Sniper (Women of the United Federation Marines Book 2)

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  She turned towards her belly and eased her Windmoeller forward until the Miller had a line to the position. She couldn’t see anything. Either the sniper was already gone, or he hadn’t thought of that yet. She was just about to ease back when the breeze picked up, and the tattered growth started to sway—all except for one of the purple balls. It remained almost motionless. The purple balls tended to move in the slightest breeze, so something was holding it back. She couldn’t see the base of the ball because of the top of the ripple.

  Gracie aimed as low as she could on the ball and fired a single round, just clearing the ripple and blasting the ball into a purple mess. She caught the briefest movement as something scurried back down. She couldn’t make anything out, but after seeing the ghillie on Manny’s feed, that didn’t surprise her.

  She knew she hadn’t hit him, but she hoped that would discourage him from trying that again.

  She checked her display. Bomba and Tenner had almost reached their destination. In another few minutes, they’d have ginned up a better position. She felt relieved, but that was not good enough. Gracie had to take out the threat that loomed over all of them.

  Trying to remain as motionless as possible, Gracie started scanning the ripple. It wouldn’t take much for her to be able to spot him. This wasn’t some sniper versus sniper exercise, where two snipers were let loose in a large training area. Gracie knew where he was, and he knew where she was. At 350 meters, the tiniest mistake could reveal an exact position.

  To lessen that chance, Gracie was not traversing her weapon—she was letting the scope do the scanning. If she spotted something, then she’d bring the weapon to bear.

  And that was almost a fatal mistake. The Miller’s small AI flicked through and highlighted possible unnatural shapes or odd movements, the majority being false positives. The flickering almost became part of the background noise, and when it hit yet one more, it took a moment for Gracie to recognize it as the muzzle of an otherwise hidden weapon. Her Windmoeller was not in position to fire upon it, and Gracie ducked back down a split-second before the ground where she’d just been erupted in a mini-volcano.

  Think, Crow! she admonished herself. Don’t rely on tech! Think like a sniper!

  Her heart racing, she shifted her position. That had been a close call. She ran a finger over the muzzle of her Windmoeller, checking to make sure her frac-tape was still on. She wondered if the enemy sniper didn’t use something like frac-tape or if he did, if it had fallen off. Either way, she was still alive and kicking because the muzzled had been visible.

  Gracie didn’t know how she’d been spotted, and wondered if it had been her scope. She wished she’d had a truthteller with her. She could set that up offset from her position. If it was spotted, the worst her opponent could do would be to take it out, and in doing so, reveal his position.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t have one with her. She might as well wish for a Wasp to strafe the other sniper or the Porto to be overhead and send down one of its ground support beams. Still, the idea of a remote kept tickling at the back of her mind. If there was only some way to get the enemy to focus on someplace she wasn’t, and then even engage it, Gracie could end this right here and now. How to do that, though, was the real question.

  As she eased forward, again, her mind started listing what she had with her. A Windmoeller sniper rifle with Miller scope. Her M99. The tiny Victor handgun she still kept with her. Her sniper kit. A fart-catcher hanging off her butt. A Hwa Win combat knife.

  The fart-catcher came back to her mind. What if she could make it disgorge CO2 instead of absorbing it? Was the other sniper still monitoring for it?

  Curious, she edged back down under cover, then undid enough of the duct tape so that she could worry one of the two cylinders loose, quickly taping the remaining one back up. She realized that if the sniper was still monitoring CO2, she’d just given up her position, but unless he had a CD round, she was still safe for the moment.

  That thought made her pause, but as no counter defilade round came blasting her way to explode a meter over her head, she shrugged and went back to examining the cylinder. She quickly realized that she couldn’t do much with it. The air that came in was pressurized from her HED 2, not the cylinder. When it was disconnected, there wasn’t any air movement at all.

