She returned her focus to the second crawler to check down the list of known traits of the Gator that the Owl had walked her through half a dozen times. There were a few Slark large enough to be the Gator, but only two of them were missing the lower left arm as the Owl had stated was true of the Gator. Claudia inspected these two closely. The Slark column was coming ever closer to the kill zone and the men on the ground charged with luring were on the verge of breaking. Try as she might to see the Gator in either option, neither target worked. The first one, the one on the crawler, was big enough, healthy enough looking, and appeared to be giving orders, but he was too obvious. If the Gator was this foolish, Claudia was certain the Owl would have killed him. He also didn’t have the slash scar on the left side of his face the Owl said would be there.
She checked the other possible target, walking slowly with the crawler to defend its flanks. This one too was missing the scar and actually seemed a little rattled by the conflict. She flitted back and forth between the two that were missing their lower left arm, the limb the Owl said the Gator had lost in a rocket attack two weeks earlier. Neither fit perfectly and neither felt right. She’d learned to trust her instincts, her sixth sense that sparked up when something didn’t feel right. It was a natural sniper trait and one she’d learned to rely upon. The kill zone was nearly upon her though and she didn’t have a target.
She wondered if limb regeneration or scar removal was possible with enough skin shedding. She didn’t know how often a Slark could shed their skin or how much it would even help with a lost limb if at all. She rechecked the possible targets on the crawlers and finally spotted something strange. The co-pilot, the one beside the drive, was maneuvering the levers and buttons normally on the right side, but not on the left. From what Claudia had seen, crawlers required four arms to drive. The co-pilot was only using three, moving his upper left arm between the levers meant to be operated by two arms. Claudia focused on the immobile arm—it was a fake limb hidden by a leather, armor sleeve. The co-pilot had the scar, had the size, but she’d passed over him at a glance because he’d seemingly had all his limbs.
Wind was neither present at the height of the hotel or on the street level; her shot would be undisturbed from her rifle to its target. It was a perfect night for an assassination. She centered her crosshairs over the Slark’s head, adjusted a tick to the left to compensate for the crawler’s slow yet reliably steady progress. She waited for the upswing that would violently drop the crawler and its co-pilot into the path of the bullet and then gave the trigger a squeeze so gentle she may as well have been making love to it. The shot cracked out above the sounds of the fire fight. Her target, her kill, her Gator, was grasping at his throat as an ocean’s worth of green blood flooded from the wound he could not gain purchase on. He slumped free of the crawler. His lifeless body was kicked a few times by the churning crawler legs until the pilot managed to get the vehicle stopped.
Claudia slipped from her nest. She made it several feet toward the proscribed exit before one of the men grabbed her arm.
“You missed,” the man said too loudly for their silent work.
“No, I didn’t,” Claudia hissed.
“How do you know that was him?” another of the men asked.
They were all closing in on her now, and she wondered how strained these fighting men really were. She tore her arm away from the grasping hand and shot the man a reproachful glare. “Because I know,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Shoot the big one, the one giving orders,” the man who grabbed her demanded. “Make sure you get him.”
“I’m not shooting again,” Claudia said. One shot, that’s what the Owl said she would have. One shot or they would figure it out. The Owl only took two, and that’s all the Slark needed to find him.
“Fine,” the first man said, making a grab for her rifle. “Give me your gun and I’ll do it since you’re too afraid to do the job right.”
Claudia pulled the gun back from his initial grab, although she knew if he wanted it and his friends wanted to help him get it, there wasn’t much she could do. She jumped back far enough to buy herself a couple of seconds, and ripped the bolt action free of the gun in a smooth, practiced pull. Her rifle was special, modified by her to be rendered useless with a technique she’d practiced until it was second nature and kept secret so she was the only one who knew how to perform it. She tossed the metal bolt of her rifle down a hole in the cement floor, hearing it clatter into the darkness and debris.
“Nobody fires my rifle but me,” Claudia said.
The man’s eyes followed the bolt as it vanished into the hole in the floor. When his vision returned to Claudia, rage had washed over his eyes. “Stupid bitch!” he bellowed. Claudia didn’t see the strike coming—she honestly didn’t think any Raven man would be so stupid, and she paid for this hubris when his closed fist made solid contact on her left temple and the outside of her eye.
She dropped with a fast moving fog covering her senses. She fought back against the darkness to prevent the punch from rendering her unconscious. Her skin already felt puffy with the numb, hot needles of being hit engulfing the place he’d struck; it had been so long since she’d been struck in the face she’d almost forgotten how much it could hurt. He made a grab for her, but she was ready, rolling to the side, kicking her leg out to make solid contact with the side of his knee with a thrust kick. He fell awkwardly and his two friends made the fatal mistake of grabbing to help him rather than grabbing to catch her. She rolled back and up to her feet, immediately retrieving her Walther from its holster on her battle harness. She had the three of them covered before they could be sure of what had happened. Their guns were with them, but uselessly slung along their backs. At such a short range, she could kill all three before even one of them could get a shot off. She knew it—moreover, they knew it—she’d gotten the drop on all three of them.
