Hammer in the Snow

  The walker continued its slow march toward the city taking shape in the distance. Staying always to one side of the road, I try to stay as alert as possible—the question wasn't if I'd see combat, but when it would happen, or if they'd already seen me first and I was walking straight into their perfect trap. Uncertainty, fear of a million possibilities, a million choices, and what if one step to the right had saved me from instant death? A single mistake was all it took to end up dead, just like the men at the road checkpoint. That was the infinite pressure on the soldier walking point in enemy territory.

  I had left the M-10 highway, veering off into a landscape of industrial skeletons. Metal chimneys pointing at a sky that had forgotten them, and a strange, endless sea of directionless pipes. Empty cooling towers, their slopes turned into cascades of ice. The "Vulkan" steel complex stretched out before me—a sample of Russian military-industrial machinery that had been abandoned due to the recent conflict, now reclaimed by winter. It was from its steels that the current tanks both factions fighting for the city had likely been born.

  VALKYRIA:

  "PRIEST, I'm skirting the old Vulkan complex."

  "It looks recently abandoned—its machinery is still running."

  "I'm going to cut through for cover; it offers too many observation points from the main route."

  "Plus, with its thermal signature, it'll be harder to spot my Walker moving around the area."

  "Looks like it stretches on for several kilometers, so it'll be a gain."

  PRIEST:

  "Copy that."

  "Watch the surrounding structures—you're probably not the only one with that idea."

  I adjusted Crimson Empress's gait to stealth mode. The hum of the electric motors faded to a whisper, barely audible over the howling wind. The Walker's legs sank with a dull crunch into the virgin snow covering the maneuvering yards. I passed under the shadow of a rusted crane bridge. That's when I detected them.

  On my thermal screen, several yellow points of light appeared against the deep blue background. They weren't in the complex itself, but on its western perimeter, crouched behind what looked like the remains of a retaining wall. They were human, not machines—their heat signatures were small, concentrated. But they carried heavy equipment: an elongated, hotter signature among them gave away a grenade launcher or possibly a portable anti-tank missile. Behind them, the barrel of a tank was visible, hidden between a metal steam-venting chimney.

  VALKYRIA:

  "Visual contact, front, 200 meters, unknown, defensive position at coordinates…"

  I couldn't finish the sentence.

  An orange flash pierced the white curtain. The projectile launched from one of the soldier's RPGs—an old Soviet Union model, unguided, in other words with no way to deflect it—traced a straight line toward my torso. In a desperate maneuver, I activated the left booster thrusters at full power to dodge the attack and take cover behind the adjacent building. The detonation was muffled, absorbed by the storm, but the shockwave sent a section of the wall crashing to the ground.

  On my screen, I could see, I counted nine human figures. They moved with the efficiency of professional soldiers, establishing defensive positions at the ship's entrances. Two of them were handling what looked like an automatic AGS-30 grenade launcher mounted on a tripod. Three others were carrying ammunition crates to elevated positions.

  Their thermal silhouettes showed the characteristic pattern of Russian winter gear: thick coats, hoods, heavy equipment. But something didn't fit. Their movements were too jittery, too rushed for a unit establishing a solid defensive position.

  VALKYRIA:

  "PRIEST, I have visual on nine soldiers."

  "They seem to be panic-fortifying the east entrance of the complex at full speed."

  PRIEST:

  "Identification markers?"

  I zoomed in with the optical lens. Through the falling snow, I could make out white armbands and the eagle on the tank that sped out of its hiding place to engage me.

  VALKYRIA:

  "Confirmed, Loyalists. They appear to be reinforcements trying to establish a containment point and close the recently created gap fom the rebels."

  My analysis was interrupted when one of the soldiers, stationed on a walkway fifteen meters up, jerked sharply toward my position. His movement was too fast, too precise. He raised his rifle, not to aim, but to point.

  ENEMY UNIT:

  "CONTACT! THREE O'CLOCK! WALKER, UNKNOWN IDENTIFICATION!"

