Backshot by David Sherman; Dan Cragg

Author:David Sherman; Dan Cragg
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction - Adventure, Science Fiction - Space Opera, Fiction - Science Fiction, Space Opera, Fiction, Science Fiction, Adventure, Life on other planets, Marines, General
ISBN: 9780345460585
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2005-07-26T10:34:18.348000+00:00

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

Near the Cabbage Patch, Forty Kilometers northeast of New Granum, Union of Margelan, Atlas Clouds were gathering in the east when second platoon, Fourth Force Recon Company, went to ground in a dense stretch of forest one and a half kilometers from the suspected weapons research facility-manufactory.

Lieutenant Gott Tevedes transmitted a directional burst message: “First squad, you know what to do?”

Sergeant Jak Daly clicked his transmitter twice for “Yes.”

“Any questions?” Tevedes transmitted. Daly clicked once; he had no questions.

“Second squad,” Tevedes radioed, and asked the same questions of Sergeant Wil Bingh. Bingh replied with the appropriate clicks; he also knew what to do and had no questions.

“Do it.”

Daly and Bingh signaled their men, and the eight Marines rose to their feet and headed for the former weapons factory now called the “Cabbage Patch.” Second squad followed behind first squad, fifty meters to its left. Daly carried a passive mapper; it would scan everything he pointed it at, but didn’t use a range finder so its depth perception wasn’t totally reliable. Bingh carried a scope with face recognition capabilities to take a census of the personnel in the Cabbage Patch. The only data they had on who was in the compound was a rough head count of the military garrison, but that count probably wasn’t reliable. The identifier would make a record of every individual it saw and prevent any of them from being counted twice.

Until they returned to the AstroGhost, they were on full combat footing; it took more than an hour for the two squads to cover the 1,300 meters to their first observation location. The Confederation Navy string-of-pearls-generated topographic maps the platoon used weren’t the most up-to-date maps available to the Marines, but they were the most detailed. The map of the Cabbage Patch and its environs showed a shallow dip in the side of a hill two hundred meters east of the facility and above it. The buildings and roads shown on more recent maps were superimposed on the topo map. The hollow was shallower than the decades-old topo map indicated, and many of the game trails marked on it no longer existed; the trails that were still there showed scant sign of recent use. Nor did all the buildings in the Cabbage Patch complex appear on the map. Several of them looked to be of very recent construction.

Daly was glad the hollow was shallower than the map showed; the Marines would be able to lie comfortably on its slopes and watch in all directions with nothing but their heads exposed outside it; if it had been deeper, they might have had to cling to the sides. Using touches, Daly positioned everybody. He placed Corporal Nomonon to watch the rear; Sergeant Kindy and Lance Corporal Wazzen had the flanks. He took his own place overlooking the Cabbage Patch complex after Bingh signaled that second squad was in its observation position to their south. President Lavager of the Union of Margelan publicly claimed the Cabbage Patch was an agricultural research station.

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