Sniper Squad

by Meg Buchanan

  Gregor breathed in. He dealt with a lot of this.

  Jack looked at him and could see a reaction brewing. “Leave it alone,” he said. “He’s just sounding off.”

  Gregor was a bloody good shot so there was a good chance he’d got in on merit. His father had been assigned here from Russia when the Quarantine first started and had worked his way up the ranks. But Gregor had lived here all his life, gone to school in the City and then joined Vector. He knew more about weapons than anyone Jack had ever met and was the squad’s ordinance expert.

  His father’s rank was no secret to anyone and sometimes he got recognised and he hated any suggestion he’d been selected because his father was a General in Vector.

  The pumped-up guy, snarled, “Can’t even be bothered defending yourself?”

  “Walk away,” Jack said. The Trooper was just making trouble, and his mates were big. Fighting them would just end up with everyone bruised and confined to quarters.

  “Yeah, listen to your pansy friend. Run away,” said the Trooper. It was probably the special treatment all the way through training that caused this resentment.

  The rest of the squad turned and were ready to back him and Gregor up, but then so had the pumped-up guy’s mates. Jack didn’t want to risk getting confined to quarters. When they left the Viaduct, he was going home, and the guys looked like about ten ton of muscle. If they did fight them, the squad would be able to hold their own, they were trained in hand to hand combat way more than Vector Troopers were, but they were going to get hurt before the MPs turned up and put a stop to the fight.

  Then the train turned up. The pumped-up guy obviously had the attention span of an ant, because he and his mates boarded the first carriage and never looked back. Jeron and Levi wandered down a couple of carriages, the rest of the squad followed them and settled there without any more problems.

  None of the squad had the sort of muscle mass VTroopers had. The squad were fit and strong and trained to run and fight, but they didn’t have that pumped up look. Jacob said probably the reason was that they ate at a different Mess to the rest of the troops at the barracks, so they weren’t being fed Genus6. They weren’t getting the testosterone the rest of the men were getting, because who needed snipers pumped up and twitchy? They needed to be calm and cold when they were doing their job.

  Levi leaned back in his seat like he owned the carriage. “You’re getting to be a liability, Ruski,” he said to Gregor. “Your dad’s too high profile, if he was just a basic guy like mine, you wouldn’t keep getting hassled.”

  Gregor ignored Levi and looked out the window. The boats in the harbour and the old HarbourBridge flashed by.

  “Not that low profile,” said Jack. He didn’t want Levi niggling Gregor. “I saw a Vid with your dad on it a couple of days ago. He was talking about a new MonoRail line they’re planning somewhere.” Levi’s dad had come to New Zealand when the Quarantine first started. But Levi’s dad was an engineer like his dad was and had been part of building the infrastructure for the city.

  Levi shrugged, but he couldn’t let it go. “Yeah. But if everyone knows he’s building stuff, no one can accuse me of using him to get in the squad. I’m like you Fraser, got in on merit.”

  Now, Gregor turned his head away from the window. “Merit,” he said. “You compared our scores on the range recently?” Nobody could argue with that. They were all good, but Gregor was the most consistent.

  “You had a couple of lucky shots.” Then Levi grinned. “Just joking man. It’s your pretty boy looks that make you stand out. That’s why those grunts pick on you.”

  Jack watched Gregor roll his eyes and let that go. But Levi could be right, Gregor had ice cold, blond, blue-eyed good looks, and he was tall and slim and looked every inch a soldier the way his father did. Like he was bred to be in Vector.

  Jack watched the City as it came closer. The MonoRail stretched out in the big curve that took the train to the platform near the Viaduct. It would stop there to let most of the rest of the passengers out.

  

  Nick, Ela and Curly sat around the table in Nicks’ room with Scott and Katie. Ela had first met Scott a year ago when she was with Jack. He’d chosen to come to University just to be with Katie, Jack’s old girlfriend. She’d been jealous when she first found out about Katie, but she liked her now. Jack had good taste in girlfriends.

