by M. D. Cooper
Jessica looked over squad positions on the platoon’s combat net. Only one other fireteam was close to the sniper’s position, but they were dealing with their own problems.
She logged her approach on the combat net and began to slowly work her way toward a side entrance on the building the sniper was in.
She crept down the alley toward a parallel street. There was little cover for her, but likewise there was little for anyone else to hide in.
Her nano swept upward, watching windows and looking over the rooftops. No enemies appeared on their scans, though she saw a few scared families through some of the windows and felt a pang of regret.
She had never been part of a military action that caused families to huddle together in their homes. It wasn’t a good feeling.
Jessica reached the end of the alley and her nano moved out onto the tree-lined boulevard.
A gust of wind rushed past her, blowing dry leaves through the air—momentarily blinding her motion tracking. She waited for a shot, but none came. If the sniper could see down this street, he wasn’t paying attention.
Keeping under store-front awnings and the occasional tree, Jessica moved as quickly as she could. It had already been thirty minutes since they left the spaceport and she could feel anxiety growing at the thought of Myrrdan escaping their web.
She crossed another street and then angled away from the sniper’s building to come at it from the side.
A chuckle came over the link.
Jessica swore softly.
She looked over the area her nano had scouted. The roof to her left sported a lush garden that would provide perfect cover. She leapt up and landed behind a tool shed.
Her probes rushed through the plants, watching for movement in the air currents and errant heat signatures. Jessica followed them slowly, her own active camouflage shifting to hide her amongst the plant life.
At the edge of the garden she toggled her vision to a full spectrum blend. Just one building separated her from the sniper’s position and she looked for any movement, or degradation of his active camo.
Her nano reached the edges of an enemy sensor cloud and she moved them around to the south. Once there she directed several of her probes to move into the enemy cloud.
Her feint worked and the density of the cloud near her decreased. She also saw some leaves on the rooftop move, as though a person laying on them had shifted.
“There’s one,” she said softly to herself.
Trist’s avatar stuck its tongue out at Jessica, and below, a very believable holographic representation of a person in powered armor dashed out into the street below.
Jessica wasn’t watching the street; her eyes were on the rooftop, layers of nano augmenting her vision. At the moment Trist sent out her decoy, Jessica spotted the second sniper and was in the air, rifle taking aim.
A primal scream left her lips as her feet crashed down on the first sniper, the metric ton of her armor driving him half through the building’s rooftop.
She dropped a sticky EM grenade on him and dashed toward the other sniper, firing proton beams as she went.
Behind her the grenade detonated while in front the second sniper’s active camo flickered off as her shots scorched his armor.
He twisted on the ground, bringing his weapon to bear on her and Jessica dodged to the side, her vision showing the heated air where his beam had lanced out. She hit him two more times before a form in powered armor slammed down onto him from above.
Trist dropped her own EM grenade on the enemy soldier before running out of its range.
The bridge crew busied themselves as best they could while the holo counted down to the grapeshot rounds. Stewards entered the bridge and provided food. Tanis grabbed two BLTs, the first disappearing in an instant.
“You’d think it was going to run off your plate,” Captain Andrews said with a smile before taking a bite of his sandwich.
Tanis returned the smile. “You never know when you may get to eat again in situations like this.”
The captain raised his eyebrow and Tanis got the message. If they missed their next meal it would likely be due to this one being their last.
A short time later the countdown on the holo reached zero and the first two rails fired their shots. Two minutes later the other rails slung their deadly payload into the black. Tanis sent new positions to all the railguns while intently watching the holo projection of the battlefield.
Tactical updated and showed the relativistic missiles also in the final minutes of their countdowns. The bridge net brought two more NSAI online as the myriad calculations required to predict all the possible battlefield configurations grew.
All eyes were either on the holo or personal VR representations of the same data. It looked like the tactic was going to work until, seconds before impact, one of the dreadnaughts jinked out of range.
The RMs had their own smart NSAI which would seek targets of opportunity as they came into range—better than the grapeshot which wasn’t smart at all. If the enemy ships deviated even a hundred kilometers it would miss entirely.