  She set the scrubber down, ready to abandon that line of thought when a thoroughly disgusting idea hit her. She wanted to reject it out of hand, but unfortunately, she thought it could work. She looked over her shoulder back towards the sniper on the hill, wondering if she should just go mano-y-mano, like in the flicks, but he’d proven to be a worthy and skilled opponent. Gracie knew she was good, but she was not T-Bone. Her ego was not going to let her ignore any potential advantage.

  With a sigh, Gracie flicked off the automatic kill option on her HED 2. If she got hit bad enough, then maybe the planet she hated would finish the job on her. She didn’t think she really needed to turn off the option, but it would suck in half-way through, she’d be KIA.

  She took out her Hwa Win and checked the blade. Short and triangular, the blade wasn’t standard issue but had been a favorite among Marines for a hundred years.

  How am I going to do this? she thought, wishing she had someone else to help her.

  But there wasn’t anyone else, so she carefully reached under her ass, like she was wiping herself, and slit the polymer undersuit around the anal valve, then the urinary valve. After that, it was surprisingly easy to pull them out, the tubes attached to them following in trace.

  Gracie stared at the two tubes, holding them gingerly. Luckily, she hadn’t used the anal tube, but still. . .

  The tubes were standard bio-tubing. They could be compacted down to a small cylinder about 5 centimeters long or stretched out to almost a meter in length. Gracie unwrapped more of the duct tape, then she used it to connect the two tubes. The urinary tube had a smaller diameter, so she stuck one end inside the larger tube, then hoped the duct tape made a good enough seal.

  She checked the time. She’d been there for almost 15 minutes. The enemy sniper knew there were other Marines still in the fight, and he couldn’t take too long to take Gracie out if he wanted to either escape or fight on, so Gracie had to work quickly if she was going to retain the initiative.

  Looking at her weapons, her thoughts went back and forth several times before she reluctantly chose the Windmoeller. With one more piece of duct tape, she attached one end of the tube to the stock of the weapon.

  She knew she had let a bit of CO2 escape when she’d pulled the scrubber, so this was a logical position, but it might be under too intense scrutiny for the same reason. So keeping low, Gracie crawled to a spot 10 meters away. It took her almost two minutes to ease her Windmoeller into position. She breathed a sigh of relief when it was in place and she hadn’t eaten a round while emplacing it.

  This was only half of the equation. Gracie had to get into a good firing position as well. She wanted to simply move to her left, but the pseudo-plants got in the way. She ended up having to almost weave the tube between the stalks, taking five minutes to set up two meters away from her Windmoeller. She wished it was farther away, but that was all the tubes she’d had inserted into her.

  Gracie brought up her M99. It didn’t have then angles that her Windmoeller had, angles designed to minimize being spotted, nor the trac tape that disguised the muzzle. . .

  Crap! I should have taken that off the Windy and put it on the 99, she thought. Too late now.

  No angles and no trac tape on the M99, but it would have to do. She put it on the ground, then slid over it, just as she’d done back on her final stalk back at Scout-Sniper school so many years ago.

  It’s been a long time just to come back full circle, she thought.

  She peered through the various fans, balls, and stalks that served as plants, shifting her position until she had a good view of the ripple.

  OK, this is it, she thought, bringing up the end of the tube, piercing th
e bubble, and placing it into her mouth.

  She couldn’t remember which end of the tube this was, whether it had been attached to the valve or had been inside of her, and she preferred not to think about it as took a deep breath, then exhaled through the tube. She didn’t know how much air she needed to make it through, so she breathed twice more, her eyes peeled for any sign of the enemy.

  And there was nothing. She knew the other sniper was there, watching, but he hadn’t taken the bait. Gracie took another breath and blew through the tube. Still nothing.

  Maybe he needed more. She gently pulled on the tube, and two meters away, the tip of her Windmoeller twitched—and almost immediately, a shot rang out. The Windmoeller was hit and flew up and back. Three-hundred-and-fifty meters away, Gracie spotted the sniper. She’d been looking at the position for the last few minutes, seeing nothing. As soon as he fired, though, his shape was evident to Gracie’s trained eye.

