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  Camp Hathcock was the smallest of the “camps” that made up Camp Basilone, only five kilometers deep by ten wide, backed up against the Veridian Ocean, but its area of influence via firepower was far larger: Air and sea craft were banned for a distance five kilometers to its sides and twenty kilometers beyond the shore.

  Warrant Officer Jaqua, Fourth Force Recon Company’s training officer and range master, was ready for the platoon’s recon squads when they reached the range. Masers slung over their shoulders, Staff Sergeant Athon and his sniper squad stood in a rank behind him. The four squads of second platoon available for that training evolution formed up in front of the company training officer the same as they had for morning formation behind the barracks. Jaqua stood, hands clasped behind his back, casually looking them over. “I know,” he said before his inspection could make anybody uncomfortable, “that most of you have already done orientation firing of various sniper weapons. A couple of you have even fired all of them. But not one of you has fired any of them for qualification. We are going to spend the next two weeks correcting that deficiency.”

  Jaqua could say “deficency” without giving offense; in addition to his Distinguished Blasterman and hand-blaster Expert badges, his chest bore the uncommon Expert Sniper badge with the scarlet pips that indicated he’d qualified at that level with all three of the sniper-specific weapons.

  “We aren’t going to overwhelm you with firing all of our weapons at once; we only have two weeks, and that’s barely long enough to familiarize you with them. Instead, we will spend the first week concentrating on learning the maser. On Frigaday, you will fire the maser on the qualification range. Next week you will spend four days firing the mid-range projectile rifle and the long-range sabot. Next Frigaday, if you feel sufficiently comfortable with either of them, you will fire it for qualification.”

  He raised a hand to stop the groans of protest he expected and quickly added, “If you qualify with any of these weapons, that qualification will be entered in your Service Record Book and you will be authorized to wear the appropriate badge. If you fail to qualify with any weapon you fire for qualification, that failure will not be entered into your service record. There is no requirement in the Basic Reconman MOS for qualification with sniper weapons, so it wouldn’t be fair to officially note any failure to do so. But qualifying with additional weapons will look good in your record.”

  He smiled. “Besides, some of you might decide you like firing sniper weapons and want to apply for sniper school. Force Recon can always use new snipers who have prior experience as reconmen.

  “Now, I’ll hand you over to Staff Sergeant Athon and his snipers for basic orientation.” He made an about-face. “Staff Sergeant Athon, front and center!”

  “Sir!” Athon sharply stepped in front of Suptra and saluted.

  “Staff Sergeant, take command of the trainees,” Jaqua said before he cut his salute.

  “Aye aye, sir!” Athon held his salute until Jaqua cut his and marched away, then stood with his feet at shoulder width and his hands on his hips, and ordered, “Lance Corporal Dwan, position!”

  First sniper team’s Lance Corporal Bella Dwan broke formation and came to stand one pace to Athon’s left. She showed her teeth to the Marines of second platoon in a grin. Her grin was no more friendly than that of a hungry shark.

  “Lance Corporal Dwan,” Athon said to second platoon, “will explain to you the operation and capabilities of the M14A5 sniper maser. She won’t go into any great detail about how it functions; none of you have the advanced degrees in physics you’d need to understand them.

  “Lance Corporal.” He stepped aside. Bella Dwan was petite and had what on another woman might be called an elfin face—as long as one didn’t look into her eyes. The other Marines of Fourth Force Recon Company were about equally divided as to whether, if she was seen off base in nice civilian clothes, she would look more like somebody’s kid sister or like someone worth pursuing as a woman. But they all knew better—and no Marine who knew her ever saw her as a woman to pursue, much less as anybody’s kid sister. Her eyes were cold and hard, and had made many a strong man excuse himself and depart for other environs. They called her the “Queen of Killers.”

