"Alpha, Bravo copies visual contact in approximately fifteen minutes."
"Confirm copy," Sergeant Metternich repeated. "Alpha is moving now. Repeat, Alpha is moving now. Alpha, clear."
Alicia turned her head, looking to the left and the eastern end of the valley. She could see a long way from up here, despite the valley's narrowness, and she brought up her sensory boosters.
She hadn't counted on how … uncomfortable the surgery to implant the standard Marine enhancement package would be. In fact, it had been more like physical therapy for a recovering accident victim than anything she would have thought of as "training" before she actually experienced it. But she'd made up for that by the speed with which she'd adjusted to the new abilities once she was out of the medics hands and free to start training. And she wasn't about to complain about the down time for the recovery-not when she could see with the acuity of a really good pair of light-gathering binoculars, even without her helmet's sensors, just by triggering the right command sequence in her implanted processor. She supposed she shouldn't be using her augmentation, either, since the exercise parameters had specifically denied the "guerillas" the use of their helmet systems, but she figured no one was going to squash her like a bug for it.
Hopefully.
The distant terrain snapped into glassy-clear focus. Nothing at all happened for quite some time, and then she spotted a flicker of motion.
"I've got movement," she reported over the fire team's tactical net.
"And who might you be?" Leocadio Medrano's voice came back dryly, and she blushed fiery red.
"Ah, Bravo-One, this is Bravo-Five," she said, thanking God that no one else was in a position to see her flaming face. "I have motion at two-eight-five. Range -" she consulted the ranging hash marks superimposed on her augmented vision "- eleven klicks."
"One, Two," Frinkelo Zigair said quietly. "Confirm sighting."
"Acknowledged," Medrano said. Alicia heard the quiet scrape and slither as the plasma gunner moved closer to the edge of their perch. He was silent for several seconds, obviously studying the situation. Then he came back up over the fire team's net.
"One has eyes on the target," he confirmed. "Looks like they're coming along right where we expected them, people. I'd say another ninety minutes or so, given how slowly they're moving. Four."
"Four," Cйsar Bergerat acknowledged.
"I think you'll have the best line of sight. When they get here, you'll be on the detonator."
"Four confirms. I have the detonator."
"Three, since they're coming in from the east this way, you and Five have perimeter security. Move to the gamma position now."
"One, Three confirms," Gregory Hilton replied. "Moving to gamma."
Hilton reached up and slapped Alicia on the back of her left heel. She nodded sharply and wiggled back from her position at the lip of their perch, careful to stay down and avoid silhouetting herself against the gray, drizzling sky or making any movement which might be spotted from below. Then she turned to follow him at a brisk, crouching trot to the previously prepared secondary position which had been carefully placed to cover the only practical access route from the valley floor to the fire team's primary position.
They reached it in just over ten minutes and settled down into the carefully camouflaged holes. Alicia's Camp Mackenzie instructors would have been delighted with the field of fire they had, and she'd been impressed by how carefully Medrano had insisted that they camouflage their positions. She was sure quite a few people would have been prepared to take a certain liberty, given the capabilities of the Corps' reactive chameleon camouflage and the knowledge that they were up against only a planetary militia-and not a particularly good one, at that-in a mere training exercise. Leocadio Medrano didn't appear to think that way, however, and for whatever a mere "larva's" opinion might be worth, she approved wholeheartedly.
"One, Three. Three and Five are in position at gamma," Hilton reported, even as his hands ejected the magazine from his M-97 combat rifle and attached the four hundred-round box of belted training ammunition in its place.
Alicia opened a second ammo box, but she didn't attach it to her own weapon. Hilton was the heavy fire element, but attaching the weight of the bulky ammunition box to transform his combat rifle into what amounted to a light machine gun cost it a certain handiness. It was Alicia's job to watch their flanks while he dealt with laying concentrated fire where it was needed. If necessary, she could quickly attach the second ammo box to her own weapon; otherwise, it would simply be ready for Hilton to reload a bit faster.
"Three, One confirms," Medrano replied over the net. "Now everybody just sit tight."
"Any sign of them at all, Sergeant?" Captain Chiawa asked, looking around a valley which had gotten only rockier, muddier, more barren, and colder over the last several hours.
"Nothing, Karsang Dawa," Sergeant Nursamden Nyima Lakshindo replied, and Chiawa hid a scowl. Lakshindo's casual attitude was-unfortunately, Chiawa often thought-the rule, rather than the exception among the personnel of Gyangtse's militia. In civilian life (which was to say for ninety-nine percent of his time), the sergeant was a pretty fair computer draftsman. In fact, he worked for Chiawa's consulting business. That had certain advantages in terms of their working relationship in the militia, but it made it difficult to maintain anything remotely like proper military discipline.
"Unless they decided just to skip the exercise after all," Lieutenant Salaka offered, "they've got to be somewhere in the next ten klicks."
"Maybe." Chiawa scratched his chin thoughtfully, eyes slitted as he peered up the valley. The sun was settling steadily towards the western horizon as the day limped towards late afternoon, and he had to squint into its brightness.
"What do you mean, maybe?" Salaka asked. "We're supposed to be pursuing a bunch of guerrillas ready to turn on us, aren't we?"
"That's what the Colonel said," Chiawa agreed. "On the other hand, according to the mission brief, the 'guerrillas' we're chasing are supposed to've wanted to take out a target somewhere in Zhikotse before they were 'spotted' and had to run for it. And Wasps are supposed to be sneaky, right?"
"So?" Salaka looked puzzled, and Chiawa snorted.
"So suppose they've actually been planning on carrying out an 'attack' in the capital all along?"
"But that's not what we were briefed for," Salaka protested.
"So what? You know Major Palacios has been hinting for weeks that our training scenarios haven't really been realistic. Suppose she decided to do something about that? These 'guerrillas' we're supposed to be chasing could have found some place to drop out of sight and hide while we went floundering past them. They could be three-quarters of the way back to town by now to carry out their 'attack' while we're still wandering around in the boonies looking for them."
"But that's not how the exercise is supposed to work," Salaka pointed out again in a tone which hovered somewhere between incredulous and affronted at Chiawa's suggestion.
"No, it isn't," Chiawa agreed, suppressing an ignoble desire to point out that that was exactly what he'd just said. He stood a moment longer, drumming on his thigh with the fingers of his right hand while he thought. Then he waved his radioman closer.
Unlike the Marines, the militia's older, less sophisticated individual communication equipment lacked the range to punch a signal reliably off one of Gyangtse's communications satellites, especially out here in the mountains. That took the larger, heavier backpack unit the radioman got to lug around, and Chiawa gave the sweating, tired youngster a faint smile of sympathy as he reached for the microphone and the radio's directional antenna deployed and locked onto one of the satellites.