  Everyone was still subdued after what happened to Tom and Jake, but now the grief had been hardened by anger and a resolve to keep going and get this finished.

  Nick tapped a stylus on the table. “We have one more shield to put in place. If it’s not in position, and the Administration blocks Jacob’s message, we won’t be able to use the backup plan.”

  Everyone around the table nodded. If the shield wasn’t in place sometime in the next week, everything they had been working towards for the last year would be wasted. Jake and Tom’s lives would be wasted too.

  “So, who is going to do it?” asked Curly.

  “It has to be one of us,” said Scott. “We’re the technicians, we helped Curly design the shield, so we know how to wire it in.”

  There was general agreement around the table.

  Nick shook his head. “No,” he said. “We need your expertise here. We can’t risk losing technicians. We’re going to need what you can do once this is over to fix the mess we’ve made. I’ll do it.” He looked over at Curly. “Can you teach me what to do?”

  Curly nodded. “Yeah, we can teach you. But we can’t risk you getting shot. We need someone here to run the place.”

  Nick grinned. “I won’t get shot. And anyone can run this place if I can.”

  Ela watched Nick lead the discussion. He was as blond and blue-eyed and good looking as Amon but seemed older and was tough in a way Amon never would be. A scar ran down his cheek from the corner of his eye to nearly his mouth reminded the others of how they had to live in their own country, and the other kids were willing to follow him because he inspired loyalty.

  “Now we know the response times and how Vector will react, we can plan for it,” said Nick. He’d been tortured too when Curly was, and the Administration had taken his brother’s baby, so he had even more reason to hate them than most Locals did.

  “If Jake and Tom had been expecting Vector, they could have come out of the building Hazed, or they could have stayed in there and hidden until all was clear,” said Curly.

  “Vector’s not likely to give up and just go away if they thought someone unauthorised was in Humicrib,” said Katie.

  “Probably not,” said Nick. “Any ideas?”

  “We could just make sure whoever did it was authorised to be there,” said Ela.

  “Who would that be?” asked Nick with a touch of sarcasm.

  Ela knew there was no way he’d easily agree to her doing it. But if Nick could be taught how to wire in a shield so could she.

  “Me,” she said.

  “No way,” said Nick. “Too dangerous.” It was just the way he and Jack always reacted last year to any suggestion she did anything interesting.

  “It’s less dangerous for me than for anyone else here,” she pointed out. “At least I have good reasons for being there.”

  Nick nodded. “Yeh, between your mum working there, and being a trainee doctor, you’ve got the best cover.”

  Then Curly spoke up. “It needs two people anyway,” he looked over at Ela. “Can you get down to the basement?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never tried it but there must be some way.”

  “You might be authorised to go into the Humicrib building but I don’t think Interns loiter around the basement,” said Nick.

  “I’ll act all ditsy and Sweet and Elite, and pretend I’m lost.” Ela put on what she hoped was her most angelic smile.

  “They’d think you were retarded if you looked like that,” said Nick.

  “Thanks,” said Ela.

  Curly rubbed his chin. “I could probably organ
ise an Authorisation for Nick to get in. Then I can hack into the Humicrib system and make you both look like Authorised Technicians.”

  Ela nodded. “I could have something ready for us to change into, so we looked the part.”

  “Can you make it work?” Nick asked Curly.

  Curly nodded. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I could.”

  “So,” said Nick like that settled it. “Now we just have to work out a way to get me into the building.”

  “I’ll get you a cloak and you can pretend to be an Intern if Curly can get you a pass.” Ela looked over at Curly. “Can you make that happen?” she asked.

  “Sure can,” said Curly. “Now we’ll see if we can give you two a few basic electronics skills.

  Chapter 8

  AT THE VIADUCT every bar was pumping.

  “Where to first?” asked Gregor.

  “How about the Hologram Bar?” Levi asked. At that bar, each table had a small disk that turned out to be an ImageMaker, and when you waved your hand over it, a Hologram of a naked girl slowly rose out of the disk and danced.