  "Open fire now!" he shouted, his voice distorted by the wind but picked up by the Crimson Empress's external microphones.

  There was no warning, no attempt at identification. The automatic grenade launcher swung toward me and opened fire.

  VALKYRIA:

  "They're firing! No identification attempted!"

  PRIEST:

  "Return fire! You can't let them delay you!"

  There was no room for warnings now. These weren't frozen corpses; they were alive, alert soldiers, and they had just declared their intentions. My HUD screen automatically tagged the four targets with red markers.

  My hands closed around the controls. On the HUD, I selected the Stellaris's pure energy mode. I didn't need physical ammunition against exposed infantry. The Walker's cannon pivoted with a servo-mechanical whir, aligning with the first red marker.

  VALKYRIA:

  "Affirmative, opening fire on hostiles."

  I pulled the trigger.

  There was no conventional recoil, just a faint tremor through the Walker's entire structure. A bolt of blue-white energy, as thin as a pencil but devastatingly bright, lanced through the horizontal snow. There was no gunshot sound, only a crack of air ionization followed by a hiss as the beam struck.

  The soldier behind the wall—the one who had fired the RPG—simply ceased to exist in his upper half. Where there had been shoulders and a head, there was now a meter-wide, smoking hole in the concrete wall behind him. The snow around it vaporized instantly, creating a small circle of black, molten pavement. The body, what was left of it, slumped to the ground.

  The silence that followed the Stellaris's shot was more deafening than the earlier detonation. For a moment, there was only the moan of the wind through the metal structures and the crackle of snow vaporizing in the smoking crater.

  The eight remaining soldiers froze—not from the cold, but from the shock of seeing a human turned into red mist.

  PRIEST:

  "Walker damage?"

  VALKYRIA:

  "Negative. Stellaris system is operational at 100%. SubReactor stable."

  I swung the Walker's torso toward the automatic grenade launcher's position. The two soldiers operating it were beginning to regain their composure, one frantically loading a new drum magazine.

  I didn't give them the time.

  A second blue-white bolt. This time shorter, a suppression shot. It struck half a meter from the tripod, melting concrete and sending incandescent shrapnel flying. The soldiers threw themselves to the ground, the AGS-30 toppling over with a metallic crash.

  ENEMY UNIT:

  "It's one of the new ones! An Energy Walker!"

  "New Walker type detected!"

  "Where's our armored support! Call the T-90!"

  As if they had summoned the devil of steel, a deep roar rumbled from behind the smokestacks. The tank I had detected earlier—a T-90 with the double-headed eagle markings worn by ice—emerged from its hiding spot. Its 125mm gun turned toward me with menacing slowness.

  VALKYRIA:

  "Armored contact. T-90. Distance: 200 meters."

  The movements came back again—the hip-sway to reposition, the fine-tuning of stabilizers, the mental sequence to switch between attack modes. But I didn't feel the precise control over the machine as I used to have before.

  "I'm a little rusty."

  "It's been a long time since I drove one of these things."

  The T-90 fired first. The muzzle flash of the main gun was an orange flare that illuminated the horizontal snow. The armor-piercing round passed a meter from my left shoulder, impacting a cooling tower that collapsed in a cacophony of twisted metal.

  Anyway, this isn't even a real confrontation; it's just a hunt, barely even counted as a warm-up, there was no way I was in trouble with this. But it was the ideal scenario to remember a little of what it was like to pilot one of these Walkers: how to select armaments, how to pay attention to the reactor system's consumption, the stress on the thrust system, or the tolerance capacity of the damage control systems.

  The tank was advancing now, its treads crushing frozen rubble. The commander probably thought he had the advantage—thick armor vs. light Walker. He didn't know the Crimson Empress was anything but "light," and that the Stellaris wasn't a conventional anti-tank gun.

