Janine ran across the rooftops, shattering the stones with every step. Martyshkina stopped briefly to rescue another family from a burning apartment. Janine’s heart ached at the thought of losing her sons, but she refused to blame her friend for this decision. Normies had a right to expect their protection. They can’t just let them die.
As she approached the pillar of smoke ahead, the barking of machineguns and the roars of her kin reached her ears. Janine reached the edge of the building and looked down, assessing the situation.
The Reclaimers were pinned down. The car carrying the captain was now smashed against a wall, its side bearing a huge dent, the passenger door was torn wide open, and there was a gaping hole in the center. Not a result of a grenade launcher’s shot. Not the result of a grenade launcher blast. Several Ice Fangs lay dead on the road; judging by the red stains on their weapons, at least three of them had perished, taking the lives of the invaders. But these were knights, and there was no sign of the captains and sages who had accompanied Tancred. Only a single young knight-captain, bearing the colors of Summerspring, organized an effective evacuation and tried to reach his allies, leading a small unit. Red smears on the surface told the whole story of how Bogdan dragged a group of wounded into the relative cover of the police car.
There were two wrecked Provincial Army vans. They were coming from the west, unloading their troops, when a sudden hail of armor-piercing bullets reduced both drivers to bloody shreds. Next, something or someone cut open the rear doors of the vehicles, and grenades did the rest. With their backs exposed, the troops didn’t last long, and their survivors now hid among the cars on the road, firing at the armored figures.
Bogdan was firing shots from a pistol into the enemies on the street, and Marco desperately tried to bandage the wound of the white-furred girl. Soot turned the girl spotted, but Janine recognized Cordelia Sunblade. The rest of her group had their snouts on the ground and their heads covered with paws, but one boy bravely held a terminal to Marco’s ear.
“No, the heart is not damaged!” her boy shouted. “The claw hit her in the right side. Yes, there are blood blisters on her lips. Very small ones. What should I do, Maxence…”
Janine’s muscles tightened, bulged, and she disappeared from the rooftop, coming down with all her speed. Her howl joined Kalaisa’s and Anji’s, and she had promised herself to apologize to the stupid girl for suspecting her. Kalaisa was already injured, but fought undaunted alongside her rival against a duo of clowns. The wolf hags were in no immediate danger, and the full weight of the warlord’s mass crashed down on a Horde soldier trying to push through the gunfire toward Bogdan.
A single punch—that’s all it took to pop his head like an apple, but Janine wasn’t done yet. Her second blow shattered the sternum despite the armor protection; her paw closed around an ammunition belt, and the lifeless body crashed into two more raiders, knocking them off their feet. A kick threw the dead man’s machine gun and ammo into Bogdan’s eager paws.
“Finally, not a pee shooter!” Bogdan sprayed at the fallen soldiers, finishing them off.
Suddenly, the Ice Fang boy and Cordelia grabbed Marco by the shoulders and pulled him down just in time to save his life from a flying bullet that shaved off a little of his hair. Janine spun, her amber eyes shining bright as lamps, and the sniper let out a single scream in an unknown language, a plea or a boast; the warlord didn’t care as she was on top of her, tearing the woman limb from limb and biting through the visor.
“Heh. Even now,” Cordelia whispered hoarsely.
“Thanks! No talking!” Marco slapped her on the head. “Don’t you dare die, Cordi! Maxence, orders?”
“Would rather not…” Another slap shut her up.
Jacomie was beside the cubs, hyperventilating and tightening the tourniquet on Cristobo’s missing leg. Janine noted briefly that whoever had sliced up the captain had taken cleanly everything below the knee. The captain himself appeared to be unconscious, his lips peeled back, showing teeth and saliva dripping from the corners of his mouth.
The once peaceful street had become a battlefield. Burning cars, dead soldiers, rolling civilians unable to stand from their horrible wounds, and cautious helpers trying to drag them to cover. Bullets flew in the midst of the chaos; the raiders shoved the cars aside to get to Bogdan; their heavy steps were about to end the lives of the trapped civilians when a single roar reached the sky. A flick of the wrist sent a car door flying at a raider, and the heavy metal slammed into the man at a speed of five hundred kilometers per hour. It staggered the armored foe, and he retreated, trying to get the warlord in his sights.
His head left his shoulders in the next second as Janine was already behind him, spinning, slashing, and biting. Her claws opened armor plates, her elbows smashed faceplates straight into skulls, her bites left mangled bodies in her wake, and the Horde soldiers recoiled in the face of unhinged aggression, frightened by the opponent their eyes could barely see. More and more tried to string a few familiar words together, but for Janine, the time for mercy and reason was long gone.
They brought war to civilization? She will give them a taste of their beloved barbarism.
Kalaisa, dressed in an orange robe, and Anji, in stylish black leather pants and a jacket with way too many silver zippers, did their best not to die against their opponents, who were aided by three strikingly similar New Breeds who tried to end the wolf hags from afar.
