We arrived in what I was starting to think of as the normal meeting room where Summers and Mary were in the midst of a fast-paced discussion that Mary somehow held despite furiously typing on her laptop. She was in BDUs rather than her usual indie shirts; I hadn’t seen her in those since the first time I had met her out at the garage. She didn’t have a plate carrier or any other gear, but I wasn’t sure if that was a rank thing or if she would get them later.
“- they can be there in two and a half hours maybe a bit more.” Mary was saying, with a deep frown during a pause in her typing.
“That will be too late.” Summers countered while leaning over her shoulder, brows knitted together.
“Yes, but it’s what they can do, they can’t take the LAVs through downtown or they will get stuck in traffic. So they will be having to do a circuit around-“ Mary glanced up at us as we started to sit down before immediately launching into catching us up. “The police got Mcclure, it sounds like he got cold feet after seeing their victim die like that and was hiding in a motel, he surrendered willingly and even gave up what is possibly our biggest intel gain so far.”
“He told us their client was changing strategy, changing over to some kind of combined equipment and victim hand over.” She clicked on something before swinging the laptop around to show a point on a map. “it’s happening at a copse of trees in the middle of a farmer’s field near Wingham in…” She tilted her head around the laptop to look at the clock. “Two hours and forty minutes.”
“I have the armed forces preparing to head there, but frankly they won’t be there in time to stop them.” She sighed. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a specific plan for you two besides being on standby as of right now. From what Mcclure says there are supposed to be six remaining individuals in the cell plus whomever they are meeting. We aren’t going to send you to fight them, regardless of if you believe you can, as the risk for harm in a stand-up fight is too great.” Molly clearly looked like she was going to protest. “Molly, you do not have the range with your gravity powers to surprise them if they are out in the open, and I know you could only defend against shots for a limited time.”
Molly frowned leaning back into her chair as Mary continued. “I am open to suggestions, but we have extremely limited time if I am to meet them en route and brief their commander.”
“Is there any value in just watching them?” I asked while Molly stewed in her frustration, it didn’t look like she had any immediate ideas.
“Of course, but we would be seen before we got close.” Molly groused. “It’s not like we can hide in crops or something, at this point I doubt there’s anything more than knee-high in those fields.” She said gesturing at the map up on the screen.
“Well, it is flat and the scope on my C15 has up to twenty-five times magnification.” I pointed out. “We could probably take a peek from the next town over, and we probably have some binoculars for you somewhere right?”
“Yeah, yeah of course we do. There’s a pair in the car already-“ Molly paused, then a grin started on her face. “Hey Mary, that thing is an anti-material rifle, right? That includes stuff like trucks?”
“Yes.” Mary acknowledged a small smile of her own forming.
“If we need more time for superior numbers to get there, why not disable the vehicle?” Molly proposed the grin spreading. “We don’t have to be anywhere close if Sam is accurate with that thing as she was with the pistol, we wouldn’t have to stick around either, she could take that shot before we book it.”
“That sounds reasonable, it would have sufficient energy to disable a civilian truck engine from beyond their own engagement range.“ Mary said with a nod while turning her laptop back around to start furiously typing again, she glanced at Molly before pointing out an issue the clack of her keyboard undiminished. “We don’t know if the people they kidnapped will come under threat from that though.”
“True, but we know what’s going to happen to them if we don’t do anything.” Molly said grimly, getting a clanking shudder out of me.
“Agreed” Mary said with a curt nod. “Sam, are you willing to take that shot? I won’t expect you to engage any people though.”
“Yeah, a shot into the engine block should be enough, right? Couldn’t tell you exactly how far away I could do it but something like a kilometer shouldn’t be a problem.” I confirmed.
She snorted and muttered something like ‘not a problem my ass’, then cleared her throat and glanced to Summers where he had settled into a chair beside her. “It’s your call on their plan, I can only advise you that it seems reasonable.”
“Stay safe, and don’t take the shot if the situation changes.” Summers said brooding a little. “While I dearly wish for us to prevent them from getting away with murder and kidnap, not to mention cross-dimensional raiding, be aware this is a big risk you are taking as we have no idea how the hand-off is happening.”
“Right.” Molly said standing up. “We got this Summers, come on Sam, we gotta load up.” She said before dashing out the door. I barely had time to offer a wave to Summers who was giving me a sad smile as I rushed to keep up.
----------------------------------------
Getting the case for the C15 in the car ended up requiring us to drop the back seats and have it stretch from the back of the trunk down the middle of the car, but it ultimately fit.
