He didn’t believe Ferret was dead yet. Soon, certainly, and Dagger would be glad to help with the process. But he was alive now. The tracer showed the box to be down there, about under those gliding reptiles, so that’s where Tirdal was. Ferret was playing silent. That was a pity. It was also a bit of a pain in the ass. But he’d nail Tirdal shortly, then get back to Ferret.
Ah, there was the trace. It was moving steadily, enabling him to compare it to terrain features, and there was low bank ahead where he might get a shot. Nodding slightly to himself, Dagger rolled forward into a crawl and eased up to the edge of the bluff. He stopped about a meter back from where the edge rolled down to meet a cliff face of earth and tumbled growth. The grass curled over him and he was nearly invisible. Once he triggered the chameleon circuit, he effectively was invisible.
His visor still showed him the tactical display, and he waited, ready to kill that image and go to the scope proper, which was nestled against the matching window on the visor built into the sniper’s visor. He had the rifle in a good position, and squeezed the control that extruded the bipod legs. They sought the surface, spread out their paddlelike feet, and the rifle was as steady as it was going to get. All he had to do now was wait.
The dot moved north, closer to that shallow area, where he could see the narrow waters widen and ripple around the rocks, glinting in the light. Dammit, that water looked cool and tasty. Soon, he told himself. Don’t get distracted.
There! Bare hints of Tirdal’s chameleon helmet showed above the edge, just ripples, but Dagger knew what they were. The rifle’s rounds could punch right through that soft sand. If the first shot was only a wound, it wouldn’t matter. Once Tirdal slowed, Dagger would get into position and take him out joint by joint. Or try to get Ferret to do it for him, which could mean he’d need even less effort. He focused through the scope, through the target, inhaled and relaxed, letting part of the breath escape, then held firm and watched the image. Tirdal intersected the third line of the reticle, which should be enough lead. The oscillations caused by Dagger’s tremors were as slight as they could get, almost nonexistent, even considering his condition, and he squeezed the stud. The rifle recoiled in the slight fashion gauss weapons did, twitched slightly and steadied. There was the crack of the projectile’s hypersonic passage, the wounded air trying forlornly to keep pace with a thoroughly unnatural event, and in his scope he could see the flat, barely arced passage it left, heat-damaged air molecules showing on the screen. Dirt flew from the bank…
And the little bastard fell!
Chapter 16
Ferret heard the shot. It was close enough to be a good crack. A quick scan with his sensors narrowed the source to a grid about one hundred meters on a side. And Dagger was within that box. Sure enough, it was up on the ridgeline. But without a scope, there was no way to get a good shot. He couldn’t start picking away at random, because Dagger would backtrack the energy discharge. It was frustrating.
What he could do was slug the intel to Tirdal, assuming, hoping, Tirdal was still alive. That would show where he stood on things, and with two of them tracking Dagger, just maybe they could get him on the run. It would have to get dark again, too. That, added to the rest, might give them the edge they needed.
But assuming they succeeded, Tirdal was going to have to have some very believable answers to some tough questions.
He attached the grid to a transmission and sent it to Tirdal. Then he sent it to Dagger, just to let him know he was being watched. Ferret grinned a rictus that would have scared even him, if he’d had a mirror. Pain, fear, fatigue and grime gave him a visage to scare a gargoyle.
Tirdal felt the shot and launched himself into the wash, artifact flying clear. The bead cracked past, showering him with loose sand and bits of grass. That had been close enough for him to not only hear, but feel the slap of the shockwave. Then he realized it had hit him, slicing through his ruck and his shoulder. It was a minor wound, but would be extremely painful, as the mass of the ruck would rest on it. Still, he couldn’t have Dagger thinking he’d succeeded.
“That was a good shot, Dagger,” Tirdal taunted, keeping tight rein on his voice and the growing agony underneath. “Not good enough for an intelligent target, of course, but good enough for a rock or a dummy on the pop-up range.” He rolled down deeper to secure the artifact again.
“My shooting is plenty good enough, Elf,” Dagger snarled back in rage. “You’re just a filthy little cheat.” He definitely sounded upset over Tirdal’s evasion. He seemed to feel that Tirdal not dying was an insult. Well, there were more insults where that came from.
“Cheating, Dagger? Is not the unofficial motto of the DRTs ‘If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying’? By that argument, your control and coordination is also cheating, because not everyone can do it. No, if this game is to be played properly, each player must use his resources. Surely as great a shooter as yourself can predict my evasions… given time. In fact, if you’re as smart as you believe you are, you should have seen a pattern already.” That was a dangerous statement. Tirdal wasn’t aware of falling into a pattern yet, but he just might have. But he had to goad Dagger into thinking even less, to level the field between them.
At that moment, the signal from Ferret came in. He cleared the screen and allowed it to appear, and studied the map revealed. His Darhel gear could come up with much of the same data for him, but of course Ferret didn’t know that. And this did prove Ferret was an ally, at least until Dagger was taken out of the equation. After that, they’d have to see.
“As for cheating,” he said with a deliberately human tone of malicious amusement, “it wasn’t I who tossed a grenade into a resting party while hiding behind a rock.”
That seemed to have done the trick, Tirdal thought, as four shots ripped overhead of his cover, blasting dirt into the water. And his Sense showed him Dagger’s surroundings, the link between them suddenly solid. He saw the scope image, saw himself as a tiny form that had moved just in time and sunk out of sight. The sun was over there, so Dagger was on that bluff to the east, as Ferret had said. Tirdal brought the image of that back from his memory and confirmed with an image from the suit sensors’ cameras. Dagger was… right about there, and that might just be in range of the punch gun, if he took the shot now. The punch gun, he reminded himself, was a speed of light weapon. All he had to do was account for the .7416 seconds of recharge time and dodge for cover in between shots. He set the artifact down and got to work.
The suit’s computer set up the map for him, and he shifted to a slightly less steep section of the parched dun gully. Then he was up and poounk! firing, dropping, shoving to the right off a protruding rock, up and poounk! then down and left to the flat piece of shale and up and poounk! and left again to a hardened chunk of clay and fire and right and fire and left and again from the same location, as random as an ordered mind could manage.
A Sense came to him, but it was not of Dagger firing, it was of Dagger panicking. Tirdal grinned his toothy grin. Securing the artifact, he moved out.
Ferret just lay still and rested as the firefight ensued. Dagger was clearly not shooting well. Interesting. He was terrifying on the range, great in exercises, had done well enough against the bugs that had jumped them. As to real battles, Ferret knew of his record, but wasn’t aware of any specific commendations for his shooting. Things did tend to go to hell in an engagement, true. But Dagger’s cold, calculating façade was just that. He clearly wasn’t that impressive a shot when it came down to it. That was good to know.