Blood already painted Meinrad’s armor, and Ivan’s now-unmasked face was spattered in drops of the red liquid as they circled around one another.
Ivan rushed forward with his knife pointed low—instead of aiming for Meinrad’s chest, he would try to hit him in the abdomen. During their fight, Ivan had noticed a pattern: the barriers Meinrad formed originated and sprawled out from in front of the body part he most expected to get hit. This was a small but crucial observation.
Meinrad read the way Ivan’s body leaned and deduced where he would hit next. He correctly guessed that Ivan was aiming for his stomach and rapidly formed a level 10 barrier, the quickest he could form in that time, but not the strongest. The barrier held only for a second before Ivan’s armed plunged through it, his hand burying itself in his armor. Meinrad feared the worst and slowly looked down as he backed off. To his surprise, Ivan’s hand did not wield a knife.
“W-When did you switch hands?” the astonished teenager asked.
“I never did,” Ivan brought his other hand down onto Meinrad’s shoulder. The sound of metal slicing through armor and flesh elicited a wild scream from Meinrad as he pushed the slightly older young man and his knife off of him. “Don’t forget, before you joined the Shield, only Vi and Jay were stronger than me.”
“Oh?” Meinrad with determination said as he bent his knees, ready to pounce forward at any given moment. The Titanian-trained soldier had also busied his mind with learning his opponent’s patterns. He knew that Ivan saw when he changed his stance, and he always stepped back slightly in anticipation of the next strike.
As Ivan stepped back this time, he suddenly found himself stopped by an obstacle.
“Boss, he put up a barrier right behind you!” one of Ivan’s subordinates cried.
“Shit!” Ivan swore. Meinrad was already right in front of him when he realized, so he resorted to diving sideways away from his opponent. Unfortunately Meinrad’s hand was faster than Ivan’s body, and as he dove away, the younger man slashed the shorter man’s chest diagonally as he fell. Ivan screamed as he hit the ground, his knife falling from his grasp. Ivan’s subordinates prepared to rush in and take on Meinrad on their own, but the boy sharply reminded him that it was a duel. There was to be no outside interference.
“He’s right on top of you, boss!” a subordinate cried as Meinrad took a knee, holding both his knife and Ivan’s above his chest.
“Do you yield, Ivan?” Meinrad asked, giving his opponent one more chance.
“Fuck you, asshole.” Meinrad clicked his tongue.
Meinrad’s lips let out an indifferent sigh and slammed the tips of both knifes towards Ivan’s upper chest. Only to suddenly stop when each knife was hardly three inches deep into Ivan’s light armor, shirt, and skin.
“Hey,” Ivan chuckled despite the sharp pain running across the front of his torso. “Why’d you stop? You finally realise that you don’t have the courage to kill someone who can see you?”
“Bravo,” Meinrad suddenly stood up, his voice carrying an air of anxiety. “I’ll be right there. I’m on my way.”
He stepped away from Ivan’s form, leaving the knives embedded inside him. As Meinrad switched on his jetpack and ascended into the air, Ivan furiously tore the knives out of him, spilling them across the paved ground, and sat up.
“You can’t even finish a fight you started! You’re nothing but an Angel in a human body, you’ll never be one of us!”
“Easy there!” a subordinate called to him as they and the 10 other soldiers who accompanied him gathered around and helped him to his feet, pulling his shirt and armor off. His well-built chest was covered in cuts and slashes, but he would be okay.
--
“What’s the situation?” Meinrad said as he swung and pushed through a partially open window in the base Frei Squad had made for themselves.
“We have three casualties. One stable and two critical.” Klaudia announced, her helmet removed, and her gauntlets replaced with disposable gloves. On the ground atop a white sheet sat Sindri, his armor removed, and heavy gauze wrapped around his knees and hand. On two tables, two figures lay nearly unmoving, unconscious. Both were unarmored like their comrade.
One of them was Lucia, whose breathing had stabilised due to Klaudia performing CPR on her, but her exact condition was unclear. Her pants were cut below the knee and socks removed to apply gauze to her burns. Joakim held up her intravenous bag, his gaze averted from the grisly state of her neighbor.
The other was Malin. Meinrad saw nothing wrong with her at first, but as Klaudia shifted to give him room, his expression became one of horror as he saw the fist-sized wound Klaudia painstakingly cleaned.
“Alright, talk as we work.” Meinrad rushed to grab an intravenous bag connected to a line that Klaudia had stuck into Malin’s leg. He held it up high despite the pain in his untreated shoulder.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
“Charlie was electrocuted at the power plant; Delta was hit in the abdomen by some newly improvised weapon I think the Anti-Imperialists came up with.”
“Have you contacted Command for an emergency medevac?” Meinrad asked.
“They said they’ll have a couple pararescue units ready when the extraction team comes to pick us up. But that won’t be until the ground forces arrive.”
“Two hours…” Meinrad bit his lip. “Shit.”
“I can only treat one of them until then,” Klaudia said as she packed the wound with as much gauze as she could, but blood continued to rush out of Malin’s wound. “They hit a couple major arteries.”
“So that means…” Meinrad muttered to himself.
One of them won’t make it.
“I’m doing the best I can,” Klaudia stressed. “Just keep holding up those bags.”
It was becoming clear how dire their situation was becoming. To their benefit, it didn’t seem that the Alliance was trying to look for them actively, instead holding their ground at the important locations in the Depot. However, it was a minimal benefit. Time passed, Klaudia still working on Malin while occasionally checking up on Lucia. But it was clear that one would die if the proper treatment was not given quickly.