  Gracie grabbed her M99, pulling it forward in one smooth movement—just as the other sniper seemed to realize it was a trap and started to swing his weapon to take Gracie under fire. As the gunman turned, he became a she, her face clear above the breathing mask.

  He or she didn’t matter, and Gracie fired her M99 on full auto, sending the hyper-velocity darts over the intervening distance. The enemy sniper managed to snap off one shot, which still came distressingly close to Gracie, but that was all as the little darts shredded her body. Gracie kept firing as the sniper fell forward over the edge of the ripple, her body sliding down the slope and leaving a bright red trail that contrasted with the dull pastels of the planet.

  Chapter 50

  69

  Two days after the shootout, Gracie stood back as the new Mei Shan scientists took over the lab. Unbeknownst to any of them, the giant multi-galactic corporation had bought out Allied Biologicals’ share in the bio-rights to the planet. The Mei Shan Group was headquartered on the independent (and tax haven) world of Du Pierre 4, but Mei Shan Plastics, Inc, was incorporated on Hiapo, and therefore as a Federation company, qualified under Federation law for the purchase—this despite the fact that as far as Gracie could pull up on the interweb, the company had nothing to do with biological research.

  The AB team seemed in great spirits, happy to get off the planet and secure in the knowledge that there would be hefty bonuses thrown their way. Dr. Tantou seemed the happiest, and if Gracie could read him, relieved.

  Dr. Williams was the only one of the team working. He was assisting the Porto doctor preparing for the transport of the popsicles, the eleven bodies in stasis, back up to the Porto and the Mei Shan transport. The troopers and the enemy snipers were going to the Mei Shan ship, but by unspoken demand, the Marines were going to the Navy ship. The brotherhood between the Marines and the Navy created a trust that wasn’t always there with other organizations, and the Marines always preferred Navy medicine. Lieutenant Commander Chacon had tried to send the shuttle down to pick up the popsicles right after the battle, but he’d been ordered to stand down until the Mei Shan ship arrived in system.

  With the buyout, secrecy was no longer a factor, and the Marines expected to be recalled soon. Mei Shan had their own security teams, so the IS Team was being lifted off today, and the Marines, while still at the station, were somewhat redundant. And the Marines were down to eight effectives. The captain was one of those effectives, even if she was still limping. When she’d got up to fire her M99, she’d given Gracie the cover to run to her position, but the sniper had simply shifted her position and fired at the captain, hitting her in the fart-catcher. One of the scrubbers had stopped the round, but it had been forced into her hip and butt cheek, leaving a nasty mass of bruised flesh. A couple of hours under local regen on the Porto would go a long way in starting the healing process, but the captain would not leave while she had Marines still on the planet.

  Eight effectives meant nine Marines were down. Gracie shifted her gaze to the line of popsicles. Dr. Wiliams gave six of them fairly good prognosis. Riko could possibly be resurrected in the Porto’s sick bay. He’d been shot in the side, not doing much damage but destroying the integrity of his HED 2, so the suit had shut him down as per protocol. It was well within the ship’s capabilities to zap his heart back and heal the relatively minor wound. The rest would probably go back to one of the Naval hospitals before being resurrected. Dutch faced a long and painful regen, but he should be able to make it. Spig and Farouk were the only two confirmed fatalities, and T-Bone was on the borderline. All told, the Marines and the IS Team were pretty lucky to escape as lightly as they did.

  Only it didn’t feel light to Gracie. Including her, there were only three left from her section.

  Ready to load first were the causes of her losses. Two mystery people who had chosen to attack them. The man was a good candidate for resurrection, but the woman Gracie killed was not. They wouldn’t even try. They’d take her DNA and search for a match, but Gracie knew they wouldn’t find anything. Hollybolly took liberties with science all the time, but their favorite trope of DNA manipulation to give someone a new identity was more of a fact than fiction. Whoever these two were, from a DNA aspect, they were no longer the same two people as when they were born.