“One ship out of the pocket. They’ll miss the head-on grapeshot,” Priscilla called out.
“They must have caught a reflection off it,” Andrews mused.
Two other ships managed to shift out of range before the grapeshot met the rest of the Sirian fleet. Optical scopes on both the Intrepid and Anne’s surface showed seven ships being torn to shreds by the hail of pellets.
“That’s brutal,” Ouri whispered as the ships all but disintegrated under the barrage.
The other Sirian vessels were lashing out with their forward beams, hoping to break apart any shot coming their way. ES scoops flashed on in an attempt to shift the pellets and shrapnel from their fellow ships away.
In some cases it appeared to be working, the scoops lit up sporadically as shot was deflected, but in two other cases ships didn’t get their scoops up in time, or jink far enough.
“Nine ships down, eleven others have visible hull breaches,” Priscilla reported.
“That puts their total at fifty-two,” Andrews said. “Let’s see if the crossfire hits any of them.”
“It’s going to require them to not change velocity for the calculations to work,” Tanis said.
“One other ship just went dead,” Priscilla added. “We’re down to fifty-one with fifteen of those having suffered some sort of damage.”
“Ten seconds to the grapeshot crossfire,” weapons said. “It’s hard to tell what our spread will look like at this range, but you appear to have predicted their dispersal pattern well,” the officer said
to Tanis.
They only had to wait a moment more before the holo updated with four more ships getting hit by the shot.
“Enemy ship count at forty-seven,” Scan gave the update out loud. “They’re breaking formation, looks like they’re scattering into four separate groups.”
“RMs have locked onto targets in three groups,” weapons added. “We have fifteen missiles, six each on two of the groups and three on the other.”
“Could finally even the odds,” Sanderson said softly. “I’ve never rooted so hard for an RM before.”
“I know what you mean,” Tanis said.
Jessica sighed. Wiping out a whole police squad was not the sort of thing that made long-term relations better. Especially when it was at the hands of armored Marines.
Borden replied.
From her rooftop vantage point she saw one of the assault transports arc toward Borden’s position. A self-guided missile un-racked and lanced toward the ground. Moments before impact it exploded into a cloud of foam. Jessica knew from experience that once that foam hit it would solidify into a firm, yet breathable cocoon, and the enemy police force wouldn’t be going anywhere.
The combat net showed the embattled squad on the move once more. Overall, the net was tightening. Two fireteams had also engaged presidential guard in powered armor, but otherwise all opposing forces had been police or civilian.
Several casualties had occurred—results of Jessica’s orders to push forward quickly. She tried not to think about it too much. It was imperative that they pin Myrrdan down in the Parliament buildings.
Jessica saw that Smith’s platoon was within a kilometer of the Parliament building and would reach its perimeter in minutes. Jessica was a half-kilometer ahead of Usef’s platoon, but the scouts were a kilometer further. She leapt to the top of a building and signaled Trist to double-time it.
The pair bounded across rooftops, using sensor data from the scouts to pick the safest path. It was a risk exposing themselves like this, but Jessica couldn’t allow Myrrdan to slip through her grasp.
Only a large plaza followed by a row of administrative buildings separated her from the Parliment when a call came over the Link from the scouts.
Jessica turned on her down jets and saw Trist do the same. They slammed into a rooftop, crashing through to the building’s top floor.
They rolled to cover against the wall and Jessica sent probes toward the windows and out onto the rooftop. Before she got a good look, artillery fire hit the roof and then the side of the building.
Fire raged around them and debris flew through the air. Trist dove out of the room and Jessica followed. They dashed down a long hall and then broke through a window and into another building.
Jessica was nearly out of nano, and Trist released a dampening cloud to mask their heat and radio signatures.
Usef acknowledged their situation on the combat net and his platoon moved to flank their position. The scouts pinpointed the locations of the artillery fire, but the mobile emplacements were too well shielded for their weapons.
Jessica shook her head. Why move troops out front when the Marines were kicking in the back door?
