Endgame by Kristine Smith Page A

Shèràa that she felt as though she tracked quarry on her homeworld. The thought upset her, and she struggled to push it from her mind. When nìRau Cèel counseled her, he had been adamant. Assassination or sabotage, what acts she performed could not be committed on Shèrá. Too much risk of discovery, he had told her. Too much danger, for both of them.
    She held her shooter at the ready as she approached the house, circling the place once before pushing a rock aside with her foot and passing through the partly collapsed doorway. She stepped around a pile of rubble and into what had once been a room. Remains of furniture, sticks of polywood and scraps of weave, littered the space. Some lay scattered across the floor, the rest wadded in corners, where it served as bedding for the animals whose claws Rilas heard skittering against the cracked and stained tile. She sniffed the air, grimacing at the tang of waste and rotted flesh, the stench of the things which lived in this place mingled with that of the things which had died. An unseemly place, and truly. None would look for even the lowest Haárin in such as this.
    Only when her eyes had better adjusted to the half-dark did Rilas explore further. Grit and dried leaves crunched beneath her feet. Sunlight streamed in through a lone window, highlighting dust motes that leapt and fell like sparks from a fire, disturbed by her passage.
    She set her slingbag on the floor. A short time spent pushing aside rock and clutter left her with a space through which she could maneuver as well as a path to the window. She hoped that it would look out over the bay, and was pleased to find that it did. “I can just see the water.” And beyond that, the curve of land that held her target.
    Rilas recovered her bag from its resting place and carried it to the window, set it on the dusty floor and opened it. She removed wrapped tubes, a small box, a roll of heavy cloth. First she removed the wrapping from the tubes, then laid outthe smooth plastic on the floor to serve as a barrier. Lay the tubes atop it, followed by the box and the cloth roll.
    She knelt. Picked up the tubes, one short and one long, fitted them together, then set them aside. Unrolled the cloth and removed three items. First, two curves of metal, one large and one much smaller, the stock and the discharge mech. Last, her prize, her most valued thing. A clear glassy cylinder shot through with lines and discs of color. Her sight mech.
    She worked with a speed born of practice. Attached barrel to stock. Fastened discharge mech to the underside of barrel, sight mech to the top. Removed the sighting device from her pocket, attached it to the sight mech, and activated data transfer.
    Rilas watched the colors in the sight mech brighten and dull, flash and fade. As the last burst of color faded, she detached the sighting device and tucked it back in her pocket. Only then did she rise, turn to the window and raise the rifle. Bracing the stock against her shoulder, she poked the barrel through a gap in the shattered pane and lowered her eye to the sight mech.
    Fully assembled, the rifle felt weighty, but balanced, like a finely crafted shooter. She paused to run her hand over the barrel, savoring the smooth chill of the dull black metalloceramic. She then resumed her check, studying the bay and the cliffs beyond through the sight mech.
    It is as though I stand there. After all this time, after completing so many such tasks for nìRau Cèel, she still marveled at how the mech magnified the distant view, how the micro-lenses moved in concert to sharpen, brighten, provide contrast, expose detail no idomeni eye could detect unaided.
    Rilas scanned a road that diagonaled along the cliff face and wound past structures before vanishing at the summit. She moved on to a larger structure, one of the largest she had seen on Elyas, which jutted from the cliff face as though part of the stone. Through windows, she could see