Esther wracked her brain for a course of action. With a normal infantry unit, she’d have options upon options. Supporting arms, air, naval gunfire—any of these could clear the area ahead of them. That sniper might be skilled, but he or she couldn’t stand up against some of the Navy big guns. The problem was that she had none of those normal resources. All she had were the Marines with her.
“I think our target is using this to maneuver. Manny, I want you to shift left, then using Delhi as cover, get up and haul ass to an FFP in the vicinity of 22455-67395,” Gunny Medicine Crow passed on the net while forwarding an overlay that showed a series of almost concentric ripples on some high ground to their fore.
The gunny turned to look at Esther as if for approval. Esther had been contemplating a more typical base of fire and envelopment, but with a sniper on sniper action, she gave sway to the gunny and nodded. A good officer made the best use of his or her resources, after all, and Gunny Medicine Crow was a hellaciously capable resource.
“Everyone else, get into a good FFP, then stay put until Manny’s in position. Manny, you and Riko keep your eyes peeled. If I’m right, you’re going to have clear enfilade if the target tries to move between positions,” she passed.
“Roger that. We’re on our way.”
“Now we wait,” the gunny told the captain.
Chapter 22
When the gunny had said they were going to wait, she hadn’t been kidding. For thirteen hours, the two of them laid still while the others maneuvered into position. Gunny Chun had covered 1900 meters, which didn’t seem like much, but when he and Sergeant Rikoman were covering that on their bellies while trying not to be spotted, that took a little extra time.
Esther and the Gunny had traded off using her Miller scope to try and spot the sniper. While holding the Windmoeller, she had a daydream of taking action. She imagined seeing the enemy sniper, taking aim, and firing, feeling the rifle recoil back into her shoulder and watching the enemy fall. She’d earn the coveted HOG[4] designation and be able to hang the hog’s tooth around her neck. She’d fam-fired the Windmoeller before while in recon, and she was confident of her ability to hit a range target, but she knew she wasn’t a real sniper. If she spotted the opposing sniper, she’d hand the rifle back to the gunny.
Medicine Crow’s plan was a simple one. With Gunny Chun in position, Esther and the gunny, along with the other five teams, would become bait. Their sole purpose in life would be to draw a shot from the sniper and making him reveal himself so Gunny Chun could take him out.
Esther was scared, her throat tight, her stomach threatening to heave. Gut-wrenching fear like this was pretty much a foreign emotion for her. It took her awhile to realize what was wrong with her, and that confused her. She’d been in some pretty tough spots before, and she’d been sure she wasn’t going to survive the final assault on Mount Zeus on Elysium, so she’d faced death before. But she’d faced it while fighting, where she was absorbed in her mission. This time, she’d just be crawling along, waiting for Thor’s hammer to strike her. Her mission was to get shot.
Part of her wanted to object to her presence as bait, and there was a by-the-book reason to justify that. Without false humility, Esther knew she had the experience and knowledge to be best qualified to bring everyone, civilians, troopers, and Marines, out of the mess they were in. But at this stage, the die was cast, and then maybe just ahead of Spec Lum, she was the least-qualified for this mission. If she fell, SFC Juarez had the capability to call in the shuttles and get the civilians off planet.
And with more than a little guilt, she knew that Gunny, with her Windmoeller, would be the prime target between them if they were the ones spotted. The enemy sniper would give Esther, with her little M99, barely a second thought when there was a Marine sniper on his trail.
Of course, all of the other Marines had been through sniper school. They’d passed their stalks. Esther had never done that. So, if anyone was going to make a stupid mistake and be spotted, it would probably be her.
Sucks to be you, Gunny. He might spot me and then latch onto you.
Finally, Gunny Chun was in position, and with a quick order to the rest, Gunny Medicine Crow turned to Esther and said, “It’s time.”
The gunny, with Esther on her ass, slid out of their hide and into a depression to their right. Slowly, the two Marines advanced, and Esther could almost feel the crosshairs centered on her back. She started to wonder how long the fart-catchers would work, and she imagined a plume of CO2 rising out of their asses like a signal fire to pinpoint their position.
It was almost three hours later, while she and the gunny were only 400 meters from the rise, that the expected shot was taken. Immediately, Sergeant Ganesh’s avatar grayed out, and another shot was fired. Staff Sergeant Cezar’s avatar, right next to Shaan’s, went light blue.
“Get ready, Manny!” Gunny Medicine Crow passed.
Esther froze, waiting for the gunny to fire. Nothing happened, and Esther thought the plan might have failed, when a single crack of a Windmoeller reached them.
“Target down,” Gunny Chun passed.
“Give me a feed,” Esther demanded.
The gunny connected his Miller’s feed, recycled fifteen seconds, and the image of a figure in some sort of ghillie appeared, a breathing system over his mouth and nose and hunched low as he ran along one of the terrain ripples Gunny Medicine Crow had spotted.
She hit that on the nail head!
