First, Mack needed to turn the two of them around, such that his opponent's back faced the turret's muzzle. This would hopefully prevent the thing from taking aim at him during its next firing round.
The man's body lurched forwards, knife gripped by two shaking hands, and went for a stab. Mack, unable to fully block the blow with one arm but being fast enough to gauge its trajectory, deflected it and sidestepped, drawing several degrees closer towards his intended position.
His heart pounded in his chest. This could work.
Before the man had a chance to rebound, Mack went for an upward slicing movement, trying to get the man to dodge backwards instead of parry.
Though, with his injuries, he likely deemed it disadvantageous to dodge, since his upper body strength was higher than his lower body strength. Besides, such a shallow slash wouldn't do any real damage through his hardshell armor.
Mack's blade clanged off the opponent's own as their knives met again. The man stumbled a step backwards.
Then immediately lunged for Mack's throat.
Crap.
To dodge would be to lose precious ground. To meet the full force of an experienced soldier so close to his throat would mean serious injury.
So Mack did the only thing he could think of, digging the balls of his feet into the ground, ducking, and rushing forwards, tackling the man at his torso.
They fell together. Even though Mack weighed less, the opponent was far less stable on his feet due to the injury.
Though Mack didn't have a clean bill of health either, feeling the consequences of the rash move instantly stinging through his left shoulder.
Now, he could easily go for the man's throat, but that would leave him open to attack from the turret or other soldiers who spotted a lone man on the battlefield.
"Ugh--" Mack groaned exaggeratedly, grasping at his visibly injured shoulder.
This gave the enemy enough time to prepare a counterstrike, without being afraid enough of being overpowered to retreat.
And once again a blade was rushing towards his face, growing in his vision with every millisecond.
Mack rolled to the side, cursing under his breath as the injured shoulder met ground, rattling torn muscle and sinew.
They had used the momentum of the swing to right themselves, and once again, Mack and the man were face to face, both standing from a precarious kneel in unison.
Mack knew he couldn't rely on his luck to dodge forever--it would only take a single strike to ruin everything--so he went back on the offensive and went for a stabbing motion at one of the joints in their armor.
Instead of parrying or dodging, the opponent went to slice his wrist's tendons from below, angling the blow away and disabling Mack's other arm.
But Mack wasn't that stupid. At the last second, he pulled back, and the man swung up into thin air.
Unable to change his momentum fully, Mack instead turned the blade on its hilt and hit the side of the man's neck with its back, causing him to stumble.
TACKTACKTACKTACKTACK!
The deafening sound of turret fire barely registered to him; because all Mack cared about was that this time, it wasn't aiming for him.
They exchanged blows several more times, fatigue seeping into their bones.
An unexpected left hook caught Mack's nose, and his eyes sparked with salted darkness as he reeled back, clutching his face. Blood poured from his nostrils hot and sticky, blinking tears from already-strained eyes.
He barely had time to react as the next attack slashed into his temple, nicking the top of his ear. It was meant for his eye, but Mack just barely wrenched his neck sideways.
A thought came to his mind as he prepared to return the blow with a sideways slash near the man's throat.
That through his aching body, ever nerve and muscle fiber screaming at him to stop, to retreat, to just kill the guy already, to let someone else handle it--
Through the stinging pain at his ear, the throbbing in his nose, the wetness of ripped scabbing at his shoulder, the gash in his leg--
Through blurring vision and lungs working harder than bellows in the wintertime--
That this...
This is kind of fun.
And Mack knew then that the feeling belonged truly and wholly to him.
The pair continued their dance on the battlefield, unabated by rounds of turretfire, various screams of "FALL BACK!" or cries for assistance.
Two injured soldiers, neither recognized as a particular threat, one fighting for his life, his country, his everything...and Mack. Toying with the idea that he could kill at any moment, or continue his unabashed plan and risk being killed instead.
Each second he let his opponent think or recover or plan was a gamble.
Mack knew he'd never been this lucky before at the roulette table.
Sweat mixed with blood from his nose and he tasted salted iron. The machine gun grew ever closer.
Still strapped across his shoulder, the weight of the weapons belt sank into his chest. Attached were multiple grenades, though he couldn't recognize the type--they weren't even marked by proper standards, instead being adorned with different colored dots of paint.
Well, here goes nothing, Mack thought.
He kicked at the back of his opponent's knee, sending them crashing to the ground, and began fumbling for an explosive, knife still in hand.
There it was: the one-pound egg that could make or break this battle.
Things were never simple though.
In a last-ditch effort, the soldier swung up while still on one knee, aiming for any soft bit in Mack's torso that might contain a vital organ.
An metallic eerie scrrrrape rang as Mack took the grenade into his left hand and parried. Their blades locked together in standstill, wrists jittering faster than a hummingbird's wings.
F*ck it.
Still straining as hard as possible to keep a knife from running straight through his abdomen, Mack pulled the pin with his teeth, violently wrenched back his pounding left shoulder, and threw with every miserable working fiber left.
The projectile sailed through the air. Mack's wrist collapsed, sending him falling backwards. Air escaped his lungs with the thwack! of his back against hard ground, sending silt powdering up around him.
The soldier's weight landed atop him, yet again preventing another breath from being drawn into his lungs. A knife dangled above the center of his forehead.
These things did not matter: it was over.
Mack smiled.
A sound rang clear and true, harmonious snare drummer on his tympanic membrane. In perfectly conducted unison: a spray of blood spattering across his visor, and the clattering of a dropped knife by his head.
From his view on the ground, it was like so--directly above Mack's face loomed the injured soldier, gloved hands desparately clawing at the two-inch deep wound that had most certainly severed clean through his carotid.
Behind the bloody scene, a plume of rising smoke, embers and burnt flesh and metal vaporized and inhaled.
And behind that, a fiery orange sun, painting the back of everything a violent scarlet.
The soldier above Mack collapsed, never to get up again, and he rolled the body off his. It was the first time he'd murdered someone so intimately, vision stained red by the spatter tracking on his helmet.
As expected, the cleanliness of a rifleman suited his tastes more. Even if it didn't have that crucial thrill he'd felt earlier.
Being able to see the face of death reflected in each soldered frame of his opponent's armor.
With the turret gone, the rest of Mack's allies made quick work of stragglers too slow to retreat on foot, now unafraid to battle in the open.
The battle was over: they had won.