We found ourselves tensely driving the roads near the copse of trees an hour before the supposed handover, we’d taken a few minutes on Google maps before we headed out to try and get some idea of our options for a place to take a shot from. While it wasn’t a certainty, there was supposed to be an abandoned farm that looked like its out structures would offer us an angle that would give us a view of the narrow dirt path up to the copse while remaining far enough away and obscured. Hopefully, we could see into the trees and the small storage shed that flickered in and out of view as we drove by too.
Molly’s phone stated our destination is on the right just before we turned into the lane where the car crunched across the mix of gravel and grass that lead into a central clearing in the overgrown farmyard. I would guess from the crops growing around it that someone had bought it up for the land and just never spent the money to have the structures torn down.
“What’s your pick of spot?” Molly asked as she was looking around, hand on the open door of the car, a moment later having gotten out of the car.
The farmhouse was boarded up, and while it had a roof that could have worked getting there might be a bit tricky. The barn had all but collapsed making it an obviously unsafe choice, even if it would have had a great view. I think we were in luck with the long low shed at the side of a two-story structure we had seen on Google maps. It had an ancient tractor against one wall to act as a route up and an apparently flat roof. “Shed?”
“Sounds good, hopefully, it can support our weight still.” She said a touch warily while staring at it.
It didn’t even shake when we clambered up onto it, so whoever built the thing seemed to have done a good job even given the years of neglect. Bringing the ammo for the rifle up ended up being a little annoying as I didn’t have anywhere to put the three huge magazines in my skirt and my holster’s dinky pistol magazine pouch would be of no help. We hadn’t been planning for the C15 when Molly did my initial round of procurement, we choose to throw them in Molly’s backpack so she could carry them up. She ended up with quite a bit of ammo on her once you included the three extra magazines for her C8 in a simple chest rig.
We set up near the second story part of the structure to try and avoid being too obvious against the flat horizon the edge of the roof created. I had the rifle deployed with a loaded magazine in place, but no round chambered.
We were maybe a little closer to the copse than either of us really preferred, just about 650m according to the little laser range finder Molly had. I knew academically that we would be out of range from a normal rifle, but it honestly didn’t look that far away. My ballistics unit was pleased, for lack of a better word, at both getting a nice long chance to consider where the targets might be and for relatively exact ranges. It was still going to be my furthest shot to date, and since we wanted to avoid shooting from someplace with other people, this place was about as good as we could hope for. Any of the other farms around here would have been substantially further and were probably occupied. Molly spent some time surveying with binoculars she had while I was setting up, her rifle laying beside her on the roof.
“Well, I don’t think we would have found a better view than this.” She commented lowering them, then snorted “That ‘copse’ of trees is like ten at most, I’m kinda surprised they are going to do whatever right out in the open like that.”
“Maybe that’s the point?” I suggested. “No one is really gonna think about a U-Haul truck going to a storage shed, but they might for one in the middle of a forest or something.” I peeked through a window into the shed, nothing much I could see from here, maybe some shelves of junk. I clicked the scope back a few levels of magnification to get a wider field of view.
“Could be yeah.” She admitted. “So, do you feel you could land a shot from here?”
“No problem.” I confirmed lifting my head from the rifle as I reached up to adjust the CRD branded black baseball cap we had found to hide my shiny hair. “My ballistics unit has the characteristics of the round and rifle down enough to be confident in hitting what I am aiming for.”
She nodded, then spoke quietly a moment later. “You know you don’t have to take the shot, right?” I looked over at her. “We are talking about engaging an armed and trained unit as amateurs even if the plan is to immediately leave, we can just sit here while watching hoping for the calvary to get here in time instead.” She finished, watching my expression.
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I thought about it for a moment or two.
“Yeah, but I also remember what it was like to be in the back of that van, and then listen to Roger screaming.” I said with conviction. While we were too late for their first victim this time, I didn’t want to let them go. “I would like to help whoever they grabbed, and this might be the last chance for them.”
She continued to watch me for a moment then nodded before turning back to look across the field.
“Ok, sounds good.” She said a bit unsteadily then took a deep breath and continued with resolution to her tone. “Try to delay the shot as long as possible, we want as much time as we can give Mary.”
“For sure.”
The wait was brutal, we made small talk occasionally but neither of us was really into it and we didn’t want to distract ourselves by going on our phones and potentially missing something. Mine buzzed a few times beside me but nothing important showed up so I tossed it into Molly’s bag as we closed on the hand over time.
I checked the loose rounds were still to hand in her bag and took one out and laid it in the breach, we were only supposed to take the one shot, but I wanted every round available just in case.
“Molly, I need some mag pouches for this thing,” I said while eying the other two magazines sitting in her bag.
“I didn’t even think of it before, we might need something custom for you even.” Molly mentioned binoculars at her eyes while looking around, she suddenly paused. “Wait, I see them I think, U-Haul coming down the main road.”