  Dwan was a very unusual Marine. She was still under thirty and not yet through her first eight-year enlistment, which was the only excuse her chain of command had for not offering her a meritorious promotion to corporal. She was qualified as Expert with blaster, hand-blaster, and most sniper weapons. She wasn’t qualified as Expert with the maser because she had surprised the competition-shooting community by earning the treasured Distinguished designation with the maser after only three years of part-time shooting in authorized competitions. Dwan unslung her maser and held it across her body at port arms. “This is the M14A5 sniper maser,”

  she said, in a voice only slightly less elfin than her face. The weapon was little more than a meter long. Its rear half resembled the buttstock and firing group of the standard blaster carried by Marine infantrymen and Force Recon. Forward of that, the “barrel” group was a dull metal cylinder about three centimeters in diameter sitting in a short, knobby, wood forestock for almost its entire length. The barrel was slotted at regular intervals. Midway along the cradle, a handgrip dropped down. The “muzzle” tapered to a point, circled by a series of tightly spaced rings that diminished in diameter as they approached the point.

  “The M14A5 sniper maser is an electrically operated, tightly focused, single-shot, shoulder fired, microwave weapon. It has a maximum immediate kill range of two hundred meters, and a maximum effective kill range of four hundred meters.” Her grin broadened. “It can cause sunstroke at nearly a kilometer and severe sunburn at a klick and a half.”

  Then her smile tightened. “The M14A5 is a very quiet weapon. Someone with keen hearing can possibly detect it at a distance as great as five meters, but no farther. It fires a tightly focused pulse of high-intensity microwaves. A three-quarter-second pulse, at two hundred meters or less, striking a human target anywhere from the crown to mid-thigh, will kill before the full pulse has completed. To kill at four hundred meters, the entire three-quarter-second pulse must hit in the same point, somewhere between top of head and groin.

  “The wave is so tightly focused—don’t ask how, I don’t understand the physics any better than you do—that it is virtually undetectable by any surveillance device not directly in its path. When the target is killed, it drops straight down and shows no external sign of being shot.”

  Her grin became wider than ever. “Gentlemen—that means you, Marines!—that means a sniper who is good enough at snooping and pooping can kill his—or,” she cleared her throat, “her target without being discovered.

  “Now, I know most of you badasses are Expert Blastermen, accustomed to firing plasma bolts at targets as much as a klick away and hitting them nine times out of ten, so you may be wondering what’s so difficult about firing a weapon that can kill only up to four hundred meters.

  “It’s that three-quarter-second pulse. There isn’t any recoil, or not much, but you have to maintain a solid lock on your aiming point for that entire three-quarters-second. You might be surprised at how many Marines can’t.”

  Lance Corporal Wehrli from second squad raised his hand. When Dwan acknowledged him, he asked, “If that’s so, why doesn’t the maser have a stabilizing system?” He gritted his teeth when she gave him a you’re-cute-when-you-ask-dumb-questions look.

  “Weight and noise,” she said. “Snipers have to be able to move slowly and silently. That means carry nothing you don’t absolutely need. And every stabilizing device makes noise, no matter how slight. The maser gets heavier if it has enough shielding to silence the stabilizer. The more weight a sniper carries, the more chance he or she has of making noise. A silent sniper makes kills, a noisy sniper gets killed. It’s that simple.”

  Dwan looked about, but nobody else raised a question, so she continued her lecture.

  “Aiming is
easy. You look through the optical sight, lock on target, and squeeze. The M14A5 is a line-of-sight weapon, and is unaffected by wind, weather, or gravitational effect within its effective kill-range. Which doesn’t mean it isn’t affected over ranges measured in thousands of kilometers, but that effect’s from solar winds and Jovian-sized gravity wells. And by the time the waves travel that far, they’re so dispersed it really doesn’t matter.

  “The basic elements of firing apply, BRASS: Breathe, Relax, Aim, Slack, Squeeze.” She looked about for more questions, but when none immediately came, Staff Sergeant Athon stepped forward and took over.