  I activate the assisted targeting system. The HUD overlays a reticle on the T-90's thermal silhouette, highlighting weak points: turret-hull joint, rear engine panel, commander's sight, so many options but for now let's go with a classic and simple one and just shoot the engine to stop it.

  I chose the engine. A Walker can dodge; a tank without mobility is a metal coffin.

  The Stellaris's bolt strikes right where the rear armor is thinnest—where the engine exhaust emits its brightest thermal signature. There's no dramatic explosion, just an intense blue glow that pierces the metal like butter. The T-90 halts abruptly, its roar diminishing to an agonized whine. Black smoke—a mix of burnt oil and charred insulation—billows from the grates, its crew fleeing from it at full speed.

  The infantry soldiers, seeing their armored support neutralized in seconds, began to fall back. Some threw smoke grenades that the storm immediately dispersed, trying to help the tank crew escape. Others simply ran deeper into the industrial complex.

  I didn't pursue them. They weren't the main threat.

  VALKYRIA:

  "Armored unit neutralized. Infantry retreating. Consolidating position."

  I took a deep breath. I had survived the first encounter, but it wasn't enough. If I wanted to make it back home alive, worse battles would follow. I couldn't be satisfied with this result; I had to improve, and fast. I needed to awaken the old me, the one who fought dragons with this very machine in the past. The monitors showed stable readings: energy at 98%, structural integrity at 100%, energy ammunition... practically infinite.

  The Vulkan complex had returned to silence—broken only by the groan of the wind and the crackling of the cooling T-90. I checked the perimeter sensors. The soldiers had completely fled. A good choice. Chasing them would have been... messy.

  Post-combat silence was always deceptive. As I reviewed the sensors, confirming the loyalists had fled north of the complex, something on the edge of my screen didn't add up. There was a strange heat signature inside a network of pipes in the middle of the industrial complex. Another signature... more subtle, almost camouflaged among the residual heat from the foundry.

  I adjusted the sensors, applying the relative filters Momo had configured. The image sharpened, and then I saw it: He had been watching me for some time, sizing me up, camouflaged and hugging one of the factory's steam chimneys. He took advantage of me not using the normal color camera, countering the thermal vision I was using for everything. And what was worse, it was another Walker.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  But not like any Russian Walker I had seen before. This one was shorter, more agile, with a silhouette that prioritized a low profile over protection. Its lines were angular, designed for speed rather than endurance. And the strangest part: instead of a conventional cannon or missile launcher, it carried a rather peculiar weapon mounted on its back. It was a war hammer. A gigantic hammer, with a rectangular head featuring a spiked end, easily eight meters in total length. The handle seemed to be made of some reinforced polymer composite, while the head showed the metallic gleam of tungsten steel.

  VALKYRIA:

  "Walker contact. Unknown model, light class. Primary armament... is fucking giant medieval war hammer."

  PRIEST:

  "A hammer? Are you sure?"

  GLASS:

  "That would explain the almost invisible thermal signature. No projectile propulsion systems, no cannon to heat up... It's purely just a metal rod."

  The rebel Walker must have noticed my detection, because it suddenly accelerated. Not with the clumsiness of heavy Russian models, but with an agility that reminded me more of a feline than a war machine. It leaped from its hidden position, using its robotic arms to propel itself over a fallen beam, and landed fifty meters from me with an impact that shook the frozen ground.

  Its paint scheme was irregular: splotches of white and gray over a worn olive-green background, but with bright red touches on the joints. It bore no regular army insignias or imperial symbols. Instead, on the left shoulder, someone had hand-painted a howling wolf inside an irregular circle.

  It assumed a guard stance, the hammer now detached and held with both manipulator hands. The posture was clearly martial, almost like a medieval warrior preparing for a duel.

  IDOL:

  “Enemy Walker identified.”

  “S-99 'Strekoza' Model, front-line assault unit of the Iron Star Battalion.”

  “Pilot callsign, KóUTS.”

  “Non-standard army weapon. Pilot's personal modification. Large-scale medieval war hammer.”

