A Marksman's Tale
Hope you guys will enjoy this short story.
Seargearnt Clark Scmidt stared down at J'thruatua. Its lush
forests being peppered with gunfire. The fighting on both sides were
tremendous, and so were the casualties reported. The planet's natural
blistering heat had made the conflict even worse, considering the growing
scarcity of water around. Many trees had been toppled over, the result of
insisting rocket barrages. Many large tanks had been destroyed in the
battlefield, their hulls split open and their ruptured pulse cannons leaking
toxic liquids into the soil, further poisoning this already polluted planet.
The sky was filled with a yellowish hue, and clouds contaminated with uranium
were spread out. The air itself contains enough oxygen for humans to breathe,
but the concentrated amounts of chlorine and ammonia made breathing without a
gas mask suicidal. At the intersection of hill 45 and a Hill 30, was a city.
This city was dubbed the Thratuan Chorazin. It had seen much fighting, and its
many buildings had been reduced to a devastation and resembled a maze, an ugly
puzzle of shattered bricks, and twisted steel. Body parts littered the streets
of the city, arms, legs and feet shod or
unshod even a head or two would stick out of the bloody soil. A dead native
could be seen here, a self-proclaimed Colonel could be seen there.
Occasionally, a plane would roar overhead, looking for targets to drop their
bombs upon, like predators looking for prey to kill and eat.But for now, the intersection was quiet, though a lethal
acid rain washed over head. Eroding away bloodstains, entrails, faecal
deposits, and muffling the screams for men who had lost their leg or their
testicles. The whole destruction of a bitter war fought at close quarters in
scorching conditions, under the visage of a burning forest, set on a planet so
unforgiving, many had sworn that this was a vision of hell itself.One man however, was quite comfortable in this inferno. He
is positioned lying prone with a 50. Calibre rifle in his arms, in what had
been a temple, which it no longer had any roof and all that was left was a few
walls. He laid belly-down on a soft cushion. An oxygen masked sheathed his
mouth and nose And a pair of goggles hid
his eyes.This prone man was named Clark Schmidt, and he was a sniper,
a sergeant in the 3rd battalion of the 44th Infantry
Division in the XI corps in the sixth Army under a Colonel Richardson. The
enemy, were the Roxons, an intellectual, war-like species originating in Roxon
Prime, whose only meaningless reason to go to war was a conquest for ultimate
power. Many vary in height from 6-8 feet tall, and closely resemble humans,
despite being totally hairless. They opposing army was trying desperately to
encircle Richardson as a preliminary to
destroying himself and his 3 hundred thousand men. None of that mattered to
Schmidt of course, he'd wouldn't be bothered to check up on the latest updates
in the war, other than those in his 6 power telescopic sight.He was a sniper, and he was hunting a sniper. That was all.The human had been shipped to this inferno two weeks ago.
His mission hadn't changed however. He was a talented stalker, and even more so
marksman. He had already brought down 23 Roxons, 8 of them officers. He liked to kill Roxons. But now a Roxon with the same skill
sets, similar weapon, and a mission to kill him. Schmidt felt challenged. And
Schmidt liked challenges, he liked nothing for than to prove his adversary
wrong and that he was the very best in the world.This game was now part of a dimension he had not yet
encountered. Normally, you stalk, you pop up or dip down, and sooner or later a
Roxon with a rifle or machine gun walks past, doing his patrols, you settle in
your position. You hold your breath. Steady your weapon and watch at the scoped
crosshairs ooze unto you oblivious foe and then you fire. The Roxon staggers
and falls, or he steps back and falls, or he just falls. But it always ends
with the fall.However, the figure across the street knows this too, so the
game plan has changed. You don't move at all. You don't swing your rifle around
carelessly and you don't look up and around. You mimic the dead. Your entire vision
encompassed the entire battlefield, and you can drop a Roxon at about 500
meters. You stay disciplined. Your rifle loaded and cocked, so there was no
ritual of bolt throw, with its bobbing head and flying elbows, either of which
could get you so very dead.The name of this game was patience. The opponent will come
to you, it was just a question of waiting.He had set himself up at the 5th storey. If his
opponent or himself had set themselves a floor higher or lower, or a window to
the left or the right, they would never encounter each other. Wait,wait,wait.And finally the ordeal seemed to be paying off. He was
convinced that a dark shadow the corner of the room of an apartment was a shape
more defined and intense than it was a few hours ago. Schmidt had convinced
himself of seeing movement. The Seargent closed his eyes from behind his telescopic
sight. Eyestrain can lead to hallucinatory visions. Now coupled with the fact
that he had hardly received enough sleep in the previous days made that very
real. Once he had opened them, he was sure that there was a new shape in the
window. It could be a broken window pane, twisted and mangled left on the
floor, or a spine of a broken chair or even a table who'd lost a fight with a
mortar round, but it could also be a Roxon, hunched similarly over a weapon,
eye similarly pressed against a scope. It didn't help that discriminations were
made more difficult by reason of an occasional sunbeam that would break through
the clouds and illuminate the room just above the suspected enemy. Whenever
this happened, Schmidt would have to look away and blink his eyes until the
conditions passed. But Schmidt felt safe. The Roxons possed a 5.5 laser optic
scope , which meant at this position even his enemy were on him, the details
would be so blurry that he would be sure that no sigh picture could be made. So
Schmidt felt invisible, unseen and undetectable. Maybe even a little godlike.
His higher degree of magnification was a good advantage. Schmidt would wait awhile longer. The alien sun would
disappear and full darkness would come. Both opponents, if there was an
opponent, would wait until that happened and then would gradually disengage and
come back and fight tomorrow. But Schmidt had decided to shoot. He'd been on
this stand for a week, and he's more than sure that this shape was new, and
something he hasn't seen before. He closed his eyes. He counted to sixty.Schmidt opened his eyes, and carefully assembled his
position to fire. He found angles for his limbs, making pronounced adjustments
slowly, building bone trusses under his rifle resting on a sandbag, pushing the
safety off, and sliding his finger onto the trigger. He felt the trigger's
heat, his fingertip engage it, felt it move back, stacking slightly as it went,
until it had finally reached the precise edge of firing and not firing. At this
point, he had committed fully by opening his eyes to aquire the picture through
the glass of his scope, and setteked the intersection of the crosshairs on the
centre. He exhaled half of his breath, and put his weight behind the trigger.Then he pulled.The flash blinded him for a moment, but once he had
succumbed to his senses he stood up smiling, he was sure he had hit him, or it
in this case. The shape had snapped back from where it originally was, and a
fresh coat of Roxon blood was to be seen from the wall inches behind it. He has to move. No doubt had the shot attracted the Roxon
troops nearby, and-A round had hit him on a slightly downward angle at the
midpoint of his right shoulder, breaking a whole network of bones, though
missing any major arteries and blood-bearing organs. To Schmidt it felt like someone had unloaded a full swing
ten-kilo sledge hammer against him, lifting him, twisting him, depositing him. Dazzled by shock, he recovered quickly and tried to cock his
rifle, but of course found that the arm attached to his now-destroyed shoulder
no longer worked. Still, on instinct, Schmidt found himself trying to place his
cheek back on to the stock, his eye returned to the scope and searched the
windows above his destroyed target. And so it happened, that his opponent had
risen to depart after firing the shot. His hood fell away and Schmidt caught
the pale Skin of the Roxon reflect in the sunlight. Then the sniper was gone.