Ashes

Grey ash drifted slowly down over everything in sight. From my position in the ruins of the tallest building downtown, I could only see a few thousand feet into the morning gloom. I adjusted my legs, being careful not to shake the ragged camouflage netting above me. Any motion would be a dead giveaway; it would give me away and then I would be dead.

My scope blinked silently with hundreds of heat signatures. My eyes couldn’t see anything, but the scanners were picking up a whole battalion of mercenaries winding their way through the urban wreckage below me. Their constant pressure had won them foothold after foothold, and we were losing more ground every day.

I radioed into Central, and their response was music to my ears: “Hold for 30 more seconds, then give them everything you’ve got.”

I clicked the seconds off, subvocalizing the words, “Twen-tee-eight, twen-tee-nine, ther-tee!”

My finger nestled into the trigger, pressing it to the break. My body thrilled at the sensation of the mechanical engagement of internal assemblies. I pressed all the way down, and a shot rang out, muffled by my heavy suppressor. One of the heat signatures tumbled off its path, disappearing into a deep ravine.

My scope lit up with frenzied motion as the battalion raced for cover. I released my finger, pressed again, then watched as another signature dropped in place.

They returned fire, or tried to, but I knew it would be several minutes before they could come close to finding me with their primitive sensor arrays. Pull. Release. Watch them tumble. Pull. Release. Watch them tumble.

Without warning, I heard a clatter of metal all around me. The room filled with tiny red dots, then erupted into a thousand flaming jets of super-heated liquid metal. My body was hit from every side at once, but I managed to pull the trigger one last time. I was gone before the round reached its target.