  An open radio transmission crackled on my general channel, with interference from the storm but understandable.

  KóUTS:

  "Aha! A Western toy! I thought the Empire didn't meddle in civil wars."

  "Did they change their policy, or do they just send little girls to do their dirty work now?"

  The Strekoza Walker stepped forward, its hammer spinning in a fluid motion that showcased the millennia-old craftsmanship of the medieval knight. The storm seemed to quiet momentarily, as if nature itself respected the tradition of a duel between knights and their armor.

  VALKYRIA:

  "I'm not from the Empire. And you're in my way."

  KóUTS:

  "All paths here are mine, devochka."

  "This is my country, my war. You... are just a foreigner with an expensive toy."

  "What's this war to you? This isn't your loss, it's not your gain. What are you even doing here?"

  The Strekoza attacked first. It lunged forward with its thrusters at full speed. It wasn't the clumsiness of someone using a strange weapon from a bygone era; KóUTS knew what he was doing, he knew how to use his weapon, no matter how crazy or unusual it was on the modern battlefield. The hammer moved in a low arc, sweeping aside the accumulated snow and exposing the black asphalt beneath. I barely had time to make the Crimson Empress step back, the lateral thrusters emitting a high-pitched whine from the strain.

  The hammer struck where my left leg had been a second before. The impact was seismic—the concrete cracked in a three-meter diameter spider-web pattern, sending fragments of ice and rusted metal into the air.

  GLASS:

  "The kinetic impact is enormous! Don't let it hit you directly!"

  VALKYRIA:

  "No shit, Sherlock!"

  "I'm sure it's better to let myself get hit by the damn giant can-opener and die impaled!"

  Kóuts's hammer rose again, this time in a descending arc aiming to split me in half. The Crimson Empress's lateral thrusters whined as they pushed me to the right, the energy blade on my left arm activating with a sharp buzz that cut through the frozen air. Blue-white light against tungsten steel.

  KóUTS:

  "Come on, devochka! Show me what Western toys are made of!" Kóuts's voice echoed in my headset.

  The hammer descended. I lunged forward.

  Not backward, not to the sides. Toward him. The momentary surprise of the rebel pilot was all I needed. My HV-LS-9 "Photon" laser sword traced a perfect arc toward the Strekoza's right shoulder joint. A lucky strike, a millimeter of precision, and I could disable its manipulator arm...

  But Kóuts was no novice.

  At the last possible instant, the Strekoza twisted the hammer's handle, not to block, but to deflect. The tungsten head struck the side of my energy blade with brutal force. The impact wasn't metal against metal, but energy against matter—a burst of blue sparks that lit up the horizontal snow like unnatural fireworks.

  The recoil shook me in my seat. The Crimson Empress's inertial systems groaned in protest. My laser blade, destabilized, bounced off harmlessly, drawing a molten line across a nearby pipe that exploded into superheated steam.

  KóUTS:

  "Ha! I thought you'd be more original!" Kóuts laughed.

  I tried to regain distance, my sensors searching for open ground. But Kóuts had already anticipated my move.

  From the shoulder mounts on the Strekoza, two tubes deployed with a hydraulic snap. They weren't conventional missiles; the thermal signature was far too low.

  VALKYRIA:

  "What's he launching?"

  There was no time for an answer.

  Two projectiles shot out, but not toward me. They rose in high arcs, tracing smoke lines against the gray sky before exploding twenty meters up with muffled detonations, dampened by the storm.

  It wasn't a fragmentation blast. Not heat or a shockwave.

  They were seeds. Hundreds of them scattered like diabolical rain around us, forming a perfect circle with the two Walkers trapped in the middle.

  My HUD instantly analyzed. Red markers appeared on the ground, forming a semicircle in front of me. The identifiers flashed:

  IDOL:

  TM-62M ANTI-TANK with "KROT" MINEFIELD EJECTION AERIAL DISPERSAL

  DETECTION: MAGNETIC/SEISMIC/PRESSURE

  EXPECT IMMEDIATE ACTIVATION.

