Most of our missions together had been over a brief span after the war, before I'd been re-designated "Special Asset: Technical" from "Special Asset: Tactical." When we'd seen each other in the field, it usually meant someone was going to die. I was a different person back then. Still cold. Still angry. A mask of zen calm concealing the turmoil within. It was no wonder her memories of that period were more pleasant than my own. Some of the memories were painful. Like the one our talk the other night brought back to the surface.
The war will be over soon, but none of us know it. Not yet. And even if I knew I wouldn't really care. We're on Ares, around Boros in the Georgia system. We've been inserted to deal with a specific target. Arion deSilva had a distinguished career with the Alliance, retiring a Colonel before the war. The Indies have made him a General. He is a master strategist, responsible for several Independent victories, and a thorn in High Command's side.
I am here to kill him.
General deSilva is visiting an Indie listening post in a remote area of Ares, sharing the love with his troops. We're a bit over two thousand meters from the well camouflaged command building, on a wooded shallow hillside, barely five hundred meters from their perimeter. Roughly fifty meters to the side, and a bit further up the hill, my spotter's waiting for him to make an appearance.
Her optics give a broader field of view than I have through the high power scope resting on the back of my Ritter&Lau 415 sniper rifle. We're both suited up in passive camouflage with infra-red damping, a phase change material absorbing heat to keep our signature close enough to the background that thermal imaging won't see us. A hair fine fiber optic strand runs between us, so our only RF radiation is a couple of pico-watts escaping from our gear. We're traveling light and we're both small, making us a hard target for seismic sensors as well.
This level of precaution would be overkill anywhere else and is probably overkill here too, but this is a listening post and if the Indies have any sophisticated sensors here is where they'll be deployed. Their patrols walk the perimeter at semi-random intervals but their closest approach is roughly four to six hundred meters from our position. The nearest actual installation, an 18mm auto-cannon emplacement about a thousand meters from us.
I've worked with my spotter before. Her name is Amanda. She's a year or so younger than I am, a little taller, not much heavier. She's blond, and pretty, but we aren't exactly friends. We're lovers, but not because I have any deep attachment to her. I sleep with her in a vain effort to chase the chill from my Ghost with the warmth of another human body.
It doesn't work.
Caitlin's loss is still too fresh in my mind. Too near. It will be years before I can let go but right now I'm concentrating on the mission. I don't hate the men and women in the listening post below, or the General who I have come to kill. Hating them will not bring Caitlin back. Will not warm the cold places in my chest.
We wait for hours, patiently, silently. Then I see the target acquired flag in the corner of my Head's Up. Amanda's spotted our target and fed me the position. Through the scope, I see the General standing close to the listening post's side entrance. His assistant, Lieutenant Colonel Li-Hue Sue, a couple meters from him, holding a mildly animated conversation. She's another former Academy graduate who left the Alliance military to join the Independents. A worthy target in her own right.
I don't need to ask Amanda to check for spotters. She already has. A few moments after giving me the target flag, she sends the 'Clear to Fire.'
I take a slow breath, hold it, consciously slowing my heart rate, relaxing into a surreal calm. Through the scope I can see both targets clearly. Everything in crystal clear focus. The scope's passive systems are already done computing the range and windage. I settle the reticle on target and ever so gently squeeze the rifle's trigger.
The 415 fires a 400 grain 10.54 millimeter round from a choked down 20 millimeter cartridge. With a muzzle velocity a bit over 12oo meters a second, it delivers an impact energy of almost 19000 joules. At those energies, a target's body armor doesn't matter.
Without a compensator, the massive recoil would break my shoulder. With it, the weapon barely moves. A heartbeat goes by. Another. I've shifted targets a hair's breadth and squeeze off another round between beats while the first is still in flight.
Through my scope, I watch a man die. I don't know him. I don't care. His aide barely has time to recognize the splatter of blood on her clothing before the second round finds its mark and her span ends as well.
