Location:

Atlantic Coast United States, 2036 A.D. September

War. One of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse had always been an "Us v. Them" type of activity, yet every time the "us" in the equation skewed the line of "them" including civilians. Mothers, fathers and children were always part and parcel in the game of war, and no burg on the coast had been spared from the specter of death and destruction when the United Asian Forces broke through the American Merit Time Defense. The forces had been smashed against their borders and the Asian armies crossed into the Continental United States and took no prisoner. What happened in Europe was no different. How the Asian forces mustered so many men to fight was unfathomable.

In a smoky, burned out cathedral Sgt. Snyper sat in a shadowy nook evaluating her ammunition, and regrouping. The sounds of gunfire and explosions lingered in the near terrain of the city she held up in. Her once long brown hair had been cut short, "for safety" she had said, a bit above her shoulders and bound in a tight knot in the back. Snyper kept a spare clip on her hip for her rifle, but after being separated from her unit she had gone through more ammo than anticipated.

Her intent green eyes roamed over the white poly-armor A4-F3 Tactical Sniper Rifle, a prototype next-generation plasma weapon she had been given to test in the theater of war, and with lethal efficiency. Snyper's record was uncanny compared to the greatest shooters to ever join a military unit. By many accounts, she was nearly perfect on the field, knowingly missing only one shot in her four-and-a-half years of service. And her shots were never easy. Windy, rainy conditions where few reconnaissance teams rarely fought were minor annoyances to her. Her spotter, Captain Harold Tiller sat in another corner, an M4 laying across his lap, shooting up a pain-killer for the bullet he'd taken when hell was unleashed on their position.

"Sir, are you feelin' better," Snyper asked as she counted her rounds in her plasma cartridge. What she got from Captain Tiller was a soft groan, and she heard him move slightly, signaling he was alive. She nodded and continued on. "Do you have any idea where we are?"

Cpt. Tiller slid slowly and carefully out of the shadows and into the moonlight where a shell had ripped the roof off the cathedral and pulled out his digital map. The Geo-synchronous satellite had been crippled by an E.M.P., electromagnetic pulse high in the upper atmosphere. The green flickering partially three-dimensional map was almost useless without an orbiter to update the data.

"We're on the edge of the town where we'd come in," he groaned as he picked himself up to a slap of stone to sit and show her what the map had for data three weeks back. "According to the terrain, we're able to get out undetected through a tunnel heading into the sewers. The gates would be our only obstacle."

"That and your leg, sir," she replied. Sliding from the shadows quietly herself she checked the wound he'd tied off with the sleeve of his uniform when they got inside. "If you get that infected you won't be any good walking, and you could die when we get back to the F.O.B."

Snyper was pretty, beautiful by many men's opinions, yet she never saw herself as "beautiful", always finding fault, something to cover up. Where other girls had preferred dresses and make-up, she wanted fatigues and mud. At twenty-seven, many would have gone on to start families, but she had a relationship with the military when she enlisted. The war had been raging for several years by the time she had completed basic training, and when assigned to the 183rd Combat Reconnaissance Team and matched up with Captain Tiller.

The Captain was a balding man in his early 40s, the exact number he would not tell, like Snyper not telling her first name, with slate gray eyes, a squared jaw and a squared nose where he'd had it broken a couple times. He was as professional as they came, and kept Snyper's impulsiveness under control.

Where she'd asked him about his leg he grew dismissive and pointed at the map.

"Are we going to get out of here Snyper, or are we going to sit here and worry about my leg?"

"Please continue, sir," she relented. She sat beside him on the stone and they went over the map.

"If we enter the gate here, the water should be lower by now, it hasn't rained in a few nights. We can circle around the bulk of the fighting and get back to base without incident." He rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand and swallowed a drink of water from his canteen. He wouldn't tell her, but fever was already setting in. "If we're lucky, we can get an account of the enemy numbers and relay that to Central Command."