“I’m leaving,” Claudia said. “Do not follow me.” She backed out toward the stairs, never wavering in keeping her gun trained on the three stunned men. They would follow, but it wouldn’t matter. She’d kept the longest of the escape avenues to herself; besides, they couldn’t catch what was behind them.
Down the stairs, she doubled back to the other stairwell on the floor below and ducked into the alcove of what she guessed used to house a water heater for one of the rooms. The second floor was unimaginably dark as most of the windows were still boarded up. Darkness alone might have concealed her, but the alcove offered auditory protection as well should one of them be smart enough to listen for her breathing. She heard the thumping of the men’s boots on the cement stairs and then heard them split up. They covered the three escape routes they knew of and were gone without as much as a word passing between them. Claudia waited for a good while before sneaking from the darkness of her hiding spot. She slipped out one of the side windows, walked around to the back of the building on the tiny ledge provided, hopped down a single floor, rolling to dissipate the impact of the jump down to the loading dock, and she was free of the building to head back through the suburban side, blocks away from any other escape route and several minutes behind them.
She would have to return in the morning to try to find the bolt from her rifle. By then, Bancroft’s men would be pushing the Slark back toward Lake Tahoe.
Chapter 6:
Hanged.
During the long walk back, Claudia vowed to herself to become more cautious. Her talk with the Owl had done her a world of good in improving her target selection skills and her throbbing eye was an ever-present reminder of what misplaced trust might do. She’d simply succeeded so easily in the past. She’d taken to the fine art of the distant strike with ease and flair. Scouting and survival built on the lessons her father had taught her in such a familiar and natural way that she wondered if it all wasn’t a fated part of her. The Raven instructors who trained her in sniping and scouting gave glowing reports that she was meant for the work and possessed natural affinities that si
mply could not be taught. And this, combined with easy success over the last couple of years of actual combat, had made her lazy and reckless.
The mission held darker connotations as well: the Slark were recovering from the blow they’d taken. The cataclysm was a stout blow, a destructive blow, but not a killing blow. The Gator would be the first of many to pick up the cause that brought them to earth and do so with renewed fervor. More would learn and adapt. Veronica believed they would. She’d told Claudia as much on several occasions. The quirky little pilot also seemed to think so. With ample evidence before her, Claudia had to admit she’d erred in doubting them. Still, the pilot believed humanity could outrace the Slark to new and better technology while Veronica thought brute force and eradication would suffice. As with most things, Claudia imagined the answer rested somewhere in the middle.
The background noise of battle gave way to the foreground noise of celebration as she neared the security lines of the occupied Carson City. She was identified by the soldiers on post and enthusiastically, if a little roughly, escorted toward the heart of the celebration. The loop at the front of what used to be the Carson City Community Center was abuzz with a full blown carnival atmosphere. The closer Claudia came to the center of the throng the more the zeal increased around her specifically.
A Slark body was hanging from scaffolding in front of the community center. Claudia knew the giant beam and platform well as a gallows for multiple simultaneous hangings. Men were hoisting the Slark body in the center now. Claudia was pushed forward into the focus of the excitement. Bancroft personally bent low on the edge of the great wooden platform to help Claudia up. A second guest of honor, the Owl, made his slow, shuffling way through the crowd to join them. Even battered and dusty as it was, Claudia recognized the Slark as her kill and likely the famed Gator. The Owl took a long, lingering inspection of the dangling lizard corpse. Finally, he declared in his out-the-side-of-his-mouth way of speaking that it was indeed the Gator. The gathered Ravens erupted in applause and cheers. It was a roar on par in intensity and envelopment with the rumble of the mudslide in the canyon.
Bancroft wrapped her massive arm around Claudia’s shoulder, holding her close enough to speak to her, raising her voice to be heard above the adulations. “We sent some RPG equipped shock troops in after your shot. If the Gator was still in the mix, the Slark line would have hardened under his orders and we would have been pushed back by good use of reinforcements.”
Claudia didn’t need to hear the rest. The very presence of the Gator’s body told her all she needed to know. Bancroft, sensing Claudia’s shift in attention, continued by directing the rest of the information to the army around her. She held out her hands, finally releasing Claudia and silencing the masses.
“For the first time in months, the Slark showed us their backs,” Bancroft shouted, waiting for the army’s whooping and hollering to subside before she continued. “The famed Gator is dead and brought back as a trophy of war.” Again, more cheering followed. The crowd was working themselves into a proper bloodlust and Claudia suspected they would have marched to the ocean that night if Bancroft so much as glanced to the west. “Before the autumn frost, we will push them back to the lake and reclaim our wall in time for the first snow!”
The next part, Claudia recognized in usual patterns of victory speeches as she’d attended a few over the years, would be to thank those responsible, and this she needed to stop. Claudia stepped close enough to Bancroft’s side to be heard, speaking quickly in her ear before the last of the applause died out. “Broken Heiklen Law,” was all Claudia whispered. Bancroft’s facial expression went stone solid with fury when Claudia pointed to her swollen eye.