  “You just like the table decorations,” said Jack. They’d come here a week ago, just after they’d arrived in the City and scoped the place out. They’d had fun, but that was when they discovered it was better to stick together and keep clear of the VTroopers.

  Bloody Levi had sent half the night waving his hand over the disk and making the girl appear and disappear.

  “What’s not to like?”

  “Fool,” said Sharpe.

  They wandered across the tiles, up the wide steps to the bar, and snagged a table near the back.

  Jack and the others sat down, except for Gregor.

  “Want some Bliss?” he asked. A night of Bliss. Not what that meant at home. “My shout.”

  “For all ten of us?” asked Levi.

  A BlissTrolley slid up to the table. “Why not? Then it will be your turn to buy.” Jack keyed in ten packets and waved his Com at the screen. The ten shots slid down into the dispenser.

  Levi took his packet of Bliss and broke it open. “I think those trolleys should have a Hologram pushing them. It would look more real.”

  Sharpe separated his Bliss into four piles in front of him. “Let me guess. Female and naked?”

  “Yeah.” Levi waved his hand over the disk in the centre of the table and a dancing girl appeared. “Do you think they used a real girl to model her off?” he asked staring up at the Image.

  “She had bloody big tits if they did,” said Gregor. “She’d tip over in real life.”

  Levi lifted his face to the Hologram. “Kiss me,” he said, and the girl knelt slowly and gracefully and brushed her lips across his.

  “Feel anything?” asked Jack. Bloody stupid wanting to kiss an image. It wouldn’t be anything like the real thing. The memory of soft warm lips and softer palms on his cheeks came back to him.

  Levi grinned. “Only in my imagination.”

  Rocco snorted. “You should try the real thing.” He nodded at the next bar. “Real girls there.” He put the butterfly he’d just folded out of the empty Bliss packet beside the flock he’d already made. He learned origami when he was in Japan. He’d been brought up in Barracks around the world. He said his family had moved to a new country every few years when Vector posted his father there.

  Levi shrugged. “I’m getting the technique right.”

  After a few rounds of Bliss, they’d all relaxed a bit.

  “Who would have thought he’d kill his mate and then turn the gun on himself?” Phillipe looked as shocked as Jack felt. Up until now it had all been fun. They’d been shooting cardboard cut-outs and Holograms, but those two guys were real.

  “There was no way I could have stabilised what that pistol did.” Phillipe was the trained Medic in the squad. He always carried a pouch on his belt with EpiPens, filled with anaesthetics, DermaFix for cuts, compression pads and other stuff he might need if any of them got hurt.

  Jack had only seen Phillipe use the contents of the pouch a couple of times. Once when Rocco had a run in with some rusty iron and once when Dante managed to fall off a roof and break a few bones. Philippe said it wasn’t his job to fix anyone, that’s what hospitals were for, he just stopped them bleeding to death, stabilised them, then gave them something to knock them out until a Hover arrived.

  Gregor licked the last of the Bliss off his fingers and poured some water into his glass. “Guess he knew what Vector would do to him if he got caught.” The blue of the bottle reflected off the table. They didn’t usually talk about what they’d been trained to do but somehow this afternoon had made it real. Maybe they were all shocked.

  “I can understand that.” Sharpe usually got relaxed when he was Blissed out, but his time he sounded bitter.

  “Could you do it?” Gregor leaned back in his chair.

  “Do what?” Levi asked.

  “Shoot your partner, then yourself to avoid getting caught?”

  Levi shrugged. “Who is going to catch us? We’re Vector. We’re invincible.”

  Jack snorted. Maybe Levi was right. But he didn’t feel too invincible. Even with the drugs they gave them to accept the violence it sickened him.

  All around them the lighting in the bar had been turned down and most of the tables had Holograms on them dancing, watched lazily by the men sitting around. A group of VTroopers in the table next to them started asking their Hologram to do more.

  Rocco was watching the Troopers at the next table too. “Did you see the soup of service numbers on the Vid? You could tell where we were. Two red numbers at each vantage point, and a thousand white ones in a mass on the ground.

