CHAPTER


TWENTY

Three Hundred Kilometers Northwest of the Bataan Peninsula, Ravenette

After the sniper strike on the Kampeer Aanval staging area, first sniper team and second squad went out looking for more targets of opportunity. They went south on foot fifteen kilometers before donning their puddle jumpers and moving in a search pattern. Once they were in the air, it didn’t take long for them to find a highway that showed evidence of military traffic.

This time, they were on a hunter-killer mission, not a sniper mission, so Sergeant Kare was in command; Sergeant Gossner readily agreed that he and Lance Corporal Dwan were along as extra blasters.

“I’m not carrying a blaster!” Dwan objected. Her meaning was clear; she was a sniper, she wanted a sniper mission.

“All right then, we’re along as extra firepower,” Gossner growled right back at her.

“Tell you what,” Kare jumped in before Dwan could say more. “I’ll let you take the first shot when we spring an ambush. You snipe the lead driver.”

“Driver! I’m a sniper, I’m carrying a maser, I don’t waste my shots on drivers!”

“We need the lead driver taken out first to block the road and jam up any vehicles behind it,” Kare said reasonably.

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to hold aim on a target moving that fast?” she objected.

Kare nodded. “Yes, I do,” he said, looking directly into her eyes. “And I believe there’s only one sniper in all of Human Space good enough with a maser to be able to hold aim on a target driving a military vehicle.”

Dwan pursed her lips, glaring at him. He was playing on her pride, using it to manipulate her—and she knew it. But her pride insisted that she accept the challenge.

“If there’s an officer next to the driver, can I shoot him?”

“After you shoot the driver, you can shoot the officer.”

Dwan nodded curtly; an officer was a more proper target for a sniper than a lousy driver—even if she had to shoot the driver first.

“But you don’t fire until I tell you to.”

“WHAT!”

Gossner clamped a hand on Dwan’s shoulder. “Sergeant Kare’s in command here, Lance Corporal,” he said firmly. “We do it his way.”

Dwan glared at Gossner’s offending hand, then turned her glare to his eyes. He didn’t flinch. She began to think maybe she’d made a mistake when she’d jumped his bones after making her kill on Atlas—Gossner was getting entirely too familiar with her person and had lost some of his wariness of her. But she had to agree, no matter how much she disliked the idea, that Sergeant Kare was in command, so she’d do it his way.

Dammit.

Overlooking a Bend in a Highway, Three Hundred Kilometers Northwest of Bataan

Sergeant Kare had selected an ambush site with the skill of someone who had set many small-unit ambushes. While looking for the ideal spot, he’d let two single lorries and a five-vehicle convoy pass unmolested. That, of course, infuriated Lance Corporal Bella Dwan; she didn’t have the same degree of patience in an ambush that she did as a sniper. Not that she was all that patient about picking targets to snipe.

Finally, impatience got the better of her and she went to Kare and touched helmets with him. “Why do you keep letting them go by? We could have taken any of them!”

“I want a bigger convoy, Lance Corporal,” Kare snapped, “and I want to get everyone in it. Now get back with your team leader and stay alert.”

Unseen inside her helmet, Dwan bit her lip. She shook herself with impatience, but the prospect of wiping out a bigger convoy made her back off. She rejoined Gossner and touched helmets with him.

“I talked Sergeant Kare into going after a big convoy,” she told him. “We’ll have lots of targets.”

“Sure thing, Bella,” Gossner said. “Sounds good.” He could feel her jittering and knew how impatient she was for action, so he knew she hadn’t talked Kare into anything, that wanting to hit a bigger convoy was the squad leader’s idea. But he also knew that challanging Dwan on her claim would be the wrong thing to do.

The site Kare had picked was on a slight rise just outside a bend in the highway, where the Marines would be able to have both plunging and enfilading fire on the convoy he chose to ambush. The rise itself was wooded, and the ground had at one time been scoured by glacial rocks that had left deep gouges the Marines could use for cover. He carefully placed his people so that each of them had wide fields of fire between the trees, though the trees would keep any of them from having a clear shot at the full length of the ten-vehicle convoy he was hoping to catch. He set Dwan at the extreme left of his short line, where she was able to look almost straight down the highway. He positioned himself where he could watch the highway in both directions, control his Marines, and be able to signal each of them with a tight-beam transmission. He also assigned everybody two alternative positions. He didn’t know how many soldiers would be in the convoy they ambushed, but there were only six Marines, and they would be severely outnumbered if the convoy they ambushed carried troops. If it did, his people would have to move, probably more than once, to avoid being overrun early in the fight.