  “You all know the range routine for new weapons,” he told second platoon. “I have all six of my snipers here, and there are twenty-three of you. Each of my people will take a squad, Sergeant Gossner will take the command element. They will give you dry-firing instruction, supervised by Gunner Jaqua and myself. We’ll go right down the line. First squad, you go with Lance Corporal Dwan. Second squad—”

  “Come on, big boy,” Dwan said, stepping close enough to slap Daly on the shoulder. “Bring your kiddies with you.” She marched toward a section of the firing line a hundred meters distant and didn’t bother looking back to see if first squad followed—she knew they would. Daly pursed his lips at the undue, almost insubordinate, familiarity of the “big boy” and shoulder slap—not to mention the insulting “kiddies”—but Bella Dwan was allowed to get away with minor infractions and insults, she was that good at what she did. Besides, like everybody else in the company, Daly was wary of her and didn’t want to do anything that might provoke her anger; she wasn’t known as “the Queen of Killers” just because of the look in her eyes. Everyone knew how she had earned the name.

  With twenty-seven confirmed kills to her credit, she had more than any other woman sniper in the Confederation military—more than most male snipers, for that matter. But that wasn’t why the men of Fourth Force Recon Company were wary of her. A tall, strikingly handsome, and drunk—that’s important, he was drunk—Marine who thought himself irresistible to women hadn’t believed pixie-faced Bella Dwan when she repeatedly told him “no.” Nor had he taken her seriously when she had told him he was about to lose the hand he put on an inappropriate portion of her anatomy. When he took further action with his inappropriately placed hand, so did she.

  The navy doctors who operated on him successfully regenerated a new hand to replace the one Dwan had removed from the inappropriate part of her anatomy. But as a permanent reminder to him that when a woman repeatedly says “no,” she really means it, they only regenerated one of his testicles. The court martial board that tried him took his drunkeness into consideration and only gave him a General Discharge for Disciplinary Reasons instead of several years of hard time and a Bad Conduct Discharge for attempted rape. Of course then-PFC Bella Dwan had also taken his drunken state into consideration in refraining from killing him. The court martial board that tried then-PFC Dwan found her not guilty of assault and battery, aggravated assault, assault with a deadly weapon (her hands and a knife she was carrying in a thigh-sheath), and several other charges, on the basis that she acted in self-defense and showed reasonable restraint.

  And Bella Dwan never encouraged other Marines to make advances, or made advances herself. So the men she served with were always very careful with her.

  Dry firing was an exercise all of the Marines had repeated many times since they first trained on the range in Boot Camp on Arsenault. Take a solid shooting position. Draw a solid sight picture on the target. Control breathing to steady the sights on the aiming point. Gently squeeze the trigger until the firing mechanism goes off and a plasma bolt, projectile, or beam moves downrange at the target. Keep the sights pinned on the aiming point all the while you’re squeezing. It’s called “dry” firing because it’s done with an empty weapon. Do the same thing with a loaded weapon and it’s called “live” firing. During his dozen years in the Marine Corps, Sergeant Jak Daly had done countless hours of dry firing on all kinds of individual weapons. Dry firing wasn’t any particular fun, but he knew it helped him get his first round on target when he finally got to live-fire the weapon—and getting that first shot on target, that was fun. On the range master’s command, Daly lowered himself into a solid prone firing position and swiveled the butt of the maser into his shoulder. Through the maser’s sights he found the target, a simple 40-mm bull’s-eye target fifteen meters distant, and aimed at the center of the smallest circle. A laser pointer that closely matched the weight and balance of a maser’s power pac was used in the maser for dry firing. In the sights, the red dot jiggled around Daly’s aiming point until he let out his breath, then it steadied down. The dot slowly spiraled until it settled where he wanted it, though it continued to move in a small circle, mostly inside the 5-cm bull’s eye. He gave the trigger a steady squeeze until the red dot brightened, indicating the maser had fired. He kept the trigger back for a count of one-thousand, which he estimated was about three-quarters of a second, then let it go. The circle described by the dot hadn’t moved more than a millimeter or two during firing.

