“It’s a point of view,” Ryan commented, sighting the Steyr on a camera that was high in the vaulted chamber, partially hidden behind a small buttress that ran off a pillar to the high ceiling. Squeezing gently, he let off a shot that whip cracked in the air, echoed almost immediately by a similar—though deeper— crack as the camera shattered under the high velocity shell.
J.B. sighted Ryan’s SIG-Sauer on a camera that was more within handblaster range and loosed a shot that took out the lens with a minimum of effort and fuss—a typical J.B. Dix move. His very movements were easy and laconic, with an ease that belied the razor sharpness behind the move. He and Ryan had elected to take their sector together as the Armorer had been swift to point out that target shooting with handblasters would be efficient for those cameras that were within easy view—but those that lay farther up in the ceiling and walls of the chamber presented a problem. To take them out was hard enough. To even spot them in the first instance might require a magnified sight such as that on Ryan’s Steyr.
The one-eyed warrior agreed, and so he accompanied the Armorer and was sighting higher and farther up than his friend, taking out those cameras where a single handblaster shot might not be enough. It would be stupid to waste ammo on two SIG-Sauer shots where one from the Steyr would suffice.
Taking out the cameras in J.B.’s allotted sector gave Ryan some idea of what he was looking for, and he soon left the Armorer behind, moving swiftly around the chamber, joining the other members of his party and covering their areas at the higher level, picking out those sparsely but carefully concealed cameras that occupied the upper levels.
Eventually he was satisfied that all the sec cameras had been taken out. There was always the possibility that there might be one or two that had escaped detection, but the sight on the Steyr was so powerful that the odds were against that.
“We’re as secure as it’s possible to be,” he said to his assembled crew. He dispatched Jak to tell Gloria, and the Gate queen responded by informing the albino that the base camp was also secured and guarded at all points leading off the large hall.
“Now we’ve got ourselves really dug in, I think we’d better talk about what the fuck we do next, don’t you, honey?” she said to the albino.
Jak allowed her a smile. Rare on his scarred visage, he found that the warrior queen had an ability to inspire them in him. “Sure. Can’t stay here forever,” he replied. “You and Ryan need talk tactics.”
“Then talk we’d better. Eat, as well. I don’t know about you, sweetie, but there’s nothing like a chilling to work up an appetite. I’ll set the stupidworks men to it.” She added, before smiling, “Not that it includes you, of course.”
DOWN ON THE FIRST level, where the sec monitors were set up, the Illuminated Ones were unaware of the ease that had descended over the Gate camp. Al and Simon were standing in front of another bank of monitors, these all in darkness. The monitor system for the interior hall was like that for the sec cameras on the exterior of the building. Whereas the vid systems and screens for those cameras that were dotted around the compound—and also on the corridor system in the interior of the building—were sectioned off into individual rooms to allow the vid watcher to concentrate his attention entirely on his sector, the monitor systems to cover the exterior and main hall of the central building were set up in a bank that would provide an overall picture of proceedings and enable a sec chief and a trained observer to pick out tactical points and direct a defensive or attacking action.
Except that this strategy didn’t allow for the cameras to be taken out. From their position on the upper level of the redoubt, Simon and Al watched in mounting horror as screen after screen went dark, watched each time as one of Ryan’s people was caught full in the camera eye as they lined up the shot, then vanished in a blink as the mechanism was shattered and the vid link severed.