At last, they came to a dead end. After checking for traps, Sousuke kicked open the rusted metal door and came out into a small, damp room. It was an empty space with minimal ventilation and lockers filled with cleaning tools. Across the room, there was a thick door that would likely take them to the surface.
“We’ll make our stand here,” he decided. “Lemon, take the back entrance.”
“Got it.” The door to the outside wasn’t locked. Lemon opened it a crack, and that was enough to bring blessed fresh air blowing in from outside. Sundown had been a while ago, so it was pitch black outside.
Sousuke shouted out as a bullet landed nearby; it must have come from the enemy hiding outside. He saw a spark before his eyes and heard a ringing in his ears. It seemed to have come from an entrance to a building about fifty meters away. He traded fire with his attacker while keeping ammo usage to a minimum, just enough to keep them at bay.
“They’re coming from behind, too!” Lemon shouted sharply, pointing his gun in the direction they were coming from.
“Buy us time!” Sousuke yelled back. “As much as possible—” A bullet flew into the room from the corridor, grazing past Lemon to ricochet around them.
“Dammit!” Lemon fired. Sousuke fired. Tessa huddled up in a corner. The roar of the gunshots and metallic clinking echoed around them.
The enemy was well trained enough to know that they were just buying time. At this rate, they’d run out of ammunition and soon be overwhelmed.
“We’re surrounded!” Sousuke screamed. “Kurz, where’s that support?!”
Uruz-7’s demand went in one ear and out the other, as did the reports from Gebo-4 and 6 and the messages from his AI, Yukari. A duel between snipers came down to finding the enemy before he found you. They were both hiding as carefully as they could, focusing all their knowledge and concentration on a battle of nerves.
Kurz didn’t have time to think about anything else. He had to predict the enemy’s location using just his night vision display, a map of his surroundings, electronic information, climate conditions, and all the other data on his screen.
Where is he? Kurz wondered.
Any heat sources? Kaspar’s machine had its ECS on, but with its generator set to minimum it would be outputting very little heat. With so little human activity around the ruins, Kurz thought, there must be a telltale sign somewhere... But his infrared sensors only showed complicated patterns in the blue to yellow-green range, denying him an obvious location for the enemy.
Any sounds? he wondered next. In ruins this quiet, he might just be able to pick up a low-running palladium reactor. But all the M9’s high-sensitivity directional microphone could pick up was the gunfire being exchanged between Sousuke and the others. If the enemy was keeping as quiet as he was, it was unlikely he’d be able to trace him by sound.
Anything electronic? Not likely. Using an active anti-ECS radar would be like projecting a searchlight into the darkness, so neither he nor his enemy were doing it. The fairy eye wasn’t picking up on any lambda driver force fields at all, which meant Kaspar must have shut it off to avoid detection. On the other hand, that confirmed to Kurz that if he could down his opponent with his first shot, he’d win.
Where is he? Kurz knew that he would have to intuit the answer based on knowledge of terrain, vantage points, and what he knew about his opponent.
Screw the tech, he told himself. Let’s think about Kaspar’s position.
He’ll know as well as I do that the battle between Sousuke and the others is going down in the northeast of the ruins. He’ll be positioning himself to offer support fire if needed, just like me. So he has to be somewhere with a sight line to Sousuke, instead of hiding beyond the hill line. Still, I can say for sure that he’ll be as high up as he can. He’d need to be up high to find me.
A building in the ruins? The east side of the plant, among the winding pipes and silos? There were about ten places Kurz could imagine, which wasn’t enough to narrow it down.
He’ll have to be on the lookout for the transport helicopters, too, and for the likelihood of other M9s hiding nearby. So, he won’t be too close to the plant itself. That narrows the candidates down by about half, Kurz reasoned.
Still not enough. What about considering the machine’s weight, and escape route after firing?
If he’s firing a high-caliber sniper cannon, he’d want to avoid anywhere with too much dust, which would be stirred up by the shot and make it hard to aim a second. Hard to imagine he’d be inside a building, especially since most of the ones here are in danger of collapse...
