If the enemy sniper was Brotherhood, then Gracie knew that higher-ups would be taking into consideration in what an aggressive act against that sniper could result—which Gracie, in typical Marine fashion, thought was utter bullshit. Whoever that was had already taken the first step, not the Marines, and if that person was Brotherhood or not, he or she, or whoever had issued the orders, had to take responsibility for any subsequent actions.
Still, a good scout-sniper preferred to know the lay of the land before going out on a mission. Sun Tzu said, “Know your enemy and know yourself, and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.” That might have been said more than two thousand years ago, but that didn’t make it any less accurate today, and if the OK to engage was given, Gracie would like to know just who they faced.
Chapter 42
65
“Captain, we’ve got a hit on the seisos on Calcutta,” Dutch said, turning from the console.
The seven Marines who had just sat down at the small dining table to eat turned around as one, then stood, leaving their food to gather around the makeshift command post, which was little more than a folding table shoved up against the bulkhead in the galley/common room. The Allied Biological team had insisted that the “muscle,” as they referred to the Marines and IS team, didn’t get in their way in the lab, so the Marines and FCDC had set up tables, making the common room even more crowded. The FCDC table hosted monitors that displayed the 22 cams they had emplaced both inside and outside the station, while the Marines’ had the main comms with the ship as well as the feeds from their various scanners.
The dragonflies had been almost useless. Several of the drones had disappeared, failing to obey commands to return to the station, and the others usually showed nothing but static when a signal was even received. Gracie thought it was ironic that with all the high-tech equipment they had deployed, it was the simple, extremely old-tech seisos, which recorded the vibration of footsteps, that was giving them a hit. “Calcutta” was the ridge where Gracie had led her patrol that first day.
“Can we tell how many?” the captain asked Dutch, who had the watch while half of the Marines ate.
“Looks like three, but the AI puts that at a 54% prob.”
The captain switched her throat mic, the flashing green light on the ship’s comm station evidence that she was on the hook with the Porto.
After a few moments, she turned to the others and said, “They don’t have anything, but they’re pretty sure there’s something there. They just can’t tell us what.”
Having great gear meant nothing if the other side could jam or spoof it. The Porto was a pretty impressive piece of Federation equipment, but their opponents, be they Brotherhood or corporate, evidently had the equipment to render the Porto blind to them.
“So what do we do, Captain?” Manny Chun asked.
Captain Lysander hesitated only a moment before answering, “I’m taking this as a potential threat to the station’s safety. As such, it is my call, and my call is that we’re going to get visuals on them, and if I still deem them a threat, we’re going to take them out.”
There was a chorus of “ooh-rahs” from the rest as the Marines expressed their joy at finally being able to do something.
“Specialist Khan, please get Sergeant First Class Juarez,” the captain told the FCDC on watch.
“And since Calcutta was in the port section’s AO, Gunny Medicine Crow, your team’s got it. Sorry about that, Gunny Chun.”
Manny’s face fell while Bomba punched Gracie’s arm in excitement.
“But I’m going with you, Gunny,” the captain told Gracie. “To give weapons free in case our comms are being jammed.”
That put a little damper on things, but Gracie knew the captain was right. Only she had the authority to authorize action on her own, and only for self-defense. If she couldn’t communicate with Gracie, she couldn’t give the order to open fire.
The mission was essentially an immediate action drill that had been briefed ad nauseam. Eight minutes after receiving the seisos hit, the port section was exiting the station at the lab door, the IS team was on full alert and with four troopers outside the station, and the starboard team was suited up and ready to act as the quick reaction force.
Gracie took her team back away from Calcutta, using the station itself to keep them out of a direct line of sight for anyone on the ridge. After retreating 30 meters, the team reached a low depression that ran at a 70-degree angle away from Calcutta. It took them farther away from their target, but it allowed them to move quickly and unobserved by line-of-sight. With Bomba leading at a controlled jog, they quickly covered the 150 meters to where a fissure bisected the depression, a fissure that led to within a few hundred meters of the ridge.
Gracie never intended to approach that closely, though. She didn’t have to. All she had to do was get eyes on the target and within range of any of the team’s weapons. The place to do that was on a wrinkle at the fissure’s lip, a weird formation where the ground puckered up a ten or twelve meters as if some cosmic deity had a little extra material when making the planet and just left it there without smoothing it out.
The bottom of the fissure was a little rough, so the going was slow. Gracie was very aware of the fact that they had mined the fissure with more seisos, and if they had, whoever was out there might have as well. Someone with ill intentions could be tracking them as they moved, ready to blast caps at them as soon as they emerged.
It took nine minutes to reach the wrinkle, 21 minutes since the initial alarm. That was good time, really good time, but it was also more than enough time for anyone setting up on the ridge to take the station under fire. Four FCDC troopers were continuing their security sweeps, in full view of anyone on the ridge. Gracie knew that Juarez, with the rest of his team ready but hidden from view, had to be having a conniption, knowing that he had four troopers sitting ducks as they projected an all-is-normal appearance to any watchers.