I chambered the round and took the safety off.
“Yep, that’s them, they just turned onto the dirt road.” She confirmed a couple of minutes later. “I wonder why it’s a U-Haul again, that seems pretty predictable.”
I watched the truck make its way toward the shed, rifle tracking it while accounting for the travel time of the round. They came to a stop just in front of the shed before three people got out of the cab, they each had a rifle, some kind of ArmaLite-derived weapon like Molly’s C8. Two of them went to either side of the front wheels, glancing around for threats but not seeing us at this distance. While the last went to open the back door, allowing three more mercs to hop out. I couldn’t see into it at this angle, but it had looked like they had been concerned with the contents of the vehicle from the way they kept their guns pointing into it.
The guy who had opened the back then appeared to be shouting some order prompting one of the three to nod before turning to walk up the dirt a short distance. I guess from the way the guy was looking around a lot that the merc who got cold feet was supposed to be helping him cover the road, but instead, he was having to do two people’s jobs.
No one seemed to be looking at us nor was there any alarm in their motions, the person I assumed to be the leader walked back to the front of the truck to lean against it. We were expecting something to happen, but they were just kinda loitering there for a while.
“What are they doing?” Molly whispered after ten or fifteen minutes of us watching them, other than a couple of them lighting cigarettes nothing had happened in the intervening time. “They are waiting for something, but I don’t see anyone arriving from anywhere around us. Which probably also means Mary is late of course.” She finished with a tch of concern.
“Mmm.” I hummed back while drifting my scope across them again. “Hey, the leader guy in front is staring at his watch for some reason.”
A few seconds later we realized why.
It started as a glinting dot some two or three meters ahead of the truck, that then stretched into a half-circle of shimmering blue taller and wider than the truck. The leader didn’t seem concerned, but the others started shouting for a bit then quieted down at his calming motions and whatever speech he was making.
“The fuck is that?” Molly exclaimed quietly. “Is that what a dimension portal looks like?”
“Doesn’t look like it to me, those are kinda just black voids other than the traversable section to me.” I responded remembering the portal in the arch. “You know like the thing in Nevada is in pictures? This one is actually glowing like the descriptions.”
“Huh, I wonder if there is a relation between the globe and dimensional portals then-”
“It’s changing.” I interrupted, as the portal slowly started to become ‘transparent’ the farmland and trees being replaced by a different vista beyond the assault on physics the portal represented. I couldn’t see much from this angle, but there was a ratty chain-link fence with a row of vehicles parked against it in front of a view of mountains that had no place being visible in southern Ontario. I realized the trucks had license plates, so I twitched the rifle over to one and clicked the magnification up.
“That’s gotta be somewhere in the states.” I commented looking at the plate, it definitely wasn’t a Canadian plate I recognized, and I knew what BC and Alberta plates looked like from my visits to relatives on that side of the country. I couldn’t read the text on it, but there was a symbol that I guessed was distinctive. “What state has a bucking horse with a rider on it right in the middle of the characters?” I asked Molly.
“Fuck if I know, any guesses where that might be on the other side?”
“Those look like the Rockies, so I guess that and the plates should narrow it down for us later.” I answered while watching the individual I was pegging as the merc leader walk up to the edge of the resolving portal.
“Motherfucker, I bet that’s why they are using U-Hauls, they all have Arizona plates.” Molly commented as realization set in. “If you had trucks from wherever that is turning up someone might notice, but no one will think twice about a U-Haul.” She paused thoughtfully. “Do you think that’s still our dimension then? If it’s not a dimensional portal.”
“Good chance, but I don’t have any proof.” I answered still looking through the scope.
There seemed to be a friendly conversation going on between the leader and someone I couldn’t see, after a few minutes, the leader started walking back to the truck gesturing at one of the mercs to get in. I assumed that meant he wanted them to drive it, which meant we were running out of time if we wanted to stop them from getting away. I brought the gun back to the engine block and started the final calculations, my ballistics unit accounting for the slight wind causing me making to adjust as need.
We can just watch, we probably already-
I heard Molly’s point but it was almost subconscious, as I was entirely engrossed in trying to guess where the most important part to aim for would be on the truck. I settled on where the transmission should be attached to the engine base on vague memories of YouTube videos of people working on cars or trucks.
-know a lot from this already.
The truck rumbled into life through my scope, I couldn’t leave those people to their fate.
We can’t even see Mary-
I fired, the boom interrupting whatever Molly had been saying. It took less than a second for the round to travel the distance, giving me just a momentary glimpse of the streak flying towards the truck in my scope.
Then it hit.
