Disclaimer: Don't own and never will.
AN: Set during the level 'Death from above'
Fern Heinlich licked her lips nervously and looked across the open, rubble-filled space with a mixture of fear and trepidation. It couldn't have been more than five or six metres tops she reckoned. She could run five or six metres easily, no sweat. She was on the school track team and she had more than held her own.
There was a sudden crack as another sniper round skipped off a piece of the ruined building they were hiding in. She would need to be fast to avoid Molov's snipers though, they had the place pretty much zeroed up from above, well out of effective range of her squad's weapons, a handful of assault rifles and machine guns. Still…
"Listen up!" her squad leader said in a firm voice, his five-o-clock shadow becoming more prominent. "We're pinned down and we need to get out. Echo says that reinforcements are on the way, but I need a volunteer to get across that open space to the other side, someone to act as a distraction."
"Sounds like a suicide job to me," one of the men said sardonically and Fern mentally fumbled around for his name. It was something beginning with A, but with such a high casualty rate amongst Red Faction fighters, Fern seldom remembered anyone's name. "Sorry, I'm not in the business of getting myself killed for that."
"I'll go," she said firmly as she stood up and was promptly shot at for her trouble. Ducking away, she looked up at her squad leader. "I'll go. I was on the school track team, I reckon I ought to be fast enough to survive."
"I wouldn't favour your chances," the first man snorted and she fixed him with a glare.
"And what," she began in an angry tone, "would you propose doing? If we stay here, they're going to get us before reinforcements arrive." She turned and looked at her squad leader once more. "I'm willing to give it a try."
He gave her a very solemn look and put his hand on her shoulder.
"You don't have to do this if you don't want to you know," he told her. "Someone else could go."
"Like who sir?" she asked and she waved her hand at the remains of their squad, a pitifully small group of men and women who looked thoroughly weary of war. "And none of them are as likely to survive as I am."
"Well then, good luck soldier," her commander said and before she could have second thoughts, she ran out into the open. For a few moments it looked like she was going to make it as silence filled the air. Then there was a sudden crack and Fern suddenly felt a bullet slam into her with all the force of a sledgehammer and as she lay dying on the rough, rubble-strewn ground looking up at the ruined building the shot came from, one last thought crossed her mind.
"Looks like I wasn't fast enough after all" and with that thought, she died, just as Alias of the Red Faction hit the snipers from behind.