16th August 3116 – 1730UST
Col Rothero looked at his gathered command group. In the dim light of the star they looked a bit like ghosts. Keying his command channel, Rothero spoke ‘We’ve received new orders from General Dawes, in 5 mins we take point for the final push on the enemy installation. The order of march will be Alpha, Delta, Charlie, Bravo. Make sure that the word is passed to all troopers that just because we’ve not encountered any serious resistance yet, it doesn’t mean we can let our guard down. This appears to be the only installation on this forsaken dirt ball, if there are any defences they will be here. Any questions?’
After 30 secs of static, he continued with ‘Let’s get this done, I don’t want any casualties. Dismissed.’
As his command group set off to brief their units, Rothero looked around at the desolate landscape. ‘I wouldn’t even set up remote mines here, so what the the Precursors doing here?’
He knew a great deal about mines, as the second son of Llewylln Rothero, scion of the Rothero Mining Corporation, it had been expected that he would take over one of the business’ divisions when was old enough. Instead, and to the rage of his father, he had joined the Celtic Army and done well.
Pushing the regrest from his past out of his consciousness, he turned to head towards his lead company. As he did, an agonising burst of noise drove him to his knees. Disorientated by the noise, he didn’t see the puff of dust rise up to his left. The trajectory of the round that had caused the puff passed right through the space where his head should have been had he not been driven to his knees.
2 kilometres away, Mabon Peters spoke into his throat mike, ‘Operative 1, Operative 3. Sniper detected, range 5 000 meters from my position, location tagged to this comms. Sniper is not, repeat not Precursor, sensors suggest that the snipers has equivalent tech to us. I have a shot, request permission to fire.’
Less than 5 secs later there was a terse reply ‘Open fire.’
Making sure that his aim hadn’t drifted Mabon sighted his weapon on the target. Sniper mode was already selected, the weapon was as steady as it could be. Controlling his breathing, Mabon pulled the trigger and a the penetrator round was sent on its way. Less than a sec later, the round hit the target squarely in the chest and it fell down lifelessly.
20 mins later, Mabon was standing over the corpse as his two team mates approached. ‘This guy may have had equivalent tech but he was no soldier, he didn’t move after his first shot was way too exposed here. What I don’t understand is how the first shot missed.’
It was the team leader that answered. ‘I saw some movement over here and I assumed it was a sniper. I sent an incapacitating signal to Rothero that forced him to his knees.’
‘It worked, where do we take the body? It can’t stay here and we can’t take it back to the Hub in case it is booby-trapped.’
‘We have a facility we can take it too. Once the Celts have moved on I’ll call in a transport.’