War Criminals by Gavin Smith (ereader for textbooks .TXT) 📕

ballistic shield. Water was lapping over the cupola as Mass awkwardly manoeuvred the Wader round. He was trying to step to the side as well but the water resistance was making that difficult.

More tracers now but the tracers were only one in every three of the inbound rounds. Hogg called out a position. Miska followed his tracers and saw movement about a quarter of a mile from them to the south. She magnified her vision and started firing, aiming high and leading the movement, giving the Triple S Waders time to walk into the falling cannon rounds.

Miska saw cannon rounds splash down in front of the Wader. Saw their wake in the water and heard them thump against the armour having been slowed down enough to be harmless. The Wader was mostly facing south now. It was at just enough of an angle for both Miska and Hogg to fire. She was aware of Corenbloom firing the 20mm cannon and Kasmeyer firing the HMG in the other Wader.

‘Raff, you’re rear security!’ she shouted over the dull bass boom of the cannons and the higher and faster shots from the HMGs, hoping that the CIA agent’s noise filters would enable him to hear it. She was very conscious that they could be backing into an ambush. ‘Mass, use the trees for cover! Nyukuti, tell Hemi to do the same! Then I want you on local security, watch the water and the trees around us!’ She fired again, and then used the pedals, which were now underwater, to move the cannon around and fire at one of the other Triple S Waders. Mass moved the Wader behind a tree and Miska had to stop firing.

‘Boss!’ Hogg practically screamed in her ear. ‘In the trees we can spot and snipe!’ Miska glanced at him. She wanted Hogg where she could keep an eye on him but she knew she was being selfish.

Hemi’s Wader was making a huge bow wave as it splashed through the water trying to move behind cover. Incoming cannon and HMG fire tore up the bark of the enormous tree they were making for. She saw rounds splashing into the water, others sparked off the Wader’s armour. She assumed the latter were HMG rounds and not cannon rounds. When they’d made it behind the relative and temporary safety of the trees Miska stood up and signalled for Kaneda to spot from the trees. The sniper pulled his sodden ghillie suit over himself and leapt off the Wader. Tiny molecular sized hooks on his gloves, kneepads and boots helped him scale the tree like a spider. Hogg did the same. They looked like large, wet, moving patches of moss scaling the huge trees. The firing had stopped but Miska knew that the Triple S Waders would use the lull to close with them. Just for a moment she thought of how much easier this would all be with modern weapons. I mean we might be dead by now, but at least it would’ve been over quickly. The Bastards hadn’t had much in the way of decent weapons when they’d assaulted Faigroe Station. On Barney Prime they’d had to make do with modified civilian weapons. Just once she’d like to be able to bring all the toys to bear on a problem.

‘What’s the plan, boss?’ Mass asked from the driver’s seat.

‘Let Hogg and Kaneda spot for us while these Triple S assholes close. Then, when we know where they are and they’re in close enough range, we make a run for dry land laying down as much ordnance as we can,’ she told them. High-noon-style gunfights like this were mostly a zero sum game and three on two lessened their odds considerably. All they had going for them was Hogg and Kaneda acting as spotters.

‘Raff, anything behind us?’ she asked.

‘Not that I can see,’ he replied. It wasn’t the most reassuring reply.

‘Nyukuti?’

‘No fish,’ the stand-over man replied. She knew he was smiling by the sound of his voice.

The face in the water! Just for a moment she convinced herself that she had imagined it but she knew she hadn’t. If she hadn’t seen the face, ordered the Waders hull down in the water, then Triple S would have had them dead to rights. Was it a warning? she wondered. She tried to remember what it had looked like but she had only caught a glimpse of it, just a sense of the inhuman.

She heard a whistle from above her. She looked up to see Hogg free his hands from his ghillie suit to signal the position and distance of the three incoming Waders.

‘Mass, you’re going to back us straight back to the land, this is about speed not finesse, but stay hull-down,’ she told the button man. He nodded. ‘Nyukuti, I want you on the GMG, Raff you’re on the HMG, everyone shoots, we destroy one move onto the other. Nyukuti, signal the others.’

Nyukuti stood up to signal the other Wader.

Miska knew Hemi’s Wader had one less shooter than them.

‘What about rear security?’ Raff asked.

‘What’re you, Delta Force? Just do as you’re fucking told,’ Mass told him. ‘I’ll watch our backs.’

‘Mass sees anything,’ Miska added, ‘Raff switches back to the SAWs.’

Another whistle. Miska glanced up and Hogg let them know how much closer the Triple S Waders were, their change in position. Kaneda would be doing the same for Hemi’s Wader.

‘We go now,’ she told them. They would be able to keep the tree between themselves and the third Wader at least for a time, or until the enemy Wader changed position.

Both the Waders made a slow motion sprint through the water towards the muddy bank and the fungal forest. They were taking fire almost immediately. The water exploded all around them as the Triple S Wader’s GMGs opened up. Miska’s wired reflexes slowed everything down. She saw the tracers bursting through the slow motion explosions of water. The dimples in the ballistic shield from the enemy’s HMGs. She pumped the trigger