The Man Who Never Missed Read Online Free PDF Page B

going to last long, he felt himself about to explode—
    —exploded into a shower of blood and torn flesh as the slugs from his carbine smacked into her flesh. The look of surprise on her face, of puzzlement, touched him. She had not known she could be hurt, that she could die. It was there on her face as she fell, the amazement. Among the hundreds of them charging across the harvested wheat field, he saw her face clearly. But the look was on other faces in the background. Wrong, the look said. This isn’t right, this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be, those dying expressions said—
    “Khadaji, get your quad to the left, three hundred degrees! There’s another wave coming!”
    “Jasper, Wilks, Reno, the Lojt says cover three hundred, stat!”
    “Why are they still coming, Emile?” Reno was almost sobbing. “We’re blowing them to fuck and they ain’t even armed! They’re fucking crazy!”
    “Goddamn fanatics,” Jasper cut in. “They don’t think they can die, their leader’s told them they’re invincible. Well, we’ll show the stupid ratholes—” He triggered another blast of his carbine, waving it back and forth at hip level like a water hose. Three hundred meters out, four or five of the attackers went down, human wheat in the field used to grow a different crop.
    “Stupid fuckers, stupid fuckers, stupid, stupid—!” Jasper screamed as he fanned his weapon back and forth. All around them, other quads burned the air with blasts from their carbines, firing a locust-cloud of explosive bullets at the oncoming enemy. Thousands of the attackers dropped, so many they were stacked two or three meters high in places, with others climbing the hills of human debris to keep coming. Those were cut down as well, until the mounds of dead grew higher still.
    “Why don’t they stop?” Reno was crying, pointing his empty carbine at the sea of people, clicking the firing stud over and over. “Why don’t they stop? Why?”
    Khadaji felt gray, he felt as if a barrel of sand had been poured over him, ground into his eyes and nose and mouth and muscles. His arms ached from the weight of the carbine, the stink of electrochem propellant filled his nostrils, the roar of the explosions seemed continuous, even through the mute-plugs in his ears. But he kept firing. And firing. And firing…
    He opened his eyes suddenly, but otherwise didn’t move. The sheets were damp from his sweat and he felt chilled. Only a dream, he told himself. Just a bad dream. He couldn’t even remember it, only that it was bad. He took a couple of deep breaths and went through a relaxation drill, but he was still tense. And awake.
    After a few minutes, he sat up, then stepped out of the bed. He padded across the floor, the air cool on his naked skin. He bent and touched his toes, straightened and leaned back, stretching his belly muscles. He was in good shape, but using Reflex drained him. He always resolved to avoid the stuff after he went through one of these nights, but sometimes it was necessary. Only a little while more and he could stop.
    He went to his desk, slid it aside, and opened the secret store box under the flooring. In one corner was a small case, a flash-rigged packet coded to open by the print of his left ring finger. He sat cross-legged and naked on the floor by the desk and printed the lock open. Anybody who tried to violate the packet without the proper print would be rewarded by a face full of phosphoreme at 800 degrees C.
    Inside the case was a writing nib and a small pad of paper. A single number was written on the top sheet: 2376. He stared at the number for a minute, then tore the sheet from the pad. Add four in the woods. Plus two on the picket line, that’s six. Four more in front of the T-plex made ten and the Sub-Befal made it eleven. Twenty-three-eighty-seven. He wrote the number on the blank top sheet. He put the pad back into its case and tucked it back into the locked case. There was no need to count the