Chapter 15
6
“Any moment” happened to be that evening.
“India just got hit,” Staff Sergeant Riopel said, walking into the corner of the warehouse that the platoon had claimed.
“What happened?” Zach asked, and the eleven Marines there put their chow down to listen.
“One of their platoons was inbound, just 400 meters out, when they got hit with some sort of rocket. The Quick Reaction Force deployed and brought them back in.”
“Anyone hurt?” Gracie asked.
“First Sergeant D-ski had his leg taken off at the knee, from what we’ve been told. We’ll know more after they get him to the aid station.”
That got their attention. First Sergeant Dzieduszycki was the very popular India Company first sergeant. There would have been no tactical reason for him to be on a patrol, but it hadn’t surprised any of them that he would have wanted his Marines to know he was there for them. And to hear that he’d lost a leg hit them hard.
“Mother-fucking svermin,” Possum said, using their newly minted derogatory slang for the Svea.
“We don’t know it’s them,” the staff sergeant said. “And you heard the sergeant major about how we refer to everyone here. Jerichites for all of them, Svealanders and Argentines, or even Svea and Tino are OK, but not that other shit.”
“Who else would it be if not the Svea,” Possum said, drawing out the word, his opinion of PC-speak more than clear.
“We don’t know. The Porto tracked the rocket and took out the launcher, but it looked like a remote-control setup. No signs of anyone actually on the site.”
“So what now?” Sergeant Muad asked.
“Now we get to play in the sandbox. This planet has just gone hot.”
Chapter 16
6
Two weeks later, and the city hadn’t erupted into violence. Gracie and Eli had been out in the ville almost the entire time, tagging along with patrols, then slipping out and into buildings. The first one, the night after First Sergeant D-ski had been hit, was abandoned but had been used before. Gracie had selected a ninth-floor room, facing away from the port and with decent fields of fire, but upon entering the room, the used stim-tabs and coffee packs that littered the deck were evidence that others had spent time in this room as well. Whoever that was would know that the Marines would probably use it, too.
She spent a nervous night and next day, knowing that it was just Eli and her against anyone trying to take them out. The following night, she discussed the issue with Gunny Buttle, and he agreed with her thought process. After that, she selected decent, but not great hides.
It didn’t matter as neither of the two Marines saw anything that could be considered a target. Three patrols were hit, but far from their little AO.[18] Sergeant Muad, from Bravo Section, had a kill when a patrol from Golf got hit, but other than that, not a single scout-sniper had fired a shot in anger.
The fact that the city had not erupted into an orgy of violence was a good thing, but still, it made for some intense boredom. Gracie felt guilty for wishing for some action—but only a little.
Tonight, they were in the port control tower. With eight teams, they were out for three nights, in for one. One of the nights in would be a complete stand-down, and the other one would be in the control tower overwatching the port. Even with the control tower mission, it was good to get a couple of hot meals, hot showers, and simple down time to decompress. Kierk and Oesper had the stand-down this rotation, and Gracie and Eli had settled into the cushy seats favored by the VTCs.[19] With a curfew still in effect, and with most seaborne traffic curtailed, the port was quiet after dark, and the VTCs were all home. This gave the entire tower over to the team. The last time they’d taken the “Tower,” as they had started calling the duty, one of the H&S cooks had brought up midrats[20] for them just after midnight. Midrats were normally leftovers, but Gunny Coventry, the battalion head cook, had baked up some amazing chocolate chip cookies to go with the leftovers.
“Think gunny will send them up again?” Eli asked after checking the time five minutes after he’d checked last.
“I hope so,” Gracie said, knowing that he was asking about the cookies.
Gracie didn’t think she was too motivated by food. She wasn’t a die-hard foodie. Eating was primarily just fuel for the body. But when eating field rats every day, real food became more and more alluring, and the thought of the cookies made her mouth start to water. She cocked an ear to listen for footsteps coming up the ladder hoping for a treat.
“Corporal, we’ve got an alert,” Eli said, snapping her back to the mission at hand.