Kurz made a mental checklist of a few other highly specialized elements in his mind before narrowing down the options. “And then there were three...” he mused: the roof of one of the government buildings in the ruins; the large statue of Lenin at the center; and a steel tower that loomed over the plant’s north side. It had to be one of those.
Now let’s consider his personality, Kurz thought next. Kaspar’s not a flashy guy, and he’s always been steady when it comes to the sniping part of the job. He’ll hide wherever he’s least likely to be spotted, and that will give him the easiest shot. Even if with a lambda driver-mounted machine, he won’t rely on a hard sell or luck.
The roof of the government building, then? he guessed. Firm footing, clear sight lines, and probably the widest vantage point, locationally speaking. It would let him deal quickly with attacks from other directions, and offer support fire to allied helicopters arriving with aid.
But would Kaspar really take up residence in such an obvious place? Kurz wondered. Out loud, he said to his AI, “maximum magnification.”
《Roger.》
His screen displayed a zoom-in of the building in question. Kurz tried viewing it with various modes: infrared, amplified light, passive EM... but he just couldn’t be sure. Kaspar might be there, or he might not. He scanned the other two locations with passive sensors, and got similar results. If he could study it all a little longer, things might come clear, but...
One of the three. If he was right about that, it would come down to instinct. Kaspar’s a logical sniper—that’s one thing I know for sure, Kurz reminded himself. And he knows all about me. He probably knows how I’ll be approaching the problem, too. So maybe he’d be somewhere else? But what if he’s anticipating me realizing that, as well?
“Uruz-6, hurry up! Sousuke and the others will be killed!” said Gebo-6’s voice, urging him on. They were waiting to fly in from a spot just beyond the ridge.
Kurz tried to ignore this but failed. He felt a new swell of urgency rising inside him. “Wait a minute,” he snapped back. “Almost got it.”
Time was the element that gave his enemy an advantage. Kaspar didn’t have to worry about allies in danger; he had all the time in the world to look for Kurz. Kurz’s condition was entirely different. No matter how skilled Sousuke might be, his ammunition was limited. He only had a few minutes before his resistance reached its limit. Kurz had to defeat the enemy before then—no, as soon as possible.
He had to hurry.
The building in the city center, or the tower in the plant... Kurz had narrowed it down to those two locations. Kaspar was in one of them.
His infrared sensors showed him a yellow-green reading, indicating a slightly higher temperature, on the building’s roof. But there was a similar color pattern on the top of the tower. Both were roughly a match to an AS’s size.
Which is it? Which one is him?
“Uruz-6, hurry!” Gebo-6 urged.
Kurz felt even more nervous. The building had the higher temperature, and there was something unusual about the flow of wind there... Could it be an AS in invisibility mode disrupting the wind patterns? The shape on the temperature reading looked like a humanoid lying in an ambush position, as well. It must be that. It had to be.
He made his decision and took aim.
Infrared mode. 24x zoom. Manual control. Distance: 3390 meters. Wind speed: five knots from the southeast. The power of a 76mm round makes moisture and the coriolis effect irrelevant. Margin for error, thirty centimeters.
He aimed two meters to the right of the center of the temperature reading, where he expected the cockpit to be.
Kaspar... I’ve got you, he whispered in his mind, and then pulled the trigger. He felt a jolt as his 76mm muzzle flashed and the low trees around him were blown back. The shot flew through the night like a dart.
The shot was a hit.
No... All it seemed to do was blow up chunks of concrete. There was a large amount of rubble and dust stirred up by the impact, but no AS. He’d just hit the building.
That means—
He looked again to the steel tower, but it was too late. A red machine was dangling from the tower’s summit, having already fired. The enemy’s shot was on its way.
It hit.
Kaspar had learned of Kurz’s location the moment in which he made his shot. He’d fired immediately and hit his target with precision.
Kurz’s M9 had been lying on its front, so the enemy’s shot hit the M9 in the head—the area that would be the forehead on a human—piercing through its radar, ripping apart the drive system and dynamic relay, breaking through the rear cockpit block through the upper torso armor. The shot’s explosive kinetic energy wreaked havoc on the electronics, the shock absorbing system, and the operator beyond them, before it continued out the machine’s back, just above the hips.