Star Wars: Shock Doctrine

Sniper Duel

Viper returns to the cave where he escaped Vertex. He crawls in the prone position until he's behind the stone pillar, then shoots the flood light over the door nearest him. Slowly and carefully, he begins to crawl out to get a line of sight on Vertex. The panels are solid in the infrared spectrum, making his thermal vision useless for now. But on the bright side, Vertex can't see him either. Even Night vision won't be able to pick him up in a cave this dark.

After crawling 5 or 6 meters forward, Viper sees a muzzle flash and a shot fired from the firepuncher take out the flood light over the opposite door. A little over half a second later, he hears the shot. He holds his breath and aims carefully at that panel, then fires his beam rifle. The shot knocks Vertex back. As Viper suspected, the shot splashes off cortosis armor as most energy attacks do. But with the beam rifle being as powerful as it is, it still packs quite a wallop even against this unique armor. 

Viper gets up and sprints forward to find a new position. When Vertex gets back into position, albeit shifted a meter left or right, he won't be able to fire back at Viper by attacking the same position. Vertex gets on Reunion 99 comms and says, "Hmmm, you've taken Riggs' hexa-matrix haven't you... invisible to infrared scopes... and I don't suppose Night Vision will do me any good either in this light..."

If he's already looking in Thermal and Night Vision scopes, he must have some kind of periscope to peak around corners without a heat signature Viper can pick up. But Vertex is closer to the opening in the cave that lets water and some starlight through. Viper switches to Night Vision, and sure enough, he sees a small outline of a scope peaking up over the edge. But he could be holding that at arm's length... Viper can't take any chances. He'll have to strafe with the beam rifle.

He practices the motion several times... just the slightest flick of the wrist to cover a meter of the panel. He executes, turning out to be correct, as the tail end of the beam hits Vertex' upper arm and torso at the far right side of the incision in the panel. Vertex recovers quickly and snaps into a crouched firing position over the wall. Not quickly enough, as Viper manages to fire a follow up shot that hits Vertex for the full duration, and causing Vertex' counterattack to nearly miss. Viper shifts his body and the shot pings off his durasteel pauldron, bouncing off at an angle 20 degrees off the ground. 

Viper counts his lucky stars and runs forward 15 or 20 meters to find another new position before Vertex can get back and peer through the holes. He picks a position closer to the water where concrete blocks can provide better cover in case of another close call counterattack from Vertex. 

At this distance, the thermal scope would be too blurry to spot Vertex through one of the holes in the panel left by the beam rifle, but Vertex could easily look back out. While Viper is still too far for the stars to betray him to night vision now, that won't be the case in another 50 or so meters.

But Viper remembers that he's discharged 4 shots now, and the beam rifle's power cells were only good for 4 shots. Vertex knew this too, but did he know that Viper had shot Muchi with it already? If not, he might do something that would force Viper to use a follow up shot again, expecting him to run empty.

Patiently, Viper crawls forward. After he crawls a good 15 meters, Vertex reaches over the panel and fires a flare gun, arcing the flare to land just 30 meters ahead of where Viper is now. Viper fires back, his shot splashing off Vertex who snakes his way right, steadying himself to counterattack, but Viper fires again, taking him by surprise. Viper ducks down behind the concrete block, and the shot from Vertex' firepuncher rips through it, raining hot concrete dust and gravel on Viper, but leaving him mostly unharmed. 

Viper then runs forward, firing another shot at Vertex before he can even pull himself up to buy himself enough time to kick the flare into the stream below. To finish off the power cell, he fires one last shot that hits Vertex more from below, and buying Viper enough time to run up practically right under him. At 10 meters forward and below Vertex, Viper will have to shoot up at a 45 degree angle from this position.