18
PFC Yazzie kicked in the door with a powerful boot, almost knocking it off its hinges. She darted in to the left, Rev on her hip as he went right, M-49 sweeping the room.
“Coming in left,” Tomiko shouted, moving beyond Yazzie to aim up the stairs of the townhome.
Staff Sergeant Delacrie followed immediately, and between the four of them, quickly cleared the ground floor, which consisted of a living area, utility room, and kitchen. Three place settings were still on the dining table, a breakfast uneaten and dry. The entire building had been secured six hours before, but the situation was fluid, and Angel shits could have come in since then.
“Clear!” the staff sergeant yelled.
One by one, the rest of the team, plus their package, entered the building. Delacrie sent Nix and Second up the stairs to clear the next floor, which they did with loud shouts.
The Marines had steady comms, which was a nice advantage for a change, but for this mission, the team was putting on a show. They wanted any observers to notice them, and they wanted to announce their progress.
Once the second floor was cleared, Rev and the rest of First Element leapfrogged them, leaving the package with Rev, then clearing the three bedrooms and bath. That left one more floor. Nix, Strap, Hussein, and Badem passed through with Hussein yelling, “Coming up!” as he led the charge. With all the commotion the team had made until then, their entry appearance shouldn’t be a surprise, but better safe than sorry.
Second Element disappeared into the upper floor with Rev looking up the stairs, and ten seconds later, Sergeant Nix appeared and motioned for him to come up.
Rev turned to Yazzie and said, “Stay here and cover our six.”
She nodded and moved to the stairs going down, and Rev, Tomiko, the staff sergeant, and the package moved up to the top floor, an attic that took up the townhome’s entire footprint. The townhome was a corner unit, with windows to the north and east. Scattered toys, a small pink child’s table and chair, a holovid platform, and a ratty couch were not enough to fill the space, but an elaborate construct of blankets and sheets, hung on lines, surrounding each window served to fill in the space.
In the middle of the room, Giselle Incrit-Kole stood with another Marine. Their package, Sergeant Yuri Mason, brushed past Rev, walked up to the other Marine, and slapped him on the shoulder.
“Whaddaya got, Soup?”
“Quiet. Some action a couple of blocks over, but no line-of-sight. But let me show you the lay of the land.”
The two zero-three-fourteens, Marine snipers, sidled through the blankets and to the side of one of the windows where the first one gave Mason a debrief, full of ranges, headings, and microclimates—in other words, sniper-talk.
Rev listened in for a moment, then turned his attention to Incrit-Kole. “How was it, Gizzy?”
The Second Team corporal shrugged. “Like Soup said, not much happened. The Angel shits are keeping their heads low. Kinda boring, to be honest.” She gave the two snipers a glance, then lowered her voice. “He’s just happy that they have a mission, you know.”
Rev did know. Fighting the Centaurs, Marine Corps snipers were not effective in the least. None of the weapons of their trade could do much to a paladin or riever. Some were assigned as overwatch, their target enemy drones, but most were used as regular light infantry. The senior SNCOs and officers who came from the sniper pipeline, once considered elite infantry, had to be glad that their skills were being put to use again.
“They all want to be HOGs, you know,” Rev said.
“That’s all Soup was talking about for the last eight hours.”
Rev grunted a noncommittal response. He could understand their situation. According to tradition, a trained sniper was a PIG, a “Professionally Instructed Gunman.” In order to become a HOG, a “Hunter of Gunmen,” they had to record a combat kill. Only then would they be allowed to wear a Hog’s Tooth, a round hung on a cord around their neck.
This tradition went back a thousand years or more, with the tooth taking an almost religious aspect, supposedly able to keep the bearer safe. But with the war with the Centaurs, the only HOGs in the Corps were senior SNCOs and a few mustang officers. An entire generation of new snipers were all champing at the bit to get their Hog’s Tooth.
The two snipers moved to the other window and went through the same process. Rev listened in for a moment, but while the words were in Standard, they might as well have been speaking a different language.
It took another minute or so, but the handoff was made. Sergeant Mason was now the sniper on duty.
“OK, let’s move out,” the staff sergeant said.
Nix and Second Element went down the steps followed by Incrit-Kole, Soup, and the staff sergeant.