Each had four insectoid legs in place of humanoid ones; chitin covered these limbs completely, making it impossible to see any veins. Humanoid arms of these New Breeds were covered by armored sleeves, but the green plates were incomplete in places, as scarred and welded carapace shapes grew on their bodies, resembling cancerous growths, and the metal was tailored to fit around this sturdy protection. One was dark-skinned, and his sibling had milky-white, pale skin visible through the gashes.
Interesting, but irrelevant for now. It had only taken Janine a breath to observe the field.
The warlord jumped, deciding to eliminate ranged support and keeping track of the wolf hags fight. Kalaisa and Anji had already eclipsed Anissa and Impatient One in physical abilities by far. Even without their PAs, they could depopulate small settlements through sheer speed alone. Yet now their foes weaved around them like threads of silk, almost sliding off cruel thrusts meant to disembowel. The clowns’ skin-tight suits were uniquely colored; one even had white and black squares running the length of the cloth, and another had lines of emerald and blue that shifted in the light. Their faces were hidden behind elaborately crafted white masks; one mask had a smile, while another had a frown.
Janine brought her weight on a New Breed who aimed her gun at Anji’s back. Claws pierced the shoulders, splintering bones and shredding muscle. The raider shrieked in a high-pitched voice, trying desperately to roll aside, but the momentum carried the warlord to the ground, and the woman’s amputated arms fell to the floor. She tried to retreat, but the paw grabbed the back of her head as insectoid legs drummed in fear. Janine faced the crying, pleading face, guessing the wordless request without needing to understand language. With just her legs left, the woman was no longer a threat.
Jaws opened wide, silencing the scream. My sons. The people here. You threatened and hurt them. The lessons of the Twins seemed to scream in the warlord’s head, but she ignored them, closing the mighty maw and silencing the last muffled shriek of agony when the skull was pulverized between her fangs. The flesh of the dead prey tasted divine, and Janine dropped the faceless body.
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“Death. Death!” Janine roared, trampling on the convulsing body and terrifying a civilian into hiding.
She charged ahead, dodging a pulse rifle blast that opened yawning holes in the corpse behind her. In the aftermath of the battle for the settlement, the engineers and Till Ingo made progress in understanding the Horde’s weapons. Most of them used standard armor-piercing rifles, but their riders used energy weapons.
The principle behind their use was simple. A single energy particle was accelerated to Mach 10 and launched through the barrel. The weapon itself was shaped like a normal rifle, but it actually had a small energy generator above the trigger that fed its extra cooling mechanism. The weapon tended to overheat with prolonged use and required expensive energy cells to reload. In return, the pulse rifle provided excellent accuracy due to the lack of recoil and enough striking power to penetrate power armor with relative ease. Design shortcomings and general unsuitability for prolonged combat led the engineers to abandon the idea of introducing the pulse rifle into the army.
For all her speed, Janine wasn’t even close to being able to dodge these fast-moving energy projectiles, but her eyes were fixed on the weapon in the attacker’s hands. To hit her, he would first have to get her in his sights. And Janine refused to grant him that courtesy, circling around the man as he fired blindly.
He cursed, pressing the trigger in vain as the anti-overheating system activated, and faced the snarling Janine. Her paw came down, hitting harder than an artillery shell and smashing through the pulse rifle the New Breed was trying to use as a shield. His chest armor cracked, the blow splattered the man against the street, and his legs, ending in sharp hooks, tried to close in on the warlord’s neck. Janine grabbed all four legs at the joints, two in each paw, and squeezed.
What came out of the man’s lips wasn’t exactly a squeal of pain, but rather a strained rasp. His knees snapped like straws, and in a last desperate attempt, the New Breed grabbed a sword from his belt and tried to crawl away from his opponent. He propped himself up on his elbow and slashed at the warlord, trying to cut through her ankle. Janine kicked. The claws of her foot broke through the gold-plated metal and found the neck. Blue eyes widened in shock, then calmed as the pain left them along with the life as the head rolled down.
“Shit steel.” Janine spat at the dead.
She paused to survey the carnage, freed from the last New Breed thanks to the Summersprings’ bullets. The two ridiculous-looking fools had actually pushed Kalaisa and Anji. Where the Wolfkins acted ruthlessly, each eager to claim a kill for themselves, only blocking the grazing blows intended for their ally out of habit, their opponents danced in battle. Every step betrayed an inhuman fluidity; instead of blocking the incoming attack, the weird fighters took the claws on their daggers, allowing their arms to be drawn back almost to the point of snapping before whipping them back into position with a sudden burst of movement, the vivid colors of their suits shining in the light, free of any dirt.
The clowns stood on their tips, spinning gracefully to dodge Ice Fangs’ shots, and their mocking laughter enraged the novice knight-captain. He holstered his emptied pistol, his mind affected by the rage-inducing power, and hurried to aid the wolf hags, beating aside the dagger aimed for Anji’s neck with the flat of his blade. Immediately, the laughing clown spun around, unperturbed by the interference, and the tip of her leg barely touched the knight captain’s forearm, spreading the wide, deep dent upon it. The bone cracked, and the Summerspring let go of his round shield. Giggling, the clown turned to face Kalaisa’s attack, exposing her back to the captain.
