Chapter 57: Long-Range Discipline
Kian Voss hadn't forgotten his primary objective: grinding his Marksman proficiency. In the logic of his System, skills only improved through "Meaningful Action."
To increase his skill with a rifle, he had to hit targets. A successful hit granted a point of proficiency. There were slower ways—field-stripping the weapon, cleaning the firing pin, or performing maintenance—but those were agonizingly gradual.
In his past life as a gamer, he remembered the "PMC Grinders" who would find a bolt-action rifle and spend hours simply cycling the bolt to eject and reload the same round, over and over, just to see the bar move a fraction of a millimeter. Kian's hands would probably catch fire before he saw a real return on that kind of tedium.
No, he needed live targets.
He was currently at the highest point of the Strategic Reserve Warehouse. His head was only a few meters below the reinforced plastocrete ceiling. From this "God's Eye" perch, the entire sector was laid out beneath him. It was a sniper's paradise.
He pressed his eye to the long-range optic and scanned the floor. A conflict was brewing.
Two groups were clashing in the center of the vault. The first group consisted of about eighty freelance scav-rats. They carried torches and flickering glow-globes in one hand and rusted cleavers in the other. Kian recognized their rags—they were independent scavengers, drawn here by the scent of the previous Syndicate war. The battlefield was still littered with gear; to a lone rat, a single PDF helmet was a month's worth of food.
The second group was an Alchem-Hound recovery team. They were roughly two hundred strong. Among them were several hulking Gristle-Hounds and a heavy metal flatbed trolley. Resting on the trolley was a dormant, sedated Chem-Sow.
The Hounds were here to reclaim the equipment and "meat" lost in the previous skirmish. They had recently conscripted a wave of new "meat-stock" who lacked weapons, so this recovery mission was vital to their "Mother."
The freelance scavengers were outnumbered, but they were healthy, desperate adults. The Hounds, aside from their "Elite" Gristle-Hounds, were mostly skeletal junkies whose brains were half-melted by Tox-Stimms. The two groups were currently locked in a brutal, low-tech stalemate.
The Gristle-Hounds were the deciding factor. They were mountains of knotted muscle, swinging massive cleavers that could cleave a normal man in two. It took four or five scavengers just to pin one down.
Kian watched the meat-grinder through his scope and decided to play "God."
He adjusted the bipod and dialed the magnification. The PDF Long-pattern Precision Rifle was a masterpiece of industrial lethality. It was chambered for 9.9x75mm High-Pressure rounds—a caliber so large it was practically a light autocannon.
The ballistics were terrifyingly efficient. At 600 meters, the bullet's trajectory was perfectly flat. Even at his current range, the drop was negligible. The propellant density in the 41st Millennium was leagues beyond anything from the 3k era.
Kian checked the range using the stadiametric scale on the lens. The average height of a human in the Hive was 1.8 meters. By fitting a target into the vertical markings on his reticle, he could estimate the distance with a glance.
"Eight hundred meters," Kian whispered.
For this rifle, 800 meters was a "handshake" distance. He didn't even need to adjust the mil-dots.
Clack-shirr.
He cycled the bolt. A massive 9.9mm brass shell slid into the chamber. He engaged the two-stage trigger.
Standard PDF marksman rifles used a "Heavy/Light" trigger set. You'd squeeze the heavy first stage to set the mechanism, then the second stage became a "hair-trigger." This prevented the slight jerk of the finger from throwing the shot off over long distances.
Kian centered the crosshairs on an Alchem-Hound. He chose this specific target because the idiot had stopped in the middle of the melee to inject a fresh vial of Tox-Stimm into his neck. He was a stationary target.
BOOM.
The rifle let out a thunderous report, a tongue of blue-white flame erupting from the muzzle-brake. The recoil was significant, knocking the scope off-target for a second.
Kian didn't bother looking through the lens to see if he'd hit. He simply opened his System interface and scrolled to the Ballistics line.
[Ballistics Proficiency: 16 → 17]
"Confirmed," Kian smirked.
He cycled the bolt, the heavy brass casing clattering against the metal gantry. He lined up his second shot.
His next target was a Hound lurking at the rear of the fray, watching his "brothers" die while he picked through a pile of scrap. A slacker.
BOOM.
The heavy slug shrieked across the warehouse. The 9.9mm round hit the man's chest and didn't just stop. It entered with a hole the size of a fist and exited the back, taking most of the man's spine and internal organs with it. The exit wound was large enough to fit a human head through.
The slacker was dead before his nervous system could even register the "zip" of the passing bullet.
Kian inhaled the scent of burnt propellant and centered his sights again. "Two hundred targets. Ten rounds in the mag. This is going to be a very productive cycle."
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