Naero's War: The Citation Series 2: The High Crusade (9 page)

Bad move on their part.

Most Spacers were experts with blades, and elite Marines received special blade-fighting training.

James drew two Spacer Marine battle blades, one of them energized, and proceeded to carve up six of the slashers as if they were big hams.

The seventh Ejjai was about to stab him from behind when a blazing red katana sliced away the alpha’s blade hand first, and then her head.

James whirled an instant too late and instinctively impaled the headless torso with both of his blades. Then he kicked it away.

“Too late, James,” Shetanna told him. “Line them up or arc them. If you let them surround you, and you’re not fast enough, one of those bitches is going to gut you wide open. And, from now on, let’s all scan those gut piles for any life signs before you go to burn them, as well.”

James shook his head. “Sounds good, sir. So, I guess everyone’s going to have a laugh tonight at the rook’s expense, eh?”

“Well, only if you’re stupid enough to tell them. I’m not going to say a damn thing. I’ll just remind everyone to look out. The Ejjai infiltration teams have just started trying to use this trick. Everyone needs to be wary of it.”

“I wasn’t sent here to burn any of them. I was just sent to dump off a deposit.”

“Doesn’t matter, Marine. Either way, from now on, we guard these dumps with fixers, if nothing else, and we send a full fireteam along with the burn teams to dispose of the trash–not just one or two. I’ll notify HQ and Command, and these disposal sites will be kept under better security from now on to defeat infiltrators. See, James? You almost dying here might just save many other lives, by alerting us to a new problem to deal with.”

“Just doing my job, sir. And…thanks for having my back.” Tucker offered her his hand. Naero took it, up to the elbow.

“You’re welcome. Let’s get back to work, Marine.”

When they returned to 36 at the dropship after the fighting was over, they learned that they had already lost someone else that night.

Perice Logan, crushed to death during an op when a building suddenly toppled over on her squad. She went down warning others and shoving them out of the way ahead of her. She never made it.

A demo team had to recover her crushed body from the rubble. 36 and the new Marines brought Logan in and showed them what was done.

On top of all that, it was Food Night, and now with their newest loss, they needed one more rep.

6

Haitha-1 was a jungle/swamp world of the Silesians as well, who, on that planet, chose to build their homes in gigantic, stone oak trees that naturally petrified from within as they slowly died, due to the minerals and crystal residue in the swampy, underground water.

There were many of these small tree cities, with a system population of only 1.3 billion.

As they did on many such worlds, the Ejjai invaders broke off into smaller, hunter-killer units and teams. This made them harder to track down and eliminate, with them being so scattered across the planet’s surface. And they could engage many more targets at once, better matching the equally scattered population.

In one region in particular, a small enemy sniper team was causing havoc, panic, and death over a wide area, wherever the enemy chose to strike at random. And they kept moving and popping up in the vicinity, only to cause more.

Shetanna and 36 assumed that this was the work of an elite Ejjai sniper unit. They had encountered standard op enemy sniper units similar to this one on several different occasions on other worlds they had served on.

The sniper team would show up, find the highest vantage point in a local area, and then kill as many civilians or military personnel as they could. Then, by the time any troops or competent authorities did show up to combat them, the enemy sniper unit had already packed up, melted away, and was long gone.

These were radical new tactics for the Ejjai, meant to cause Chaos and terror, and not simply bloat their meatships.

They clearly chose a new area, at random, and repeated the bloody process.

From the signs of things–initially, at least–the enemy snipers and their small team also apparently had advance scanning and jamming tek that defeated all normal attempts to pinpoint their locations and firing positions.

That became a problem for the Marines and their teks as well.

These ruthless enemy snipers struck at several random points planetwide, and had already killed thousands within a few days, terrorizing an entire region with small groups of such forces. They obviously had at least one starship, most likely a small insertion ship, with highly advanced stealth tek.

Then something even worse happened the very next day.

A hundred sniper teams just like the first one struck the same region all at once. Civilians, lander military, and even Spacer Marines fell victim to the enemy sniper onslaught.

Bravo Command and 36 organized into rapid-response, anti-sniper teams.

Shetanna formed up with Squad 4, an attached tek unit, and three superb counter-sniper teams, composed of Marine snipers and their spotters.

