Chapter 747: The Sniper
Night was not ideal for fighting.
During the Months of Demons, both sun and moon disappeared behind the permanent overcast. A dim, sourceless light lay across the shifting desert, faintly tracing the crests of sand hills. Everything the light failed to reach was simply dark.
Given that, torches were necessities for either side—for attacking or for holding ground.
When the first scattered glints of fire appeared from the direction of the oasis, Danny polished his clip, pressed it into the loading port, and bolted the action.
“Attention. Enemies incoming.”
“I see them.”
He gave Malt’s voice and then replied to it. The habit had formed without him deciding to form it. Malt was no longer on the sniper team—had been reassigned after everything that happened—but Danny found the silence where Malt’s voice used to be more distracting than the imaginary conversation.
Shortly after his release from detention and his return to the gun battalion, Brian had come to find him. The commander had brought a new flintlock.
The one Danny was holding now.
It looked similar to the bolt guns used by the rest of the sniper team at a glance. The difference was immediately apparent when he picked it up. Weight distribution. The way it settled. He had handled enough guns to recognize one that had been made with exceptional care—the way a swordsman could distinguish between a training blade and the real thing by the sound it made in the air, by the way the grip fit differently against the palm.
The barrel’s metal gleamed without roughness. Every joint was polished. No prickle in the grip, no binding in the action. And on top of the barrel: a monocular telescope, its lens engraved with two fine crisscrossed lines, the intersection marking exactly where the bullet would land.
Danny did not know the optics. He knew only that a distant target which had been a vague smear became clear and specific when he looked through the lens. The effective range, as far as he could tell, had been extended in practice as well as in theory. During the test session he had put rounds into a humanoid target at five hundred meters with roughly ninety percent headshot accuracy in still air.
When Brian told him the weapon had been made for him specifically—despite his misconduct—Danny had almost wept.
He had not earned this. His Majesty had chosen to give it anyway, and with it the freedom to select his own firing positions. Danny had no payment to make for that except his life, and he intended to honor the debt.
When Brian asked if he wanted a protector assigned to him, Danny had declined.
He already had two. The gun. And Malt.
The senior officers briefed every team before each engagement. Danny knew the operation in its broad shape: the artillery battalion would light their rampart and fire at intervals to draw the watchdog’s counter-attack, bleeding their strength in preparation for the main assault at dawn. Controlled fire rate was essential—too rapid a bombardment would scatter the enemy before they committed; too slow, and the ammunition reserves would be empty before the night was out.
He knew, because he had been paying attention, that the artillery battalion had no real awareness of how limited their shells were. A dozen carriages, more than half carrying cannon and machine gun ammunition. Two Longsong Cannons firing at exercise pace would exhaust the supply in under an hour. The soldiers in the artillery battalion had no idea. They had Hummingbird’s help to even get the equipment here, and they walked around as if the thunder they made was their own.
Danny had no patience for it.
The gun battalion carried everything themselves—weapons, ammunition, all of it. Each man was responsible for what he carried. That was how a real unit operated.
The real reason for the controlled firing rate is ammunition conservation, he thought. Not tactics. But let them believe what they want.
The supply convoy from the recruits was still one or two weeks out.
When the forward torchlight was lured into the First Army’s ambush, Danny raised his scope.
“Northerly wind. Moderate strength. Target is approximately seven hundred meters.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He spoke both sides. The habit was clean now, automatic; it kept him calm.
He had positioned himself closer to the rampart than his range would typically require—shooting across the field of advance rather than from behind. At night, with accuracy degraded, it was better to keep the targets visible and close than to extend range and lose them in the dark.
The Sand Nation warriors were skilled cavalry. As the scattered torchlight moved and organized, it gradually formed a line. Hooves on packed sand, a rhythm becoming a roll. They threw their torches—which Danny had expected—and drew blades that reflected nothing. Now the lit rampart of the artillery was the only fixed landmark in the dark.
Then, from both flanking sand hills at once: a series of flat, fast cracks.
The machine guns.
