Sniper (Women of the United Federation Marines Book 2)

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  “And how is Daphne?” Gracie asked Tiggs.

  “Doing fine. She’s back from maternal leave, kicking butt and taking names, from what Bill says. She was going stir crazy, sure that the commission was going to fold without her guiding hand.”

  “Sounds like her,” Gracie said with a laugh.

  “She wishes she could be here, too, but you know, her duties. . .”

  “I understand. I’m just amazed you came. When I invited you, I never thought you’d come half-way across the Federation to be here.”

  “How could we miss it, Grace? We owe you. I owe you,” Eli said.

  “Gracie, I don’t want to be a mom, but don’t you think you better get ready? Time’s running short,” her mother said, wringing her hands.

  “Oh, sure. If you want to gather up Jared and Persephone” Gracie told Eli and Tiggs, “you can head on into Lodge Grass. There’ll be food after, and mingling of course, but later in the afternoon, we’ll see about rounding up a few horses.”

  Gracie received a hug from each of them, including Electra, then went inside her parent’s home. Her sister Dana was in the kitchen, placing pemmican on a large platter. Gracie knew that Dana had spent days making it, and the thought touched her. Any fabricator on the reservation could make it, but Dana had wanted to do it the old way.

  Gracie went upstairs and into her old room. She had some good Montana dirt on her face, so she took a quick Navy shower, then came out and stood over her bed where her dress blues had been laid out.

  Her emotions surged as she looked at the uniform. There, on the bed, was her career. There wasn’t much on her chest, comparatively speaking. Her highest medal was her BC3. Gracie had been in the shit more times than she could remember, and she’d been in some intense fights, but not much of that translated into awards. Part of that was because her missions were often classified, but part of that was, she thought, because even if the Marine Corps mission was to close with and destroy the enemy, some people were not as comfortable with what she had been. She’d been the handmaiden of death, reaching out and touching those who she felt should die. And for the straight-leg grunt, the fact that she could reach out 4,000 meters to dish out death seemed almost unfair to some. She didn’t know how that was different from arty or air Marines, but the fact was that snipers, even if every kill they made statistically saved the lives of three Marines, were rarely decorated. She’d built a reputation, and she’d even had somewhat of a cult following, but her chest was pretty bare, the distinguished shooter badges hanging under her two rows of ribbons the only indication of anything out of the ordinary.

  But on her sleeve, the chevrons of a Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant and the ten service hashmarks looked good. Her arms were so short that the chevrons and hashmarks almost filled the entire sleeve. Together, they told the story of a long and successful career—one that had almost ended prematurely. She picked up her PA and scrolled the many congratulatory messages she’d received on her retirement, going down to the L’s and punching it up.

  Master Gunnery Sergeant Medicine Crow,

  It is with pleasure that I offer my congratulations on your upcoming retirement. It has been an honor serving with you, and I wish you the best in the next phase of your life.

  Esther Lysander

  Lieutenant Colonel

  United Federation Marine Corps

  It was short and sweet, but Gracie owed the colonel a debt of gratitude. Back on the Portoluma Bay, eight years earlier, Gracie had submitted her resignation in a fit of anger. The next day, she’d come to her senses, but she knew it was too late. It wasn’t until Captain Lysander asked on Tarawa just before she’d been detached if she still wanted her to forward the resignation that Gracie realized she’d been given a second chance.

  Captain Lysander had not only held onto the resignation, but she’d given Gracie a sterling fitrep with a recommendation for early selection to master sergeant. Because of that, a month-and-a-half ago, Gracie had become Master Gunnery Sergeant (Retired) Gracie Medicine Crow, with the pay and benefits of a full retirement.

  Get going, Crow. You’ll have a long time to contemplate your memories!

  For the first time since her retirement ceremony, Gracie slipped on her uniform. It felt like coming home. She buttoned it up and looked in the mirror.

  I still look kicking!

  Time was getting short, so with one last brush of her hair, which for the first time since her enlistment, was reaching over her collar, she left the bedroom and headed downstairs.

