the ground. The impact of the bullethad finally penetrated his thick skull enough to knock him cold—and now darkness closed over him.
• • •
It was a hot, dusty day on the parade ground, and Smartun was tired of supervising the marching drill. The soldiers, so called, were barely capable of keeping order, as they tramped in ragged lines back and forth, and he had to break up fights every ten minutes. The army typically lost aman every couple of days to a casual murder in the barracks. Smartun tried to avoid deaths on the parade ground when he could. But these knuckleheads seemed untrainable sometimes.
It didn’t matter. Gynella wanted them trained anyway. And Smartun wanted whatever Gynella wanted.
Still, he was relieved when she sauntered up to him and made a peremptory wave of her hand that allowed him to dismissthe soldiers.
“Take it easy in the barracks!” he called after them. “And don’t kill each other! It’s against the rules!”
Grumbling, and with many hungry, backward looks at Gynella, they filed off to the barracks.
“My General?” he asked, turning to her, inclining his head respectfully. “Something’s up, no?”
“Something’s up, yes. I have the Second Division down on the southwestern frontier ofthe Salt Flats. There’s a ripe settlement down there we want to overrun; we want to loot it and enslave it. Place called Bloodrust Corners.” Almost as a vagrant afterthought, she added, “And of course, be sure to kill anyone who resists.”
He nodded. Of course.
“But,” she went on, “someone there has had the clever idea of setting up a big, high metal wall, guard towers, and other barriers aroundthe settlement. They knew we were coming, and . . . well, there are moats of fire, there are kill-mechs, a lot of nasty things.”
“Kill-mechs at a settlement? Where’d they get those?”
“It appears that they were a mining settlement. The kill-mechs double as mining robots, with drills and the like. They may have been retrofittedfor the extra duty . . . there’s someone clever there. But I won’tbe stopped,
A Bruiser rushed at him, and Brick smashed his fist right through the man’s breastbone, yanked out the still-beating heart, and stuffed it down the dying man’s throat, all in less than a second. Fist still bloody,he turned to strike another Psycho before the ripped-open Bruiser had quite fallen dead. Brick smashed every bone in his next target’s head: jaw, cheekbones, cranium flew to flinders all in one blow.
Bullets cracked into his shield, and it began to give out. He felt the protection slipping away from him, but he didn’t care; he was mad with bloodlust as he gripped a Psycho by the neck with hisright hand, another by the face with his left. With his right hand he squeezed hard, crazy hard, and caused the man’s blood to explode out of his eye sockets, making his eyeballs fly out with it; with his left, Brick dug his middle and index fingers squishily deep into the other Psycho’s eye sockets, got a grip, and ripped the front of the man’s skull off.
Those two Psycho soldiers fell, andhe smashed two more with fists slammed left-right to their sternums, then turned to another—
Who was pointing a very large-caliber weapon at his head? It was a Tediore Avenger, aimed at him from about a meter away.
Brick roared defiance, his bellowing kill rage echoing across the Borderlands as he prepared to rush the Tediore—and then his enemy fired.
The bullet struck Brick glancingly in theside of his head, gouging but not penetrating—still he kept moving, grabbing the Tediore’s barrel. And he used the weapon as a club to brain the gunman, and then the bloodied rifle slipped from his fingers.
Brick swayed . . .
And stared wildly around him . . .
And fell onto his back, toppling down like an ancient tree chainsawed at the base and crashing to the ground. The impact of the bullethad finally penetrated his thick skull enough to knock him cold—and now darkness closed over him.
• • •
It was a hot, dusty day on the parade ground, and Smartun was tired of supervising the marching drill. The soldiers, so called, were barely capable of keeping order, as they tramped in ragged lines back and forth, and he had to break up fights every ten minutes. The army typically lost aman every couple of days to a casual murder in the barracks. Smartun tried to avoid deaths on the parade ground when he could. But these knuckleheads seemed untrainable sometimes.
It didn’t matter. Gynella wanted them trained anyway. And Smartun wanted whatever Gynella wanted.
Still, he was relieved when she sauntered up to him and made a peremptory wave of her hand that allowed him to dismissthe soldiers.
“Take it easy in the barracks!” he called after them. “And don’t kill each other! It’s against the rules!”
Grumbling, and with many hungry, backward looks at Gynella, they filed off to the barracks.
“My General?” he asked, turning to her, inclining his head respectfully. “Something’s up, no?”
“Something’s up, yes. I have the Second Division down on the southwestern frontier ofthe Salt Flats. There’s a ripe settlement down there we want to overrun; we want to loot it and enslave it. Place called Bloodrust Corners.” Almost as a vagrant afterthought, she added, “And of course, be sure to kill anyone who resists.”
He nodded. Of course.
“But,” she went on, “someone there has had the clever idea of setting up a big, high metal wall, guard towers, and other barriers aroundthe settlement. They knew we were coming, and . . . well, there are moats of fire, there are kill-mechs, a lot of nasty things.”
“Kill-mechs at a settlement? Where’d they get those?”
“It appears that they were a mining settlement. The kill-mechs double as mining robots, with drills and the like. They may have been retrofittedfor the extra duty . . . there’s someone clever there. But I won’tbe stopped,
Similar Books