  “Do you think the numbers just come from the Locate in our wrists?”

  Gregor shook his head. “No, Dad says your helmet has your service number in too.”

  Levi got the Image to kneel and kiss him again. “What if you grabbed the wrong helmet?”

  “No idea. An electric shock for being stupid.” Rocco suggested.

  O’Hara finished the last of his Bliss. “Your turn to buy next Levi. Anyway, who grabs the wrong helmet? They’ve got our service number painted on the back.”

  “Yeah.” Levi fished in his pocket for his Com. “It’s easy for you, O’Hara you’ve got wings on yours in case you can’t read.” He signalled for the BlissTrolley again.

  O’Hara turned back to watch the VTroopers at the next table again. They were still tormenting the Image. “Learn to fly a Hover and you’ll get wings too.”

  “Might do that,” said Levi. “The FailSafe built into the Hovers means anyone can fly them without killing themselves.”

  “FailSafe?” asked Dante. “I haven’t heard about any FailSafe.”

  “Yeah, Levi’s right,” said O’Hara. “You can’t crash the things. In event of catastrophic failure, the autopilot takes over, the auxiliary power kicks in, everything nonessential turns off, and the autopilot is programmed to get the Hover back to Base.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  Jack shrugged. “Live to fight another day? What’s the point of killing off the three hundred or so Troopers in the Hover if it crashes, or leaving them stranded if it can’t take off again?”

  Dante nodded. “Makes sense. Does the hover take off if it’s empty?”

  O’Hara shook his head. “Got to have the pilot on board at least.” He turned to Levi. “So, are you going to get your wings?”

  “Not sure. Can you hotwire a Hover?”

  “Haven’t heard of anyone trying it,” said Jack. During training, Levi had proved he could break into any vehicle and get it going. But he couldn’t see Levi getting into a Mamba with a steel bar or starting it with a bit of wire he’d picked up.

  The Trolley turned up, and Levi bought his round.

  As the night wore on the VTroopers got more and more obscene. Finally, they got their Image to lie on the table with her legs open and touch herself. Then, one of the Troopers pretended to use his tongue on her. Everyone at
the table laughed at what he was doing.

  Levi had been watching. “Can you reprogramme her so she kicks them in balls,” he asked Jeron.

  Jeron shrugged. “Might be able to if I had my Tablet here.”

  “Thought you were the electronics whizz,” said Rocco.

  Jeron shrugged. “Need the right tools, can’t break into Admin control with a Com.”

  Jack stood up. He felt sorry for the Hologram, even though he knew she was only an image. “Let’s go.” Everyone had bought their round so they’d all had enough Bliss for one night, no point in starting another round.

  “What’s the rush?” asked Levi.

  “I’ve got leave and I have to be back at Barracks by midnight Sunday. I need to get going.” He had to get the MonoRail to the edge of the City if he was going to catch the night train that went to Paeroa. He didn’t want to miss it and have to wait until the morning. Half his leave would be over before he got there.

  “How did you manage to get leave?” Gregor asked.

  “Applied for it.”

  “So that’s the secret,” said Levi as he waved his hand over the ImageMaker and made the girl disappear. Then he picked up the disk and slid it into the pocket of his coat and nodded at the VTroopers. “Don’t want them abusing her after we’ve gone. She’s my girl.”

  “Idiot,” said Gregor as they wandered out into the silver light.

  About an hour later. Jack felt the carriage slow and could see the Barrier that separated the Hinterland from the City. The MonoRail finished there and once you’d gone through the checks you either had to have your own transport or get the train. His mum had offered to pick him up, but he’d said not to bother. She worked long hours in the pub and didn’t need to miss out on a night’s sleep to collect him the way mums did with little kids when they were at school.

  Finally, the carriage slid to a halt. He left the platform and headed for the Barrier. It didn’t take long to get through. There was no way a border guard was going to question a Vector Authorisation carried by a VTrooper in full uniform.