Gracie and Eli had been alternating wearing the helmets, and for the moment, she was bareheaded. Scout-snipers also had the same monocles used by recon, but the PCS helmets had a much bigger display which could show much, much more information being fed to it.
She grabbed hers and put it on. Immediately, she saw the alert. It was a Marine feed, not from the Josh in orbit above them. She oriented herself and peered down to the corresponding spot on the ground, beyond the F-line of warehouses.
“Hornet-Four, are you picking up the alert at 447832-slash-797919?” came over Gracie’s comms.
“Roger that. We are trying to get eyeballs on it now.”
She ran her face shield to max, and she thought she could see a low-lying lump on the ground just outside the fence, but the magnification coupled with light amplification resulted in a pretty blurry image.
“We’ve got the QRF[21] ready and awaiting your visuals.”
Gracie whipped off her helmet, pulling out and inserting the remote earbud, and brought up her Windmoeller. She could fire any of her weapons in full battle rattle, to include the helmet, but like almost all snipers, she preferred to take off the helmet when firing. At the moment, she was not going to engage, but the Miller had much more advanced optics than the PCS helmet.
It took her a second to locate the spot. A man lay prone on the ground, cutting away at the links. There were what looked to be wires attached to various parts of the fencing around him. He had to be using them to bypass the sensors embedded in the wire itself.
“I’ve got him,” she told Eli, before passing “I’ve got one male in the process of cutting through the fence,” on her comms.
She waited a moment while the duty comms in the CP passed the word up.
In a moment, her comms crackled again with, “Are there any signs of arms?”
Gracie had been searching for that, but despite the Miller’s superb tech, it was still over 900 meters to the man, it was dark as Hades out there, and the man was in a shallow depression on the ground. She just couldn’t tell.
“Nothing in sight, but that is not confirmed. I say again; that is not confirmed.”
“Roger. Wait one.”
Another moment later, the voice said, “We are deploying the QRF. Do not engage the target unless you elevate to orange.”
Orange was the second highest threat alert, where there was a “high” risk of danger to Marine or civilians. Only red was higher, and that was reserved actual combat taking place. Gracie, as part of the scout side of scout-sniper, had been drilled incessantly on both the legal and practical ramifications of the alert tree, and she could place the entire battalion in that status on her call.
“Roger that. I’ve got angel-watch,” she passed before settling into a good firing position.
The VTC chairs were very comfortable, but that made them poor supports. She pulled down her bipod, placed the legs on the control counter with the barrel of her rifle extending past the window, and leaned up against the counter with her waist. She was standing, but the counter provided her with a solid support.
“Anything else showing up?” she asked Eli, who still had his helmet on.
“Negative. Just the one, but I’m monitoring.”
Infiltrators didn’t always work alone. If this guy was attempting the Marines harm, it could be just a diversion for something bigger. She knew the C
P would be all over it, but Eli was right there with her, and their view of the port compound was excellent.
The guy trying to get in might not present a threat, Gracie knew. There were millions if not billions of credits in goods in the port’s warehouses, stuck there due to the situation. This guy could just be a thief, and if so, the QRF would sweep him up and turn him over to the local authorities.
Still, he could be intent on killing Marines, and Gracie was going to be prepared.
“What does the Josh have our range as?” she asked Eli.
The ship had both theirs and the infiltrator’s position. She hadn’t received any comms from the ship as to who or what the guy was, but range was an automatic function that was continuously downloaded didn’t need a human interface to request it.
“She’s got it at nine-two-nine meters.”
Gracie’s Miller marked it at 928. The ship would be more accurate, but the exact range depended on just what the ship was using for both the man and them. One meter, either way, was not going to change the firing solution.
What she didn’t like was the fact that she was 92 meters above ground. If anything, elevation had been her weakness at school. She’d done the math correctly, but still, somehow her accuracy had suffered, and she’d missed the shot more than she’d care to admit. It had to be in her cheek weld and body position, but it was something with which she sometimes struggled.