The six Marines waited while several individual vehicles, a couple of pairs, and three small convoys passed by—all headed southeast, toward the besieged Confederation forces on the Bataan Peninsula. The Marines were alert but calm—except for Bella Dwan, whose jittering turned to twitches so violent she was making noise loud enough for Kare to hear from his position.

Kare tight-beamed to Gossner, “Can you calm her down? As much noise as she’s making, if a convoy has ears pointed in our direction, she’ll give us away.”

“I’ll give it a shot,” Gossner tight-beamed back. He tight-beamed to Dwan, “Heads up, I’m joining you,” and slithered to her position. He knew what would calm her down.

“Hey, Bella,” he said when he touched helmets with her, “I know you’re anxious to do this thing. The waiting’s hard on all of us.”

Dwan grunted something inarticulate.

“You’ve got a tricky shot coming up,” Gossner continued. “Have you visualized it yet?”

Dwan snarled and jerked her helmet away. Gossner waited for a tense moment, then relaxed as he felt her helmet rejoin his.

“Visualize the shot,” she said flat-voiced.

“That’s right. Put your maser to your shoulder and sight it where you expect to see the cab of an approaching lorry.” He felt her shift as she moved into firing position and put the butt of her maser into her shoulder “Picture it in your mind.” Her jittering stopped, and he felt the growing regularity of her breathing. “Now lock in your aim. Picture the movement of the vehicle. Track the movement. Imagine squeezing the trigger.” He felt her breathing stop. “Imagine holding your aim on the moving target.” He felt her move slowly, smoothly, as the muzzle of her maser slowly tracked her imagined target.

Zap, you’re mine,” she murmured. Then to Gossner: “Yeah, visualize. I can do this. No sweat.”

“Good girl.”

He smiled when she snarled at him, “I’m not a girl, I’m a Marine sniper.”

“The best Marine sniper.”

“Damn straight.”

“I know you can do it, Bella. Now visualize your shot a couple more times. Keep yourself focused, and we’ll get this done. We’re all going to be proud of you today.”

Three and a half hours after the Marines had settled into their ambush position, a convoy arrived that Sergeant Kare decided to take. A landcar with a mounted assault gun led, followed by another landcar in staff configuration. Eight lorries filled with soldiers and supplies followed them, and another landcar with a mounted assault gun brought up the rear. Best of all, the vehicles were tightly spaced.

Kare began snapping out orders. “Dwan, stand by for my signal. Kassel”—Corporal Kassel had the extreme right flank of the ambush—“on my signal, take out the rear gun. Gossner, work with Dwan to kill that lead gun.” He instructed Corporal Quinn and Lance Corporal Ilon to fire into the first and second lorries when he set off the ambush.

The convoy approached rapidly, seventy or eighty kph, and reached the kill zone a few minutes after Kare tight-beamed his orders. Kare waited, judging velocity, range, and turn radius. When the lead vehicle was partway through the bend, he tight-beamed Dwan, “Now!”

Dwan had had the driver in her sights since the landcar was still half a kilometer distant. It was now less than a hundred meters away. She held her breath and gently squeezed the maser’s trigger. The driver slumped at his controls and the landcar swerved, going into a high-speed skid. The convoy accordioned, each driver twisting his vehicle to one side or the other to avoid crashing into the vehicle to his front.

Kare shouted, “Now!” in the open so all his Marines could hear and fired his blaster at the driver of the staff car, sending it out of control.

In the lead vehicle, the gunner and assistant gunner were struggling to hold their places as the landcar skidded and threatened to roll over. It was a tough shot, but Gossner fired. The range was short. The bullet’s fins didn’t have time to stabilize before it bored through the gunner’s chest.

The lead landcar was close enough that Dwan didn’t have to track to hold her aiming point; she got a shot at the assistant gunner and was satisfied to see him release his grip on the roll bar and collapse.