The distinct dry percussion of their fire mixed with the drumming hooves, and the two sounds together were the true beginning of it. Bullets swept across the charge. The desert erupted with shouting—screams and curses and the sound of bodies striking sand. Shadows moved faster than the torches had, erratic now, broken out of their formation.
Danny watched none of it.
His eyes stayed on the enemy at the very front.
“Five hundred meters. I have you.”
Night made target acquisition slow. He could barely distinguish the shape of the lead rider—a mass of shadow moving against slightly lesser shadow. But this was not an exercise. A clean kill required a hit anywhere on the body; it didn’t need to be the head. The mount would do as well as the rider.
He exhaled halfway. Held.
Pulled the trigger.
The barrel barely moved. The smoke rose. The lead rider simply—stopped. A quiver, a fall, and the horse continued without him.
This is my ground, Danny thought. This is where I belong.
“Did you see that, Malt?”
“Don’t lose focus. Next one is coming.”
“Already on it.”
He worked the bolt, settled, and began again.
He was perhaps a dozen targets in when he noticed it: multiple times he had acquired the lead rider, only to find—by the time the trigger broke—that the target was already going down. Falling sideways, always to the same side. Consistent.
Someone else was shooting.
The pattern was too precise to be random. He read it: a sniper positioned near one of the flanking sand hills, close enough to shoot through the torchless dark with something approaching certainty, hitting the torso reliably, predicting the rider’s path through the shifting desert wind before each shot rather than correcting for it after.
Is there another sniper in the army?
Danny didn’t know. He hadn’t been told. Could be someone from the precision shooting squad—or someone like him, a soldier from the gun battalion that His Majesty had equipped separately, given a special weapon and sent without fanfare.
He increased his pace.
He was not willing to lose to anyone. Not tonight.
Not with Malt watching.
“One remaining on your right. Two hundred fifty meters from the defensive line.”
“He’s mine.”
Chapter 747: The Sniper
Translator: Transn Editor: Meh
The night was not the perfect hour to fight.
The sun and the moon both became invisible during the Months of Demons. Dismal light spilled across the heaving desert, faintly tracing the curve of sand hills. The area which light failed to penetrate was, in contrast, pitch dark.
Given the poor lighting condition, torches became necessities for either attacking or defending.
When glitters of fires emerged here and there in the oasis’ direction, Danny polished his clip, slipped it into the loading port and bolted.
“Attention, enemies are coming.”
“I saw them.”
He first mimicked Malt’s voice and then replied to himself.
In this way, he could pretend that Malt was still fighting beside him as his protector, although Malt was no longer a member of the sniper team.
Shortly after Danny had been released from his detention and sent back to the gun battalion, Brian had come to see him and brought him a brand new flintlock.
It was exactly the one he was holding right now.
Although the new flintlock did not look any different from the bolt gun used by the sniper team, he knew at once that it was a masterpiece after weighing
it in the hand.
Like longswords that bore a similar looking, some of them were casually forged by blacksmiths just for training purposes; some of them, however, were splendid weapons, whose blade could bite into flesh as easily as cutting through cheese.
The metal part of the barrel gleamed, its surface as smooth as a maid’s skin. The joints were all polished like a work of art. The gun was perfectly molded without any prickly feelings.
What surprised Danny most was the monocular telescope on the top. The lens was engraved with two straight, crisscrossed fine lines, the intersection of which exactly aligned with the place where a bullet should land.
Danny did not understand why the distant target, which had been blurry and tiny earlier, became clear and visible instantly when he looked through the telescope. This meant that the shooting range of the gun had, in a way, been extended. During the testing shooting session, Danny had further verified his theory. He had noticed that the new flintlock was much more accurate than an ordinary bolt gun. When there was no or little wind, he could successfully hit the humanoid target 500 meters away with a headshot at an accuracy of 90%.
When he had learned that the weapon had been specially made for him by His Majesty, Danny had almost burst into tears. Despite his misconduct, he was still given high hopes by his Majesty and was even granted the power to freely choose his shooting positions. Danny knew he had nothing to pay back the king for his benevolence but his own life.