A moment later and we are ready to bug out, our mission done, when the auto-cannon opens up. Their acoustic system can only give them a general direction based on the crack of a near hypersonic round, but it is enough for them to start spraying the hillside around us with fully automatic fire.
I'd ranged the auto-cannon hours ago, and reset the scope to its preset. At this range, the shot isn't a challenge. I fire three rounds in rapid succession, the first two taking out the cannon's gunner and loader, the third slamming into, and through, the weapon's breach. The cannon silenced, my magazine empty, I ask Amanda for a target update.
Silence.
I ask again, and again, nothing. It's possible that in the hail of auto-cannon fire, we've lost the fiber optic link. But no. I still have telemetry from her but it takes a moment for me to recognize what I'm seeing on the display.
Moving as quickly as I can through the trees and undergrowth without fully compromising my position, I slap in another magazine and work my way to Amanda's position. Sporadic gunfire from the post tries to find us, but they only have a general location. They're still too far away and too confused to see my well camouflaged form through the trees.
Thirty seconds later, I reach Amanda's position and confirm what I'd surmised from the telemetry. Our suits are light armor, at best. They could stop a handgun or slow down a carbine, but against a cannon, they might as well be cotton. Through random chance, an 18mm round has impacted and detonated against Amanda's collarbone. I can take some solace in knowing she didn't suffer.
In the distance two, possibly three, patrols are starting to work towards us. They're moving carefully, trying to stay to cover. They know there's a sniper. The sudden silence of the cannon giving them reason to be cautious.
I don't know Amanda's faith, so whisper a prayer asking for Buddha's wisdom to guide her Ghost on the next stage of her journey. It's all I can do. That, and offer an apology for what I must do next.
Knowing I may need it, I snag the heat sink canister from her suit and the spare from her pack. Along with with her macros. Her sighting optics give less magnification than my scope, but a wider field of view. In any case, I don't want them to fall into the hands of an Indie patrol. Finally I snag her side arm and the two spare mags, then rig a demo charge to deal with anyone who decides they want to touch her lifeless shell.
In the distance, I can hear a skiff lifting off. Even if they stay low, they'll be able to cover enough ground quickly enough to make my life miserable. Shifting back into cover a few meters away from Amanda's body, I sight in on the rapidly rising skiff.
It's a gunship. Weapons pods under stub wings and a small cargo bay for an infantry fire team, currently manned by a door gunner on each side. It's cockpit and engines are lightly armored. More than the rifle can punch through, but that doesn't stop me.
As they stabilize, trying to get their bearings, I sight the pilot through his armored canopy and start to fire rounds in rapid succession. The first one spalls the canopy in front of him, drawing his attention as the second and third rounds slam into the clear polymer armor almost on top of each other. The forth round breaks through, but deflects, ricocheting off his back seater's helmet. The pilot glances back at his gunner and I put my final round through the fist sized hole in the canopy in front of him.
I don't wait to see the skiff go down, taking its dead pilot, unconscious gunner, and helpless door gunners with it. I have to move. Now. Inside a hundred meters I've stripped the scope and compensator from the Ritter&Lau and fired off a small demo charge in the weapon's firing mechanism. It had served me well, but with no ammunition and active pursuit, it will only slow me down.
Ares is not friendly to the Alliance, so I can expect no help from the locals, and over the next three days I play cat and mouse with the Independents. Eventually, tired, dirty, low on ammunition, they manage to extract me. I've covered nearly a eighty kilometers across Ares' rolling forested hills and, when they get me back to base, they treat me like a Gorram hero.
I'm not a hero.
I'm a soldier.
I've lost my spotter, and left eleven men dead. They pin a medal on my chest and say I've done a great service to the Alliance. But all I can think of are the faces I saw in my scope. They've given Amanda a medal, posthumously, as well. I ask for, and receive, permission to deliver it to her parents on Albion in person.
I do it for her memory. But this kindness does nothing to warm my Ghost. I am still cold and empty.
I am still the Ice Queen.
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