Masquerade : Landing of the Wikings

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The 113 Wikings from Eagle squad, lead by Sergent Lukas, crept along the fjord's edge. Nothing but silence and shadows. Their boots barely disturbed the frost-covered stones as they approached the Iron Skulls' camp of Longyerbyren.

SPLASH!

The water exploded. Ghostly masks broke the surface everywhere, diving gear gleaming in the dim light. Their techno-axes sparked and hummed - weapons that could slice through steel like butter. Pure chaos erupted.

25 of their best went down fast. Just... gone. Swallowed by bloody waves before anyone could even scream. A quarter of their force, wiped out in seconds.

"Shields up ! Phalanx formation!" Lukas bellowed. His voice cracked. 17 men was all he had left for the heavy infantry - barely enough to form a decent shield wall. But they moved fast, real fast.

Three seconds. That’s all it took. Like umbrellas unfurling in a storm, three staggered rows of large shock shields opened up, locking into place and forming a barrier that felt almost impenetrable. The snipers worked methodically from behind cover, dropping targets one by one. But these insurgents... they just kept coming. Throwing themselves forward like they wanted to die.

Lukas squinted through the chaos, counting heads. His stomach turned to ice.

500 enemies. At least. Maybe more lurking in those dark waters.

Something was off. Dead wrong. Lukas squinted into the chaos, bile rising in his throat as he watched the attackers keep coming. Their relentless charges - wave after wave despite catastrophic losses - it spat in the face of every tactical doctrine he knew.

Never. Not once in his blood-soaked career had he seen barbarians fight like this.

"The pattern..." The word slipped out as he tracked their movements. This wasn't random violence. These bastards were pushing them, forcing them to hold position like fish in a barrel. A horrible realization hit him like a punch to the gut.

Lukas voice turned to ice. "It's a goddamn trap."

"BLITZKRIEG!" Frank's roar ripped through the air like artillery fire, his eyes blazing with a berserker's fury. The battle cry rolled across the fjord like thunder, echoing off the ancient cliffs.

Good job Frank... Raw, brutal speed. That's what made the Eagle unit legendary.

The formation transformed into a living weapon, every piece moving in perfect harmony. 17 shield-bearers carved through the enemy mass like a steel avalanche, their synchronization down to the microscopic level. Not a single wasted movement.

Behind them, the rest of the unit exploded through the gap. Their light exoskeletons turned each stride into a crushing blow, the frozen ground trembling beneath their coordinated fury. Insurgents who tried to stop them might as well have been trying to hold back a tidal wave with their bare hands.

300 meters vanished in the blink of an eye. The enemy stronghold - their impossible target - suddenly filled their vision like a monster rising from the depths. They'd just pulled off something that would fill history books.

BOOM!

A blast shredded through their ranks like paper. Frank was gone. Just... gone. Lukas spun around, ice crawling down his spine as he stared at the empty space where his second should've been.

Without Frank's tactical genius, he felt adrift. Lost. His eyes darted across the hellscape, desperate for anything familiar. Time stretched like molasses.

Get it together, he thought. Artillery first. Always the artillery.

Lukas sucked in a breath, pupils narrowing to pinpoints—like eagle hunting his prey. The scope of his rifle drifted across enemy positions - 15,500 meters out. Perfect.

Narrator’s note : Eagle DNA ran through Lukas's veins. He could spot a needle in a haystack from miles away, his reflexes sharp as a bird of prey. The neural implant in his skull pushed his accuracy to absurd levels - 99.99%.

His rifle was more cannon than gun, the beast could reach out and touch targets 35 kilometers away. The recoil should've torn a normal man apart. But that's where the exo-suit came in, drinking up the massive kickback like it was nothing.

KRAA - WHOOSH!

Ten shots ripped the sound barrier apart like banshee—screaming like eagles. Each blast knocked him back, his exo-suit hissing steam to counter the recoil.

Like clockwork, ten artillery crews dropped. Five seconds flat - enemies never seen anything like it.

• • •

A war horn split the air. The insurgents and their tech-axes were pulling back.

Dead silence fell.

Then the sky lit up. Tracer rounds hammered their position like never before, and Lukas felt his blood run cold. Something was wrong.

Had the Iron Skulls finally changed their playbook?

That fancy neura link told him exactly where every bullet would go, but it didn't matter. The air was more lead than oxygen. Even an ant couldn't dance through that.

"DOWN!" he screamed, lost in the chaos. Pure terror on every face as metal rain shredded everything—armor might as well been wet paper.

His boys tried to hide, but death was faster. Screaming and explosions mixed into something from a nightmare.

No way... 45 seconds to punch through our best shield?

Wikings dropped like flies, torn apart. Only 62 left, hugging whatever shield still stood, counting seconds they might not have.

Dieter was right all along - not that Lukas would ever admit it. The mission needed raw strength, not finesse.

"Stand your ground! We're fighting our way out of this!"

His visor display picked up three shapes moving through the mayhem.

Those faces—war paint like something from a nightmare. Had to be the Olsen brothers. The anarchist triplets everyone whispered about.

Half-naked in the freezing cold, "Liberty" carved into their skin... pupils blown wide from combat stims. Typical anarchist lunatics.

"Black Eagle ain't so tough! Watch and learn!" The oldest one barked, scattering their own fighters like leaves.

The triplets spread out, settling into firing positions. Their makeshift exoskeletons barely contained the massive plasma cannons strapped to their arms—all locked onto Lukas.

Pure instinct kicked in. Lukas moved like water, twisting away as rounds tore past. The shield behind him disintegrated.

His men exploded into red mist. Limbs scattered—Body parts everywhere. Blood painted what shields remained, backed by a symphony of screams.

Another barrage forced him behind a fallen shield section. Snow swirled around him as he gasped for air.

The brothers adjusted their aim, trying to pin him down.

Lukas' eagle-like reflexes sent signals to his neural links, and he felt them surge online. Everything slowed to a crawl as he raised his sniper rifle.

"Got you..."

One trigger pull. Three synchronized shots. Lightning fast.

FWWIP-PT!

First shot: eldest's head exploded like a ripe melon.

Second shot : middle brother's throat turned to red mist. His head flew up like a vulgar balloon.

Third shot : straight through junior's eye, back of his skull gone.

Then…he was lining up his next move when everything—stopped—just like that. A figure stepped into the chaos... The whole battlefield went dead quiet.

Lukas stayed low, tracked the movement. Squeezed the trigger. But the figure just... dodged his bullet. The kind of impossible grace only Reich elite forces had.

"Still shoot first, ask questions never, huh Lukas? Perfect little Reich soldier, following orders like a good boy."

"Frank?" Lukas kept his voice steady. "The hell are you doing here? Why's everyone frozen?".