As she stood in the tower, she focused on those two things. Her AI had the calculations for the high angle, and now it was just up to her to execute the shot.
The other thing that concerned her was the fact that the man was still behind the fence. The Windmoeller threw out a relatively heavy round, but it could be deflected off the target if it hit a metal fence strand just right (or wrong, from her perspective). She was glad she had the Windy over the Kyocera, but the Barrett would have been an even better choice.
“I’ve got the QRF on the move, six pax, about 400 meters and closing from your eight o’clock,” Eli said.
“Roger,” she acknowledged.
She was tempted to swing about to spot them, but they weren’t her target. She stayed on the man, who had already cut away a decent-sized piece of fencing.
Just as Eli said, “100 meters,” the man stopped cutting and sat up, looking in the direction from which the QRF would be approaching him. Gracie fully expected him to bolt away from the fence and try to escape into the city. Instead, he pulled up something from his far side, something that his body had hidden from Gracie’s view. Gracie didn’t exactly recognize what it was, but it looked like a projector of some sort, and the man’s body language said he was going to attack.
When he’d sat up, his head and chest were in back of the fence, and only his legs and groin were uncovered by the hole he’d cut out. As he started to swing the projector around, Gracie reacted.
She dropped her aim on the first shot, aiming at his groin, not willing to take the chance on the fence deflecting her round. She fired and immediately chambered another round, regained her sight picture, this time aiming higher, and firing just as the first round hit the man in the crotch.
“Hit, low, in the balls,” Eli said as Gracie chambered the next round. “Hit, center mass.”
The man was still sitting, though. The second round should have dropped him, but with one hand cupping his crotch, he reached for his side. Just as Gracie fired the third round, a huge blinding flash of light filled her view. The Miller immediately compensated, but not before enough light got through to give Gracie stars. She jumped back, hands to her eyes.
“Great green lizards! He just blew up!” Eli said.
Ignoring the eruption of comms through her earbud, Gracie peered forward to where small fires lit the area where the infiltrator had been. A huge 30-meter gap had appeared in the fenceline. Lights appeared, probably from the QRF, and it was only then that she picked up the comms reporting two men down.
She pulled out her HOG’s tooth—the round the Eli had recovered on Wyxy and which was now mounted on a necklace made from polychord—from under her cammie blouse, gave it a kiss, then slipped it back. She wasn’t superstitious, she told herself as usual, but it cost her nothing, and better safe than sorry.
She watched for a few minutes as a platoon-sized QRF rushed to the scene. The two Marines down were WIA, not KIA, she heard, and the hole in the fence was soon filled with armed Marines. The Marines would probably keep the gap covered, not trusting the local police, until a work crew could erect something to close it.
“Where’s the midrats?” she asked.
Eli looked at her in surprise.
“What? I’m hungry.”
“You’re not, well, excited by what just happened,” he said, obviously hyped.
“Just our job, Gittens. Nothing more.”
Chapter 17
7
The recording showed that Gracie’s first round had hit the man in the crotch which elicited laughter and shouts of “ball buster” and “dick-dicer” from the other four teams at the debrief.
“As you can see,” Staff Sergeant Riopel said, nonplussed from the general levity, “the second round hit right here.”
He highlighted an area right in front of the man’s chest.
“The round deflected on the fencing, ripping through his sleeve, but otherwise missing him. The third shot probably hit him just as he detonated the pyrostene.”
Gracie studied the recording. To her, she thought she could see the impact of the round a split second before the screen went white.
“If he blew himself up, does Crow still get credit for the kill?” Zach asked.
Gracie wheeled around to stare at him, wishing she could slap the smirk off his face.
“Yes, she gets the kill. That’s our SOP. So if you want to catch up to her, Sergeant One-Kill-To-His-Name,” the staff sergeant continued, “you’d better get off your ass and do something about it.”
There was more laughter, and Possum said, “Bam, Sergeant. Staff Sergeant’s got you painted!”
