Sniper (Women of the United Federation Marines Book 2)

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  Less than two minutes had passed when Ears said, “I’ve got an anomaly, sir. Probably a shielded ship moving closer to the planet.”

  “Brotherhood?” the skipper asked.

  “I’m running the probabilities on that, but I don’t think so. Looks commercial, probably Yantos-made, possibly GE.”

  The skipper raised his eyebrows for a moment, probably in relief, Gracie figured. A Brotherhood ship would not only be better armed, starting a ship battle with a supposedly peaceful ally was not something done lightly. A corporate vessel was a much easier target, from warfighting, political, and legal standpoints.

  “Sir,” Captain Lysander asked, “Are your lifeboats shielded?”

  “No,” Boats answered for the skipper. “That sort of defeats the purpose of a life boat in being seen. Our rekis are shielded, though.”

  “You have rekis? I didn’t see them on the manifest.”

  “I don’t think they were originally part of the TE, but we’ve had them as long as I’ve been aboard. They’re in C24. I can have them assembled in an hour.”

  “So they’re the R version?” Captain Lysander asked.

  “That’s affirm.”

  “Captain, I take it that you want to take your Marines and seize that ship out there?” the skipper asked.

  “Yes, sir. I’m assuming you don’t want to break your own shielding by firing at the vessel, and I know the Federation doesn’t want any of the research to get out of the system. We don’t know what’s being uploaded, but all the samples will need to be lifted off the surface.

  “And there’s another thing. If we’re going to have to clear out the bad guys, I’d rather they didn’t have any support the ship there can provide. I want them cut off.”

  Gracie could almost see the skipper’s thoughts on his face and he considered the idea. She would have thought, though, that this would be Captain Lysander’s call, but evidently the protocol that helped the Marines and the Navy function as a team still had command with Lieutenant Commander Chacon.

  “Anything more information, Ears?” he asked.

  “Their shielding is pretty good, but I’m getting enough gravitational disturbances to know they’re out there, and it looks like they’re heading to take up a position along a standard ascent profile for the station.”

  “How long to reach a launch point for the rekis, given full stealth?” the captain asked the navigator.

  “About six hours, sir. Anything faster, and we’ll start to lose stealth. If we launch the rekis, though, sir, if there’s a Brotherhood ship out there, she’ll see the sleds,” she said.

  “She’ll know something is out there, like I know we’ve got something out there, but she won’t know exactly what,” Ears said. “She won’t know they’re Federation rekis.”

  The captain chewed his lower lip as he processed all this for a few moments before making his decision, saying, “Nav, bring her in.

  “And Captain Lysander, what’s your plan?”

  Chapter 37

  62

  The reki slowly floated out the hatch of the darkened hangar. The Porto was only 20 klicks from the target ship, so despite the high-tech shielding, they were close enough so that any break in simple light-discipline could give their position away. The target ship, which had been visually identified as a Yantos Executive III, one of the most common corporate ships in the Galaxy, was conducting recovery ops, her hangar bay open to space, and while the ship’s sensors should be blind to the Porto, any of the EVA crew could simply look over and see a stray light.

  Gracie was both excited and nervous. She was a gunnery sergeant with almost 24 years in the Corps, but this was her first space-borne operation since boot camp. She felt exposed in the eight-man space sled. The R-version was heavily shielded, both from shipborne surveillance and with a space version of a tarnkappe, which essentially bent light waves around the sled, from visual means. Unlike with a tarnkappe, though, something as low-tech as two tiny pinhole cameras allowed the Navy coxswain and the Marines full visuals to the front.

  Gracie was the section commander of the Marines on the first reki. Her job was to secure the hangar entry, then hold it while Captain Lysander, in the second reki, took the ship itself. As part of that mission, Gracie was carrying her Windmoeller as well as her M99. T-bone, who was in Gracie’s section, had been royally miffed that he wasn’t the designated sniper, but when Gracie had asked him when his last simulation in null-G had been, the staff sergeant had admitted it was back at sniper school. Gracie had tried to contain the satisfaction she’d felt when he said that. If it had been more recent, she’d have had to give him the mission, much as it would have galled her. But her simulations last year had her quals up-to-date, so she was justified in her decision.

