Ochre surveyed his latest round of range targets. He nodded to himself in satisfaction and safetied his pistol, slipped the empty eighteen shot clip out of the butt and set it down on the bench in front of him before, taking off his earmuffs and stepping back from his station at the firing range to take a break and have something to drink.
At the station next to him, Blue was frowning as he checked over the sights on his gun and tweaked them with a tiny screwdriver.
“All okay there?” Ochre asked. While he trusted Adam to not be an idiot, habit made him stay behind and to the right of Blue so as to be able to stop anything stupid. As a young man he’d had range safety and gun safety all but engraved on the back of his eyeballs by his uncle. It wasn’t a practice he wanted to lose any time soon.
“Sights seem to be out.” Blue glanced up at him. “My aim is true, I checked with a muzzle laser sight, but my shots are all going left when I use the sights,” he said, nodding to the target.
Rick cast his eye over the tight group of shots and frowned, they were all indeed skewed left of centre. “Let me have a look?”
“Sure.” Adam put the screwdriver and gun down on the bench, muzzle pointing down range, and stepped back.
Ochre put his earmuffs back on, picked up the gun, loaded it and snapped off a clip of rounds at a fresh target, frowning when his shots were also all off to the left. “You’re right, it’s off. Did you drop it?” he asked as he took off the earmuffs, pulled the clip and safetied the gun.
“Someone smacked it out of my hand with a pipe,” Blue explained. “Took the hit right across the top of the gun.”
“Yeah, that’ll do it. I think I can realign it, otherwise you’ll have to take it to the armourer,” Ochre said. He took the gun to a small table at the back of the range and started unscrewing the sights. Blue collected their spent clips and brought them to the table to start reloading them from the box of bullets he’d also brought with him to the range.
“Hey Adam, can I ask you about something?” Rick asked after a few minutes. “It’s been bugging me for a while now.”
“Sure.”
“It’s about what happened at the Car-Vu,” Rick stated, glancing up to watch Adam’s eyes, and not surprised when his expression became guarded. “Paul is a good shot, a very good shot in fact,” Ochre continued. “From the witness reports, when someone is replicated, their memory might be spotty, especially if it’s not needed for their task, but the skills and associated knowledge, that’s always intact, right?”
“Right.” Adam nodded, half-suspecting what was coming next.
“The Scarlet replicant was shooting from cover at an exposed target at what… 45 yards at most? Most pistols’ accuracy range tends to top out at about 100 yards; ours are a little better and top out at about 120 yards in good conditions.” Ochre put down the gun and gave Blue a grim look. “You should have been dead several times over at that Car-Vu.”
Adam’s expression flickered through several different emotions before he spoke. “I know,” he replied quietly. “Paul came to me to talk about it not long after the report was finalised. That entire time period is still a blank, he couldn’t explain it either.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “You know Fawn’s theory about what happened when Steve and Paul were replicated?” he asked as he fidgeted with an empty clip.
“That Paul wasn’t quite dead yet so they copied too much?” Rick nodded. “Yes, I’ve heard it.”
“I think Paul was fighting back on some level, even then,” Adam explained his theory. “That’s why the replicant’s aim was off. And because he was fighting, when the Mysterons lost control or abandoned the body, he was there to take over.”
“It makes sense,” Rick said after a pause, looking down at the table and turning it all over in his head. Then another thought occurred to him and he felt the blood drain from his face. “...We were damn lucky, weren’t we?” he asked, looking up at Adam. “If they hadn’t made that one, tiny mistake…”
“Yeah,” Adam replied quietly, his manner showing he’d had the exact same thoughts himself. “If they’d waited just a few moments longer to copy him, we’d probably all be dead several times over by now.”