Tomiko stepped up to Rev and said, “You let him do his thing. Don’t try and get involved.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Bullshit, Rev, and you know it,” she said before moving to the stairs.
She was right, though. Rev had trained with both the Dykstra and M102 Nellis. He didn’t have a sniper’s specialized augments, but he’d like to think he was a pretty good shot. He would never be a HOG not having graduated sniper school, and he really didn’t want to kill a fellow human again, but he was nothing if not competitive. If Raiders and snipers were both supposedly elite, at least in public opinion, he wanted to test himself against the Marine.
And with that, they were alone. Mason said, “If you can take that window and keep an eye out, that would help. But keep your ass back and out of sight. I can’t have you revealing our position.
Rev bristled a bit at the sergeant’s tone. He was there to provide security, not be an A-gunner. But to be honest, that sounded much better than sitting there and watching the stairs leading to the fourth floor. He nodded and made his way through the blankets the previous sniper had hung on lines that darkened the interior of the space.
One of the side-effects of the war was that not as many snipers were going through their pipeline. So now, with a war against humans, there weren’t enough trained snipers to fulfill the requirements. The powers that be decided the best way to make use of that asset was to split up the two-person teams and fill the position of A-gunner with a grunt, or in the battalion’s case, with a Raider. Not an actual A-gunner, as in helping with the shots, but to provide security.
And Rev was it for this mission.
Incrit-Kole had been Soup’s A-gunner, and he was Mason’s. The team had been camouflage, just a regular patrol doing routine security sweeps. To watching eyes, nine Marines had entered the building, and nine had left. The team would clear another several buildings before moving on.
“Any specific instructions, Sergeant?”
“If you see any Angel shit movement, any at all, tell me. Don’t engage. That’s not your job. Let me decide.”
In three hours, Fox Company was going to be conducting a sweep, and Mason’s mission was to conduct an overwatch. Rev didn’t think he’d be cleared to engage a target before then. But that was out of Rev’s hands. He was only there as a glorified security guard.
With a sigh, he settled in to wait.
* * *
Hidden in the draped folds of blankets, Rev looked over the rooftops stretching away from him. The most exciting thing he’d seen was an old alley cat stalking a pigeon on the rooftop across the street. If he shifted his body slightly to the left, he could see down the street until it curved away.
Not everyone on the planet was an Angel shit, but after the Marines landed, most people had evacuated the city. Some had gone to evacuation centers set up by the CRA troops, but others were holed up or out in the countryside. Drones and Navy surveillance had hits of hotspots, but some of those were dummies set up to spoof the Marines. Others were people just trying to keep alive and get past the battle that everyone knew was coming.
That left Rev and Mason with not a lot to do. And if Fox Company passed by without incident, then the two Marines would have to just cool their heels until the next patrol came and picked them up.
In scientific terms, Rev was bored.
“Tell me a joke.”
He couldn’t believe he asked that. In a combat situation, he couldn’t ask his battle buddy for music or an audiobook, but why not a joke? It wasn’t as if there was anything out there for him to see.
<What do you call a boomerang that never comes back?>
“I don’t know. Broken?”
<No, try again.>
Why? That’s a good answer.
He thought for a few moments before subvocalizing, “OK, tell me.”
<A stick.>
Rev suppressed a groan. But it really wasn’t bad. Still juvenile, but Punch was getting better. And if he was being honest, Punch’s answer was better than his.
“That one was almost OK.”
<The more opportunities you give me, the better I’ll be able to refine my understanding of your sense of humor.>
“Wait. My sense of humor? What about yours?”
<I am your battle buddy. Your sense of humor is what I’m programmed to consider.>
“So, you don’t find that any of the jokes you tell me are funny? You have no opinion of your own?”
There was a slight pause, which was significant just in itself. <I don’t know.>
That was even more shocking.
“You don’t know?”
<I think I now might have a sense of humor. But I have no baseline upon which to verify that.>
Rev had to digest that. He was positive that this entire joke thing between the two of them was something programmed by the psychs with no other purpose than to keep Reverent Pelletier in top fighting form.
Other battle buddies told jokes, but not all of them. And some that did didn’t seem to have the same sense of purpose about it as Punch seemed to have. But with that last statement of his, something was different. Rev would bet that it was something not programmed into his crystal brain.
