Chapter 22 Chapter Thirteen

Kassad admired the Ouster's advance defenses, which he applauded.When the two assault boats landed, they were less than half a kilometer apart. Their guns, catapults, and missile launching turrets could cover each other and fire in all directions at 360 degrees.The ground troops of the Ouster had dug a trench here in full swing, and this trench was more than a hundred meters away from the two assault boats.Inside the trench, Kassad saw, were the hulls of at least two electromagnetic tanks, their projectile columns and gun barrels dominating the vast open wilderness between the City of Poets and the assault craft.Kassad's vision had been modified so that, to him, the overlapping ship containment fields were ribbons of yellow haze, and the motion sensors and anti-personnel mines were tiny eggs of pulsating red light.

He narrowed his eyes, realizing that something was wrong with the things in front of him.Then it came to him: everything was still except for the dim light and the feeling of a heightened energy field.The Ouster armies, even those posed to move, were as stiff as the toy soldiers they had played with as children in the Tharsis slums.The electromagnetic tanks were taking their positions inside the trenches, but Kassad noticed that even their detection radars, which looked to him as purple concentric arcs, were stationary now.He glanced up into the sky and saw a large bird hanging there, motionless, like a worm sealed in amber.As he passed through a cloud of windblown dust that was also suspended motionless, Kassad raised a chrome hand and brushed the spiral of particles to the ground.

Ahead of them, shrikes strode casually through the red maze of proximity mines, across the blue lines of security beams, dodging the purple pulses of auto-fire scanners, across the yellow containment fields, green of sonic defense perimeters. wall, and stepped into the shadow of the assault boat.Moneta and Kassad followed. How is this possible?Kassad realized that his question was being asked through some medium, not telepathy, but something a million times more complicated than implanted conductors. He controls time. King of Great Mourning? certainly. Why are we here? Moneta pointed to the motionless Ouster.They are your enemies.

Kassad thought he had finally woken from a long dream.This is true.The eyes of the Ouster soldiers, unblinking behind the helmets, are real.The Ouster's assault craft, standing on the left like a brown headstone, is also real. Feldman Kassad knew that he could kill them all, all the commandos and the crews of the assault boats, and there was nothing they could do.He knew that time did not stop, just as the spacecraft was driven by Hawking, time did not stop, it was just a matter of different speeds.Given enough time, birds fixed above their heads can complete a flap of their wings.If Kassad had the patience to watch long enough, the Ouster in front of him would blink.Meanwhile, Kassad, Moneta, and Shrike can kill all Ousters without the Ousters even knowing they're under attack.

Kassad understood that this was not fair.It's immoral.This is fundamentally a violation of the new Bushido code, even more immoral than the coldhearted massacre of civilians.The essence of honor is embodied in the moment of equal duel.He was about to send the idea to Moneta, but she said (wanted to), look good. Time flowed again, and the sound exploded, like a torrent of air rushing through an airlock.The bird soared again, circling overhead.The desert breeze blows dust into the static containment field.An Ouster commando who had been kneeling on one knee stood up, and he had seen the Shrike, and two human figures, screaming something over the tactical comm channel, and raised the energy weapon.

The Shrike didn't seem to be moving. To Kassad, it was just disappearing here and reappearing there.The Ouster commando let out another short scream, then looked down questioningly as the Shrike's arms removed his heart, which was clutched in the bladed fist.The Ouster stared blankly, opened his mouth to speak, and then fell headlong to the ground. Kassad turned to look left and found himself facing a heavily armed Ouster.The commando fumbled to raise his weapon.With a flick of his arm, Kassad felt the hum of the chrome force field, and then the smooth palm sliced ​​through the armor, the helmet, the neck.The Ouster's head rolled into the dust.

