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Chapter One
He squeezed the trigger, and swept.
Squeeze and sweep the line of fire across the target.
It took a very steady hand, and a sharp eyes. But Sergeant Gruddik was good at this. The best in Ground Forces. He emptied his lungs and rested his head on the ground, allowing the tension to dissipate. His job done.
It had taken him over two hours to work his way into this position, to make the kill. Two hours of steady pounding his own men were taking from the enemy, as he, with his snipers rifle, worked his way into no mans land between the opposing forces.
Stop….. look….. move….. stop.
From one piece of cover to another. Some of them very marginal at that. Across open ground in a slow slither. Move an elbow forward. stop. knee and hip. stop. other elbow and shoulder. stop. other knee and hip. stop. Agonisingly slowly. The press of sharp rubble, smashed timber and bent steel softened by his body armour. His breath let our in slow whispers directly down into the ground lest the fog of warm moisture in his breath give his position away in the cold morning air.
Move….. stop….. look…… move.
Sometimes a shell lobbed short and if the burst was close by it gave him the opportunity to make some real ground, a quick dash ahead in the maelstrom of the blasts residue. That is unless it didn’t cover the ground with bits of him first. Both sides lobbed the occasional short for the very reason of stopping snipers and spotters. He was after a spotter. They knew one had to be out here because suddenly, about two hours ago, the enemy fire got very accurate.
Look….. move….. stop….. look.
* * *
“Brad” Jenny shouted, “like a coffee?”
Brad stretched back in his chair, arms reaching up behind him, a low groan in the bottom of his throat as he stretched and arched his back against the chair, listening to the crack and pop of joints as he rotated and flexed his arms and shoulders.
“Yes love, thanks”
Closing his eyes he grasped his neck firmly with both hands and massaged the aching muscles. Taking off his glasses he put them down and got up from the computer desk, stretching once again as he did so and glancing at his watch. Two hours. He had been tapping away for two hours without a break. But he felt that he was getting somewhere. The unprecedented increase in the numbers of Nova and Supernova being recorded in recent years bore far more study than he could allocate. But he felt the key was in past history.
I’ll have to call George at the institute,” Brad spoke loudly as he moved from his study through the living room towards the kitchen where he could hear jenny making the sounds of coffee, “I think I have something, a sort of a pattern but I can’t be sure. I just don’t have the facilities at the campus observatory to nut this out properly. Need a decent Cray is what I need.”
Brad stopped and leant up against the frame of the kitchen door, watching Jenny as she moved, pouring the coffee from the percolator.
“Ask the CIA” Jenny quipped.
“Yeah, sure”.
She turned and smiled. That always stopped him dead. A killing smile. The thing that first attracted him to her was the smile that laughed all over her face, sang out of her eyes and seemed accentuated by her blaze of auburn hair.
I’ll ask George, maybe he can get me some time on the NASA computer. I’ve got all the data and I know that there is something there but I need a different way of looking at it.”
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