  Shooting in zero-G was in most ways easier than on a planet. In deep space, there were few if any forces that acted upon the round once it left the barrel. With the scope switched to zero-G mode, it was as simple as point and shoot, keeping a tight body position. If the shooter was not anchored, the recoil could impart a slight angular rotation, but it wasn’t like the Hollybolly flicks where firing sent the shooter spectacularly flying backward. A round might mass 13 grams while a gunman in an EVA suit might mass 200 kilos, so while the force imparted on both would be the same, how it affected each would be different. In orbit, the round would be affected by the planetary gravitational pull, which would try and keep the round itself in orbit. Hoever, while that was much more difficult to calculate as the force changed as the round’s distance from the surface changed, the effects were generally less than those on the planet’s surface.

  What might create difficulties in the situation facing them was that to keep the hangar bay doors open, Gracie might have to take out anyone going for the emergency close switch, which would be well inside the hangar near the main entrance into the ship proper. If Gracie took a shot, the round would initially travel through zero-G, but as it crossed into the ship’s hangar, it would be affected by the ship’s artificial gravity. Scope AIs had a notoriously hard time calculating a firing solution across such an interface. No Federation scope AI, at least, had the ability to measure gravity from a distance, and whether a ship was under ½ G or 1 G could make a huge difference achieving a kill or a miss.

  Gracie turned to look at the breaching chamber clamped to the back of the reki. If the crew of the ship got the hangar doors closed, Gracie’s Marines would have to use it to breach the ship if they could. This was essentially the same piece of gear that Marines had used unchanged from 200 years ago. It would work, she knew—if the ship hung around and let them. If the ship took off, the Porto would follow and blast it into its component atoms before it could enter bubble space, leaving the assault team to float around until the ship returned. Rekis were fine for space, but they could not land on a planet.

  The reki was on silent running, but knowing how long an Executive III was, Gracie’s EVA AI could calculate the closing distance. Gracie felt her nerves rise. As a sniper, Gracie was used to long stalks where the key was to remain concealed. Sitting in open space, with just the reki structure under her butt, was unnerving. The closer they got to the target ship, the more she felt exposed. At 2000 meters, she felt the crew had to see them coming in.

  “Over there, to the right of the shuttle. The red emergency button,” the coxswain passed on the wire.

  To keep emissions to a minimum, each Marine and the coxswain were wired into the frame of the sled. They could communicate without fear of anyone picking up a signal. That would end as soon as they left the reki, but for the moment, the old-tech was superior for the situation.

  “Got it,” Gracie said, noting the emergency hangar doors closing switch.

  She tried to get a feel for how deep it was. The ship was not particularly large, and the hangar took up almost ¼ of the round vessel. Gracie figured that the switch was 25 meters inside the hull. Looking at how the crew moved about inside the ship, she thought it was set at about ½ G.
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  There was one more major force that would affect the bullet’s trajectory. There was both an electrostatic boundary and an atmospheric boundary between open space and the hangar. Either one could seriously affect the round. Like a reentry vehicle skipping off the atmosphere and heading back into space, so too could a round skip right off the boundary, especially if the angle was too oblique. Even at a better angle, the boundary could alter the shot enough to cause a miss. This was another area where the scope AIs were weak and why continual practice and re-qualifications were necessary. Once again, sniping almost became more art than math.

  The key was to get as perpendicular as possible, and the coxswain was doing a pretty good job at that. The captain and the second reki, not having to worry about the same kind of shooting, would come in at a shallower, less exposed angle.

  “Can you orient this thing so we’ve got the same aspect at the hangar?” she asked the coxswain.

  At the moment, the hangar’s “up” was at Gracie’s seven o’clock. She’d fired at different aspects in the simulators, but she’d done better when both she and her target had the same aspect.

  The coxswain complied, and within a few moments, the ship seemed to rotate to match Gracie’s up. She knew that was a trick her brain was performing to match what her eyes were seeing and what her middle ear was feeling.

  Gracie kept her crosshairs just off the red emergency switch. The distance to the open hangar door didn’t really matter to her firing solution, so she didn’t have to adjust her point of aim.