  The house was empty—everyone was already in town. Gracie hurried out, swung her legs over Isá, and took off into town. It was a short trip, maybe five minutes, before she was pulling in front of the field office of the tribal council. She was shocked at the size of the crowd who broke into applause as she parked and got off the bike.

  There were only 22,000 registered members of the Crow Nation, but there had to be double that number of people there. A Marine chief warrant officer and his team came up to shake her hand only to be shouldered out by the governor’s support staff and more than a few news teams. Gracie didn’t realize this was that big of a thing.

  Dana barged through the different groups and rescued her, pulling her by the hand to the field office.

  Gracie spotted Eli and Tiggs by the front door—and another familiar face, and she pulled Dana to a stop.

  “Sergeant Major, I’m surprised to see you here,” she stammered out.

  “You invited me, didn’t you?” Sergeant Major (Ret) Megan Holleran said, her hand out to shake.

  Gracie had sent out about fifty invitations to the ceremony, but that was mostly as a courtesy. Federation Space stretched out a long way, and coming all the way to Earth wasn’t something she could have expected. But here was the sergeant major, her Marine Corps Emblem pinned to the collar of her dress.

  “Gracie, we have to go,” Dana said, pulling on her sister’s hand.

  “Megan, we’ll talk after the ceremony, OK?” she said as she was pulled inside the building.

  Darrel Old Coyote, the tribal council chairman, stepped up to shake her hand.

  “Quite a crowd out there, huh, Gracie?” he said. “I don’t know if you’ve met the governor, so let me introduce you. Governor Wiederhof, Gracie Medicine Crow. Gracie, the governor.”

  Gracie shook the governor’s hand. She’d seen her on the news before, but this was the first time she’d seen the five-term governor in person (which wasn’t surprising as she had spent almost all of the governor’s time in office off-planet).

  “It’s a great pleasure to meet you, Master Gunnery Sergeant,” the governor said, a huge smile on her face.

  Gracie murmured something back that she hoped sounded intelligent. The woman had a force of personality, and Gracie understood how she’d been elected and re-elected five times now.

  Darrel escorted Gracie, Dana, and the governor to a small waiting room where her mother, father, and older brother were sipping tea. He then slipped out for a few minutes while the governor skillfully directed the small talk, even getting Gracie’s usually taciturn father into telling a humorous story involving an eight-year-old Gracie and a baby skunk.

  Everyone was laughing, even a red-faced Gracie, when the chairman stuck his head back in the door and said, “It’s time, Gracie.”

  To the governor, he said, “And as I told you before, Madame Governor, the ceremony itself is only for Apsaalooké. My assistant, Bryan, will sit with you in the meantime.”

  “I know, Darrel. No worries. I’ll be waiting here.”

  Gracie and her family stood up, shook the governor’s hand once more, then followed Darrel to the back of the field office and out the rear door. There, in the parking lot, a huge bison-skin tent had been erected. The Crow had raised bison for hundreds of years, but Gracie was shocked at the size of the tent. It had to have taken hundreds of skins.

  A roped-off area was to the right. Camcorders from the governor’s office, the Marine Corps, and news
outlets were behind the rope busily recording. As the chairman had told the governor, the ceremony was closed to outsiders, and that included camcorders. This was as close as they were going to get to the actual ceremony.

  Gracie’s family entered the tent first, followed by the governor, while she stood outside the entrance flap, waiting.

  “Gracie Medicine Crow, enter,” a voice called out from inside. Gracie took a deep breath and stepped forward.

  **********

  Forty-five minutes later, Gracie pushed open the bison-skin flap and stepped back out into the late-morning sunlight. The edge of the flap knocked the eagle headdress she was wearing askew, and conscious of the press, she quickly straightened it up.

  There was a smattering of applause as she stood there, waiting for her family and the council to step out. Gracie nodded once, and then feeling self-conscious, tried to look dignified until Darrel took her by the arm and escorted her and her family back up into the field office while the other 300 or so attendees filed around the side of the building to reach the front were the mass of people were waiting.

