“We going in after him?” Lambert asked.
“We don’t have to,” I said. “We just have to wait for him to position himself to take another shot. Then we take him.”
“How are we going to get him to take another shot?”
“Easy,” I said, and stood up.
“Your suit’s not going to take another direct hit,” Powell said.
“Then maybe the three of you should kill the shit out of him before he gets the chance to take another shot,” I said.
“On it.”
“Good.” I stood there in the street, watching the pixelated sniper settle into another apartment, a floor below his previous one, and over the course of a couple of minutes, carefully position himself by a window to take another shot at me.
“Got you,” I said.
The apartment building exploded.
More than a hundred meters away, I was knocked back by the crack of the pressure wave and then by the rush of heat and flying debris.
“What the fuck just happened?” I heard Salcido yell, followed by Powell and Lambert yelling at each other to get back. I rolled again, then looked up and saw a dirty wall of dust rolling toward me from the collapsing concrete. I ducked my head and held my breath despite my mouth being covered by my mask, and filtering my air for me.
After a minute the worst of the dust cleared and I stood up. There was a pile of rubble where the apartment building used to stand.
“Fuck,” I said.
“Wasn’t that what we didn’t want?” I heard Lambert yell, via my ears rather than my BrainPal. I looked back and saw him, Powell, and Salcido walking up on me.
“It looks like what we wanted and what the higher-ups wanted were two different things,” Powell said. “I told you we should have just called it in. We could have saved ourselves some trouble.”
“Shut up, Ilse,” I said, and she shut up. I turned to Salcido. “Find out if there was anyone in the building besides the sniper.”
“I’m pretty sure it was cleared out before we even got here.”
“Make sure,” I said. “If there are any civilians in there, we start digging them out.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Lambert said. I turned to him to snap his head off for complaining about rescuing civilians, but he held his hand up. “Not about that,” he said. “Look at your feed. That goddamn sniper is still alive.”
I looked back at the building—or more accurately, at the pile of rubble. Near the periphery of the rubble, under about a meter of concrete, our sniper was trying to push a pile of concrete and rebar off of him.
“Come on,” I said.
We reached the spot where the sniper was buried. Salcido trained his Empee on where the sniper’s head would be while Powell and Lambert and I pulled chunks of building away from the hidden shooter. After a minute, I pried off a final slab, clearing a shot for Salcido.
“Jesus,” he said.
Our sniper was fifteen standard years old at best and she was covered in blood from where the fallen concrete had creased her skull. I glanced through the rubble as best I could and saw her left arm pinned and her right leg going off in a direction it shouldn’t.
“Get away from me,” she said, and her voice told me that at least one of her lungs had collapsed.
“We can get you out of there,” I said.
“Don’t want your help, green.”
I was confused by this until I figured out she meant me, with my green skin. I looked back at Salcido and his Empee. “Put that down and help us.” He looked doubtful but did as he was told. I turned back to the sniper. “We’re not going to hurt you,” I said.
“You brought a building down on me,” she wheezed.
“That wasn’t our intent,” I said. I skipped over the part where our intent was to shoot her in the head the moment she gave us a chance. “We’ll get you out.”
“No.”
“You don’t want to die here,” I said.
“I do,” she said. “This is where I lived. I lived here. And you destroyed it. Like you destroy everything.”
“How are we doing?” I asked, not taking my eyes off the girl.
“Almost there,” Powell said. Then she sent a message to me through her BrainPal. The chunk of concrete on her leg is the only thing keeping her from bleeding out, she said. If we move it, she dies. She’s dying anyway.
“Okay,” I said. Call in for a medic, I said through the BrainPal.
Why? Powell asked. You’re being awfully nice to someone who was just trying to kill you and who we were just trying to kill. She doesn’t even want our help. You should just let her die.
I gave you an order, I said. Powell visibly shrugged.
“We’re going to call for a medic,” I said, to the sniper.
“I don’t want a medic,” she said, and her eyes closed. “I don’t want you. Why don’t you leave. This isn’t your planet. It’s ours. We don’t want you here. Leave. Just leave.”
“It’s not that simple,” I said.
The girl didn’t say anything. About a minute later she was dead.