Crucible Read Free Page A

tank, one that had taken a direct hit from a firebeam weapon, judging by the gaping, smooth-edged wound melted through the armour of its hull. The man had been hit multiple times by the explosive shards, and lay groaning on the ground, his blood bubbling furiously as it bled out through the rips in his chem-suit and reacted fiercely with the toxic elements in the air around him. He would die soon, either from shock and blood loss, or, more likely, from exposure to the leftover remnants of whatever biochemical weapon had once been used on this portion of the battlefield.
    He raised his head groggily, watching as Venner walked towards him. He wore the trademark featureless, spherical black helmet that marked him as one of the so-called "black domers", a master sniper who had more than a thousand confirmed kills to their credit. Venner was delighted. This would be the fourth black domer he had killed.
    The two snipers looked at each other.
    "How many?" asked Venner, shocked at the sound of his own voice. It had been the first time in over a week he had heard it, and it sounded unfamiliar to him, especially when talking in the harsh, guttural language of the enemy.
    "Twelve hundred and fifty-three," answered the Nort sniper, unable to keep the betraying hint of pride out of his voice, even at a time like this.
    "Not bad," grunted Venner. The Nort nodded in acknowledgement, as one equal to another. Then Venner shot him through the heart. The man deserved respect and a quicker, cleaner death than the one he had been facing.
    "But nowhere near good enough," the Souther added, bending down to search his opponent's corpse for some kind of identification. The other kills were strictly small-fry, but to receive a confirmed kill on a black domer he would have to bring back proof of his status and identity. He had to strip off the man's chem-suit to find it, finally managing to take a scan-reading off the barcode tattoo on the back of the corpse's neck.
     
    An hour later, the atmocraft arrived to pick him up. His real mission over, he hadn't troubled himself to double back and destroy the last listening post, but he had its coordinates precisely mapped. Some petty glory boy in an artillery unit somewhere could proudly claim the credit for its destruction, assuming the Norts hadn't dismantled and moved it on elsewhere in the meantime.
    Sitting back in the pressurised interior of the atmocraft, he checked his suit's own internal chem-count meter twice against the read-outs on the wall panel beside him before breaking the seals on his suit's neck brace and taking off his helmet. He sat back for a moment, breathing deeply and relishing the nearest thing to clean, unfiltered air that he'd tasted in over a week.
    The two other Southers in the cabin with him shifted nervously. One of them, the atmocraft's crew chief, busied himself with some pointless maintenance task, clearly feeling uncomfortable in the presence of the Souther Security Service's most notorious assassin. The other, a young female intelligence officer, did her best to retain an aura of command authority in the face of a man who - no matter what junior rank his service record said he possessed - vastly outclassed her in terms of experience, ability and appetite for death.
    Venner smiled, spotting the data-port in her hand and its winking green light showing that it had information waiting to be downloaded.
    "Another job for me?" he asked, indicating the device in her hand. "Show me."
    "You need to rest," she told him. "Once you're back at base and have been fully debriefed, we'll-"
    "Show me." The smile left his face.
    She handed the device over. Venner pressed his thumb against its small ID plate and tapped in his authority code. The screen blinked into life, information scrolling across it at a rate matching the movement of his eyes as he studied the new mission briefing. A name came up, and then a visual image.
    The smile returned to Venner's face, and he sat back, contentedly