Chapter 37
I watched the battle through the zoom of my sniper rifle, constantly refocusing the view to keep up with their movements.
Vann was fast. He fought like a cornered animal, desperate to survive, and somehow that seemed to be the one foil to Seba’s careful, meticulous, perfectly curated fighting style.
It was like watching a trained martial artist in a bar brawl with a street thug, one fighting with honor and dignity, the other, fighting to win, to harm, and to kill.
It was intoxicating and beautiful. That drive. That desperation. So completely rough around the edges.
On the surface, he was small, frail, and ordinary.
He didn’t have anything noteworthy in his record, and he’d gotten a nice scholarship, on the path of being a respectable person of respectable rank and standing.
He was the kind of guy who would get matched with a nice girl, even if he hadn’t come from much to begin with, because he was a hard worker in a smart career.
His life should have been sheltered from what the rest of us had to endure.
But I’d seen it when I’d fought with him in the simulator, time and again, I’d seen it on the mat, and now that I was watching him engage with someone else, I was seeing something truly feral that some part of me knew was there, but struggled to truly accept.
The man wasn’t a quitter, but this was a level beyond that.
This was someone with something to prove, who went a lifetime feeling like he was always one of the have-nots.
Maybe I was projecting, or maybe I simply wasn’t blind and oblivious.
An explosion separated limbs and threw Vann and Sebastian in opposite directions.
My view was obscured by red dust, and when it cleared, I saw Vann bolting for the Reactor, his systems half destroyed, missing arms, and not letting any of it slow him down.
He was learning to accept the pain of injury and fight through it.
So very focused. What a good boy, staying true to the mission instead of the fight.
I trained my scope on his core, and I rested my finger on the trigger, ready to pull at any second.
Seba gave chase, blind, headless, and using his back up sensors to follow.
Even if he caught him, it would be too late.
Vann was already in range to destroy the reactor with his self-destruct sequence.
Unless I took him out right now, this mission was done, and we lost.
I kept following him through my scope. Seba crashed into him, violently throwing them both onto the base of the reactor. His gun was against Vann’s core, but Vann was exactly where he wanted to be.
I removed my hand from the trigger, returned my rifle to my back, and I stood on the cliff side to wait for the spectacle of it all. Not three seconds later, I watched from a distance as the reactor exploded in a mushroom cloud of brilliant blacks and pinks.
“Mission Failed. Initiate retreat,” the feminine voice told me. I couldn’t help but laugh.
You earned this one, Mishka.
I can’t wait to see how you handle the real thing.