Sergeant Maria Bucci led Squad 4 with Terrence Dekker, Sarah Maeris, and Pete Cooper in Fireteam 1. Corporal Veronica Nelson led Fireteam 2, with Ken Ryan, Tavis Marshall, and Zina Gordon. Fireteam 3 was comprised of Corporal Braeden Kowalski, Karla Cherokee, Jonny Fox, and Dillon Kothari.

They were thirty klicks away when the call came in about an enemy sniper starting to kill among the locals.

Shetanna and her team swept in fast.

For good measure, Shetanna transported in ahead of them cloaked, and spread out a rapidly expanding cloudnet of specially modified detection fixers.

Let’s locate this sniper and take her down, Om. She’s not going to show up on any normal scans.

Got it, N. I have local reports of six casualties. Four civilians, one local police, and one medical response person. Nope…make that seven KIA. The sniper just fired again and took down another first responder.

Any kind of trace-back trajectory, Om?

They were meters away from where the action was going down, and still no one, including Naero herself, had heard any conventional shots.

Nothing yet. Fixers almost in place. Net up and running.

Any anomalies or background scatter feedback or blips?

None. Nada. Nacha.

Naero sighed. Then I think I know what this is, Om. We faced something like this back in the Annexation War, remember?

Phaze rifles?

Exactly, Om. It was originally Triaxian Hevangian tek, but I’m guessing our new enemies have improved upon it and taken it to the next level. Adjust the fixernet; watch for subtle energy fluctuations in the near psyonic ranges, similar to the spectrum flux frequencies and vibronic patterns of Astral energies. Have the fixernet track, triangulate, and follow any spikes or even blips.

Adjusting and tracking along those bands that you have specified and anything close. Uh-oh. You’re not going to like this.

What, Om?

Four more KIA–a mother and three kids. They were caught in the open, running down a street looking for cover.

Om, if we don’t find this sharpshooting invader bitch and neutralize her and her team, there’s going to be a lot more death. Find her so that we can ghost her hairy ass and put an end to this slaughter.

N, we have reports of over a hundred such enemy units, doing the same thing on this continent alone.

We crack one of these teams, scan their gear, and send it to Intel, and then we’ll figure out how to nail all of these bitches.

There’s a flood of data. I think they’re trying to confuse our efforts by overwhelming the nets with bursts of useless chatter junk info. I’ll shunt it to the tek unit to sort it out.

The tek team called her back seconds later over their link, breaking up a bit from the enemy jamming.

“Talk to me, guys.”

“We’ve computed various anomalies from the fixernet, and gotten rid of the intentional data garbage dumps obscuring the real info.”

“Do you have a lock?” she nearly demanded.

“Not yet, but we’re close. We can tell you where the sniper last fired from.”

“Boys, what good does that do us?”

“Sir, they move thirty meters left and then back thirty meters right, popping targets of opportunity from that position in any direction, at random.”

“Then what? That can’t be all of it,” Naero said.

“Hmm, the full analysis says that they move again within five to ten minutes at most, and they set up again within one minute and start shooting again.”

“That’s tight, guys. Thanks a lot,” Naero told them. “These sniper teams are elite and extremely well-trained. They excel at this.”

“Sir, we still can’t locate the next exact location of the shooter, but we can pinpoint several possibilities. May we suggest having auto or miniguns ready to shred all of those areas at the same time? We might get lucky with a scattershot approach?”

“Negative. One sign of something like that and they’ll just fade away and set up shop somewhere else, where we aren’t.”

“What if we mass stun the blanket area and sort it all-out from there, sir?”

“No good either, guys. Stunfields won’t affect phazed troops. We know at least that much. Explosions or indirect fire won’t, either. Their rounds only un-phaze an instant before they hit their targets. We can only detect them for sure when they pause to recharge.”

“Sir, didn’t phaze armor originally kill the users in some horrible fashion?”

“It did. Phaze-sickness. But we think the enemy has improved upon that tek by now, although it sucks up lots of juice to function. They will still be forced to recharge at some point, or swap out energy paks or some such.”

“Sir, we’ve got just such an apparent recharge spike.”

“Get it up on the Combat Grid locator.”

“Wait a sec–no good, sir. We’ve got five more bursts of charging echoes just like it, all within thirty klicks. Probably just echoes.”

Shetanna kept up the feeds live to Squad-4 and the others, now positioned around her, ready to go in. Then she spotted the pattern and what it meant.

N, those aren’t echoes or feedback scatter and chatter.

I know, Om.