  “Don’t keep dwelling on it,” Bomba said, coming up and leaning an arm on his shoulder.

  “Too many lost,” she said.

  “And there’d be more if you hadn’t gone warrior queen out there. You saved our asses, including my mother’s favorite son’s ass, and for that, she’ll be eternally grateful.”

  “Your mother will be grateful?” Gracie asked as a soft chuckle escaped her.

  “Sure. Well, maybe me, too. I’m fond of that ass, too, and I’d have hated to see it get shot off.

  “Even if you looked like a penguin doing it.”

  She turned, knocking his arm off her shoulder and leveling a wicked punch right under his ribcage.

  “I did not!” she protested, before breaking out into laughter.

  And it felt good to let loose.

  She had looked like a penguin, she knew. One of the Eagle Eyes had captured her run to her position, the fart-catcher banging on her legs, keeping her strides short—buzz-saw quick, but short. Even watching the recording, she kept expecting to see herself cut down.

  “OK, we’re ready for them,” a petty officer said, coming into the station.

  “That’s us,” Bomba said, powering up his suit.

  Gracie followed him, and along with the rest of the Marines, the captain included, they carried each Marine outside and loaded them into the shuttle. The loadmaster strapped each one down and motioned for the next. In a ziplock, material restraints were preferred over locking beams as there had been occasional instances of locking beams interfering with what were essentially only temporary containers. On the ship, they’d be transferred to sturdier units.

  When Manny was loaded, Gracie lingered a moment, reaching out to touch the ziplock. She could see his shape inside, but no details. Dr. Williams had been confident that he’d make a full recovery. He’d looked pretty bad, his chest a mass of hamburger, so she’d been relieved to hear that.

  As she started down the ramp to go back to the station, she had to get out of the way of Rez and Hamilton as they pushed the Palomino up the ramp and into the shuttle.

  “Hey, what’re you doing with Isá?” she asked, watching the beautiful machine disappear into the cargo bay.

  “Orders,” Bomba said. “The Intel types want to get their hands on it.”

  Gracie understood that, but still, it hurt. She’d even gone so far as to name the bike Isá, which meant “Arrow” in Crow. She wasn’t the type to name inanimate objects, but this time, it seemed appropriate.

  The serial number had already been sent on, which came back as “no such number” from WCD, no surprise. Gracie didn’t know what else Intel could find out, and even if she expected to leave the planet soon, she hated to see the bike go.

  She turned to get off the shuttle.
The eight remaining Marines stayed outside until the shuttle lifted off, watching until the shuttle’s flare was lost from site.

  “I don’t know how much longer we’re going to be here,” the captain said. “But we might as well make the best of it.”

  Gracie was the last to turn and follow the rest inside.

  FS PORTOLUMA BAY

  Chapter 51

  69

  The Marines were taken off the planet nine days later, but not how Gracie had expected. It had been obvious by the second day after Mei Shan had taken over that something was wrong. The Marines were spending most of their time in the common room when they weren’t leading the Mei Shan security on lay-of-the-land patrols, and the arguments arising from within the lab were hard to miss. At one point, Captain Lysander started to open the door to find out what was going on when a short, broad-shouldered guard blocked her way, apologizing, but obviously determined to keep her out. The captain was still the mission commander, but after a few moments, she just shrugged her shoulders and sat down. It was obvious that even a captain could catch short-timer’s disease.

  On the third day, a construction team came down from the ship to start enlarging the camp, something to which the Marines were looking forward. Having their own berthing and head would be nice. That construction came to an immediate halt three days later after one of the corporate bigwigs came down to the station and locked himself and his retinue in the lab with the scientists for five hours. When he came out, he was not looking happy. Three hours later, the construction crew was picked up and lifted off-planet.

  No one was talking to the Marines or the Navy. Lieutenant Commander Chacon knew no more than the Marines. The captain ended up not even asking any more and immersing herself in a century-old holo series, and taking her cue, the rest of the Marines took their packs off with a resounding thud. There wasn’t even a façade of providing any security.