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.Slow, tedious searching of every rooftop and window in the garden well, looking for someone that didn’t hang out in one spot for very long.The easier way was what Koller was really banking on, but it would require some patience.One of the smart rifle’s features was the ability to recognize and pinpoint muzzle flash.If the enemy sniper fired again, and within his line of sight, his rifle would spot the flash, and calculate a return trajectory within fractions of a second.If the Othersider didn’t know about the feature — and Koller wouldn’t have known about it himself if he hadn’t read the documentation — he would be in for a very small, very fast surprise.But for that to work, the Othersider would have to shoot first, and for the last half–day, he had been stubbornly refusing to do just that.Koller gave up on the rooftops and began scanning the wall at the far end of the well.Left to right in broad sweeps, moving up or down after each sweep and heading back the other way, working a rough grid.Every nook and crevice on the wall was examined in both light amplification and IR.Maintenance corridor — clear.Ventilation shaft — covered, probably clear.Odd–looking panel — odd–looking, but completely solid.And so on.He nearly jumped out of his skin when the gun chirped in his hand.“What the heck?” he said.He blinked and looked into the viewfinder.A bright red arrow on the left of the screen.“Ohhhhhhh.” The counter–sniper sensor, telling him where the shot had come from.He rapidly panned the rifle to the left.The arrow moved to the right of the screen.Swears filled the spot under the mayor’s desk as he corrected to the right, overshooting again.Taking a deep breath, he tracked back to the left at a more measured pace.Finally, the arrow turned to a dot, hovering over a dark room on the far end of the garden well.The sensor automatically adjusted the gain on the light amplification, revealing an observation room overlooking the garden well, seats arrayed on a gentle slope like in a theatre.One of the many rooms on the ship that had seemed like a good idea to whoever had designed it, it hadn’t been enjoyed much by the actual citizens of the ship and had fallen into disuse over the past centuries.Not complete disuse, however, judging from the movement in the back of the room.There, a figure struggling in the low–gravity, trying to haul a bulky object up the stairs to the door.Koller moved the reticule onto the door the figure was moving towards and hit the targeting button.A blue arrow appeared on the side of the screen.He knew what that was and slowly began panning towards it, until a blue reticule appeared almost in the center of his viewfinder.He settled the crosshairs on the blue reticule, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger.The rifle shuddered beside him, snapping the projectile out with a pleasing sound.Panning back to the observation lounge he watched as the door shut behind the retreating figure.A split second later a fist shaped hole appeared in the door accompanied by an explosion of plastic and metal splinters.Koller watched the hole for another several seconds.The fragments of the door wafted around the room, plastic and metal and foam, taking a long time to settle in the low G.The splinters were not, sadly, accompanied by any noticeable amounts of blood or gore.“Fuck!” he yelled, swinging the gun back and forth across the room in hurried, jerky movements.§Stein held her breath as Bruce pulled the massive hatch open.It had already been slightly ajar when they had found it, and although there were no sounds coming from within, they had approached it carefully, nonetheless.Bruce’s shoulder sagged slightly.“Empty,” he said.They were on the 20th level, getting close to the central axis of the ship.Gravity was present but was more of a suggestion than a law.Getting there without being seen or shot had taken a ridiculously circuitous route involving a great deal of crawling, skulking, stairs, and complaining about stairs.Bruce stepped inside the disconnect cavity, Stein moving to the entrance to look inside.There were the two clamps, just like the others they’d examined, this set still grasped tightly together.Bruce’s terminal light flickered around the cavity, casting odd shadows on its curved walls.To Stein’s eyes, the disconnect didn’t look obviously bent.But their stolen notes indicated that it had indeed jammed.Someone would be getting to it soon.“There’s a hatch on the other side,” Bruce said.Stein stepped into the cavity, bracing herself against one of the big clamps with one hand, stepping carefully in the awkward gravity.She turned on her light and moved around the disconnect.Sure enough, there was another hatch on the far side of the cavity, clearly connecting to the aft core of the ship, the part that would ultimately separate.“Is it open?” she asked.Bruce nodded.“A crack, yeah.” He froze, then flicked his light off.From the far side of the hatch, the sound of voices as people approached.Stein froze as well, turning off her own light.The voices stopped, just outside the hatch.“We’ll have a better angle at it from this side,” one of them said.“I’m going to start it up out here.This thing’s a bastard to maneuver in low G, and I don’t want to cut my foot off.”Stein swore under her breath and started backpedaling away [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]