Jessica gave the approval and signed her auth code to the combat net’s ledger. While much of the engagement had used non-lethal force, herding enemy troops in powered armor was going to take more serious firepower. LR2 missiles were like a shotgun of rail-delivered pellets in a short-range missile delivery system.
They were designed to tear through armored combatants while doing as little damage as possible to structures.
On the combat net she saw Assault 2 circle higher and launch four missiles at the enemy’s west flank.
Assault 1 was covering the northern approach and Tanis saw the combat net update with seventy seconds to weapon deployment.
Thirty seconds later Assault 2 called in.
Jessica sent an acknowledgement.
Fireteams from Usef’s platoon began taking up positions in nearby buildings, ready to engage the approaching enemy once the artillery emplacement was dealt with.
The seconds ticked by at a snail’s pace. Jessica glanced over at Trist and gave her a smile. Trist returned the expression and gripped her rifle tightly.
The building shook as a round from the artillery tore through the floor below them.
Jessica replied, praying to the stars that their position was masked well enough to buy them another fifteen seconds.
Jessica took several slow breaths, and then a long, relieved exhale as the deafening crack of the bunker buster tore through the air. The building shook and she prayed it would hold up after the punishment it had received.
Seconds later the Marines moved forward.
Jessica peered through the window, checking for enemy positions with her eyes while layering combat net data over top. If Myrrdan was with the enemy, he wouldn’t be one of the unarmored noncoms—they would be decoys. He would be armored. You didn’t survive as long as he did by being vulnerable.
Trist was at another window taking a shot.
Jessica sighed.
The firefight had only been underway for a couple of minutes when Jessica heard a loud shot to her right. It didn’t sound like any weapon Trist was carrying.
She turned to see Trist splayed on the floor, a large hole torn through her armor and torso.
A woman stood over her, a railgun cradled in her arms.
“Huh,” the woman shook her head. “I wasn’t sure that it would go completely through, her armor must have been weakened by that sniper fire earlier.”
Jessica rolled onto her back, switched her rifle to the proton setting and leveled it at the woman.
“Drop the rail! Now!” she yelled, forcing fear for Trist from her mind.
The woman’s mask cleared and Jessica recognized the person standing over her.
“What! Amy Lee?�
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“Oh for stars sake, Jessica, try to keep up. Would Amy Lee shoot Trist? She died back in Estrella de la Muerte. I’ve been using her…leftovers…since then.”
Her mind reeled. Myrrdan had been amongst them, within their inner circle for over a century. She couldn’t even count the times they had discussed plans and strategies with her present.
Jessica scoured her memories, trying to remember any instances where knowledge of the Gamma site may have been discussed with Amy Lee present. The disaster was unimaginable, all their careful plans—.
Jessica’s eyes flicked to Amy Lee’s railgun, and time slowed down as she watched Amy—Myrrdan’s finger curl around the trigger and twitch ever so slightly.
A moment later, everything went black.
Jessica gasped for air and her entire body arched as her armor shocked her heart back into motion. Her HUD flickered to life and showed an alarming amount of physical damage. She looked down at her torso to see compression gel oozing out of several cracks and a large hole just below her heart.
She took a deep breath and nearly screamed as agony lanced through her body. Jessica forced herself to calm, and took several shallow breaths as she scanned the room.
Myrrdan’s body lay at her feet, completely missing its head. Beyond, Trist was slumped forward over her rifle.
Jessica pulled herself across the floor to Trist’s side and gently flipped her over. A second hole was in her wife’s chest, green silbio spilling out of both wounds.
Jessica rushed her own nano into Trist’s body, attempting to slow the bleeding, but it was too late, she had lost too much blood and the biological silicon which had supplanted her original organs. Without an internal AI, her body didn’t have the direction to repair itself.
Jessica let out a gargled cry before remembering she could Link and get help. When she re-initialized her connection a message from Trist was waiting.
Jessica bit back a sob as her own wounds sent pain searing through her body.
Trist was gone.
Squad three found her like that, sobbing uncontrollably beside the bodies of Trist and Amy Lee.