And the Ice Fang fell for it. His stab drove the clown into Kalaisa’s close quarters, but in a single, elegant motion, the clown leaned back, dodged the wolf hag’s horizontal slash, and plunged her own curved daggers into the Summerspring’s rubberized neck guard, timing her attack perfectly to coincide with a single moment when his gorget and jaw guard would be momentarily out of the way. The Summerspring still stood, disbelieving his own demise and supported by the armor, as the clown somersaulted over him, saddling the dying man to twist her daggers, then kicked him into Kalaisa.
The clown who had the frowned mask jumped away from Anji and reproachfully wagged his finger. With blinding speed, the twin daggers rose to block a swift thrust at his neck. Anji shrugged and jerked her fingers, sending the lithe figure from the middle of the street onto the sidewalks. Right in the middle of the Ice Fangs.
Janine cried out a warning, but it was too late. The clown rolled like a rag, faking breaking bones, then burst into motion as the knights, angry at the loss of their leader, tried to hack him to pieces. With surgical precision, his daggers sliced at the ankles, right where the protection was weakest, and the knights howled in pain. The attack came to an abrupt halt when the dagger stuck in the mechanical leg of a young Ice Fang.
“Spirits, give me the strength to save lives,” Malerata Summerspring said, delivering a kick to the enemy’s forearm that sent him flying. She fired immediately, but the killer deflected the bullet aimed at his forehead, and the knight kneeled, reaching for a first aid kit.
My cousins. A vein burst in Janine’s eye as she assessed the number of wounded and dying in the street and noticed an impaled scout pinned to the wall. Nightmares plagued the woman, at nights she dreamed she was under heavy shelling. Maxence diagnosed it as a case of PTSD, and on Janine’s recommendation, the scout took a leave to visit a psychologist. And now she was dead. My family.
“I’ll wear your entrails for decoration and serve your brain on a silver platter as a dessert!” Anji shouted, leaping at her foe.
Janine charged on all fours to her, knowing full well that the serene girl had made a mistake. She took the bait. Cruel as it was, this particular massacre was meant to enrage the fighters. Realizing that it would take too long to defeat their opponents in a fair manner, the clowns deliberately included the Ice Fangs. While Kalaisa tossed away the dead Summerspring and went after her enemy with precise determination, Anji, unaccustomed to fighting in anger, was overwhelmed by her emotions.
It blinded her to the danger. Still in the air, she had no opportunity to evade or block an attack when the frowning clown sprang off the concrete and launched himself into the air. The slender and agile body easily veered away from the incoming claws, and deep incisions opened on Anji’s arms and torso. The wolf hag landed badly; her legs gave in, and bloody drool clogged her windpipe, while the opponent positioned himself for the final strike.
Sensing the threat, he whirled around and caught Janine’s claws onto the daggers’ edges. The warlord calmly closed her claws around the weapons, remembering the opponent’s style, and whipped out a low kick that knocked the clown off his feet. Still holding the daggers, she slammed the bastard into the concrete, sending an explosion of dust and stone upward. Before she could capitalize on the advantage, a bright streak pierced the veil, forcing her to let go to block it.
A dagger struck her claws and flew back in an arc. The frowning clown swung his head, slapping the rebounded weapon back into his partner’s hand, and gained distance, studying the warlord from a distance. A snap of Janine’s fingers sent Kalaisa to Anji’s side, freeing the warlord to focus on the two individuals who had just toyed with the strongest wolf hags of the tribe.
“Anji!” Kalaisa tore off the robe off her body to fashion bandages.
“Damn poison, Kali.” Anji raised a trembling paw, waving it before her eyes. “Kali? Are you here? Can’t see. Can barely hear. Fainting. Tell the warlord…”
“I am aware,” Janine said, glaring at the two unmoving foes. There was an unknown substance on their weapons, potent enough to threaten even a Wolfkin’s life. “Rest, soldier.”
“Have we ever hunted a warlord, precious Adonis?” The laughing clown sang softly, her feminine voice sounding like the murmur of a running river.
“No, dear Heika. This one is the first,” purred the frowning clown, spinning his daggers. His voice reminded Janine of the rustle of a silk dress she had seen on a sword saint once.
“An offering worthy of the Khatun’s attention.” Heika bent her knees, spreading her arms wide. “Let’s make it beautiful.”
“You know Common,” Janine stated. “Are you from the Reclamation Army?”
“It speaks so clearly!” Adonis marveled. “We should reward it.”
“We should indeed.” Heika nodded. “No, beast. Our homeland died, squashed and compressed by the moving land. We have been traveling ever since, honoring it through the use of the skills it taught us, and bringing glory to the ghosts of our people.”
“Glory, tch.” Janine spat. “It’s only worth a damn if you have what it takes to acquire it. Honor is more important, but you are too dumb to realize the dishonor you have brought to your lineage.”
“And how would you know what passes for honor in our homeland?” sweetly inquired Adonis.
“Simple. Big, fat, tall, short, black, white, red, furred, or naked—all people share the same desire to live and raise their young in peace. It’s the strong who miss the point. Come.” She beckoned. “Let us end the story of your poor nation.”