Valkyrie Burning (Warrior's Wings Book Three) Read Free Page B

since the early days of warfare, to the point where a sniper in the modern forces had to wear more hats than just a concealment specialist and marksman. Like everything else, computers had become integral to the work of the true long gun specialist. At ranges of twenty kilometers, one simply didn’t calculate the ballistics trajectories by eye any longer.
    Marksman records for unaided shots were still just under five kilometers, despite superbly accurate and powerful rifles. Able had taken that record himself, just over three years earlier in an international match, and it hadn’t been in any danger of being broken at any time since. Using the liquid lenses that let their scopes be truly compact, built into their armor and rifles both, the two snipers had surveyed the camp almost nonstop during the door kickers’ entire approach.
    They’d singled out targets, both mobile and immobile, highlighting them on a shared combat HUD, and proceeded to divide up the targets between them. They split the Ghoulies evenly between them, as much as they could with the little guys moving around and occasionally vanishing inside the base and such. The computers kept track of the movement as much as possible, following mobile targets around so that they didn’t get them mixed up and re-designated as new targets.
    As the clock wound down, though, the decisions had all been made, and it was all about the waiting.
    “Ten seconds,” Mack said over the tactical network.
    Able just tipped his head slightly in the armor, relaying a simple confirmation that he hadn’t dozed off, and watched the clock wind down to the last second. As it reached three, he flipped the safety off his rifle, letting the capacitor charge the weapon to combat readiness. At one, he flipped the fire selector to full automatic, priming the entire magazine as he let out a breath he’d been holding and tightened his finger around the trigger.
    The air between Able and Mack was rent by the roar of supersonic explosions as both rifles spat out thirty rounds apiece as fast as they could cycle the action, each heavy slug departing the weapon at Mach four. The weapons slammed back into the snipers’ shoulders, but in their armor they barely felt the mule-like kicks of each round, and within three seconds both their magazines were empty.
    They rolled clear of their nests, coming to their knees as one person, the carbon barrels smoking as dust burned off the super-heated material. Then they leapt away, vanishing into the treeline even before their bullets had finished crossing the divide.
    *****
    The twenty-five-millimeter rounds fired from the heavy warfare sniper rifles screamed through the air, guidance fins deploying just moments after they had erupted from the barrels while each kinetic kill round looked ahead with its dedicated sensors for its own preprogrammed target.
    The swarm adjusted in midflight, turning and spreading out as they flew true to their targets, and they struck almost five seconds before the sound of their launching reached the base, eighteen enemy soldiers falling in silent deaths as forty-two sensor masts, recon probes, and automated weapon turrets were destroyed in the same moment.
    Those few that survived calculated the direction the attack had come from automatically, and the command came down instantly from the control center to respond in kind.
    Twenty kilometers away, and halfway up a mountain face, twin explosions roared as the Ghoulies’ gravity valves opened up the full force of gravity on two pockets of dirt barely thirty centimeters in diameter. The resulting nuclear inferno lit up the valley from end to end as four armored figures vaulted the perimeter fence and charged into the base.
    The sharp crack of the sonic booms echoed around the valley, joined by the rolling thunder of the nuclear fire just seconds later, but by then no one in the base was listening to the far off sounds at all.
    *****
    Sorilla landed on her tiptoes, her armor