Chapter 356 - Far Future, Ch. 66 – Borgs Running Their Mouths Off (1/2)

Several months pass...

It had been a good fight, and an enthusiastic one.

Jimo had fallen under Briggs' wing as a power armor enthusiast, and gone into the dueling. Given the inordinate toughness of my soulclaw boys, and the ability to empathic transfer injuries to me, he wasn't afraid of getting hurt, and he fairly worshipped the huge Ancient whose borg-wrecking career was an inspiration for anyone made of flesh and bone.

Of course, the borgs on the other side were less than happy to see a wave of power-armored mind-clawed bastards with all their meat climbing the rankings. This M'bale the Breaker was one of them, a true cyborg with eighty percent of his meat gone, just wearing a borg suit everywhere he went. He'd given up basically all of himself to be a high-end cyborg.

Jimo had made a good fight of it, but six attack limbs, multiple gun ports, chains, and nets later, he'd run out of gas as the mini-rockets detonated in his face and sent him flying back, armor crumped and insides shaken.

Of course, most of those attack limbs, gun ports, chains, and nets were now in many pieces, and M'bale the Breaker was lurching around on two legs carefully, as Jimo had hacked the other two off.

Jimo slapped the ground twice, the universal symbol for a surrender, but the outraged M'bale didn't back off.

”Let me leave you with the same souvenir you left me with!” he howled in a voice artificially amplified for effect, and hacked at Jimo's leg with an adamantine powersaw.

The crackling, spinning weapon on its extensor drove down on Jimo's leg, sparks flying as it cut into the durasteel, and then into the meat beneath. Blood sprayed and bits of meat flew around as M'bale cackled.

”How's it feel, boy?” the cyborg shouted at him. ”I'll be good as new, any cyborg would, this is just some friendly play!”

And then Briggs was on top of him, even as Jimo's leg was kicked free of him.

M'bale barely had time to look up before Briggs' Hammer plowed through his exo-skeleton, shrieking energy melted and fused the durasteel of his frame, and the cyborg was smashed over backwards.

”You're interfering in a fight!” M'bale screamed, ignoring what had just happened, almost happy. ”You'll be thrown out of the league for this!”

”The fight ends when the opponent is judged unable to continue, surrenders, or is forced from the ring,” Briggs rumbled as he kicked the trembling legs of the cyborg aside, shattering his pelvis with the force of an armored boot. Very precisely, a dendrite snaked out of the back of his suit, wrapped around Jimo's leg, and pressed it back against the bloody stump it had been severed from.

There was a hiss and a glow of light. The sprayed meat and blood everywhere shimmered and disappeared, flowing back as mere mist in the direction it had come from.

From start to end, Jimo had not uttered a cry. Steam vented out the gash in his armor, and he stiffly pushed himself up on his armored leg.

”What I am doing now is effectively after the fight, which falls under the area of personal unregulated combat... or would, if you hadn't tried to maim someone outside a fighting ring. On camera. In a public venue. Before lots and lots of people watching.”

His dendrite retracted, and Briggs stepped forwards, violet eyes glowing with their own non-mechanical backlight. M'Bale the Breaker tried to retreat, but chainsaws aren't made for scrabbling, and he didn't have any other effective limbs... plus Briggs had obliterated his main power core, and he basically only had life support active.

Briggs stopped, towering over the man, psi-circuits and hardware criss-crossing the remnants of his head and torso. Behind him, Jimo got to his feet, took off his helmet, and slowly stepped up next to him.

”A little playing around, something a cyborg can easily recover from, huh?” Briggs repeated, his voice low enough to make the sands of the arena tremble, and M'bale blanched as he looked at the unharmed Jimo. Psionic healing could be much faster than nanite repairs, after all. ”Well, that means you're absolutely fine with the same being done to you, right?”

His hand flicked with a golden blade across his hand, cutting right across Jimo's throat. The same cutting arc flared around his Hammer as it flicked out, the thirty-pound head lighter than a willow wand, and sliced through M'Bale's throat.

”Let's see who comes to fix you.”

Blood was gushing out Jimo's throat, but his eyes were firm. There was a flash, and a hiss of red steam. The gushing wall coming down his throat stopped, and the escaping red was visibly sealed off, the deadly wound reduced to little more than an angry red line.

M'Bale gaped and quivered as black-red biotic fluid poured down his throat and chest. He was starting to choke, and lights from his life-support systems flashed danger lights as he thrashed helplessly and then jerked forwards, lolling as his mechanical eyes went dim, and red lights danced over the frame of his borg-suit.

Briggs waited patiently, but nobody from the crowds or the emergency resuscitation crews seemed interested in preserving the cyborg's life. That kind of behavior was indicative of someone going Cyber, losing their humanity and having nothing but prejudice against those with all their flesh.