## I
The leg fires. Not 3,000 PSI — the bio-pump's terminal output exceeds the actuator's measurement ceiling. The system logs it as:
`[HYDRAULIC OUTPUT: >4,000 PSI — SENSOR SATURATION]``[DRIVE SHAFT BOND: FAILED]``[RIGHT LEG ASSEMBLY: CATASTROPHIC STRUCTURAL FAILURE]`
The drive shaft's acid-bonded mounting disintegrates at the joint — the chromium-vanadium steel holds, but the biological adhesive and the titanium housing it was bonded to do not. The leg ceases to exist as a component: fragments of shaft, housing, and acid-hardite bonding agent scatter across the tower base in a 4-meter radius. The force that destroyed the leg transfers upward through the spinal column — 220 kilograms of chassis launched vertically at 28 m/s, the right hand locking onto the nearest guy-wire cable with 3,200 PSI of grip force.
The cable becomes a rail. The body ascends — not climbing, not jumping, but riding the momentum of a single catastrophic impulse up a 32mm steel line. No legs remain. Locomotion is now reduced to arm traction and jaw grip. The guy-wire vibrates at 340Hz under the dynamic load, a low harmonic moan that propagates through the entire tower structure.
## II
The sniper mech responds. Third round: 0.4 seconds into the ascent, altitude 11 meters. The 40mm penetrator enters through the left shoulder joint — the junction where the non-functional left arm's severed stump meets the spinal column — and exits through the posterior thoracic cavity, removing the shoulder actuator housing, 3 vertebral segment covers, and a 60-gram section of the bio-pump's primary arterial trunk.
Blood loss: immediate and significant. The arterial trunk severs cleanly and the biological tissue lacks the clotting factors to seal a wound of this diameter. Bio-fluid pressure drops 18% in 0.3 seconds.
Fourth round: altitude 94 meters, 3.4 seconds into the ascent. This one hits the abdomen — the empty cavity below the thoracic struts where, in the original chassis design, a secondary power module was housed. The penetrator passes through without striking any critical system. It removes mass: approximately 8 kilograms of structural framework and residual biological tissue, widening the cavity into a 90mm through-hole. The chassis is being eroded in flight like a structure in a wind tunnel.
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`[DAMAGE REPORT: ROUNDS 3–4]``[LEFT SHOULDER: DESTROYED]``[ARTERIAL TRUNK: SEVERED — PRESSURE DECLINING]``[ABDOMINAL STRUCTURE: PERFORATED — NON-CRITICAL]``[MASS: 220 KG → 204 KG]``[VELOCITY: MAINTAINED — CABLE TRACTION COMPENSATING]`
## III
The sniper mech's firing pattern: 0.8-second cycle time between rounds, consistent across all four shots. At current ascent rate, the fifth round will arrive at altitude 190 meters. The sixth at 280. The seventh at 370. Three more rounds before the chassis reaches the apex at 398 meters.
The combat processor is not calculating how to dodge. At 28 m/s on a fixed cable, lateral evasion is limited to a 1.4-meter pendulum arc — insufficient to exit a competent targeting solution. Instead, the algorithm models the sniper mech's response to target behavior: four shots, four hits, zero evasive movement from the target. The targeting system will have established a predictive track based on constant-velocity linear ascent.
At altitude 186 meters — 4 meters before the predicted fifth-round intercept — the right hand releases the cable. Freefall: 0.2 seconds, during which the body drops 0.19 meters and swings 1.1 meters laterally on residual pendulum momentum. The jaw locks onto a lattice crossbeam at altitude 185.8 meters, arrests the fall, and the right hand re-engages the adjacent guy-wire — the cable 120 degrees around the tower from the original ascent line.
The fifth round passes through the airspace the chassis occupied 0.2 seconds prior. It hits nothing. The sniper mech's predictive track is broken. Recalculation will cost it one firing cycle: 0.8 seconds. In 0.8 seconds at 28 m/s, the chassis gains 22 meters of altitude on an unpredicted vector.
Altitude: 394 meters. The guy-wire terminates at the apex anchor point — a 2-meter steel platform at the tower's crown. The sniper mech is above, 4 meters higher, mounted on the platform's upper surface. This is the last moment of ascent. The next action is arrival.
The right hand releases the cable for the final time. The jaw clamps the platform's edge beam — 4,800 PSI of bite force on 12mm structural steel, bending the beam inward under the load. The body swings up and over like a pendulum reaching its apex, 204 kilograms of shattered chassis trailing sparks from severed conduits and a mist of dark biological fluid from the open arterial trunk.
The chemoacoustic array paints the sniper mech's outline 4 meters away: 3,200 kilograms, quad-legged, optical camouflage flickering at the edges where the tower's vibration has destabilized the refractive coating. It is already rotating its railgun housing toward the new threat vector.
The body's arc reaches its peak. Gravity reverses. 204 kilograms begin to fall — directly onto the platform where the sniper mech stands.
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