  GLASS:

  "It's a rapid-deployment minefield," Glass's voice was tense.

  "Aerial dispersal. Each unit has magnetic sensors. Your Walker will trigger dozens if you move outside the inner circle."

  Kóuts, on the other hand, lifted his hammer and rested it on his shoulder with almost tangible arrogance. He didn't retreat, didn't flee his own cage. He stayed inside the dueling arena, accepting the challenge he himself had created, waiting for the knightly duel once more. A man with guts and bravery, no doubt.

  KóUTS:

  "What's the matter, princess? The floor not to your liking?" His laugh was rough, satisfied.

  "These are our toys. Not as fancy as yours, but they'll get the job done."

  "They're just a bunch of Soviet mines from the Cold War. Most from Afghanistan or the Ukraine war—sticks and stones by your standards, I'm sure."

  "But each one has enough charge to split a tank in half. Would turn your Walker into confetti, computer or not."

  A perfect trap. Forcing a close-quarters fight on his terms.

  The mines pulsed softly on my HUD, tiny dormant hearts of death buried under the snow. Magnetic sensors. My Walker was essentially a giant magnet.

  VALKYRIA:

  "PRIEST, I need—"

  PRIEST:

  "Already analyzing," my mother cut in.

  "Glass is trying to find the activation frequency. But she needs time."

  "We don't have time." I said it quietly, my hands adjusting their grip on the controls.

  Kóuts began to advance until he was right beside me.

  KóUTS:

  "I'll give you a choice, outsider. Power down your Walker, step out, surrender."

  "Or become another metal statue in this industrial graveyard."

  The fight was almost over. He had me right where he wanted me—trapped, cornered, with no alternatives, victory in his hand...

  Just as I wanted it, too.

  To fight dragons, conventional methods never worked. But ingenuity and courage are what allowed humans to endure where Atlanteans failed. Dragons tended to lower their guard a little when their victory was almost assured. It was a flaw they had, one of their only weaknesses: their pride. The perfect moment to pull a hidden move, one hidden in plain sight.

  The Crimson Empress's engines roared with a metallic lament, a final protest before surrendering its entire soul. In the cockpit, alarms wailed, merging with the howl of the storm and Kóuts's mocking laughter in my headphones. The readings turned red: critical overload in the reactors. I was priming it for the thrust.

  There was no time for elegance, for tactics. Only for brute force and a desperate gamble.

  I screamed, a guttural sound lost in the roar, and yanked the controls toward me. The Crimson Empress, which was retreating, stopped as if it had slammed into an invisible wall. Then, with a shudder that ran through every bolt of its frame, it lunged forward.

  Not to the side. Not back. Straight toward the Strekoza and its raised hammer.

  Kóuts must have seen it coming, but the logic of his attack was broken. Who charged head-on against a hammer that could split a tank? A lunatic. Or someone who had nothing left to lose.

  The impact was less a crash and more a localized earthquake. My Walker rammed his with its shoulder, just as the hammer descended. The tungsten head glanced off my armor with a screech of worlds ending, leaving a molten, smoking groove, but it missed a clean hit. The force, however, was colossal.

  For an eternal instant, the two twenty-ton machines pushed against each other, claws scraping the frozen asphalt, thrusters straining in a symphony of mechanical agony. Evaporated snow surrounded us in a white veil.

  KóUTS:

  "What are you doing, you crazy woman?!"

  The Crimson Empress, with its last strength, became a living battering ram. The Strekoza, off-balance, with its hammer a dead weight, couldn't withstand it. Its metal claws tore from the ground. For a split second, we floated, locked in a deadly embrace over the ring of mines.

  Then, gravity and my momentum did the rest.

  I let go. Kóuts's Strekoza, grotesque and clumsy in the air, flew backward like a toppled giant. It crossed the invisible boundary of the minefield circle. The world stopped. I had thrown the Strekoza—still clutching its hammer—right into the center of the minefield it had sown.