  The governor was waiting outside the room where she’d been left.

  “Congratulations,” she said to Gracie, then “You must be so proud of her” to her parents.

  Gracie was aware of a chant growing outside, and to her utter amazement, it was “Gracie, Gracie!”

  “Well,” the governor said with a laugh. “Maybe I need to take lessons from you. I can’t think of anytime that recently I’ve had people chanting my name.”

  Darrel escorted Gracie and the governor out the front doors, her family in trace, when the crowd roared at her appearance. Gracie tried to wave, and her headdress started to slip again, and she had to reach up to right it.

  Gracie stopped short of the podium along with the governor, and Darrel took his place, testing the mic by taping it.

  “Apsaalooké, friends of the nation, and of course, our honored guest Governor Bianca Wiederhof of the great state of Montana, sho’daache!”

  The crowd erupted into cheers at his greeting. He had to wait until it died down to continue.

  “It’s a great day, right? We’ve been blessed in our land and our people, and we’re here to celebrate one of our own. I can smell the food cooking, and my stomach’s growling, so please after we’re done gabbing up here, I invite all of you to share in our hospitality. I’d like to thank all our volunteers for fixing up the grub, and a special thanks goes to Peter Yellowtail from WWY Ranch for providing all the bison burgers. Peter, you out there? I bet you’re having second thoughts about that now when you see how many people showed up!

  “We’ve got the Moon Troupe, our fine young teen traditional dancers, we’ve got our own Slate Axe—not the most traditional singers,” he said as the crowd laughed.

  Slate Axe was a chemo-rock band that had gathered a pretty good following in the northwest, and they were decidedly not traditional.

  “We’re here, of course for our honoree,” he said, sweeping a hand back to indicate Gracie, “but for all of you out there who might not know much about us, here’s a chance to get to know us a little better.

  “But enough of that. First, I’d like to introduce to you. . .hell, I don’t need to introduce her to you. If you don’t know Governor Wiederhof by now, you must be living under a rock! I give you, the governor of Montana!” he said, giving her the podium.

  “Master Gunnery Sergeant Medicine Crown, people of the Crow Nation, fellow Montanans, and welcomed guests to the Big Sky country, Ka-hay!”

  The governor actually had the pronunciation of “hello” down pretty well, Gracie noted.

  “This is a great day for the Apsaalooké and a great day for all Montanans. One of our daughters has distinguished herself in the service to tribe, state, country, and Federation . . .”

  Gracie’s PA vibrated with the pattern of a personal message. She wondered who it was and looked back at the governor, trying to look attentive. The vibration continued, and she kept ignoring it, but curiosity was driving her crazy. Very few people had the number, and most of them were here. Finally, as the governor spoke on, Gracie slid the PA out of her pocket and took a quick look. A smile broke out on her face as she saw the message.

  Gracie,

  If I got the times right, you’ve had the ceremony by now. Please accept my congratulations. I wish I were there, but you know the Big Suck. My only question to you is when I do see you next, do I have to bow to your eminence?

  Bomba

  Gracie slid the PA back into her pocket. Sergeant Major Carlito Rapa was on the Navy’s annual show-the-flag tour, giving dog-and-ponies while the Federation both showed its strength and tried to woo good will. The training was pretty much worthless, but the libbo could be great, and being the Marine Corps battalion attached to the show fleet was considered a reward for the previous year’s performance. Bomba was a big part of his battalion’s rise to excellence, and his name was being bandied about for bigger and better things. Only Gracie knew that as soon as he hit 30 years in another eleven months, he was retiring, and his first stop was going to be a small ranch house under a new-oak tree on the banks of Greasy Creek.

  Gracie didn’t know how long he was going to stay. Both of them had the unspoken realization that this was a test run. They respected each other, they liked each other, and there was a little love thrown in. But brotherly love in uniform didn’t necessarily translate into romantic love once out of it. Bomba was raised a city boy, and the quiet life of the Montana prairies might not suit him.

