Stories untold

"Not like you to not have a plan, Boss," Genni said, looking at me over a cup of coffee. We'd been talking about the aftermath of the Mercenary incident, with Ravish ending and Raids taking off for the badlands to do, well, whatever it is she planned to do with the kit she acquired from her dead sister. If a machine like Ravish could be said to really be dead, and if Machines really had siblings in the way we meant them.

"We had a plan, Genni. Me and Raids. The Mercenaries just pitched a Gorram wrench in it," I replied, more amused than annoyed. The fact was, there were only two important outcomes to the entire affair. Ravish's reign of pain ended, and Raids getting the chunk of core I'd promised in exchange for the intimate secrets she'd turned over to me. We'd reached the desired outcome, so I was good with it.

"So, what was the plan?"

The plan. It had been a simple plan, really. A trap designed to get around how evenly matched the two killing machines were at their cores. One on one, it would have been difficult to call. But it wasn't going to be one on one. Raids would have help. The trick was deploying that help in a way Ravish couldn't quite predict.

"Won't hurt to tell you now, eh?" I laughed, refilling my coffee. "It was supposed to have gone like this . . ."

* * * * *

I'd narrowed my selection down from nearly a dozen potential nests to a more manageable four. None of them was ideal. That was an intentional decision. Ravish was already aware of the nests the Militia had selected and was doing a fair job of keeping out of their sight lines. She had to know there were better snipers on Hale's Moon than we had in the Militia, so would be looking for the most likely nests from which a Sniper could take a shot. There were multiple nests with overlapping areas of coverage and accessibility, so her job would be to calculate the most likely sites and act accordingly. By settling for a less than optimal nest, I'd increased the odds in my favor. Increased the likelihood she'd guess wrong.

The wave from Raids was simple. "It is time," was all she said.

I had fifteen minutes to get the Ritter&Lau 599 and settle into whichever nest I'd chosen for the shot. Raids herself wouldn't know exactly where I'd be. Only the area she'd need to get Ravish into in order to be in my line of fire.

I wouldn't even know which nest until I'd flipped the coins. Two coins. A pair of platinum coins grabbed randomly from my desk. Four possible outcomes. Decided as they landed one after the other. Heads. Tails. Binary 10. The 3rd nest of four.

The route to the nest was circuitous, avoiding lines of sight whenever possible, breaking them as quickly as possible when they couldn't be avoided. Imperfect, of course, but it would reduce the chance of Ravish seeing me and figuring out where I was going before I could get in position. Once there, it would just be a matter of letting Raids flush her quarry then taking the shot when I had it.

Simple in concept. Rather more difficult in execution.

Patience was a virtue. Especially for a sniper. It could take hours, days even, for your target to be in your sights. You couldn't get bored, distracted, aggravated. You had to maintain focus. To wait patiently until the time was right, then settle into the zone. Mind and body ready to take the shot. To end a life.

Or, in this case, to put a single hypervelocity armor piercing round through one of two vulnerable spots on an otherwise hardened killing machine.

Time passed slowly as I waited for Raids to engage her foe. I had a passive link to the town and Militia security feeds. When the two fighting machines engaged, I was ready. We'd designated several areas Raids could lure Ravish where I would have a line of sight and be able to take the shot. If Raids had tried to force Ravish into one particular area, she'd have known she was being herded; known it was a trap.

Our preparations might have been excessive. Against a more common target, I'd never have bothered with so many possibilities. But Ravish was no common target.

I tracked the fight through my heads up, switching it off to look through the 599's scope when they finally came into view. The scene was like watching . . . like watching something from a Saturday morning Cortex combat vid. The two machines were almost too fast to follow. Bladed extension arms flashing as they tried to get an advantage over the other.

Through the scope, time slowed. My heart rate dropped. 70 beats a minute. 60. 50. Breathing slow and regular. I was nearly three quarter's of a second's flight from my target. It wasn't simply a matter of being able to put the shot on target, but finding a moment when I knew where she'd be three quarters of a second later. The scope could calculate an impact point based on environmental conditions, but it couldn't predict the motion of two Machines locked in melee combat.

But I could.

A pattern to their movements. Conscious or not, there were certain actions that triggered predictable reactions. Raids knew what I needed to make the shot. Perhaps she was giving it to me. A flash of blade. Feint. Counterfeint. Parry. Then a moment of clarity.

Between heartbeats, my finger squeezes the 599's trigger and a round rips out of the rifle. The inertial compensator keeps the recoil from breaking my shoulder and the muzzle where it was. Ravish was in motion even as the round covered the distance between us, ballistic trajectory intersecting the path of a moving target. My heart beats.

Ravish's backup core is, technically, an easier target than her primary, and the round impacts dead on target with sufficient kinetic energy to punch a hold through her shell and the armored braincase beneath. She reacts instantly, but it's not fast enough. In the moment it takes Ravish to react, Raids has used the opening to drive a razor sharp tungsten spike full force into her sister's primary core. My heart beats.

It's over.

Ravish's power core is still hot, and there's still motion in her actuators, but both of her processing cores have been destroyed. The killing machine is dead. Raids looks at my position, inclines her head in thanks, and rips the components she's been promised from Ravish's crippled chassis, before clearing out.

By the time I make it back from the Nest, the Militia has secured the "corpse" for our own needs. As far as I'm concerned, we can turn it over to Raids when we've made absolutely sure it's finally, and permanently, dead.

All according to plan.

* * * * *

"Except it didn't work out that way, Genni. The Mercs threw a wrench in the works. Same outcome, of course, which is all that really matters."

"All that matters, yeah. I hear ya, Boss. Must have been disappointing after all that planning to not get the shot though."

"I admit a little. But I'm still happy to have that gorram machine out of our hair."

Truth be known, I was. No one knew, except Raids, and now Genni, what we'd had planned. No one knew I hadn't gotten the kill. And it was OK. No one needed to know. Even if I had made the shot, I wouldn't have told anyone the details. It would have just been another thing I did behind the scenes.

It was, after all, what I did.

Hidden from glory

One single priority

Only that matters