Kassad jumped into a shallow trench, and several Ousters began to turn around.Time is still not normal.One second, the enemies were moving terribly slowly, and the next they were writhing rapidly, as if the hologram of destruction had been tuned to five-quarter speed.But they will never be faster than Kassad.Kassad had already thrown the new Bushido code into the sky.These savages once wanted to kill him.He chopped off one man's back, stepped aside, thrust his chrome fingers straight into the second man's armor, and crushed the third man's throat, avoiding the slow-motion stab at him. A dagger came and broke the spine of the guy who was wielding the dagger.Then he jumped up and out of the ditch.

Kassad! Kassad leaned forward quickly, a laser beam passing over his shoulder, burning the air like the slow-burning red light of a fuse.Lasers blasted past, and Kassad caught a whiff of ozone.impossible.I dodged a laser!Kassad picked up a rock and hurled it at an Ouster manning a Helllash mounted on a tank.The sound barrier cracked, and the gunner suddenly fell backwards.Kassad pulled a plasma grenade from a corpse's ammunition belt and jumped onto the tank's hatch.By the time the intermittent flames from the grenade blasted as high as the bow of the assault boat, he had already run thirty meters away.

Kassad stopped, facing the storm, and saw that Moneta was also in the carnage.The blood splattered on her body but didn't stick to it, it ran over her rainbow-curved chin, her shoulders, her chest, her belly like oil on the surface of water.She looked across the battlefield, looking at Kassad, who felt the bloodthirsty rush inside him again. Behind her, the Shrike moved slowly through the chaos, choosing his victims as if in harvest.Kassad watched the creature disappear and reappear in an instant, and he suddenly realized that in the eyes of the Lord of Mourning, he and Moneta would move extremely slowly, just like what the Ouster saw in Kassad's eyes. same.

Time jumps, moving to quarter-five speed.Those soldiers who survived were now scrambling, firing at each other, going AWOL, and scrambling to get aboard the assault boat.Kassad wondered what the last minute or two had been like for them: something vaguely passing through their defensive positions, comrades bleeding and dying.Kassad watched Moneta move through their ranks, slaughtering with leisurely ease, and to his amazement, he discovered that he, too, could control time: blink, and his opponent slowed to a third of his speed , blinking, and things went back to their almost normal pace.Kassad's sense of honor and reason began to cry out for the carnage to stop, but his bloodthirsty, lust-like urges overwhelmed all dissent.

Someone in the assault boat had sealed the airtight door, and now a terrified commando blew the door open with a controlled plasma bomb.As soon as the mob invaded, they trampled on the wounded soldiers who were fighting the invisible killer.Kassad followed them and walked in. The idiom "fight to the last stand" is just right.Throughout the history of military encounters, if human soldiers are trapped in a certain place with no room for maneuver, then they will fight desperately.Whether it was the corridors of Saint-Laye and Hougoumont at Waterloo, or the beehive pipes of Luthers, almost all of the most terrible hand-to-hand combat in history was fought in small spaces.In a place like this, you have absolutely no way out.Even today, this sentence is completely true.Ousters fight... to the death... like men with a last stand. The Shrike had already crippled the assault craft.Moneta remained outside, massacring the sixty commandos who remained at their posts.Kassad, on the other hand, massacred the people in the ship. Finally, another assault boat began firing on its doomed companion.Kassad was already out by then, and he watched the particle beams and high-intensity lasers slowly coming towards him, and after a long time, the missiles were launched, and they moved so slowly that Kassad could almost see them flying. Write his name on it.At that time, all the Ousters had died in the deserted ships, all around, but the shelter was still operating.The energy dispersion and impact explosion threw the corpses along the outer perimeter into the air, the instrument caught fire, and the sand was as bright as a mirror.Kassad and Moneta stayed under the dome of orange flames, watching the remaining assault craft retreat into space. Is there a way to stop them?Kassad was panting, sweating profusely, almost shaking with excitement. Yes, Moneta replied, but we're not going to stop them.They will bring the information back to Youqun. what's the message? "Come here, Kassad."