The End of All Things: The Third Instalment Read Free Page B

time for tacos.”
    “And then have the Kyotans pissed off at us because several hundred of their people are homeless, surrounding buildings are damaged or possibly destroyed, infrastructure compromised, plus a big pile of shattered apartment complex dead in the middle of the street,” Lambert pointed out.
    “You’re doing that thing where you think you’re thinking about long-term implications again, aren’t you, Lambert.”
    “I’m pointing out flattening the building might be unsubtle and not the best course of action.”
    “I prefer to think of it as a Gordian knot type of solution,” Powell said.
    “The Gordian knot wasn’t twelve stories high,” Lambert countered. “With lots of people living in it.”
    There was a sharp crack and the whirr of masonry shearing off a building forty meters up the road. The Kyoto security officers who had been peeking their heads around it very quickly unpeeked.
    “He should have hit them from that distance,” Salcido said, unimpressed.
    I motioned to the several dead Kyoto officers in the road in front of us. “He’s accurate enough,” I said. “Or she.”
    “He or she’d be a lot less accurate with several stories of apartment building falling on their heads,” Powell said.
    “We’re not destroying the building,” I said. “Get it out of your head.”
    “Well, what do you want to do then, boss?” Salcido said.
    I craned up to look at the building again. It was your basic concrete block sort of apartment complex. The complex had several corner and near-corner apartments that the sniper could use as vantage points for the road we were on. The apartments were difficult to see into visually and heat scanning wasn’t turning up anything; this sniper was using camo that made them difficult to spot across the whole electromagnetic spectrum. Or was wearing a nice insulating jacket.
    “We could land a squad on the roof,” Powell said. “Flush out the asshole.”
    “If I were the sniper I’d have wired the roof,” I said.
    “How much destructive power do you think this sniper has?”
    “I’m willing to err on the side of caution, here.”
    “So he can blow up the building but we can’t,” Powell said. “Well, that’s just perfect.”
    “The point is to have no one blow up the building,” I said. “Suggest some other options, please.”
    “Track for movement,” Salcido said. “Plug him the next time he takes a shot.”
    “This differs from what we’ve been doing how?” Lambert said. “You can argue about whether this guy is a good shot, but he’s at least pretty good at not being seen until he takes a shot. And unless our return shot is immediate, we’re not going to hit him.”
    “But we can track the shot,” I said. “I mean if the sniper takes a shot, our BrainPals can track its trajectory.”
    “As long as we’re looking in the right place, sure, I guess,” Salcido said.
    “We’d still have to return fire almost instantly,” Lambert said.
    “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe not.”
    Lambert and Salcido looked at each other. “You’re being cryptic, Lieutenant.”
    I looked at Salcido. “You’re the resident Empee expert,” I said.
    “This is true,” he said, and he was. He could tell you trivia about the CDF’s standard rifle that you didn’t know you didn’t care about until he told it to you. “And?”
    “The Empee builds its load on the fly out of nanobotic material.”
    “Right,” Salcido said. “Keeps us from having to carry around six different types of weapons or ammo.”
    “Okay,” I said. “I want to use the rocket launcher function, and I want to specify the payload of the rocket. Can I do that?”
    “As long as the payload of the rocket is something that can be assembled almost instantly from the ammunition block, sure.”
    “Then I want you to make a payload of trackers,” I said. “Tiny little trackers. The size of dust mites.”
    Salcido looked at me quizzically for a couple of seconds until the