  It suited Gracie, though. And her people followed a matriarchal line. Men moved in with women, not the other way around. She’d welcome Bomba into her life, but without expectations. If it worked, it would. If not, well life still had opportunities that might come her way.

  A round of clapping broke through her reverie. The governor was done, and Darrel was back at the podium.

  “And now, the reason we’re all here, and I have to tell you, from the bottom of my tired heart, that I am truly honored to be here today. I was there at Agency 24 years ago when we bestowed upon our own Gladiator, Chief Warrant Officer Falcon Coups, also a Federation Marine, the title of honorary chief. I didn’t think then I’d ever be so proud, but I have to tell you folks, I’m about bursting at my seams now.

  “For those of you who don’t know what happened, Master Gunnery Sergeant Gracie Medicine Crow retired almost two months ago from the Marine Corps and came home. We Apsaalooké, we’re a warrior people—well, some of us are,” he said, patting his rather large beer belly.

  “And we are a people of tradition, so I asked Gracie to come up to the Agency and tell our chief historian her story. It turns out, Gracie had quite a story to tell. After her first tour, she became a Marine Corps sniper, and during her career, she recorded 144 kills, more than any other Marine in the last 50 years. One of those was at 4,565 meters, the longest shot ever recorded. She can’t tell me what it was about, but I saw the certificate. Go ahead, look it up on Guinness. This girl can shoot.”

  Gracie’s record looked to be lost three years ago when a Confed sniper got a reported kill at 4,567 meters. That record lasted all of three days before the Guinness keepers of all that is holy went over three different satellite feeds, adjusting the distance to 4,564 meters. So by one meter, Gracie was still the record holder. She knew the record would fall. The new Daewoo VT-50 was supposed to put the Barrett to shame, but until some hard-charger reached out farther than she had, she was still the top dog.

  “Here, listen to me go on. Well, to cut to the chase, Wendy Davis, our historian, she came to me and said that something had happened, something that hadn’t in over 500 years. If we used a little imaginative interpretation—Governor, you know we can be more than a little imaginative to get what we want,” he said as the governor laughed and raised her hand and gave an exaggerated nod, “we had a unique situation.

  “So we brought in the executive branch, we brought in the judicial branch, and wha
t we came up with was the vote that went to the general council three weeks ago.

  “To all the rest of you standing here, what we asked was if the old warrior task of stealing a horse could be changed to stealing a ‘mode of transportation.’ Now, unless you’re trying to sneak a ride on one of Jerry Not Afraid’s herd, there aren’t too many chances to steal a horse anymore.”

  Several planetary militias did have mounted troops, Gracie knew, but she’d never brought that up.

  “Once again, I keep drifting, so back on track. Well, the vote came in 87% in favor. With that, well, we had a winner.

  “From when we rode the plains, at war with most of our neighbor First Peoples—sorry about that, Hank” he said, pointing back to one of the men behind Gracie. “That’s Hank Gladstone, my good friend and counterpart with the Blackfoot Nation.

  “Anyway, where was I. Oh, yeah. From back then, there were four tasks a warrior had to perform in order to become a war chief. First, he had to touch a live enemy warrior, second, he had to disarm an enemy warrior, third, he had to lead a successful war party, and fourth, get ready for this, he had to steal an enemy horse. The last Crow war chief to do this was over five hundred years ago, and get this, his name was Joseph Medicine Crow, who served in the US Army in Europe during World War Two. Joseph Medicine Crow. Gracie Medicine Crow.? See a pattern here?

  “Oh, and listen. Many of you here in Lodge Grass have seen Gracie tooling around in that sweet WCD superbike of hers. Do you know what model that is? Yep! It’s the Palomino! And that’s what Gracie stole! She really did steal a horse!”

  Not many of the crowd seemed to have realized that, and the laughter was loud and boisterous.

  “Well, my wife keeps tellings me I talk too much, and the one we came to honor is standing behind me now,” he said before turning around.

  “Gracie, I was truly honored to conduct our ceremony today, and I’m sure our friends here would love it if you would share a few words.”