Smith didn’t need to rely on anything quite so primitive. Now that he was motionless, he could expand his overhead view of the battlefield. Two green dots were coming slowly up the slope in front of them and another was making slightly better time on the trickier approach behind.

More interesting were the red dots. One, of course, was right next to him, but instead of both of the remaining Delta soldiers protecting the flag, only one was. The other was coming down what must have been a nightmarishly slick gully overhead. They hadn’t left their sniper behind just as a first line of defense—they’d left him behind as bait.

“Good luck,” Smith said, rolling out of the deepening water and heading for a neutral position where he could get a good view without giving away Raymond’s position.

It was raining hard enough now that the imaging system was being supplemented by a beta version of a motion-canceling software that Dresner was developing in conjunction with Mercedes. In the absence of wind gusts, rain droplets tended to fall along a predictable trajectory and at a predictable rate. The software hid everything coming down at that speed, while highlighting motion that didn’t fit the pattern. The image it produced was a bit bizarre but, once you got used to it, provided an enormous amount of information.

It took less than a minute for Duane and Stacy to come into view at about a hundred meters. When they crossed ninety, both dropped suddenly to the ground and aimed their weapons at the Delta man. Amazing. Smith toggled off his vision enhancement and estimated unaided visibility at less than twenty meters.

When he brought his Merge back up he saw his people fire in unison. Both missed, but they got close enough that Raymond got a proximity warning in the form of the hiss of a bullet playing over his earpiece.

He immediately pulled back, going down awkwardly in the water and coming up spitting mud. Smith had linked to the Delta team’s comm and he heard Raymond’s warning a moment later. “I’m under attack from the east. Can’t see anyone but I nearly took another hit. Who the hell are these guys?”

The red dot coming down from above started traversing east toward Duane and Stacy as Grayson continued to close from the southwest. Things were about to get interesting.

Smith finally managed to spot the Ranger, his outline appearing and disappearing as the prototype software tried to deal with the wind starting to whip up the slope. The sun broke out of the clouds for a moment, glimmering off the raindrops but improving visibility slightly. It turned out to be just enough for the soldier above. A shot sounded and a moment later Duane’s combat effectiveness number spun to zero.

“I…I’m hit…I can’t see!” he said, sounding panicked. “I can’t see!”