The wrinkle was not particularly large, and Gracie did not want to bring up the entire team. She had previously designated the three best marksmen to crawl out of the fissure and edge to where they could get eyes on the ridge: Bomba, T-Bone, and herself. She nodded to the captain, then along with the other two, pulled herself out of the fissure and started to low-crawl up the wrinkle. Gracie had dreaded crawling through the planet’s vegetation, but with her eyes on the mission, she compartmentalized her disgust and ignored it. It wasn’t as if this was some herculean stalk, though. Fifteen meters later, she was peering under the leaf of a plant which looked like nothing more than an oversized and droopy magenta oyster mushroom.
She pulled up her Zeises and started glassing the ridge, all in passive mode. She had the urge to laz the range, but with all the surveillance and counter-surveillance going on, she thought the laser would light up like the LED signs on Vegas to whatever sensors were trained on the area. She knew the range, anyway. From the center of the wrinkle to the high-point on the ridge was 2,108 meters. She could adjust on that if she needed to.
She immediately caught sight of something out of place, something big and bulky. It took a moment for her eyes to be able to make some sense to her. Whatever it was, it was camouflaged with something akin to a Federation tarnkappe. But as with the tarnkappe, it worked best from a head-on aspect. By taking the route she’d chosen, the three Marines were at closer to a 120-degree aspect, which was more than enough to be able to see an outline of sorts.
Then there was movement. A body, also camouflaged, was exposed for the briefest of an instant right beside the larger piece of gear. The movement ceased, and the body was invisible to her. But that didn’t matter. She knew where the person was.
“I’ve got a weapons system, probably energy, and one person at two fingers to the left of the apex,” Gracie whispered.
“Roger that. I’ve got another, one to the left and one back,” Bomba said.
The three Marines were ready to take action if an attack looked imminent,
but Gracie held off. She wanted to be sure they had everyone. After another five minutes, the three agreed that there were three personnel on the ridge and one weapon. From the size and general outline, it was probably an energy weapon. The range from Calcutta to the station was too far for personal energy weapons. The Marines might not be able to breathe Kepler 9813 B’s atmosphere, but it was still atmosphere, and that would dissipate energy beams. So if whoever was out there was going to use it, it had to pack a pretty powerful punch.
“Bomba, scoot back and tell the captain. Then come on back, but bring Shaan with you.”
“Tibone, keep your Barrett trained on whatever kind of gun that is. If you see anything moving around it, take the shot,” she told T-Bone. “But until then, hold on. I want the gunman, too.”
She waited a moment, and despite her best intentions, she had to ask, “You’ve got your enviromentals loaded, right?”
“No, Gunny. I decided I’d keep the scope set for Rio Tinto,” he said, naming one of the Federation’s heavy planets. “Makes it more challenging, you know.”
Gracie let his sarcasm slide. She might not like the guy, but she trusted his shooting skills.
As she lay on the ground, she felt the lump of the Victor 2mm she’d taken off the pilot back on their ship. Gracie would deny that she was superstitious to her dying breath, but she did feel more comfortable with talismans around her. She knew her hog’s tooth was draped around her neck, but in her HED 2’s on, she couldn’t very well pull it out and put it between her teeth as she liked to do with each shot. The Victor, as small as it was, still had the heft and size to be felt as she lay on it.
Gracie wasn’t sure why she had such a fascination with the Victor. It really wasn’t that effective of a weapon. She’d jokingly told Bomba that she’d kept it because stealing an enemy’s weapon was one of the four tasks a Crow warrior had to accomplish to become a War Chief. This had then led to a long discussion on the background of the Apsaalooké, but in reality, she just felt good with it in her possession.
Three minutes later, Bomba returned with Shaan, and more importantly, with the captain’s OK to open fire. The fact that there was an energy weapon of some kind there was the deciding factor. Gracie knew the captain was probably dying down in the fissure, and she’d considered having Bomba bring her too, but the more Marines on the wrinkle, the more chance that they’d be spotted. Whoever was on that ridge had to know about the wrinkle and had to know it could be used as an FFP.
Gracie assigned the targets. Bomba and Shaan, armed with their Kyoceras, and Gracie, armed with her Windmoeller, would target the three individuals. T-Bone, with the Barrett, would try and take out the weapon. Gracie knew that T-Bone was not happy about not getting a kill, but the targets were predicated on each of their weapons.
All four Marines took a prone position, bipods deployed. No one would fire until each Marine was locked into his or her target, so they could be there for awhile, and the bipods would take up the strain of their weapons.
Gracie caught a break as her target, the person beside the weapon, moved almost immediately, and Gracie had him. Whoever it was had little ability to stay still. He or she had moved three more times before Bomba said he had his target. Then they had to wait for Shaan. After eight more minutes, Gracie was about to give up on the third target, thinking he might have left the ridge. Even with a bipod, it was difficult to remain locked on a target. Her eyes were beginning to water, and she had to rapidly blink several times to clear them.
“I’ve got him,” Shaan finally said to Gracie’s relief.
“Everyone still locked on?” she asked.
At their affirmation, she said, “On my count of three, engage. One. . .two. . .three!”
