Chapter 14 Chapter Thirteen

Feldman Kassad narrowly escaped the first blow, the bullet passing less than a meter from him, shattering the rock beneath his feet, and he hastily moved away before being hit by the air current; Afterwards, the camouflage aggregates have been fully activated, the compact armor is tightened, the assault rifle is triggered at the touch of a button, and the goggles are in full sniper mode.Kassad lay where he was for a long time, feeling the beating of his own heart, searching hills, valleys, and graves for signs of heat and movement.Nothing at all.He couldn't help smiling into the black goggles.

Whoever was shooting at him must have missed on purpose.He's pretty sure of that.The weapon used is a standard pulse bolt, ignited by .18 bullets, unless the person who shoots is ten kilometers away, or farther... otherwise it is impossible to miss. Kassad rose to his feet and ran towards the cover of the Emerald Tomb when a second bullet hit him in the chest, knocking him backwards. This time he grunted, rolled to the side, turned on all the sensors, and ran at full speed towards the entrance of the Emerald Tomb.The second shot is a rifle bullet.Whoever was teasing him, the shooter was using a military multipurpose assault rifle, similar to the one he was holding.The attacker, he guessed, knew he was wearing full body armor and knew that rifle bullets would have no effect at any range.But the multi-purpose weapon has other devices, and if the next round of the game uses the death ray weapon, Kassad will be dead.He plunged headlong into the mouth of the grave.

The sensors still picked up no heat or movement, save for the rapidly cooling red and yellow footprints left by his fellow pilgrims when they entered the Sphinx minutes before. Kassad switched the tactical implant to the display and scanned the UHF and video public channels quickly.Nothing at all.He magnified the valley a hundred times, calculated the effects of the wind and sand, and activated the moving target indicator.None of the things that move are bigger than an insect.He released radar, sonar, and Rover Pulse to see if the sniper dared to show up under such a guided target tracking.Still nothing.He called up the tactical display for the first two rounds; the blue trajectory jumped out.

The first blow came from the city of poets, more than four thousand meters away to the southwest.Less than ten seconds later, the second shot came from the Crystal Monument, which was located deep in the northeast valley, almost a thousand meters away.Logically, there must have been two snipers, but Kassad was sure they were the same.He turned up the display resolution.The second shot was fired from the height of Monolith, at least thirty meters above its vertical surface. Kassad stepped out of the Monolith quickly, his pressurized rifle raised, and gazed out at the night, the last remnants of the dust—and the snowstorm that was falling on the sprawling structure.Nothing at all.There are no windows, no cracks, no openings of any kind.

There were only a billion colloidal particles left by the snowstorm in the air, and Kassad saw a flash of laser light.He didn't see the green beam until after he was hit in the chest.He rolled into the entrance of the Emerald Tomb, and suddenly felt that the green walls might help stop the burst of green light. The superconductors on his battle armor radiated heat in all directions, and the tactical goggles showed the conclusion he had already guessed: gunshots From the heights of the Crystal Monolith. Kassad felt a stabbing pain in his chest, and immediately lowered his head, seeing a circle with a diameter of five centimeters appearing on the invincible armor, and melted fibers were dripping to the ground.Fortunately, the innermost layer saved him.Now, sweating profusely from his tuniced body, he saw the walls of the tomb glowing brightly and dimly with the heat from his tunic.The biomonitors were clamoring for his attention, but the damage wasn't too severe, the harness sensors reported some circulatory damage, but it was repairable, and his weapon was fully charged and fully loaded, ready to fire.

Kassad thought for a moment.All tombs are priceless archaeological treasures, gifts from future humans, preserved for centuries, even as they continue to travel backwards.It would be an interstellar crime if Colonel Feldman were to put his life on the line to preserve such a precious man-made relic. "Tsk, fuck you," Kassad whispered, rolling over into a firing position. He scanned the surface of the monolith with a laser until the surface of the crystal melted into dross and dripped down.Then he dropped high-explosive pulse bolts into the building ten meters apart, starting from the top floor.Thousands of mirror-like shards flew into the night sky and fell in slow tumbles toward the valley floor, leaving ugly gaps like teeth missing from the building's face.Kassad switched back to the broad-wave CW and blasted the interior through the openings, and things caught fire in several layers, chuckling behind his goggles.Kassad fired another burst of light—a beam of high-energy electrons—that tore the monolith from its center, digging a perfectly cylindrical tunnel fourteen centimeters wide, half a kilometer deep into the valley's cliff face.He then fired a barrel grenade, which pierced through the crystal surface of the monolith, and exploded tens of thousands of needle-sized steel spears.Then withhold a random pulsed laser mow, as long as anything in the building dares to look in his direction, no matter if it is a person or a ghost, it will be blinded immediately.Finally, he fired heat-seeking darts into every hole in the battered building's façade.

Kassad rolled back to the door of the Emerald Tomb, lifting his goggles.Flames blazing in the tower reflected off the surface of crystal shards strewn across the valley.The wind suddenly died down, and the smoke lingered in the night sky, and the vermilion sand dunes became more and more bright under the reflection of the flames.More and more wafers fell off, some dangled on the melted glass filaments, and the air was suddenly filled with the sound of wind. Kassad rolled out the depleted energy clips and ammo belt, replaced the spare ammo in his belt, and lay down, breathing the cool air that wafted in from the open door.He was sure that the sniper had already been killed by him.