A crashing door outside got their attention, and Snyper moved quickly and quietly to the top of the stairs and looked between the wooden posts in the railing to examine the source of the commotion. U.A.F soldiers were doing a sweep after obliterating the unit that Snyper and Tiller had accompanied. They were searching for the rest and were advancing toward their position. She signaled back it was four soldiers armed with assault rifles. She kept quiet and crab walked toward the corner where a hole gazed down over the pulpit from the rear. She could see the soldiers clearly from here and began to line up her shot. Captain Tiller had worked his way back to his quiet dark corner and turned off the map. He grabbed his assault rifle and watched the stairs. Snyper was laying prone, the white and gray rifle she had lined up with the fourth of the soldiers as they checked the confessional and the Father's offices on the main floor. The soldiers flipped over broken benches and set fire to the pews as they stepped on the wooden stairs going up.

Things weren't the way they would have been in the cathedral. Where there would have been a hallway, doors, more office space, a Sunday School room, there was a sloped column of stone that led to the stairs where Snyper and Tiller were hold up. The wood on the steps creaked loudly, groaning in protest of the weight one man put, then another. The slender Asian soldiers climbed slowly in single file. The first two disappeared under a slanted doorway arch. The third and fourth took a quick pirouette to look back behind, cover their flanks, and first the man third in line turned and walked up the stone slab first, then the fourth. Once he'd gotten out of sight, the fourth turned his back to Snyper and she pulled the trigger.

The A4 began to power cycle, hummed softly against her right cheek. The digital scope gave her a reading of the fourth man's heart rate, and suddenly the weapon fired.

PSST!

The soldier fell hard, his assault rifle discharged and the other three began to curse in their native tongues. The third man pressed his back against the archway he just passed under, and Snyper's aim was true. She caught him with a plasma slug between the eyes so perfect it practically passed through his head, front to back, and left the tiniest of holes.

Her position was known, the other two peered through holes in the wall and began to fire hard. Snyper quickly slid back from the edge of the lip of the opening and moved back behind the broken slab of granite she and Cpt. Tiller had shared moments ago. The U.A.F soldiers could not see her from there, but continued shooting.

Cpt. Tiller heard the heavy footsteps racing up the wooden stairs. Below, the stairs curved right about fifteen steps below, then descended to the stone slope that had replaced the stairs because of the enemy bombardment. The first man rounded the corner and Cpt. Tiller fired a volley of bullets, catching the soldier in the flack jacket and staggering him back down until he fell into the corner. Stunned, he pushed himself around the corner again, and shouted to his companion in their crisp language. The footsteps and bullets stopped then, and the wind drew a cloud over the moon, shrouding the hall in room and stairwell in darkness.

Peeking over the slab of stone, Sgt. Snyper took her weapon to her eye to see the Captain in a hazy agree glow of her scope. His heart rate was elevated, unusual for him being the professional soldier, and he seemed pale. His breathing was up, but he was alive and focused. He knew she was looking his way and signaled for her to go back to the opening in the ceiling.

They were about fifteen feet above the floor below. Splintered wood and broken marble littered the area beneath. Stained glass window fragments and busted benches remained blow, many scorched and shattered. Snyper crawled as far into the corner as she could, the rifle pressed against her right cheek as she waited. Snyper and Tiller had a relationship together that was unmatched by others in the military. Almost like a psychic connection. She knew what he was thinking, feeling and considering even when he didn't speak.

Moving into a window, Snyper dropped out the side, slid down onto the sloped roof of the cathedral and slid about ten feet lower along the outside. From there she had a clear shot at the man closest to the bottom. Her rifle raised to her right eye, she felt the weapon hum softly against her cheek and she pulled the trigger, and a shot fired, PSST! passing through the man's right eye, exiting his left ear and he slumped down.

Just then, a huge explosion ripped apart the upper room where Cpt. Tiller had been. The blast caused the floor to buckle and Snyper fell through, landing hard in a dried out baptism pool. Groaning from the fall, she got up and limped out of the pool over to the sloped stone. The first soldier's blood ran in a thick red pool at the base of the stone where his body had originally fallen. The second and third lay slumped together in the corner. The third body had fallen down the steps backward and lay at the feet of the other. Above, the last man was no where in sight. Gun raised, she eased up the slope to the steps. The wood groaned the higher she got until she came to the landing and the elbow to the left. From there above her the stairs were burned from the explosion.

When she got to the top she found the bodies of her Cpt. And the unidentified U.A.F soldier in pieces scattered about and her heart sunk.