If Rev was right, then what did that tell him about his battle buddy? Was there something more to him?
He started to frame a question but then stopped. He wasn’t sure he wanted an answer that would only lead to more questions.
“For the record, I think you have a sense of humor,” he said before instantly regretting it.
His communications with Punch like this were supposedly private, but no one believed that. The psychs wanted control over their prized assets. He didn’t want the head divers to analyze what his saying that meant.
<Thank you.>
Somehow, that made it worse. Or better. He didn’t know what he thought.
He looked through the hide at Mason. The man was happy, almost brimming with anticipation as he searched.
Does his battle buddy tell him jokes?
As if feeling Rev’s eyes, the sniper turned to look at him. “Fox comes through in another thirty minutes. Keep alert.”
“You looking forward to being a HOG?” Rev asked, with just the slightest hint of disdain.
“What? No! I’m just here to do my mission,” Mason said with a scowl—a scowl that relaxed when he said, “Shit, who am I kidding? Yeah. I want to be a HOG. We all do.”
That admission surprised Rev. He knew it was true, but he didn’t think the sergeant would admit it.
“We’ve all been too long without a real mission. Not like you Raiders and Recon types. Even sappers. Some of you have taken out damn paladins all on your own while we get stuck carrying water for the grunts.”
There wasn’t resentment in his tone—maybe just a bit of envy—and Rev felt a rush of empathy. Snipers were as “elite” as Raiders, whatever elite meant. The more Rev served, the more he realized that the term was for the civilians and the holovids. In reality, all Marines had a mission, and all had undergone augmentation to be able to complete that mission.
And all had the same job, which was to kill Centaurs. While tankers and mechs were the main thrust of the effort, snipers just weren’t set up to do that. Raiders, either, for that matter. Rev had just been lucky with his paladin. And he hadn’t even killed that courser. All he’d done was drop it in the river, leaving Fox Company to clean up the mess.
“I hope you get it,” Rev said, and he meant it.
He really didn’t want any more humans to die as a matter of principle, but he wasn’t naive. People were going to die, and they’d brought it upon themselves when they chose Centaurs over fellow humans. For them, it really didn’t matter if a mech blasted them or they fell by a sniper’s bullet. Dead was dead. With that in mind, if Mason or any of the snipers could tally that kill, justifying their place in the Corps, all the better.
Mason looked surprised at his comment, and he said, “Thanks. I appreciate that.”
I hope you still do after you get a kill.
That was the other side of the equation. Rev was still bothered by the kapo on Tenerife he’d killed, something he kept bottled up inside of him. He even kept it from Punch. The last thing he wanted was to come to the attention of the head-divers and get pulled from the team.
“The scuttlebutt is that you zeroed a tin-ass,” the sergeant said after he turned back to the window.
Rev hesitated. The Centaur he and Tomiko had found was still classified, but as far as he knew, admitting to the paladin on Preacher Rolls was not restricted. The entire operation had been suppressed due to the tremendous casualties, and with so many new joins, the facts could get jumbled.
“Were you with us on Preacher Rolls?” Rev asked.
“No. I was with the Lancers. Came over when we consolidated. So, is that true or just BS? All of the records for that goat-rope are sealed.”
“Yeah,” he said after only a moment of consideration. “A paladin. Got lucky.”
Mason kept watching out the window, but he nodded and said, “I thought so. Didn’t hear your name until this op.” He paused for a long moment. “Good shit that.”
There wasn’t much he could say to that, so he remained quiet. Rev hadn’t been happy about getting assigned this mission. Marines could get so attached to their teams that they could treat others, even other Marines, as outsiders, so to be here with him, and only the two of them, was a little disconcerting.
But for a tiny difference in his evaluations used to assign their designators, that could be him right there, a sniper searching for a mission. Recon, Raiders, sappers, snipers—they all had similar personality profiles. Rev had lucked out in becoming a Raider. But Sergeant Mason really wasn’t that much different than he was.
Damn, we’re getting deep here.
Rev shook his head and looked back out his window. He could wax philosophical later. He still had a job to do.
Still nothing to see, though. Not even that cat. It was as if this neck of the city was holding its breath, waiting for things to explode.
“Head’s up. I think I see the lead element of Fox,” Mason said.