  The angular silhouette of the rebel Walker flew through the air in a clumsy arc, its arms flailing, its thrusters at maximum trying to regain control, but there was nothing more to do, there was no time left.

  The Strekoza landed on its back, with the impact of fifty tons, right in the heart of the semicircle of mines.

  The world erupted on contact. Not just one explosion. Dozens.

  A chain of detonations that lifted the frozen ground in pieces. Geysers of snow, earth, and molten metal. Shrapnel flew like war confetti. The shockwaves overlapped, creating a wall of force that slammed into my Walker and pushed me back several steps despite all my footing.

  When the smoke cleared—what the storm allowed—the Strekoza was no longer a Walker.

  It was a metal coffin.

  The lower half was gone, turned into fragments scattered in a ten-meter crater. The cockpit was torn open like a tin can, the armor twisted outward by the force of the internal explosions. From its interior came thick, black smoke that smelled of burnt oil, charred electronics, and something else... organic, a reddish mass spilling from what was left of the pilot's seat outward, hitting the remaining metal pieces.

  There was no sign of life. No movement, it was impossible, there was no human body anymore.

  My breathing sounded loud in the sudden silence. The howling wind seemed to have carried away the sounds of battle, leaving only the crunch of snow and the distant sizzle of cooling metal.

  "Kóuts..." I tried the open radio. Only static.

  On my HUD, the Strekoza's marker flashed red once before disappearing. TARGET NEUTRALIZED.

  Priest's voice came through, tense but controlled. "Valkyria, report status."

  My hands trembled slightly on the controls, it seemed that once again I had reached that feeling of challenge I always eagerly awaited, the sensation of pure combat.

  VALKYRIA:

  "Crimson Empress operational."

  "Status green, resuming mission."

  "And the enemy pilot?"

  I looked at the smoldering heap of metal. A robotic arm, severed from the torso, lay twenty meters away, its fingers still clenched around the hammer's handle. The tungsten head was embedded in a nearby wall, still smoking.

  VALKYRIA:

  "He's...he has parted."

  "Part here, part there, parted over there, staining the wall."

  There was an uncomfortable pause. Then, Nanami's softer voice came through.

  GHOST:

  "Hey Valkyria... are you okay?"

  VALKYRIA:

  "I'm still alive, a bit thrilled from the fight, that's all."

  "Maybe I'm not as rusty as I thought."

  GHOST:

  "......"

  "Ummm..."

  "I wasn't alive when you used Walkers in combat, but what you did was pretty risky, so I don't know what fighting dragons was like."

  "But please be more careful; at home, nobody wants more than one ghost."

  "We already had enough with my death; we don't want another one."

  "Also, what the hell are we supposed to use as a coffin? Bury just a plastic bottle for the last Emperor of Atlantis?"

  VALKYRIA:

  "........"

  "At least the bottle is something."

  "Now that I remember, your father's head is still impaled on a spear in the lower levels of Atlantis."

  GHOST:

  "I didn't need to know that."

  "Also, get rid of that stupid faggot trash."

  "Garbage like that doesn't deserve any trace left of his existence."

  PRIEST:

  "Eh, girls, I know the moment is important, and a tough fight just happened, but we're not even close to where we need to be."

  "Valkyria, can you get moving already? We have a mission to fulfill and the schedule is tight."

  Leaving behind the smoldering silence of the Vulkan complex and the deafening echo of my first combat, I now face the true test: penetrating the heart of St. Petersburg. The storm seems to quiet for a moment before the dark bulk of the city, but the icy air brings something more than snow: the feeling of being watched. I gripped the controls, feeling the comforting hum of the Crimson Empress beneath my palms. The city awaited me, a labyrinth of snow and steel where every blind window could hide a patient eye and a finger on the trigger. There was no time for more chivalrous duels; now it was time to venture into the rat trap.