Only slightly mollified, Gracie turned back to the staff sergeant and the paused display on the screen. She hadn’t been sure she’d get the kill, and this was a relief to her. Despite that she’d told Eli she’d just done her job, she’d realized that numbers mattered to her, even numbers as anathematic to “civilized society” as killing another human being. But numbers didn’t lie. She could be dinged because she was not overly friendly. She could be dinged for being a weaker NCO than the others. But no one could argue kill numbers, and she had more since she’d joined the platoon than everyone else combined.
“So, to get back to the question on whether Corporal Crow should have shifted her point of aim to part of the body that was not lethal and wouldn’t kill the target—”
“Speak for yourself, Staff Sergeant. I’d die without mine!” Sergeant Glastonary said, barely getting out the words through his laughter.
“. . .instead of going for a kill shot,” the staff sergeant continued as if he hadn’t heard, even if he let his lips curve up into a slight smile. “As we can see from the recording, her hunch was right. The, well, not-immediately-lethal shot, I’ll call it, did immobilize him, while going for the kill shot and having the round deflected might have let him fire his beam-thrower and possibly taken out the six-man QRF.”
The Intel types had identified what Gracie had termed as a projector as a Vassily Mining Knife, a 12-mega-joule disrupter. It was designed for short-range work, but even at 100 meters out, if he’d been able to fire it, enough energy would have made it that far without ablating to jeopardize the QRF squad.
“Our take-away from this is a simple reminder that it is the Marine in back of the weapon that makes a scout-sniper so deadly. Number-crunchers can calculate firing solutions, but they can’t take in all the inputs and make the same decisions that we can. Remember that.
“Corporal Crow, do you have anything to add to that?”
“No, Staff Sergeant.”
/> “OK, then. We’ve got 55 minutes before Fox’s first patrol brief, so get some chow if you want. We’ll be out there for 72 this time, so keep your heads on straight.”
Chapter 18
7
“And those are the best ones,” Eli said. “The sweetest honeyberries known to man. You need to try them sometime, only I guess you got to come to Taggert to get them right off the vine.”
Gracie listened with only half an ear as she scanned the area along Route Gazelle below them. They’d been on the roof of the building for a day-and-a-half, and except for a mortar attack on the port, quickly suppressed by the Josh—, it had had been a quite mission. For thirty minutes, Eli had been waxing poetic about the various foods back in his home country. Gracie had never met anyone from Taggert, a small nation on Lister 4, but if she listened to Eli, it had to be the garden of the heavens, the best gosh-darned spot in the universe.
Eli had hinted more than once that she should visit him and Tiggs during their post-deployment leave, but she knew that wasn’t going to happen. She ached for home, for the wide-open prairies surrounding Lodge Grass. Her family had lived there for hundreds of years, always returning home no matter how far into the stars they travelled.
They had adapted over time, as the Crow always had. Lodge Grass wasn’t even the original name of the town. It was named after the creek that ran through it, but the Crow called the creek the “Greasy Creek.” The Crow word for “greasy” is tah-shay, and the word for “lodge” is ah-shay, so when the white men came and misheard the word, the new name stuck.
The prairies were somewhat desolate, according to most people, but that might explain how in the middle of the modern universe, Lodge Grass would have still been recognizable to War Chief Joseph Medicine Crow from back in the 21st Century. They had all the modern conveniences, but there was a feeling in the town of the old ways of life.
Eli was still going on about the honeyberries, which had become quite popular since they were developed by Propitious Interstellar 20 or 30 years ago, but for Gracie, nothing could beat the sour taste of wild buffaloberries she and her sister Dana found in the grasses outside of town. The small, red berries, famed as a source of lycopene, were farmed as well—no food conglomerate was going to allow that opportunity to slip away, even with fabricators providing the bulk of humanity’s food resources. However for Gracie, the wild berries, found by her sister and her (with help from grandma), were always the best.
Sniper (Women of the United Federation Marines Book 2) Page 8