With the assault gun out of the fight and the following staff car out of control, Gossner turned his attention to the first lorry. Its driver was struggling to bring it to a stop without hitting anything. A sergeant stood in the back of the lorry, holding on to the top of the cab, shouting orders at his soldiers to jump off the moving vehicle and start fighting back—orders some of them were attempting to obey.

Gossner fired at the sergeant, hitting him and a soldier standing close to him. Gossner turned his aim to the cab and fired six bolts into it, at least one of which must have hit the driver, because the lorry suddenly turned sharply and tipped over.

Corporal Kassel had more difficulty taking out the rear assault gun. The range was twice as far as it had been for Dwan and Gossner, and the last lorry partly obstructed his view. Still, he rained plasma at the assault gun’s crew and took out both the gunner and driver, as well as two or three of the soldiers in the last lorry.

Lance Corporal Ilon began firing at the second lorry by shooting into its cab. He hit the driver or shook him up so much that he lost control and crashed into the lorry that had just tipped over. The tipped lorry was slammed forward and crushed several soldiers who had fallen out. Soldiers who were trying to climb over the lorry’s sides were knocked from their feet; others, trying to clamber over the sides, were thrown to the ground. Ilon started shooting at them, taking a second to aim each of his shots.

Corporal Quinn fired a few bolts into the first lorry, but he saw how much damage Gossner was doing and shifted his fire to the third lorry. His shots into the cab didn’t make it crash or tip over, but the lorry slewed sideways across the road, tumbling the soldiers in its rear and blocking the vehicles behind it.

A commanding voice roared from next to the staff car, which had managed to come to a stop without tipping over. An officer with a voice amplifier had clambered out of it and was shouting orders to his men to dismount and get into assault formations by platoon.

“Mine,” Dwan growled. She grinned as she took aim and dropped him. Then she started firing at anybody who looked as if he was trying to fight back.

“Shift positions!” Kare ordered. It was little more than a minute since Dwan had shot the driver of the lead landcar, and the soldiers from the lorries behind the one slewed across the highway were beginning to get organized, though their fire was sporadic and little of it was in the direction of the Marines. Crouched over, the six Marines raced fifty meters to their right and dropped into firing positions behind trees or in ripples in the ground.

“Let’s light their fires,” Sergeant Kare ordered on the squad circuit. “Hit the fuel cells!”

Everybody but Dwan opened fire on the lorries closest to the massing troops, aiming at their fuel cells. The hydrogen from a ruptured cell would normally dissipate too rapidly to ignite, but when struck by two or three rapid-succession plasma bolts the free hydrogen became growing balls of incandescence, incinerating the uniforms of the closest soldiers, and causing massive, horrifying burns.

Dwan’s maser wouldn’t ignite hydrogen, so she looked for the leaders. One man stood, angrily bawling out orders. She locked on him and squeezed the trigger. He collapsed mid-bawl. But Dwan thought he was probably a sergeant; she wanted an officer. She thought an officer wouldn’t be standing up, loudly shouting out orders; more likely he’d be hunkered down behind cover, sending orders to sergeants to give to the troops. So she looked for someone hiding behind cover.

She incidentally shot two more sergeants before she spotted an officer. She knew he was an officer; not only was he using a body for cover, he was looking around and talking into a microphone held in front of his lips. Sunlight glittered off insignia on his collar. That was the clincher.

Dwan grinned evilly and sighted in on him. “You can hide,” she murmured as she steadied her aim, “but you can’t escape the Queen of Killers.” She squeezed the trigger, and the officer slumped, dead.

Dwan began searching for another officer, incidentally shooting sergeants and anybody else she saw shouting orders.

Once the other Marines had set the lorries nearest the mass of troops afire, they began firing into the troops; plasma bolts burned holes through bodies and heads, severed limbs, and cauterized the wounds as they went.

For a moment or two after the Marines shifted position, the fire from the convoy increased, but as the Marine fire reduced the number of soldiers firing back, and orders died with the officers and sergeants issuing them, the fire slackened and became less disciplined; fewer and fewer shots came near the Marines.