"Moneta," Feldman Kassad whispered.He closed his eyes for a moment before moving on. The first time Moneta came to Kassad was in Ajinge in the early morning at the end of October in 1415 AD.The fields were strewn with dead French and British soldiers, and the forest was a deterrent to an enemy soldier who would have won had he not been aided by this tall woman with short hair.He will never forget her eyes.After their victory together, Kassad made love to the woman in the forest, still stained with the blood of the vanquished knight. The thrill simulation experience in the historical strategic network of the Olympus Command School is closer to reality than ordinary people can experience elsewhere, but the phantom lover named Moneta is not a product of thrill simulation.For years, ever since Kassad was a student at the Military Olympus Command School, she had come to him in cathartic dreams in exhaustion after real combat.

Feldman Kassad made love to this phantom named Moneta in secluded corners of various battlefields, from Qom to Riyadh.On a tropical night on duty, or a freezing day during the siege of the Russian Siberian steppe, Moneta would come without anyone else knowing, not seen by any of the students participating in the thrilling simulations.The night after the real victory at Maui, in South Brescia, in the anguish of reorganizing his dying body, the two chatted in Kassad's dreams.Moneta had always been his only love -- an overwhelming passion mixed with the smell of blood, gunpowder, napalm, soft lips and ionized skin.

Then there's Hyperion. Colonel Feldman Kassad's hospital ship was attacked by Ouster torchships while returning from the Brescia system.Only Kassad survived, who stole an Ouster plane and crash-landed in Hyperion.in mainland Malaysia.High desert and barren wasteland in the secluded land beyond the Bridle Mountains.In the Valley of Time Tombs.In the kingdom of the Shrike. Moneta had been waiting for him.They made love... even when the Ousters landed en masse to track down the captives, after Kassad, Moneta, and the Shrike who seemed to be by their side blasted the Ouster ships to cannon fodder, wiped out their landing forces, slaughtered when they took over their army.Colonel Fedman Kassad, who came from the slums of Talsis, his parents and grandparents were exiled refugees for generations, and he is a citizen of Mars no matter how he looks at it, suddenly felt that he used time as a weapon and turned himself into a shadow walking among the enemies. The supreme pleasure of being the king of destruction.This is a joy that mortal warriors can't even dream of.

But then, when they made love right after the massacre, Moneta changed.turned into a devil.Or the Shrike had taken her place.Kassad didn't remember the details; since they weren't matters of his life, he wouldn't remember them either. But he knew he had gone back to the Shrike and wanted to kill it.Go to Moneta and try to kill her.kill her?he does not know.Colonel Federman Kassad knew only that all the fiery passions of his erotic life had brought him here and now, and that if death awaited him here, that was his fate.If what awaits him is love, glory, and victory that can shake Valhalla's Hall of Valor, then welcome the status quo. Kassad pulled off his goggles, stood up, and ran towards the Emerald Tomb, screaming all the way.His weapons fired smoke grenades and blank cannons at the Monolith, but the terrain he had to cross was too wide for them to be much use as cover.The man was alive and firing at him from the top of the tower; bullets and pulse charges chased him and exploded as he dodged, leaping from dune to dune, rubble to rubble. Steel spears struck his helm and legs.His visors were cracked, and warning devices flashed.Kassad turned off the tactical display, leaving only the night vision aid.High-speed solid bullets hit his chest and knees.Kassad crouched down and was forced to do so.The tight armor stiffened, then relaxed, and he stood up to run again, feeling deep bruises forming.His color-changing aggregates work desperately to reflect the no man's land he's traveling through: night, fire, desert, molten crystal, burning stone. Fifty meters away from the monolithic monument, a wave of ribbons of light threw towards his left and right sides, melting sand grains into glass at the touch of a touch, chasing him at an extremely fast speed, unavoidable.The death ray stopped playing with him and began to strike where it needed to be, driving into his helmet, heart, and groin with stellar heat.His battle armor became mirror-bright, changing frequency every microsecond to deal with various styles of attacks.The overheated air raised halos of light around him.The microcircuits screamed under overload and extreme overload, releasing heat, trying to build micron-scale thin fields, keeping the heat away from flesh and bone. Kassad struggled the last twenty meters, using power assist to jump over the sunken crystal barrier.There were crazy explosions everywhere, knocking him down and picking him up again.The suit froze completely; he was like a doll tossed between burning hands. The bombardment stopped.Kassad knelt, then stood up.He looked up at the surface of the Crystal Monolith, there was almost nothing left except flames and cracks.The visor slit has completely split and is useless.Kassad pushed it up and, breathing the smoky, ionized air, stepped into the mound. The implant told him that all the AC bands were flooded with calls from other pilgrims.He turned them all off.Kassad removed his helmet and stepped into the darkness. The room was not connected to any small rooms, it was wide, square, and dark.An open elevator shaft stood in the middle, and he looked up at the scattered skylights a hundred meters above.A figure was waiting for him on the tenth floor, sixty meters above the ground, and his silhouette was reflected by the flames. Kassad slung his weapon over his shoulders, his helmet tucked under his arm, found the great spiral staircase in the central elevator shaft, and began to climb.

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