“People, listen up,” Naero said. “Each one of those pockets of blips is coming from a six-person sniper team operating in this area, each of them independent. One or two spotters, two shooters, and the other pair are mostly guards or lookouts. That’s how they’re making this work.”

One of the attached snipers called in. “That’s how they make all of this work so well. The shooters kill as much as they want. Then they vanish with their team before the area gets too hot, and they go do the same thing somewhere else. I bet they already have the next location selected before they even move.”

Word reached them. An enemy sniper had just killed Spacer Marine Macon Abraham with a clean head shot.

“Now the slashers are killing us. Suggestions?” Sergeant Bucci asked. “How do we break them down and take them out?”

“Let me try something,” Corporal Nelson suggested. “Maybe our MCL can help. I happen to be a telepath myself, a very strong one.”

“Nelson,” Naero said, “I’m a Mystic. I’ve already tried to detect their minds. But you can’t detect a mind that is
phazed
or even cloaked, for that matter.”

“Hear me out, sir. You can do so…if you’re phazed right along with them, at the same time.”

“You can phaze, Nelson? I didn’t know that. Not many Spacers can. I sure can’t.”

“Yeah, I can phaze. I just can’t move very much while I’m doing it–and it’s exhausting. My whole family can do it, more or less. We used to play hide and scan, and we figured out the whole phaze and telepathy thing.”

Naero zipped over to Nelson’s position and they found some cover nearby. Naero focused and opened her third eye. Then she placed her hands on Nelson’s shoulders, studying her through a mindlink and with biomancy, all at once.

“Go ahead, Nelson. Go ahead and phaze. I want to study everything you do at every level. I’ll mindlink with you and study your flows when you phaze. I’m a quick study. Once I see a talent performed, once or twice, I can usually learn to imitate it. Now, find the enemy for us. Show me where they are.”

“If you don’t mind, sir, I’ll have to lie down. If I phaze successfully standing up, I’ll slip right out of my armor and flop down on the ground naked. The neutral flows of the ground strata will act as a stabilizer. I won’t fall into the ground while I’m phazed.”

“All right. Go ahead. I’ll stay right with you to maintain our mindlink.”

“Oh, we have to turn our stealth suits off, as well. That will also interfere with the process.”

They lay there under cover, and Nelson went still, into a psyonic focus trance. Naero matched her, keeping one arm across Nelson’s shoulder and another hand on the Marine’s other shoulder.

Then Nelson phazed.

For an instant, Naero winced as if she were on fire. Phazing was painful at first. Their link almost shattered defensively as Nelson compensated. Naero kept pace with her and phazed right along with her, the very next instant.

Nelson was already scanning and searching the nearby areas with her racing, telepathic mind. Once more, Naero caught up with her counterpart.

Nelson most likely did not know this, but being phazed was a lot like being in the actual astral plane. But instead, this felt more like a small pocket dimension that was temporary, and on a slightly different frequency or flux energy band of Cosmic existence. Only a Mystic would be able to figure out all of that.

There they were: the six members of the enemy sniper team were within range. Nelson and Naero could see and spot them, but without being telepathic, the Ejjai could not see them in turn.

The enemy team had moved once more, and quickly set up to start shooting again.

“We’ve got them, Om. No one else is dying here. Can the fixers paint them some way to light them up on the combat grid?”

We can’t paint them while they’re phazed, but we can paint the air around them and their positions so that they show up. They won’t see it. But what good will that do? Our weapons and any of our fire will simply pass right through them.

You forget, Om. My weapons and I are also phazed.

Naero spoke to Nelson. “I’m going to take them out.”

“Sir, wait. Moving while you’re phazed is incredibly taxing. You’ll quickly exhaust yourself and become vulnerable!”

“I’ve got an idea, Nelson. Back in a sec. Trust me.”

Shetanna transported right in on the enemy sniper team with her blazing red katanas appearing with her, already rammed right through their bodies. There was no time to react. Their eyes blinked in surprise and froze in death.

Then Naero noticed that she was both phazed, and naked.

She had her swords, which were a part of her, but she had teleported her phazed body right out of her stealth armor.

Not that anyone besides Nelson might notice.

If that was the trade-off for taking out the enemy sniper team, so be it. Naked never hurt anyone.

She quickly flashed back to Nelson and teknomanced into her gear.

“Did you get them, sir? How do you feel?”

Naero caught herself, and un-phazed along with Nelson.

When Naero tried to sit up, she felt lucky that she was already lying on the ground. She barely had the strength to move.