The sniper had his head turned in the direction from which the rest of the Marines were advancing. Gunny Chun wasn’t in that direction, of course. He had flanked the position.
The gunny fired just as the man turned to him, as if he’d realized his mistake, but it was too late. He’d just started to dive away when the gunny’s round took him in the chest. He fell, tried to rise, then collapsed to lie still on the dirt
“Any sign of anyone else?” Esther asked him.
“That’s a negative. It was just him.”
Marine snipers always worked in pairs, but memitims often worked alone. Esther didn’t know if that was a Brotherhood sniper or not, but she needed to find out.
“We need to recover the body,” she passed. “We’ve got to find out who he is. Staff Sergeant Rapa, you and Sergeant Delay are the closest. You’re up.”
Esther pulled out her binos and began glassing the face of the rise. They weren’t as good as the gunny’s Miller, but the more eyes, the better. But as the two Marines reached the base of the rise, nothing had been seen. There was no cover on the front slope, so Rapa and Delay stood up in plain view. Still, nothing happened, and Esther’s tension backed down a hair.
And as with the idiosyncrasies of the gods of war, that was when the shots were fired.
Esther rose slightly to see, but both Marines were very much alive and scrambling for cover. She dropped the binos to check the display, and took a gut shot as she saw Gunny Chun and Sergeant Rikoman’s avatars gray out.
“No!” Gunny Medicine Crow shouted out.
“Who saw anything?” Esther asked as she tried to pull up the Eagle Eye again, the bile rising in her throat.
She queried the AI, but nothing was popping up.
“Captain, right now, put everything you have on that spot with the M99. Everything!” the gunny told her.
Esther paused a second, identifying just what spot the gunny was indicating. She wanted to ask why, but in combat, Marines had to react. She trusted the gunny, and that was enough.
She didn’t have a shot while prone, so she rose to one knee and started “throwing darts.” With 4,000 of them, that was some pretty hefty firepower.
With her peripheral vision, she saw the gunny take off like a jackrabbit. She ignored her, just watching pieces of fungus explode as the hypervelocity darts struck. She was feeling a perverse joy in it, and she could feel the power flowing through her veins. Surely nobody could stand up to that onslaught.
Somebody could, though. Just as the gunny came back into vi
ew, less than 100 meters from her target, a mule kick hit Esther in the hip. She dropped her M99 and fell to the ground.
I’ve been shot, she told herself, amazed.
And then everything started tunneling in.
Chapter 23
“Captain, are you all-right?” Gunny Medicine Crow was passing on the P2P, something that took her a few moments to realize.
“I. . . I think I’m hit.”
Am I hit?
“Stay down. Don’t become a target,” the gunny passed.
OK. That sounds reasonable.
Esther still wasn’t quite sure what had happened, so she picked up her M99 and started to take stock of herself. Her ass and hip were burning, and it wasn’t until she caught the tiniest whiff of something nasty that she started into mini-panic mode. Twisting her body didn’t do jack in finding out what had happened, so she felt around. Her fart-catcher was askew, almost on her hip, and her questing fingers caught a hole in it.
It fell into place. Somehow, despite kneeling and facing the enemy sniper, a round had caught the edge of the fart-catcher, driving it into her ass and hip. And now, the planet’s atmosphere was beginning to seep in. Something was still keeping most of it out, but with any movement, that could open the floodgates, and she’d be dead, killed by her own HED. She’d be resurrected, but that wasn’t anything she wanted to go through.
What now?
She quickly sat down, hoping the ground would block more poison from entering her HED. Her nose started itching, whether from her thinking about the atmosphere or that enough hydrogen cyanide had reached her, she didn’t know, but she knew she’d better not sneeze.
A shot sounded out from in front of her. She wasn’t positive, but she thought it was a Windmoeller.
I hope she got him.
But there was no “Target down” passed. She wanted to call the gunny for an update, but if she was going sniper-on-sniper, she didn’t need any distraction.
She pulled up the gunny on her face shield display, but unlike a regular combat helmet where as a commander, she could pull feeds, all HEDs required a push, and the gunny wasn’t sending. Esther couldn’t monitor what was happening.
Or could she?
The Eagle Eye’s visual capabilities were limited, but she had two more Dragonflies. Maybe they could even help the gunny. Quickly, she directed both to the area.
Another shot rang out, something deeper than a Windmoeller, and Esther switched back to the main combat display. The gunny’s avatar remained a bright blue, and Esther let out a sigh of relief.
Her hip was burning more. Esther wasn’t sure why, but she feared that the atmosphere that had gotten inside her HED was just sitting there, reacting with her skin. The design of the HED 2, where the polymer skin hugged the body, had kept most of whatever had leaked in trapped around her hip, and with her sitting on the hole, at least no more was coming in.
She pushed those thoughts out of her mind. She checked the progress of the dragonflies. Number one should be over the gunny in fifteen minutes.
“Staff Sergeant Rapa, do you have eyes on Gunny Medicine Crow?” she asked on the P2P.