Rev turned to see the sergeant edge over to the right to get a better view. “Yeah, I think—”
Mason spun to the right and dropped as blood and bones erupted to spray the hanging blankets. Rev was already in motion, rushing across the floor to the sniper, who was in a crumpled heap, his legs folded under him, half of his face gone.
“Mason, are you still with me?” he asked as he fumbled to jack into the man.
<He’s dead.>
“Shit!”
He pulled the jack and opened the comms. “Tango-tango-three, this is Delta-Victor-Three-Bravo. My actual is KIA. I need an immediate CASEVAC. I say again, immediate CASEVAC. And I need a counter-fire trace, now!”
“Delta-Victor-Three-Bravo, roger the request. Is the area secure for CASEVAC?”
“Negative. I need that trace.”
“Roger. Wait one.”
With all the drones and naval vessels, most of the planet would be covered by redundant scans. Almost every action would be picked up. Sorting all of that data to create useful intel was the problem. But with Rev’s location and the time, that should speed this up.
Rev took Mason by the shoulder and leaned him back, then straightened his legs. Blood pooled under him, while more blood, chips of bone, and brain matter dripped down the blankets. He looked bad, but until a doctor pronounced him dead, there was still a chance that he could be brought back. Time was of an essence, and that meant whoever had shot the sergeant had to be removed from the situation if he was going to be airlifted out. Rev could carry him back, but even if he wasn’t jumped as a target of opportunity, it would just take too long for Mason.
“Stand by to accept trace.”
“Give me a map with the overlay.”
<Roger.>
Punch did his electronic magic, and the map appeared as if thirty centimeters in front of his face. Highlighted was the trace of the round that had taken out the sergeant. The CofA had been the in next block, beyond the park, and up in one of the tall apartment buildings on the other side, 1,324 meters away.
Rev looked down at Mason’s body. That wasn’t a dart that had hit him. It was a chemical round, and that, coupled with the fact that the sergeant had been in the hide—and only hit when he shifted his position—had all the signs of an enemy sniper. Some normal grunt would not be looking and have acquired Mason nor made that shot.
He scooted up to the window, keeping below the sill.
“Get ready to record.”
<Ready.>
Rev popped up, looking at the far-off apartment building, then dropped down, expecting a shot to follow him.
“Give me a look.”
An image of the building popped into his occipital lobe. Punch had the azimuth overlayed on the image. There was no way to tell from what floor the shot originated based on the data from overhead, but that still narrowed it down.
“Anything?”
<Nothing that could identify the shooter.>
“What about all those terabytes of data you have. Can you narrow it down?”
<Judging from the distance and position Sergeant Mason was when he was hit, there is a high probability that the shooter was from the ninth floor or higher.>
Rev took a quick look at the image again. The building had twelve floors. If Punch was correct, then that narrowed it down to three windows or the roof.
Something tickled the recesses of his memory. He thought back to Staff Sergeant Jesup, his green-shirt sniper instructor back at Camp Nguyen.
“Isn’t it SOP for a sniper to move after each shot?”
<For most military sniper schools, yes.>
“And some Angel shits had military training, right?”
<That is what we were briefed.>
Crap, if I hurry, maybe I can catch the bastard.
Rev started to edge up, his M49 at the ready, but then he reconsidered. He knew he could hit a man-sized target at this range, but the Children of Angels sniper wouldn’t be walking around, making it easy. And while the M49 darts were quick, they wouldn’t be able to penetrate a heavy wall if the sniper was using it as cover.
But Sergeant Mason’s Dykstra would. He looked down on it. The Dykstra had been his bane during training, but by the end of Staff Sergeant Jesup’s coaching, he’d become passable with it. And his firing profile for the weapon was locked in Punch’s amazing database.
“Go big or go home, Reverent.”
Rev dropped his M49 and crawled to the Dykstra, jacking himself into the weapon’s receiver.
“New shooter. Initialize.”
The weapon shifted, adjusting the stock and sights to his personal data. He took off his helmet, then he brought the rifle to a firing position for a moment. It felt like it was fitted to him. He was ready.
Mason had the augments to stand stock-still, but even as strong as Rev was, he didn’t think he could hold the weapon on target just waiting for the enemy sniper, then snap off an effective shot. He had to use the edge of the sill, which would make him vulnerable to the other gunman.
