War Criminals by Gavin Smith (ereader for textbooks .TXT) 📕

Miska used her thumbs to gesture at the legionnaires on either side of her.

‘The real deal.’ She pointed at Resnick’s Double Veterans. ‘Copycats.’

Resnick just strode towards her.

‘Get ’em!’ Miska told her people. The Bastards charged.

Bean died first, of his own stupidity. For reasons best known to himself he charged Resnick. Resnick batted the hatchet out of Bean’s right hand. Miska heard the bones in the cannibal’s hand breaking. The Spartan locked up and then broke Bean’s left arm and now he had a knife. He hamstrung Bean because he could. The cannibal hit the mud and Resnick stamped on his head so hard he got grey matter on the sole of his boot.

Corenbloom went down next. He was backing away from one of the Double Veterans, knife in hand, looking for an opening, obviously outclassed, when he got too close to Resnick as the Spartan strode towards Miska. Resnick punched Corenbloom in the side. It looked like a casual blow from his left hand. Miska heard the audible crack of Corenbloom’s hard armour plate breaking as the force of the blow spun him into the air. He hit the mud hard and didn’t move.

Miska was struggling to hold her ground as he closed with her. This wasn’t some Martian-tech augmented Triple S contractor like Major Sheldon had been on Faigroe Station. This was a full-blood Martian Spartan and, unlike her, he didn’t have a bullet lodged close to his spine.

Resnick threw a lazy sidekick at her. He was clearly feeling overconfident. She didn’t step back enough to avoid the blow, just enough to take some of the force out of it. Her inertial armour helped too. It still knocked the wind out of her. He may have been fast but he wasn’t fast enough to draw his leg back before she’d rammed the diamond-edged blade of her knife into his leg, hard enough to go through his inertial armour and whatever bullshit subcutaneous armour his nanotech-filled body provided. She tore the blade down his leg and was rewarded with a grunt of pain. It would probably be the last lesson she taught him.

His attacks were a little more careful after that. Not that he had to be. Miska concentrated on keeping the knife he had taken from Bean out of her flesh. Which was a good tactic as far as it went, but it meant she got hit, kneed, and head-butted a lot. Still, at least he wasn’t kicking her now. She was trying to bide time, look for any opening, any advantage, the slightest edge, but he wasn’t making any more mistakes.

Miska almost managed to get out of the way of a punch to her face. Had it contacted fully it probably would have powdered her jaw despite the reinforcement. Her head whipped round as she spat blood out. Her lack of depth perception wasn’t helping and he knew that, he’d snuck the blow in on her blind side. He hit her in the chest hard enough to turn it into one large bruise. She felt her hard armour breastplate crack. She stumbled back and decided to sit down and try and breathe again.

‘You know you can’t win this, right?’ Resnick asked as he closed with her. He wasn’t playing with his food. It was simple psych warfare one-oh-one. He would look for any advantage. Humiliating his opponent didn’t come into it. Besides, he was right.

His boot flew at her head. Miska managed to move out of the way so that it only caught her a glancing blow. It still cracked her half-helm, made her IVD jump, and left her with the strong urge to vomit as she went sprawling in the mud. Where she lay she could see his muddy boots getting closer. She was absurdly pleased that she had managed to hold onto her knife. It wasn’t difficult to play dead. She plunged the knife into his boot. He started to move but wasn’t quick enough. She stabbed again, biting in just under his kneecap. This time he actually cried out in pain. Then she aimed the diamond-edged tip straight for his groin. She felt his fingers grab her wrist. She looked up into dark eyes. It was over.

He snapped her wrist. It felt like a compound fracture. She only had a moment to experience the pain before his fist hit her in the top of the head. Her helmet split but it saved her life. She still lost consciousness just for a moment.

She was lying in the mud. She opened her eyes. Everything slowed down. She had known she was going to lose. She felt Resnick pull her up into a sitting position. Her right arm flopped around, her undersuit staining from the inside as blood filled her glove, the knife still held loosely in her right hand. Resnick made a triangle with his arms around her neck and started to squeeze. She clawed at him with her left. Fought as hard as she could as he sought to cut off the blood supply to her head.

As she fought, as everything slowed down, as she died, she caught a snapshot of the rest of the fight. Maybe Artemis had told herself this was like two groups of ancient warriors battling. Maybe she had convinced herself this was another gladiatorial tribute. It wasn’t. It was a sordid little gang fight. A prison yard brawl.

There were already bodies on the ground turning the grey mud crimson. It took her a moment to differentiate who people were. Everyone was caked in mud from head to foot. She could tell which one was Kaczmar, however, by his bulk. He was sat atop one of the Double Veterans, simultaneously biting his cheek while trying to tear open the man’s mouth. Miska imagined she could hear the sound of the flesh ripping over the noise of the battle.

Raff had locked up the arm of another Double Veteran as he repeatedly stabbed her