The first shot caused an eruption of dirt ahead of the sniper, who sent out a mental shriek of fear but then dove for ground with trained reflexes. Tirdal fired again and again at the area, tossing stalks and dirt in cascades. Dagger’s fear was palpable, edging up toward the level of his rage. And there… fatigue, despair. Emotions were piling on each other, wrestling to be the most important. Tirdal realized he could not ask Dagger to surrender. It would be perceived as weakness. He must push and keep pushing until something snapped. It was still possible, however unlikely, that Dagger might ask to surrender. That would be the best outcome. But it must be begged for, not offered.
Dagger was moving now, low and slow. Tirdal took his best guess as to where and fired again. As long as a few of his shots were close, Dagger was too low to realize they were simply lucky, and would continue to panic. The occasional wisps of smoke from scorched grass couldn’t hurt, either. It would be best to space the shots, so the seventy left would last a goodly number of minutes. Tirdal recalled a human joke about Murphy’s Law of Thermodynamics: things get worse under pressure. So pressure there would be.
In fact, fire might not be a bad thing. Brush fires couldn’t be too uncommon here, even though the oxygen level wasn’t that high. It was a perfectly natural occurrence the Tslek shouldn’t notice, and might serve to throw Dagger over the edge.
A tiny adjustment to the punch gun’s controls, accomplished as two movements between the ongoing shots, and the beam would disperse just slightly more. However, that meant a lower-pressure plasma sheath around each bolt, which should encourage dry, stalky growth, covered in dust and flaky husks, to ignite.
It was a pity the weapon wouldn’t fire faster. Still, four or five shots on the same area should do the trick, the subsequent beams providing more ignition sources and a slight wafting of air through the growth to fan the flames. Tirdal picked a spot he was sure was ahead of where Dagger was, drew it back to what seemed a good estimated distance, and started firing.
Dagger stopped prone and took a few breaths. He cringed as another scattering of dirt preceded the poounk! of the punch gun. The damned Darhel had figured out a way to track him. He thought at first that Tirdal had acquired some gear back at camp, and had finally figured out how to use it. His actions, however, indicated that he was only able to track sporadically, when Dagger was most frustrated. So it was his damned sensat crap. He seemed to notice when Dagger was going to take a shot, but only after the fact; he still could only sense emotions, not thoughts. So the thing to do would be to just… shut down. Get in that sort of meditation mode like when he was shooting. Just… become a rock, a blank spot… What was it that Darhel had said? “Think of a floating bubble…” He’d use that one, since he must. He shut out the earlier comparison to a pool and the surface. Had the slimy freak detected a residual thought of that time when he was eight, when the local bullies had held him under at the local swimming hole? Could it be coincidence, or was the Darhel trying to enrage him with bad memories? If so, it was working, and Dagger didn’t believe in coincidence. So don’t think about that. Think about that soap bubble bit. Ignore the implied insult about how simple and childish it was. There would be time to gloat after he took the shot.
Then he twitched again as another shot landed close enough for him to smell cooked lime from the ground. The Darhel bastard was learning quickly, and Dagger wondered if he’d managed to meet up or talk to Ferret. He was getting harder to kill, not easier.
How could something dodge so many rounds? He was sure a few of them had nicked, at least. Enough to slow the alien twerp down. Except they hadn’t. Was his suit that good? If so, Dagger might be in deep shit. But that wasn’t reasonable, or Tirdal wouldn’t be running.
Except he wasn’t running now. He was attacking. A sudden change in tactics indicated desperation. So Tirdal was in bad shape. A faint grin crossed his face as he thought of that. The asshole was trying to keep him scared as he approached, but he still wasn’t doing too well. His best attack so far had been to try to topple a bluff. No matter what happened, Tirdal still couldn’t actually kill.
A familiar odor crept into his nostrils and brain. It was pleasant and relaxed him just slightly. That was nice. It wasn’t something he’d smelled here, it was… grass smoke?
Then through the waving stems he saw an orange flicker that was also familiar. “You asshole!” he whispered hoarsely, and started to shimmy back in panic. A lucky beam must have caught something dry and flammable in this arid terrain.
Then Dagger realized there were more flames, making that crackling noise that meant they were spreading. Oily gray smoke hung low around him, and tickled his nose and stung his eyes. Shit. A whole area to his left was flaring up, between Tirdal and him.
Still, that meant he could use it as a screen, and he’d better damned well hurry, he realized, because that was the direction the prevailing winds were coming from. If that was a five kilometer breeze he felt, it was as fast as a brisk walk. He’d need to be faster than that.
Eyes wide again, feeling frustration, panic and fear fight with exhaustion and stress, Dagger rose to a crouch and sprinted the hell east and north. He’d had general plans to go that way anyway, but he hated, just hated, being forced into a course of action. But a grass fire was not something he could ignore, and it wouldn’t react to his weapons.
He rode over his shivers and thought of how best to dispose of the rage and, and… fear… he was focusing and concentrating. How about as a mental attack for that sensat bastard? Throw some of this at him and see what happened?
Are you reading my mind, Tirdal the Darhel, cowardly little bastard? Read this, asshole.
Tirdal felt Dagger’s mental outburst. Once again, he had a flashing connection to his enemy’s brain, thoughts and feelings and sensory input cascading over him. Raw, seething hatred! Power and control. The strength of it caused his tal levels to rise, and he fought to lower them. That was the ongoing problem; maintaining the level high enough, without flying off that precipice.
But he had caught that brief glimpse of Dagger’s surroundings. He was now farther to the northeast, almost to those trees at the edge of the prairie. The fire behind him and to Tirdal’s right front was dying down to an angry black and red scar, the red fading to ashen gray as a pall of smoke rolled up and thinned, the upper edge flattening out in the stratified air.
Dagger’s detectability was fading in and out as Tirdal fought the tal levels. Also, he seemed to be becoming “fainter.” As if he was getting ready to take a shot. Or, more likely, trying to mask his emotions. There was a lot of rage there. Time to tweak it even further. Also time to stop shooting, so as not to provide a return target. He got low and began to belly crawl, arms stretched out ahead to minimize damage to the grass.
He called up Dagger and started playing mind games again. “So, Dagger, how are you doing?” he asked as he slipped through the stalks, bending rather than breaking them again. “Of course, I don’t really have to ask. I read your mind.”
He paused at a thinning of the weeds, only to determine it was a path cleared by another herd of gargantuan insectoids. Good. He’d learned much in the last three days. This was something else for the Darhel to practice, on either cultivated “wild” areas or remote planets. The human monopoly on force became less of a potential threat as other tactical knowledge grew.