Sigma/Star

Chapter 117: Assault on Razul Part 3

Nami continued her close-quarters retaliation, swinging her pistol around and stabbing it into Hitaki's shoulder. She squeezed the trigger, firing a bullet point-blank into the Goliath's armour, sending her gun back out as it recoiled. She then kicked the Major away, spinning wildly to bring her sniper rifle around, holstering it with just one arm.

Before the enemy could react, the tip of Nami's barrel unleashed a single bullet that ploughed straight through the skull of Hitaki's battlesuit, shredding apart the complex machinery and critical computer components. The fallen Goliath ceased functioning immediately, dropping out of the sky and crashing into the ground. Nami landed gently next to it, aiming her rifle down at the base of the warmachine's spine. She pulled the trigger without hesitation, severing through the battlesuit's core mobility controls. She could envision exactly what damage had been done, years of studying everything about Goliaths giving her a near-perfect knowledge of her enemy's construction.

Still, she hesitated a moment. She couldn't simply leave the corpse behind, face-down in the snow. It would be a nightmare for the pilot getting out of their machine. Nami bent down, grabbing under her enemy and lifting with all of her fragile Goliath's power, barely managing to roll the battlesuit over. As soon as she finished, she saw the chest shooting out steam as it began to open, and she was satisfied. She could join with Porter to execute the remainder of the mission.

* * * * *

Ardwen gasped as his opponent lunged forwards. His enemy was a bizarre creation, a battlesuit with a carapace on its back that split in half vertically, parting just slightly. Beneath the armour shell lay an elaborate set of thrusters that the Goliath had just used for its sudden burst of speed. Atop the warmachine's head was a long horn that ended in a prong, useful as a battering ram of sorts. Altogether, the Goliath held the appearance of a gargantuan beetle, striking with vicious ferocity and speed.

There was only a single second before the blow would connect. It was in that tiny moment that Ardwen felt his brain spinning, nerves exploding to send signals throughout his body. Already Mother Gaia's arms were moving, instinctively, to grab the prongs and push the force to one side. It was in the time after the attack based right by Ardwen that he realized what the training against Sigma had done. That all had seemed so terribly...slow. It was nothing like before, nothing like usual when he had fought. Even when he had taken part in the defense of the north and fought off Jahari, when he had considered himself at his last peak in terms of fighting capacity, this was a whole new feeling.

And he liked it.

There was no mistaking that what Shotuku and Sigma had done with the group had changed them. Ardwen was already scanning the rest of the battlefield, noting the position of Nami as she leaped through the air, firing off a round at her opponent, or even Porter in the distance at the base. It was surreal to be engaged in intense combat, and also fully aware of his surroundings, of the other fighters, of his allies and enemies, all at the same time. He had never done this before, and never imagined he would.

Major Erich spun in the snow, twisting to regain his view of Ardwen. His Goliath, the Biorg, shook as it removed the white powder from its frame, and its body prepared to lunge once more. Ardwen was well aware of all of this, already beginning to calculate trajectories and different attack patterns. Read your opponent, prepare for the strike. Shotuku's words, the constant mantra beaten into Ardwen, rang through the youth's ears. This was what they had practiced, the thing Ardwen could only glimpse against Sigma that was more than a match for a lower calibre opponent.

Ardwen threw his right arm up, sidestepping to let Erich pass by, and then drove his elbow down hard into the carapace on the back of the Biorg. One of the orbs circling Mother Gaia fired out a small laser, normally used as part of repairing Goliaths, and it cut a shallow line through the enemy's armour, chipping away at it.