Despite her temper, Meinrad trusted Klaudia’s ability to work under pressure. Even with the sweat forming on her forehead and trying to keep her hands as steady as possible, it was evident that she was Malin’s only hope for survival. And something did happen.
Malin’s eyes fluttered open despite the pale state of her skin and the continuous ejection of blood. She looked around and quickly gained a comprehension of the scene. Everyone around her was tense, save for Sindri who she couldn’t see. Lucia was still unconscious beside her, and she understood that she herself was bleeding at an uncontrollable rate.
“Malin, are you awake?” Klaudia asked with a gentle tone. “Good, just keep your eyes open. Don’t even think of shutting them.”
“Don’t do it…” Malin breathed, her voice nearly inaudible. “Don’t save me.”
“Please don’t talk Malin. I want you to relax and focus on keeping those eyes open.” Klaudia reminded, striving to remain calm.
“Joakim… beside me. Please.” Malin ignored the medic’s advice, her attention directed toward the Terran-born boy.
Joakim could do nothing but heed her request, handing Lucia’s bag to Meinrad. He was sure both Klaudia and Meinrad knew that these were to be the girl’s final words. Not listening to her would be a disgrace.
The girl reached for one of Joakim’s hands, spilling her remaining strength into squeezing it as tight as she could.
“Listen closely…” she confided with her weak voice. “My mum… she’ll be sent back to mines the moment you return to Titan. You need to tell her quickly that you’ll become her ward, so it doesn’t happen. That way… she can live her peaceful life and you have a place to call home…”
“What? No, Malin! I can’t do that. That’s—that’s your mother, I couldn’t possibly—
“You absolutely can,” she said as something of a smile appeared on her lips. The most obvious smile Joakim had seen her make. Her eyes were wet, but with tears of happiness. “You both deserve it.”
Her eyes fluttered once more, the strength to keep them open fading fast.
“No, Malin, please! Keep them open!” Klaudia begged, her gloves stained deep with the girl’s blood. But no response came out of Malin.
The grip of Malin’s hand in Joakim’s quickly failed, but he continued to hold it as her heartbeat ceased.
She’s dead.
Klaudia peeled her gloves off and threw them on the ground as she rushed to retrieve her communicator.
“Frei Squad to Command, Frei Squad to Command.” she spoke with a shaky voice.
“Yes, Bravo,” Major General Brose’s voice came out. “I can hear you.”
“We now have one KIA.”
Meinrad put down Malin’s intravenous bag and came closer to her, shutting her partially open eyes. Klaudia, in what she would’ve called a failure-fueled frenzy, pushed the sleeping Sindri off of the white sheet he lay on, using it to cover the upper half of Malin’s corpse. Joakim finally let go of Malin’s hand as he fought back tears, placing it at her side underneath the sheet.
“I wish I got to know you better,” Joakim whispered. “I wish I knew how big your heart was.”
A few moments later the boy noticed a large shadow looming over his body. He turned around to see that Sindri had awoken, evidently due to Klaudia’s action, and was getting a sense of the situation for himself.
“Awful,” the Titanian whispered. “Just awful.”
Impossible that that freak even knows what sympathy is, Meinrad thought as he continued holding Lucia’s intravenous bag.
Sindri circled the table to the side of it Malin’s shrouded head lay on. His lips were a straight line as his hands balled up into fists.
“I’ve always wondered about something,” he said to no one in particular.
“Are all Terrans equally fragile in death?” he said as he suddenly raised a fist.
“Sindri, what are you—
Klaudia’s inquiry was cut off as the fist slammed down hard into the dead girl’s covered skull. An oval-shaped section of the white cloth obscuring her and the table became red. He repeated the actions twice, the body bouncing with each blow, to the point that the metal table underneath the body dented, and the shape of the skull no longer looked unrecognisable even with the sheet over it.
“Sindri, you fucking monster!” Joakim cried, the Titanian’s sudden, inhuman behaviour snapping him out of his grief-powered trance. A surge of Anti-Reserve rushed through his veins. “I’ll send you to hell right now!”
The satisfaction of answering his own twisted, morbid curiosity kept Sindri from reacting as Joakim’s Reserve-sapping hands slapped themselves around the Titanian’s strong neck. In a second, Joakim had depleted 70% of Sindri’s Reserve and would’ve killed him a half second later had Meinrad not come in and shoved Joakim away.
“No, Joakim, you can’t kill him here!” Meinrad cried as he slammed the Titanian into the ground, pulling his wrists behind him, slapping a pair of Reserve handcuffs on them.
“Why not?” Joakim cried, pulling himself to his knees after he hit the floor. “You saw what he did just now. There’s no way you can forgive that!”
“I’m not forgiving it, Joakim, you need to remember that we’re on a mission right now!” Meinrad countered as he stuffed a rag into Sindri’s mouth to prevent him from shouting obscenities in his episode of pride and bloodlust. However thanks to Joakim’s intervention, he was physically incapable of fighting back.
“A mission we already failed?” Joakim insisted.
“They think they’ve won,” Meinrad spoke, his knees and hands on Sindri’s back. “They’re not even looking for us. They know it’s better to keep us caged inside than to actively search for us. I bet they’ve all forgotten that we’re only the appetiser. We haven’t failed.”