The initial impact wasn’t that dramatic just a hole in the side of the fender, but I could see pieces of engine block come out through the hood. It looks like I struck it in a suitably critical location as it halted with a shudder, I didn’t see much smoke or anything so it must have cut out pretty quickly. I hope it doesn’t catch fire or something.
I felt as if I had just shot someone’s dog or something, my mechanical sympathy kicked me in my own mechanical guts. I could push through it though, so I cycled the bolt chambering the next round. Focusing back down range I could see the mercs were flipping out, looking around for targets but not seeing us yet.
Shit. The ones pointing into the back of the truck at what I assumed were the people they had nabbed are getting pretty tense and I think I see fingers on triggers. It occurred to me that from this angle there is space between their guns and bodies.
I can work with that.
I do have an anti-material rifle after all, if I can wreck an engine like that, a little gun can’t be a particularly difficult thing to break with a big ole 50 cal round.
The rifle roared again, and the first rifle was rendered useless broken in half by a round plowing its way through the side of the breach. Debris from the impact probably injured the merc but he will live, and I didn’t see fingers flying or anything. I think the round didn’t have enough time to impart that much force, it just blew straight through the side of the rifle and out the other side.
Molly is shouting now, but I couldn’t really pay attention to that as the other merc covering the victims was freaking out now and I didn’t want to leave time for him to do anything. I cycled the gun again before another roar broke the serenity of a spring day.
The other worlders aren’t covered anymore, but the other guys are looking pretty spooked. I think it’s time to go as they have started to figure out where the rounds are coming from, the gestures of the leader in our direction gave away that he had either been guessing from the angle of the impacts or he had seen a muzzle flash.
“Alright, I think we’re done here.” I said while pulling my head back from the scope.
“Fucking no shit!” Molly screamed. She had already started shuffling back from the edge C8 in one hand, as she grabbed her bag and started pulling it back with her. I pushed off from the roof with the rifle gripped in my left hand, grateful for being able to put the second story between us and them at least a little.
I turned back towards the car as I felt my secondary flues open and turbine spinning up, I noticed Molly is moving but not quickly enough for me. I start sprinting back on the roof, denting it with each step. As I passed Molly, I leaned towards her and grabbed her around the waist whilst continuing towards the edge. I leapt off, trusting my instincts that the single-story drop would be fine, they hadn’t led me wrong so far.
I felt chambers in my legs charge with steam in the instant before my feet hit the ground. I felt the shock absorbers strain but succeed in dissipating the force without damage, a cloud of steam billowed away from my legs as my skirt was fluttering all over the place from the combination of the fall and steam.
Not wasting time, I immediately resumed my sprint towards the car, grateful we left the doors open. I put an incoherently shouting Molly down near the driver’s door before running around the front, causing a big dent in the hood as I used it to pivot around. I scraped to halt past the open passenger door, swapping the hand my rifle was in before diving into the passenger seat. Molly was already in, C8 discarded on the dash as she frantically started the engine.
Without a moment of hesitation or even closing the doors, she stamped the pedal to the metal. The car roared in the direction of the farmhouse before Molly scrabbled the wheel around to aim us at the road. The acceleration slammed her door closed, but I kept mine propped open with my foot as I didn’t have the C15 all the way in the car.
“Turn right!” I shouted as we approached the road, and she did as I requested. The tires squealed as she swung us out onto the asphalt. I turned in my seat, then brought the rifle to my shoulder and cycled the bolt. Not looking down the scope yet I watched for the edge of the farm structures as we roared down the road, the big V8 screaming its fury as the transmission jumped gears.
A line of sight formed revealing the portal was collapsing away, presumably whoever was operating it had no interest in leaving it open while they were under attack with a stranded truck. I brought the scope into my vision to see what the mercs were doing.
Running around like chickens with their heads cut off it seemed.
The leader was shouting from behind the remains of the engine block, as a couple of the others were running behind the shed. One seemed to be pulling the two injured men in the same direction, but they seemed to be a bit too shocked to be following with any haste, neither looked too badly hurt from what I could tell. Pretty sure the leader was aiming his rifle at us, but we were way too far away. Then he jerked his head down the dirt road they had arrived on; I pulled my head away to track where he was looking.
Hey look the calvary is here.
A LAV was charging its way down the dirt road while a second churned its way across the field, looking down the scope again showed the merc leader wasn’t stupid as he was already in the process of tossing his gun away before putting his hands behind his head.
“Hey Molly, I think we’re good!” I shouted over the sound of the engine and road noises from the open door.
“What?” She shouted back.
“Mary has them surrendering! We can probably head over to meet them now.”
“Fuck yeah!” She shouted laying off the gas, slowing down then doing a three-point turn to bring us back to them.