“That’s a negative. She told Tenner and me to move into position where we can cover her, and we’re on the move now.”
“Is there anything else we can do?”
“More people might interfere with her, Skipper. I’d suggest letting her handle this.”
Esther had gotten the impression that there might be something going on between the two of them, but Rapa sounded pretty calm and collected. And he was probably right. If there were yet a third sniper, anyone rushing forward to help her would be toast.
And so what am I doing just sitting here? she asked herself.
She was pretty exposed, but she didn’t want to get down on her belly. She reached back and under her to touch the hole, and her fingers played along the edges of the duct tape Rapa had used to secure it. Her fingers played with the edge, and then it hit her. Carefully twisting around, she could just about see the bullet hole. But Rapa had gone crazy with the duct tape, and it wrapped all the way around her waist.
Esther reached down and slowly pulled on the edge of the tape. She released six or seven centimeters, then tore off a strip. Rolling over and reaching to the fart-catcher, she placed the strip over the hole and pressed it down. Ideally, she’d have had the power off to transfer the tape, but it didn’t seem to matter. It stuck fast, just as duct tape had been doing for centuries. It had worked to get NASA astronauts back from the moon during the 20th Century, and it worked just as well on Kepler 9813-B now.
She slowly sat up and leaned forward, exposing the fart-catcher, and her suit registered at 100%. She wasn’t about to run the hurdles, but it should last until she could get back to the station.
“Target down,” the gunny passed over the circuit, bringing Esther back to the mission.
Esther looked up confused. She hadn’t heard the report of a round being fired.
The dragonfly was almost within range. Esther directed it to focus in on the gunny. Within moments, Esther could see her, standing over the body of what she assumed to be the enemy sniper. In her hand, was her M99, not her Windmoeller, which would explain why Esther hadn’t heard the firing but opened up many more questions.
The gunny had some serious explaining to do, but that would have to wait. Esther had five more Marines down, and they needed immediate attention.
Screw the Porto, she told herself. They were going to send down a shuttle now, she vowed, or Commander Chacon would live to regret it.
Chapter 24
Chacon had not sent a shuttle for two days, but not for want of trying. He’d been ordered to stand down. So, the Marines had hauled their dead and wounded back to the station so Dr. Williams could get them into stasis as soon as possible. Esther sent six of her remaining Marines to pick up the dead enemy snipers. With the delay and the effects of the atmosphere, Esther didn’t think much could be done with them, but the Intel types would want them DNA-matched, not that Esther thought that would reveal anything. The two snipers, one woman and one man, were probably so deep into the shadows that even their handlers didn’t know who they were anymore.
The female sniper had been the one taken out by Gunny Medicine Crow, and Esther was still amazed at how the gunny achieved that. The enemy sniper had the positioning on her, and she had her array of sensors, but the gunny used them against her. Using her fart-catcher, her knife, and some tubing, she set up a dummy firing position, actually blowing out through the tube to make a CO2 bloom. The other sniper fell for the trick, exposed herself, and the gunny took her out with her M99, the same as any infantry Marine would have done.
It had been a remarkable feat, one that surely needed to be taught in sniper school, but the way things were evolving, Esther was sure no mention of it would be made—ever. This mission was going to be highly classified and buried.
At least they were leaving. At the same time that Esther and Medicine Crow had been waiting for Gunny Chun to get into position, the giant multi-galactic corporation Mei Shan 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 the company had nothing to do with biological research as far as she could tell. As far as Esther was concerned, the buyout changed nothing, but she’d received her orders as well: stand down. Somehow, Mei Shan’s purchase evidently removed the threat of the still-lurking Brotherhood ship.
For the civilians, this was a victory, and they were in celebratory mood. They were happy to be leaving the planet, and they’d been told to expect some hefty bonuses. For the Marines and troopers, the eleven bodies stacked neatly against the bulkhead dampened any enthusiasm.
The Porto’s shuttle had finally been released, and along with the ship’s
surgeon, the popsicles were being readied. The troopers and the enemy snipers were going to the Mei Shan ship which had just arrived in system, 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.
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. Esther, along with Staff Sergeant Brooke, were two of those effectives.
Esther was still limping. Between the bruise of the impact and the burns from the atmosphere, her hip around to just above her ass was a mess, one that the ship’s surgeon said a day in sickbay with minor regen, and she’d be almost good as new. But as long as there were Marines on the planet, this is where she’d be, too.
The eight Marines were standing by to take out the popsicles. Dr. Williams gave six of them fairly good prognoses. 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 medical 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 Mobutono was borderline. All told, Dr. Williams said the Marines and the IS Team were pretty lucky to escape as lightly as they did, but Esther thought it had been a pyrrhic victory. Two enemy snipers had taken on the Marines and did far more damage than they should have before being killed themselves. Were it not for Gunny Medicine Crow’s intuition first and then action second, Esther thought more of her Marines might have been taken out.
Esther's Story: Special Duty (The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins Book 4) Page 12
