The nineteen men approaching the tower marveled at the never-ending stream of bullets flying over their heads toward their destination.
“Holy shit!”
“This is amazing… Thank God for ZEMAL.”
“Once this thing is over…I think I’m gonna ask Vivi out…”
“You’ll get riddled with bullets before that ever happens.”
“Once I get riddled with bullets…I think I’m gonna ask Vivi out…”
“All right. Good luck with that.”
They were seventy yards away now, and still there was no response from the tower. They knew for a fact that the people stuck inside had not managed to flee.
There was only one exit to the structure, and there were no barricades nearby, so there was no place to hide. The only side of the tower they couldn’t see was up against a ten-thousand-foot sheer cliff.
“This is gonna work! I’m gonna rush in there and get a hundred million credits!”
“No, I will!”
“Over my dead body!”
A footrace started up. The earlier you were to get inside the tower, the more chances to take out Llenn. Of course, it also meant more chances of getting shot, but that was just a risk you had to take. Even if you blew yourself up with a grenade, as long as it managed to take out Llenn with it, you’d get that hundred million.
“I’m on death duty today!” cried the fastest man, hoping to be the first to reach the tower. Yes, he was a history nerd.
“Death duty” was a Shinsengumi term from the mid-1800s, referring to the man who walked first when they patrolled the city, charging into residences where their official business took them. Naturally, it was the man most likely to be cut down. The Shinsengumi would rotate who was on death duty each day.
This fellow had an MP5 SD6 silenced submachine gun at the ready near his waist. He had only fifty yards to go.
There was no doubt that he would be the first to get inside.
Would he be the lucky man this year? He couldn’t help but think so.
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“That’s far enough. Let’s do it,” Shirley said.
“I’ll start,” replied Llenn.
✦ ✦ ✦
The man running in the lead with a blissful smile suddenly erupted into hit marks all over his head. He flopped forward and tumbled, with a DEAD sign appearing overhead very soon after.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Huh?” the audience in the pub wondered aloud. “He get shot from behind?”
“Someone tryin’ to stop the first guy from getting in?”
Their first guess was to assume it was some ugly infighting.
✦ ✦ ✦
“What the—?”
The man running right behind him knew that none of them had shot the man. For one thing, the damage was on the front of his head, so it was clear right away that he’d been shot from the tower.
“But where?”
There was no bullet line or muzzle flash visible in the entranceway. If they had seen it, they would have dodged out of the way.
He had no idea where the enemy was.
“Gaaagh!”
And then, like the other man, he too was shot in the head.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Fire, fire, fire!”
On Boss’s orders, everyone except for Shirley and Fukaziroh began to shoot.
“Don’t be cheap, P-chan! Let it all out!” Llenn cried.
“Got it! I’m ready for this, Llenn! Finally, the time when I can bark all I want! Even if I have this muzzle protector on! Guess I can’t do anything about that!” said the boyish voice of the P90 with suppressor attached.
“Raaah!” Rosa roared, her PKM thumping powerfully. “This is for Sophie!”
“And this is for Tanya!” Anna and Tohma added, the snipers with their Dragunovs.
“This is for Shirleeeey!” Clarence belted out, holding her AR-57.
“I’m not dead yet!” Shirley snapped through the comm.
They let loose at the approaching enemies.
✦ ✦ ✦
“They’re shooting from the tower, Captain!”
Summon was stationed the closest to the tower of anyone in MMTM, at a distance of about 150 yards.
Instead of his usual SCAR-L, he was holding a monocular and poking his head out over the top of a barricade. It was possible for him because he was the tallest on the team.
Summon reported back with what he was seeing. “The invasion team is getting shot one after the other. They’re sitting ducks. The machine gun is flushing out the ones behind barricades and leaving them to snipers.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Roger that. It’ll do—tell me if anything else major happens,” David replied to Summon.
He recalled what Vivi had said earlier: “It would leave more survivors that way.”
Not helping out and forcing some of the invaders to hang back and provide covering fire would “leave more survivors.”
In other words, by having ZEMAL cover for them, it made the twenty men feel emboldened to charge into the tower, ensuring that they would all die sooner.
That makes sense to me… I can’t believe I forgot…it happened to me! David haiku’d in his head.
He couldn’t help but remember now—that Team LPFM had twice already used a strategy that involved shooting through holes created by lightswords.
✦ ✦ ✦
“My prediction is that the team creeping up on the tower will get wiped out. My reasoning is,” said the man in the pub, a few minutes earlier, “they can poke holes in the tower using their photon swords, stick the barrels out, and shoot in total safety. They’ve done that before a couple times, remember?”
He was now watching with great satisfaction, while the others looked on in shocked disbelief.
It was a very sorry slaughter—a total massacre unfolding on-screen.
The men rushing toward the tower found themselves under attack from spots along the sides of the tower, from anywhere between ten and fifty feet up. They were firing from tiny holes in the wall, eliminating their targets.
“I see… So that was still an option…”
“Let me buy you a round, man. What’s your drink?”
The stone walls of the tower were thick enough that an ordinary assault rifle couldn’t shoot through them. But no matter how thick the stone was, those cool sci-fi lightswords were guaranteed to burn a hole right through it. Whether you wanted to or not.
Llenn’s backup gear was a pair of lightswords.
She got them from Fukaziroh, then went up and down the stairs, fashioning a bunch of holes in every surface aside from the north wall. The Muramasa F9 had a dial on the handle that would adjust the length of the blade.
After checking out the thickness of the walls at the entryway, she just had to extend the blade that same length and poke it into the wall, and it would be nearly impossible for the enemy to notice that she was making holes with it.
It had been a huge rush, but she managed to create a plethora of holes for shooting through. They were called loopholes, or eyelets.
The team had their gun barrels poking through, and they used separate, smaller holes above them for seeing through, so they could spot their bullet circles and aim. It was a very unnatural position to shoot from, but it wasn’t that hard. Llenn found it quite easy, in fact, because her gun was so short.
Poke a hole in a tough, defensive surface, and let it defend you while you shot. It was a trick—or technique, or tactic—they used in the log cabin of SJ2 and the train car in the switchyard of SJ3.
The man who guessed it correctly glanced sidelong at the man offering to buy him a drink and said suavely, “I’ll take…a hot milk.”