  “Not bad, big boy,” Dwan’s voice said from too close to Daly’s ear. “Your target’s got some serious sick bay time ahead of him. If his doctors are good enough, they might even be able to figure out why he came down with a high fever.”

  Startled by her closeness, Daly rolled to the side away from her and jumped to his feet.

  “What do you mean, ‘sick’?” he demanded. “I was dead on for the whole time.”

  Dwan nodded. “Mighty fine shot—with a blaster, or any projectile weapon.” She looked from the target and rose on her toes to lean close to his face, staring harshly into his eyes. “That much movement might cook an organ, but you need to hold steadier to cause severe enough trauma for a clean kill. Let me show you what I mean.”

  Dwan took the maser from his grasp and dropped into a modified sitting position, with her elbows locked on the insides of her knees instead of her knees tucked into her armpits, and aimed; Daly assumed the modification was because of her short stature. He studied the way she sat, he didn’t think the flesh over any of the arteries in her arms was in contact with her knees; her pulse wouldn’t affect her aim.

  “Watch the target, not me,” she ordered. Daly jerked his eyes from her to the target. The red dot on the target didn’t look like it was moving at all, not even when it briefly brightened.

  “That’s what we mean by ‘steady,’ ” she said, hopping to her feet and shoving the maser at him. He grabbed it just as she let go of it. “Now try it again.” She stepped back so he could resume his firing position.

  Daly dropped into a sitting position, but Dwan nudged his shoulder with a knee. “Stick with prone for now,” she told him. “It’s easier.”

  Daly shot her a glance, but did as she said. He paid more attention this time to the almost imperceptible movements caused by the blood pulsing through his arteries, and shifted his position slightly so those points weren’t in contact with anything. He chided himself mentally as he took aim; he’d learned on the range in Boot Camp how tiny pulses in the arms and legs could be transmitted to a weapon and throw off one’s aim; he should have realized they’d have more effect on a weapon that needed to have a tighter lock on its impact point.

  This time his aim was steadier. The dot didn’t hold as tightly as Dwan’s had, but the bobble was less than a millimeter.

  “Is that good enough?” he asked, rolling to the side and looking up. But Dwan was no longer there; she was five meters away, leaning over Lance Corporal Wazzen, giving the junior reconman instruction.

  Daly shot a glare at her, but quickly wiped it off his face; he didn’t want the Queen of Killers to see it. He resumed his firing position and tried again. After a few more shots, his dot held steady within its own diameter on every shot.

  “If you can do just as well sitting and kneeling,” Dwan suddenly said, “that’s good enough to qualify as Marksman.”

  D
aly rolled halfway to the side and looked over his shoulder. She was standing between his wide-spread feet, looking downrange.

  “How long have you been there?” he asked.

  “Long enough.” She looked down at him. “Your Marines needed more attention than you did. You’re pretty good, big boy. Try the sitting position now.” She gracefully stepped from between his feet. Daly swiveled up and around until he was sitting with his feet spread wide and his knees up. He pulled the maser into his shoulder and leaned forward until his armpits slid into position on top of his knees—the sitting position he’d been taught on the range in Boot Camp, the position he’d used in firing for qualification a dozen times since.

  Suddenly, Dwan was on her knees next to him, forcing her fingertips between his armpit and knee, pads up. “Hold still,” she snapped as she wiggled her fingers to where she wanted them. She held them there for a couple of seconds, then pulled her hand out.

  “No good, you’ve got a pulse on bone, you won’t be able to hold your aiming point. Remember how I sat? You should, you were eye-fucking me hard enough. Try it.”

  Daly remembered and turned red at her comment. “I wasn’t eye-fucking you, Lance Corporal,” he snarled, “I was studying your firing position.”