  “That’s it!” she shouted at about 700 meters out as the crew suddenly leaped into action. “Drop the screen.”

  The reki had pretty sophisticated counter-surveillance, but it was still little more than an open sleigh, and it was not infallible. They’d been picked up.

  The coxswain cut the display, giving Gracie a clear shot forward as he goosed up the speed. Gracie kept her crosshairs locked, shifting slightly as they surged forward.

  There! Got you!

  A crewman inside the hangar, in the typical green overalls of cargo crew, bolted for the emergency switch. Gracie had to wait while he ran behind the parked shuttle, but as he emerged and reached for the switch, she squeezed the trigger.

  Without air in the barrel, the round was at least twice as fast, and it took only a split second to reach the ship, pierce the hangar bay’s atmosphere, and hit the man center mass. He dropped like a stone; whether KIA or not, Gracie didn’t bother to check. He wouldn’t be hitting the switch either way, and that was all that mattered.

  Standing just behind her, three of her Marines opened up with their M99’s spraying the hangar. A young woman with bright turquoise hair ducked under the parked shuttle, then crab-walked to the bulkhead with the switch. As soon as she emerged from under the shuttle, her bright hair a nice target, Gracie took her down with a shot to the side of the head.

  Gracie’s alarms screamed out, getting close to redlining. Someone had them under fire. Energy weapons didn’t dissipate in space, so they were receiving the full force of the weapon, but the EVA suits, while less-than-perfect against kinetics, were much better protection from energy weapons. They couldn’t hold up forever, though, and the Marines had to neutralize the incoming fire.

  “Find the gunners” she shouted over the comms.

  If there had been any doubt by lurking forces in the system, that put them to rest. Gracie’s comms would go out to anyone out there, and even if they couldn’t decipher the encrypted words, the fact that something was passed would be noted. The section was not under comms silence, but still, Gracie hated to take that step.

  She glassed the hangar, trying to find the source as her display reached 70% and her face shield started pulsing with the red warning light. She couldn’t see anyone firing, and there wasn’t much of anyplace to hide in the hangar.

  If they’re not inside, they must be outside. She shifted to the shuttle, which was by now only about 150 meters away, and her scope immediately caught the energy bloom of three weapons. The only way the scope could pick them up was if they were pointed at her, so these were the culprits.

  “On the shuttle. One by the front, two in the cargo bay!”

  She threw out the adjustments she’d mentally attached to her sight picture and simply aimed center mass at the figure just to the front of the shuttle. The instant her crosshairs were on the person, she squeezed the trigger, and a moment later, her round hit, and the person went limp, arms, spreading out. She started to shift to the other two, but the three Marines behind her and Bomba, who was in the third row, left side, had riddled the two with their M99’s 8mm darts.

  Whoever they were, their EVA suits were no better than the Federation’s suits against kinetics. They offered no resistance to the high-speed darts. Unlike the gunner at the front of the shuttle, who had perfectly spherical globs of blood trailing away from him, the EVA suits of the second two immediately sealed up the punctures, so there was no sign that they’d been hit other than the fact that they were not moving.

  The coxswain, Petty Officer Third Class Sahadi, had kept to his task even while they had been under fire. The reki pierced the hangar curtain, jerking as gravity’s fingers pulled at them. He landed the reki with a bounce, and Gracie and her seven Marines bolted off to clear the hangar. Gracie stumbled and fell to one knee as her body adjusted from Zero G to gravity, but with only about ½ G in the hangar, she wasn’t much at risk of hurting herself like that.

  Gracie’s position was near the main entrance to the ship, and she ran around the parked shuttle. Just as she reached the front, the pilot’s hatch opened, and a body fell out. Gracie stumbled over the figure and fell flat on her face. As she spun, she saw the woman, try to struggle to her feet, a Victor 2mm in her hand. Gracie had her M99, and she could have dropped the woman, but something stopped her. She lunged forward, wrapping her arms around the woman’s legs. Almost crawling up her back, wrenched the snub-nosed handgun out of her hands and stuck her face into the woman’s short blonde locks, shouting over her externals for the woman to freeze.