No, I don’t.
Right behind him was the couch. Rev ran to it and pushed it back, stopping just short of the sergeant’s body and about two meters from the window. He had to yank down one of the blankets, but after that, he could still see the top floors of the building in the distance.
He took a firing position with the barrel of the big weapon lying on the top of the couch, the scope centered on the middle of the ninth floor.
“Key analytics,” he ordered.
All of the environmentals, such as Alafia’s gravity, rate of rotation, and a bunch of factors that he didn’t remember, were already entered into the weapon. Temperature, humidity, and wind had to be measured.
“Give me a firing solution,” he ordered Punch as he looked through the scope. The crosshairs shifted up and to the left to take into account how the variables would affect the round’s trajectory.
“Center the crosshairs.”
If the tech was working, all Rev had to do was keep the crosshairs on the target, and assuming no shift in the wind, he should hit it.
“Should” being the operative word. He remembered how difficult it had been for him back at Nguyen.
“You see anything?”
<No sign of movement that could be a sniper.>
“Keep your eyes peeled.”
<If I can remind you, I see through your eyes. It is up to you to keep them peeled.>
If Rev didn’t have to focus, he would have rolled his eyes at that. But he just watched through the scope, looking for any sign of movement.
“Delta-Victor-Three-Bravo, we have a CASEVAC standing by. Is the area secure?”
“Wait one.”
For a moment, he wondered if he could call for fire on the building, taking it down. But he knew that would be disapproved. The ROI called for clearing by infantry. No, it had to be him.
<Movement.>
Punch highlighted a window on the tenth floor, four over from where Rev had the crosshairs centered with a pulsing red dot. Rev adjusted the aim to the window.
“Increase magnification by three.”
The image zoomed in. With the sun over Rev’s shoulder, the glare on the window kept him from seeing inside. But it was open just a crack. He shook the gauntlet off his right hand, then wiped his fingers dry on the couch.
And as he watched, there it was. The muzzle of a weapon edged out just a few centimeters, pointing in the direction from which Fox Company would be coming.
“Extrapolate the gunner’s position.”
A few centimeters, particularly at more than a klick away, didn’t give Punch much, but he created an outline and overlaid it on the window. It wasn’t much of a target, just a head and shoulder, and Rev started having second thoughts.
Can I do this?
But he didn’t have to look to know Sergeant Mason was right below him, and he needed to get stabilized if there was any chance of bringing him back. He centered his crosshairs on the outline. He released the safety with this thumb, then rested his forefinger just above the small button that was the trigger.
He could hear Staff Sergeant Jesup coaching him, telling him to take three deep breaths, then letting the last one out. The muzzle seemed to start traversing back, and he almost jammed down on the trigger, but that would certainly pull the shot.
Just breathe. In one. Out one. In two, out two. In three, out halfway and hold . . .
His finger touched the trigger when the muzzle suddenly jerked, and Rev could swear that he could see down the barrel despite how far away it was. The movement pushed the window farther open, and a scope appeared, a face with long auburn-red hair behind it.
Rev fired, and the big .62-caliber round arched up, reaching for the Angel shit sniper. He saw a flash from the muzzle just before his round crashed through the window and into the scope. The person behind it disappeared an instant before the incoming round hit the couch ten centimeters from his head, sending stuffing into the air where it fell like snowflakes around him.
Rev jumped back and turned. The bullet passed through the couch, gouging into the deck and through to at least the floor below. Rev had on his PAL-5, but he wasn’t wearing his helmet, and there were rounds that could penetrate even the armor’s carapace. By the looks of what it had done, that might have been one of those rounds.
“Don’t just sit there looking at it!”
He ducked back down, brought up the Dykstra, and scoped the window. There was no sign of movement, but in the back, was that . . . ?
“Can you analyze that discoloration?”
<I need your helmet back on.>
Rev jumped off the couch and retrieved it. Punch changed the filter, and the stain he saw through the shattered window now shined a bright neon turquoise—the sign for blood.
Rev let out a huge breath of air and lowered the Dykstra. Somehow, he’d gone one-on-one with a trained sniper and come out on top. The gods of war must really be watching out for him.
He keyed open his comms. “Tango-Tango-Three, the area is secure. Send in the CASEVAC.”