Suddenly, a soldier threw his fléchette rifle out in front of himself and, still prone, raised his empty hands.

“Don’t shoot me!” he screamed. “I surrender! Don’t shoot me!”

That set off a cascade of thrown rifles, raised hands, and shouts of “I surrender!”

One lone voice in the killing zone shouted the order to keep fighting. Some of the soldiers obeyed and began firing close to the Marines.

The Marines couldn’t see the man shouting, but they could tell where he was—behind the hulk of a burned-out lorry. All four Marines armed with blasters began shooting at the undercarriage of that lorry and shifted aim until all of their fire converged on the underside of the engine block. In seconds the engine block began steaming, then droplets of molten steel began to drip from it, puddling on the ground. A tendril of molten metal slithered under the engine block toward the voice. There was a scream, and a man jumped up from behind the lorry.

Dwan fired. The screams stopped. He fell.

That was all it took for the few soldiers still fighting to throw out their weapons and surrender.

Sergeant Kare turned on his helmet’s amplifier. “You are now prisoners of the Confederation Marine Corps,” his amplified voice boomed. “Stand up, keep your hands high above your heads, and step toward the rear of the convoy, away from your weapons.”

More than a hundred soldiers stood up, some staggering. But they did as Kare ordered. When they were far enough away from their weapons, he stopped them.

“Take off your boots,” he ordered. They scrambled to obey. “Now strip to your underwear.” They didn’t obey this order as quickly, but when they did, it became evident why not—many of them weren’t wearing undergarments and stood naked with their hands above their heads once they’d complied with the order.

Dwan turned on her amplifier and snickered at the naked soldiers. Some of the naked soldiers flushed at the sound of an obviously female snicker.

“Belay that, Lance Corporal,” Kare tight-beamed to her.

Dwan snickered once more before turning off her amplifier.

“Now get in formation, four ranks,” Kare said. While the prisoners shuffled into a ragged semblance of a parade-ground formation, Kare said on the squad circuit, “Gossner, take Kassel and Ilon, go down there, and check for wounded and mark any you find. Make sure no weapons are near them.”

There were several wounded, mostly with severe leg wounds, though one man had had his arm nearly severed at the shoulder and was in shock. The Marines propped the wounded against dead bodies so they could easily be seen and threw all weapons they found as far out of reach as possible. Some of the prisoners saw the ripples of Marine movement in their recent battleground and gaped slack-jawed at them. Some of them had heard rumors that Confederation Marines were invisible men, but not all of them had believed that until then.

When Gossner, Kassel, and Ilon finished, they rejoined the others. Gossner reported on the squad circuit.

“Front rank, count off,” Kare ordered with his amplified voice. When they reached twenty, Kare stopped them.

“All right, you’ve got ten wounded over there,” Kare said. “You twenty, go and collect them. Bring them back and lay them in front of your formation.”

Hesitantly at first, but then in a scramble when Kare barked “Now!” the twenty went to collect their wounded. When that was done, Kare said, “First five men in the second rank, break ranks and step to this side of the wounded.” When they did, he ordered, “Come forward into the trees. Look on the ground. You’ll find saplings and broken branches. Gather enough to use as litter poles. And make sure they’re long enough!”

It took the five soldiers ten minutes to find enough saplings and poles that were at least one and three-quarter meters long. When they did, he sent them back to put the poles down near the wounded, then had them return to their positions in the formation.

“Third rank, count off,” Kare boomed. He stopped them when they reached ten. “You ten, step forward. Make litters from those poles and your cast-off uniforms.”

The Marines were surprised at how fast the prisoners obeyed that order; they must have had training in making field-expedient litters.

Once the litters had been assembled, Kare singled out the soldier who’d looked most competent in the making.

“You’re in charge,” he told the soldier. “Assign litter bearers and start your formation moving back the way you came. Do not stop to get dressed again. Do not stop to come back for your uniforms or weapons. We will kill any of you who disobey. Remember—you don’t know how many of us there are, or how long we’ll be watching you.

“Now move!”

As soon as the wounded were on litters and the prisoner formation was moving along the road, Kare said on the squad circuit, “And we don’t know if they got a message off, or how soon a relief force might get here. So we’re getting out of here.” He told them where they were going, and they got.