The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [35]
Why was such visual poetry restricted to the mundane work of shooting pipeline thieves?
The Colonel daintily twiddled a diopter. The crescent Moon grew huge in the rifle’s crosshairs, blooming in a square rush of pixels. Now the Moon looked big and cheese-orange, like a rind of fancy pizza from Moscow’s finest Pizza Hut. Machine analysis worked its magic inside the rifle’s optics. The blazing crescent of the Moon toned down, down, and the vast dark plain between the lunar horns emerged in the Colonel’s vision. This was, thought the Colonel with holy awe, the Moon shining gently back at him in light reflected from the Earth.
A small red glow winked at him within a lunar crater. The Colonel was pleased; the way that red light splashed brought the Moon’s rounded qualities into startling life. A moment later it occurred to the Colonel that there should not be any lights visible on the Moon. There should be no lights on the Moon at all. After all, it was the Moon.
A second red light splashed and flickered, this time within another crater. The Colonel pulled his eye from the rubber lens cup and stared at the Moon bare-eyed. To his human gaze, the Moon was a small, distant crescent. The red light was far too faint to see with the naked eye . . . But no, this was an infrared scope. He was seeing heat on the Moon, not light.
His wondering eye sought the rifle yet again. The red spark was playing steadily, frolicking across the Moon’s surface, a shimmer and a glow.
The Colonel grabbed the phone. “Please tell Kickoff that I just saw something bizarre on the Moon. Volcanoes, I think.”
“What? I can’t translate that.”
“Lunar volcanoes! Red eruptions on the Moon! I saw them through the sighting-scope on his rifle.”
She laughed. “Oh, that? You mean that digital thing? That thing is digital, Alexei.”
Excited tension drained swiftly from the Colonel’s neck. Of course. Just a fault inside the stupid equipment. Were there really space aliens up there, live volcanoes on the holy Moon—or just a pixel or two, turned red inside some screen? What foolishness.
Kickoff tugged at the Colonel’s sleeve. Kickoff gestured at his laptop. His tiny airplanes, hidden in the night sky, were sending him fresh pictures.
A Toyota pickup truck, spanking-new and doubtless Saudi-supplied, was working its way up the gorge.
The Colonel held up his leather-gloved fingers: two. There would be two trucks, for there always were. There would also be bandits on foot to escort them, with rifles and walkie-talkies.
Kickoff shook his head and made a throat-cutting gesture. Kickoff didn’t care to wait for the chance of bagging both the trucks. That was not necessary to Kickoff’s technical purposes. His assignment, it seemed, was merely to field-test the equipment and the support system. Kickoff gently plugged a small video wire and jack into the side of the rifle’s scope. He blew dust from a flat plastic wafer and inserted a fresh, spotless disk from a jewellike case. Then he urged the Colonel on.
The Colonel nodded and bent to his labors. The first .50-caliber round, a thumb-sized lozenge of spinning steel, flew through the Toyota’s hood and completely through its engine block. As the truck lurched to a stop, the Colonel put two more rounds through the exploding glass and metal of the cab. The spidery white gun kicked very gently on its bipod. There was a high-pitched hiss of escaping gas. And yet, no burst of visible fire from the long black barrel. The rifle was gentle, surgical. The rifle almost fired itself.
A glowing human figure burst free of the shattered truck, and the Colonel missed him as he fled. The fourth round struck him true, though. The oil thief tumbled instantly into two hot glowing pieces: a ruptured carcass, and a severed, spinning arm.
The Colonel sought the phone. “Tell him that we need to leave this cave now. There will be other bandits. They are never afraid of us, and they will want this weapon very badly.”
Kickoff listened politely to the anxious squeak from