Page 20 of Stalker
“Okay. It’s fully charged; let’s take it outside to the targets.” He handed one to her, took another for himself, and led the way out. “Now that you’ve had it on for a while, what do you think of your armor.
“It feels great; it’s so light and elastic. I can move any way I want without it binding.”
“Exactly as it should be.”
The targets looked like a row of fat round posts until Stalker activated them. A round screen about a foot in diameter opened on the top, looking almost like a head.
Standing with Stalker about thirty feet from the targets, Neely waited for instructions.
“See how many you can hit,” he said.
Neely took out her weapon, set it for simulation, and stood with her feet shoulder-width apart. Holding the gun with both hands, she squeezed off eight shots and hit every one. She looked up at Stalker when she finished, and he was grinning.
“Not bad. Now let’s see how you do when they come at you.”
“All of them?” Her eyes widened a bit.
“Don’t worry; they stop before they run into you if you don't hit them.” Stalker stepped off to the side. “Ready?’
“Yes.”
The targets moved toward her at random intervals. Neely fired at the closest ones first. When she hit one, it stopped advancing. She was disappointed; she hit only half of them in the first round.
“Of course, you know you'd probably be dead if they’d been shooting at you.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
“We’re in the open here. Would you stand there and wait for them if shooters came after you?”
“Hell, no! I’d shoot back, run for cover, and try to pick them off from there.”
Stalker nodded and signaled them to return to their bases from his internal computer. “Let’s try this again.”
“Ready.”
The targets advanced this time, and Neely shot the two closest and retreated along the front of the house, stopping and hitting three more. Dashing around the end of the house, she came back out and picked off another two. She jumped out seconds later and picked off the last one.
Each target stopped where she’d hit it.
“Nice shots,” Stalker said with a pleased look. “Of course, they’d be shooting back if they were real.”
“Isn’t that what this armor is for?” she asked cheekily, retracting her helmet.
“It is, but the force of the shot could send you flying even if it doesn’t penetrate your body. You can still break bones or get a concussion.”
“Noted. That makes sense. Now, what?”
“We’re done for now. I’m still in the process of adapting to this new job. Our rangers’ team was combat specialists used to being in the thick of the fighting. I had virtual retraining before we even left Phantom, but there are a lot of variables that have affected the social structure of these communities.”
“So, we won’t know what we are getting into until we get there?”
“That’s right. There are so many different factions. They are not communities in the same sense as the more isolated towns outside the city. It’s chaotic in L.A., and they seem to be ruling by thuggery rather than consensus.” Stalker explained.
“I think you may need way more than a hundred additional protectors for L.A.”
A week later, Stalker tooled the sky cycle along an eastern Los Angeles suburb's crumbled, rubble-strewn street. He’d previously scouted the area and headed for an abandoned building to stash the hovercycle.
Pulling the bike into the building, they both climbed off. Stalker and Neely put on their weapons belts and their body armor. They each took out their ion rifles and shouldered them. Before they left the tattered building, Stalker set the cloaking field on the cycle.