Heiklen was a doctor, more specifically the Black Queen’s personal physician before the Slark invasion. She’d been beaten to death by her husband shortly after the war began and Las Vegas fell into an intense civil war. The punishment of Dr. Heiklen’s husband helped carve the Raven Legal Code.
Bancroft abandoned the speech, leaving the rest to her husband who seemed overjoyed to simply be out of his hospital bed let alone presiding at the victory wake over his mortal enemy. The Owl took his wife’s place at Claudia’s side, wrapping his burned arm around her shoulder while he finished thanking her. She was barely aware of the words he spoke or the response the crowd gave. Claudia focused on Bancroft, following her with her eyes as she barked orders to a few female MPs at the edge of the stage. During a break in the noise, Claudia thought she heard Bancroft practically shout, “…they’ll hang by dawn.”
The speech continued on as she’d expected, even with Claudia’s attention only half in the moment. It came her turn to talk when the Owl asked her how she’d managed the feat. Part of Claudia wanted to leave out the last part, the treachery, but she knew she couldn’t. Rage at the code being broken was a powerful propaganda tool and the Ravens demanded she keep this rage stoked with the telling of fresh atrocities against it. And so she told the captive audience of the events of the night in her beautiful French accent, flourishes blossoming in the story as needed, until she came to the part of the story where she’d dropped the bolt action of her rifle down the hole and the betrayal that followed.
The quality of the collected army’s energy mutated before her very eyes, never losing in intensity, yet no longer the same creature it was before she’d finished her story. They were angry, men and women alike. The code of the Ravens meant continued survival for so many who had believed the end of humanity was inevitable. Ruthless, yes that was the word Claudia knew for it—ruthless and necessary. Her word was evidence enough. The three men’s absence, the rising black eye, and the missing bolt action from her rifle were irrelevant, archaic holdovers from a society that valued a man’s claim of innocence while demanding overwhelming evidence to support a woman’s accusation. In the world of the Raven, Claudia’s word was enough.
Bancroft ushered Claudia toward the back of the gallows. “Let’s drink away the unpleasant stain on the otherwise glorious night,” Bancroft said.
Claudia couldn’t agree more.
†
The private officer’s lounge, the one Claudia would not have normally been admitted to as an enlisted scout, was little better than the tavern in Tombstone and in many ways not nearly as charming. The lounge was likely the community center cafeteria at some point, although it had undergone some strange transformations since then. Men and women, grimy and exhausted from war, populated the mismatched collection of tables, drinking grain alcohol from metal cups, their hands never far from their weapons. The only lights in the room came from oil lamps at each table and along the walls giving the effect of a much lower ceiling than actually existed.
Bancroft and Claudia had been drinking the epically foul liquor that was the only alcoholic drink option in the entirety of Carson City. The Red Rook Commander, despite her fearsome appearance, wasn’t much of a drinker and Claudia’s prowess with a bottle had long since put her at a distinct advantage over Bancroft.
“You’re a liar,” Bancroft slurred, nearly knocking the bottle of undoubtedly flammable alcohol into the oil lamp in the center of the table. “I’d be inclined to try to keep you here. We could use you. I won’t though. You’d just run away from here too.” At this Bancroft erupted in awkward, drunken laughter. “And who could blame you? Here is a shit hole.”
Enough of a fuzzy edge found its way onto Claudia’s mind to loosen her tongue, but not so much to make her trample on her new vow to stop being so reckless. “You are right in that my mission is not official Raven business. I do, however, have the permission of my commanding officer the White Queen.”
“What are you really doing out here?”
Claudia weighed her options. She could drink Bancroft into a stupor fairly easily if things went sideways on her. A drunken blackout might cover the memory of Claudia saying something potentially treasonous. Or, she could simply trust Bancroft.
“I am going to San Francisco to look for my father,” Claudi
a said.
Bancroft’s head nodded and continued nodding until Claudia wondered if it was a nod of understanding or a drunken sway picking an odd direction to manifest. “I understand. Maybe not the father thing as my dad was an absentee career loser, but the seeking out a loved one thought lost—that I understand,” Bancroft said. “If you don’t find what you’re looking for out there, know that you could do us a lot of good here.”
“Even though here is a shit hole,” Claudia said with an inebriated wink.
This brought another laughing fit to Bancroft. “We’ll fuel you up, give you what you need, and you can be on your way tomorrow,” the commander said. “I don’t think thanking you would cover quite what you’ve done for us here. We were on the point of breaking to retreat.” Bancroft poured herself another drink although she appeared to be more interested in holding it than drinking it. “On a personal level, you did the Owl a world of good too in finishing the work he’d started but didn’t think would ever get done. Take a wife’s thanks for helping out a husband who has known enough hurt already.”
Claudia reached across the table to stay Bancroft’s hand before she could down the drink wrapped in her fist; she wanted to be sure Bancroft could remember her words and she suspected the drink she held might jeopardize that. “He has a gift for instructing. Perhaps he might still find his worth in guiding a new generation of scout snipers to their potential,” Claudia said. “I would not have succeeded tonight without his words.”
The Steam-Powered Sniper in the City of Broken Bridges (The Raven Ladies Book 2) Page 5