  To her surprise, the woman did just that.

  “Gunny, you OK? Shaan Ganesh asked, running up.

  “Yeah. I do believe this is one of the shuttle pilots.”

  Shaan hauled the woman off the deck, and Gracie saw the frightened face of someone who looked no older than a high-school student. She had pilot wings on her overalls, though, so she couldn’t really be that young.

  “Sit still and you won’t be hurt,” she told the pilot, sliding the Victor into her thigh cargo pouch. “Understand?”

  The girl nodded, not looking like she believed her.

  Damned baby, Gracie thought. Either that or I’m getting old.

  She looked around the hangar. T-Bone came out of the back of the shuttle and gave her a thumbs up.

  “Falcon One, we are secure,” she passed on the net.

  “Roger that. We’re 30 seconds out,” the captain said.

  Almost to the second, the captain’s reki touched down on the hangar deck. The eight Marines jumped off and bounded up to the entrance. Sergeant Lester Piccolo, the junior Marine in the detachment, set a small breaching device against the lock, and ten seconds later, it erupted in a glorious display of purple, yellow, and blue sparks that reached out to fall slowly to the deck. Piccolo kicked the hatch, and it swung open. Within moments, the captain’s assault team had disappeared into the bowels of the ship.

  Gracie set three of her team to cover the hatch, then had two watch out the hangar doors. Surprisingly, in addition to the pilot, there were five living crew, and only one of them was a WIA with a dart through the meaty part of his bicep. Two of the prisoners were in still buttoned up in their EVA suits, and Gracie ordered them to take off their helmets. She wanted to be able to see their faces.

  Once the helmets were off, Gracie was pretty sure they posed no threat to them. They were frightened, and more than that, cowed. Gracie had to think that despite the situation, they h
adn’t thought they’d face Federation Marines, and that had broken their spirit—that and the fact that there were eleven dead bodies of their comrades being laid out on the deck beside them.

  Some of them, she was sure, had at least seen the dead technicians at the research station even if they hadn’t participated in the killing, and that had to be going through their minds at the moment. There was a good reason for that. The chief of the replacement crew had demanded that there be no survivors. Luckily for these six, though, the captain and the skipper both had said that even if these were civilians, they would be treated as EPWs. It wasn’t up to the military to pass judgment, after all. They’d leave that to the courts.

  Fifteen minutes later, the assault team declared the ship secure. Without a casualty, the Marines had seized a ship in space, one that would give up its secrets once the FCDC sleuths got through with it.

  It had been a good day’s worth of work.

  KEPLER 9813-B

  Chapter 38

  65

  By the time the Marines landed at the research station, the corporate raiders (they still hadn’t identified themselves yet, not that they’d be able to hold back once the interrogators had them in their less-than-tender hands) still on the planet had abandoned the station. Sixteen dead Federation citizens were stacked in the living quarters, but three were found in a state of shock, but alive and huddled together in a storage closet. Evidently, the captain’s “panic room” message had an effect, essentially removing the need to eliminate them.

  Captain Lysander tried to ask them what had occurred, but the three were almost incoherent, and having hidden themselves, they hadn’t observed much. The captain put them on the shuttle back to the ship and after the team had secured the building and the immediate area, approved the replacement team’s transfer to the planet’s surface.

  The research station was designed for 30. With 16 in the research team, 17 Marines, and eight FCDC station guards, the station’s life-support systems would be taxed. With the Marine’s HED 2s, each Marine could technically survive for a week or more outside of the station, but that would be an onerous drain on their energy and alertness. The Hazardous Environment Deployment System 2 was not the full monty System 3 that was in effect a mini-PICS, but it still covered the entire body with both a laminated polymer “skin” and an electrostatically maintained layer of breathable air around the Marine, the “bubble,” which worked in much the same way as the curtains Gracie had used on Wyxy. CO2 was vented through a one-way charged vortex located at the small of the back, and O2 cylinders under extreme pressure fed in just enough oxygen to maintain bodily functions. A cylinder was good for about 14 hours, depending on body size and exertion, and switching them out could be done in seconds.