When Brian had asked him whether he wanted to select a protector, however, Danny had declined the offer immediately.
He had his own protector already.
It was this gun.
And Malt.
Like his commander had predicted, more firelights emerged and they covered the desert like fallen stars. Before every battle, the superiors would usually disclose the operation intention and operation target to each team in detail so that soldiers would know when they should expect to see the battle end.
For example, the cannon unit would lit bonfires at their rampart and fire every seven minutes or so to entice enemies to start counterattacks, for the purpose of bleeding off strength from the watchdog clan and thereby preparing for the general attack at dawn. The lit battlement would attract enemies’ attention, whereas controlling the firing rate was to avoid a fierce, swift bombard that tended to directly disperse the roving enemies.
Of course, Danny knew the artillery battalion did not have the capability to control their firing rate.
Soldiers from the artillery battalion had no idea how many resources were available for them. They were all arrogant, incompetent fighters who probably could not even transport basic equipment to the desert had the witch named Hummingbird not helped them. Compared with those useless idiots, soldiers from the gun battalion were much more productive. Each soldier in the gun battalion was responsible for carrying both weapons and ammunition.
There were a dozen carriages in total, over half of which carried cannon and machine gun shells. One wooden box was only able to house two howitzers. If they fought in the same way as they did during the exercise, two Longsong cannons would consume all the ammunition they took with them in an hour. If the ammunition was exhausted, they would have nothing to fire.
Although Danny admitted that the exercise was magnificent, he always thought tons of gold royals were burned each time they fired. Unfortunately, too ignorant and conceited to understand that all the expenses incurred were actually borne by His Majesty’s treasury, the soldiers from the artillery battalion simply viewed such remarkable power as their own. If one day His Majesty stopped financially supporting them, these soldiers would be absolutely nothing compared with the gun battalion!
Therefore, the real reason for controlling the firing rate was to reserve some ammunition for future emergencies, rather than avoid the dispersion of
enemies. They probably had to wait for another one or two weeks before new recruits provided supplies and new ammunition to the oasis.
When the firelight at the very front was lured into the First Army’s ambush, Danny raised his telescope.
“Norther…ly wind, relatively strong. Your target is about 700 meters away.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Danny muttered to himself, his hand on the trigger.
Considering the accuracy would be greatly affected at night, he did not position himself too far away from the battlement. Instead, he decided to shoot across the field. In this way, he would not lose sight of his enemies even if they were charging forward on their warhorses.
Sand Nation was indeed barbarians good at fighting on horseback. The dispersed firelights had gradually formed a straight line by the time they charged. The patterings of hooves drummed the ground in a chorus and gradually grew faster. Meanwhile, those warriors tossed the torches and drew out their swords. As their swords reflected no light, the roaring battlement of the artillery became the most distinctive landmark Danny could see.
Just then, numerous flickers suddenly appeared at the two sandhills flanking in the shadow.
“Tuk, tuk, tuk…”
The sharp, crisp sound of machine guns mixed with the drumming horse hooves officially marked the commencement of the battle. As there was no field artillery, heavy machine guns became the weapons with the longest shooting range. Bullets streamed out and swept over the charging warriors. The desert instantly began to thunder. Danny could hear people shrieking, cursing and yelling. Shadows seemed to move even faster in the darkness.
Danny paid them no mind.
His eyes were fixed on the enemy at the very front.
“500 meters. I got you.”
It was not easy to locate his target at a moonless night. He could barely discern the figure of the charging enemy. However, the battle was not an exercise either. He did not have to shoot his head to score. A shot in any parts of the enemy’s body would be enough to take him down. This applied to both the mount and the rider.
Danny pulled the trigger. The barrel slightly trembled. He was exhilarated by the smoke of gunpowder.
Danny did not see where the bullet landed, nor did he notice any spilled blood. The enemy simply died with a quiver and fell off the horse.
“This is my hunting ground,” thought Danny. “This is where I should stay.”
“Did you just see that, Malt?”
“Don’t be distracted. Your next target is coming.”
“Ah, place the matter in my hand.”