On three, she smoothly squeezed the trigger. Shaan’s and T-Bone’s shots rang out simultaneously, followed by Bomba’s and Gracie’s an instant later. The crack as Bomba’s and Shaan’s darts broke the sound barrier sounded weird in the planet’s atmosphere, but the unique environmentals had been calculated and entered into the firing solution. Over 2,100 meters was no easy shot with the smaller weapons, but each round flew true. Gracie saw her round impact on her target, destroying the integrity of whatever camouflage the man was wearing. His right hand moved a few centimeters as if trying to reach his chest before falling still.
T-Bone fired five shots, one after the other. One the fourth, a small explosion erupted from the side of the weapon. Gracie didn’t see his final shot as she was quickly scanning the ridge for any movement of someone they hadn’t spotted. There wasn’t any.
The four Marines continued to scan for another minute before she told Shaan to get the captain. She continued to look for any signs of the enemy until the captain flopped down beside her.
“Three dead and the weapon probably put out of action. No sign of anyone else,” she reported as the captain glassed the ridge.
She evidently didn’t see anything either.
She brought down the glasses and said, “Good job, Gunny. I’m sending Delay back now.”
Sergeant Delay had been designated the messenger. With comms continually blocked, it was back to the same way the Roman legions had to communicate over distances. Gracie didn’t feel great about sending Tennerife alone like that, but they’d just cleared the route, and the captain wanted as many hands available to provide an overwatch.
“Bomba, take your team to Bravo now,” she told the staff sergeant. “But remember, we haven’t cleared any farther up the fissure.”
“I’ll remember,” he said with a bemused tone.
He acted like he might have something else to say, but he kept it to himself and went to get his two Marines. Gracie wanted them farther up the fissure, closer to the ridge, and able to cover more of the area behind it.
As Manny took the starboard section straight up the gut, so to speak, to the ridge for the battle assessment, Gracie’s section provided cover. She half-expected Manny to come under fire, but nothing happened. His section moved slowly over the rough terrain, and as they came abreast of the wrinkle, the captain changed her plans and jogged the 700 meters to join them.
When the Marines reached the ridge, they conducted a pretty thorough search. Bullpup took the cover off the weapon, and Gracie couldn’t help but be impressed. She didn’t recognize the model, but the engineering was unmistakable. That nasty piece of work almost assuredly had more than enough power to cause a serious hurt to the station and everyone in it.
The weapon was too big to haul back, so Manny placed something on it, and five seconds later, Gracie’s binos had to struggle to dim the small star that suddenly blossomed into life. It took the toad all of 20 seconds to reduce a good part of the weapon to slag.
A few moments later, Manny turned to Gracie’s direction and gave a half-assed salute. He gathered up his section and started on the way back to the station. Gracie waited until Bomba and his team reached her before she took her Marines back.
Whether the dead men on the ridge were actually going to take the station under fire or not would never be known. But what was known was that if you posed a credible threat to Marines, you were going to pay the price.
Chapter 43
66
“I never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad to be out among the fungus,” Gracie told Bomba.
“You and me both. I’m about ready to commence some serious violence on the geeks.”
Since the takedown of the team on Calcutta, things had been pretty quiet on Kepler 9813-B—outside of the station, that was. Inside was another story. Evidently there was a small rebellion among some of the junior scientists, and the infighting was constant. Gracie couldn’t catch all of the technical gobbledygook, but it seemed that three of the scientists had issues with the direction of their research and the reports being passed up. Dr. Tantou, the chief of mission, had been very vocal about asserting his authority, and just an hour ago, he’d gotten into a pushing match with Dr. Verone, shoving her onto the common room table and knocki
ng the captain’s lunch onto the deck. Aside from the fact that Tantou might have been doing the captain a favor, considering how vile the meals were becoming, Captain Lysander was not a happy camper, and she jumped up and shoved the larger civilian up against the bulkhead. In no uncertain terms, she told the chief of mission that no one, and that included him, was to exert physical force on anyone else.
Gracie had been shocked by Tantou’s action, but then she had to smother a laugh when the captain forbade the use of physical force while manhandling the chief of staff. After that, the tension refused to dissipate, though, and even grew stronger.
The Port Section was off duty, not that the Marines were actively patrolling at the moment, but off-duty in the station, unless released into the sweet embrace of sleep, was far worse than being on-duty, which was boring enough. With the simmering looks going back and forth, Gracie was about to scream out her frustration, so exercising better judgment, she’d grabbed Bomba and headed out. They didn’t have a destination—just getting out of the station for an hour was what she needed.
They told Bullpup and Dylan, who along with PFC Grissom from the IS Team were manning the small security station they’d all constructed the week before, their general route, and then strode off into the other-worldly vegetation.
Without a real mission, they should have remained inside the station, but things had been very quiet lately, even to the point that all jamming of comms had ceased. The consensus was that the “other side” had given up trying to disrupt the Federation mission. They’d still be out there doing their own thing, but it seemed as if they were willing to live-and-let-live. Dr. Tantou had been trying to push Captain Lysander to take offensive action against whoever was out there, but until she received such orders, the captain merely nodded her head before promptly ignoring anything further from him.
Sniper (Women of the United Federation Marines Book 2) Page 22