The Hunt for the Wolf
Chapter 1
By Aya-chan a.k.a. Yukionna42
At the beginning of the Second Europan War, the East Europan Imperial Alliance, better known as "The Empire." had cut further into Gallian territory than any invading army ever had. Lately however, the Empire had begun to suffer from a short series of rather humiliating defeats. One at the Vasel River, the other at a Supply Base in Kloden which had fallen to Gallian hands. Now, Selvaria Bles's Central Imperial Army, one of the few Imperial Armies that had never suffered a defeat against Gallian Forces, was patrolling the central desert of Barious in a loose formation.
Private Nikki Holman out of the trench into a gray dawn over the desert, where the stars in the sky were still brightly illuminated. She never saw the starts as bright as this in the city back home in the Empire. The landscape was an eternally spanning yellow sea of dunes, occasionally broken with islands of red cliffs and old ruins dating before the first Europan War, possibly even before Gallia was a nation. Wind and sand put a chalky taste in almost every breath.
Nikki reached for her canteen. She never touched it during the night. Thirst helped keep her awake on watch. Opening the canteen and pressing it to her open list, she did not swallow the first dram of water but rather washed the dust from her mouth.
"Let me have some of that." Private Paige had walked up, still wearing his gray steel helmet with his large anti-tank weapon, a big heavy rocket launcher resembling a lance, rested on his shoulder. Nikki handed him the canteen.
Fifty meters away, Major Heska emerged from the officers tent in his crimson helmet and body armor. He casually rubbed his shoulder while he approached the two soldiers. Nikki and Paige stiffened up and saluted, but the Major waved them off. "Too early for that." He yawned. "Yes, sir." Nikki replied.
"Anything to report, private?" "No, sir." "Well, the Gallians never leave anything quiet for long. Let's see what we've got." Nikki handed Major Heska her binoculars, who put them to his eyes and slowly poked his head out of the trench, surveying the sand, cliffs, and occasional ruins of the Barious Desert.
"Nothing." He said, handing the binoculars back to Nikki. "That's good. Maybe the Gallians took the night off."
Paige held the canteen up to the Major. "Sir, have a drink on that." Heska turned broadside, took the canteen from Paige and brought it to his lips, tilting his head back for a long draught.
Suddenly, the Major spasmed and threw the canteen into Paige's face. Water erupted from his open mouth, muffling a gurgled cry. The canteen dropped from his rising hands, he tumbled.
The crack of a single, distant rifle blew past the trench. It circled over the desert like a buzzard, then faded into silence.
The Major collapsed into Paige's legs. The shocked private kicked the officer off of him and scrambled to the opposite wall, back pressed against the dirt. Nikki snapped to her senses. She threw herself against the wall next to Paige, crouching low. She placed her hand against the officer's back. There was no breath.
She looked at the officer's helmet, still strapped under his chin. A red-rimmed hole had been blown into the side of the crimson helmet. Blood leaked under the helmet down his wet hair and ears, pooling on the Gallian dirt. The Major's left leg shivered once, quivering in the puddle spilling from where he had dropped the canteen.
"Fucking snipers." Paige mumbled. "We're a kilometer behind the front line. How can they get us here?" Nikki recovered her canteen, still staying low and looking down on the Major. She had seen tides of death in the past few months. To the Imperial Soldiers, death was a part of the Gallian Landscape. It was written into the rolling meadows, deep forests, and shifting sands. She now bore hundreds of memories of death on her back like ugly scars.
Nikki put a hand under Paige's arm. "Go get help moving the body. Stay low." Paige scrambled to his feet and without looking back, he bent low and scrambled up the trench. In the Imperial Army, moving bodies was a punishment usually given to soldiers who were sleeping, drinking, or gambling when they were supposed to be on watch.
Nikki moved away from Heska's body and sat. Waiting for Paige to return, she composed letters in her mind, one for her father, one for her sister, one for herself. In the letter to her father back home in the city, she told the old man not to worry. She told him the war in the West was nearing an end and that the Gallian Resistance was buckling. To her older sister, a Nurse at Ghirlandaio, she wrote the truth, for she was certain she was seeing the full horrors of this campaign in her beds and wards. In the letter to herself, the nineteen year-old scout in the Central Imperial Invasion force, crouched in a trench in the Barious Desert only meters from a corpse, she could neither lie convincingly nor tell the truth completely.
Corporal Marina Wulfstan quickly pulled back the bolt of her rifle. The smoking bullet casing made no noise when it landed on the ground beside her. At her elbow, Cezary Regard looked through his telescopic scope. The first shot had been Marina's. If another Imperial Soldier, or "Imp" appeared, Cezary would take the shot.
Marina counted slowly under her breath to sixty. In one minute, whether Cezary spotted a target or not, they would pull out. Fighting large scale battles was different from sniper duals. Here, the rules were simple: pull the trigger, then pull out. Never stay in one spot for too long, or else that spot will become your grave.
Marina knew the bullet had hit. The first thing she had seen was a canteen bobbing across the trench. She had almost fired then. At 550 meters it was difficult to tell a canteen from a man's head, even with a telescopic sight. She had increased the pressure on her trigger and waited. Then, what was unmistakably the helmeted head of an Imperial Officer came into view. Another stupid, dead Imp.
Cezary kept his rifle aimed at the area near where Marina had killed the officer. Occasionally a bullet blowing out a man's head was enough to make his comrade next to him grab his rifle or binoculars and search vengefully for the Gallian Sniper who had snuffed out the life of his officer or his friend from somewhere in the ruins some half a kilometer away. The survivors sometimes vomited out one last brave and loyal act before being killed themselves. Cezary and Marina hunted bravery as well as stupidity.
A minute passed. Marina nudged Cezary's elbow. "Time to go." She said.
Cezary lowered his rifle. He and Marina crept backward from the pile of Asbestos bricks they had hidden behind since before dawn, only fifty meters from the Imperial Front Line. In a shallow depression, the two retrieved their backpacks and stuffed their rifles inside. This close to the front line, the rifles jiggling on their backs could bring the two snipers to unwanted attention. These probes into Imperial Positions were dangerous, and called upon all of Marina's skills as a hunter. But it was those same skills that allowed her and her fellow snipers of Squad 7 to pull off feats like this in the first place.
It took them five minutes to slither thirty meters across an open expanse of sand, then into the cover of an ancient ruined building. Once there, they waited for another hour, in case an Imperial Sniper had seen them enter. The wait would try their enemy's patience, make him wonder if he had missed them, as well as probe his physical ability to stay focused through his crosshairs for sixty long, empty minutes.
Marina reached into her backpack and pulled out her old, worn sniper journal. In it's pages she recorded the morning's kill, then handed the notebook to Cezary.
"Sign this, Regard."
Cezary read the record of the kill, "6/14/35, Barious Desert, NE Quadrant, Imp. Camp, Field Officer, 550 meters, head shot."
After signing "Spotter PFC Cezary Regard." below it, Cezary did a quick scrawl, sketching a pair of pointed ears, an elongated, snarling canine snout bearing it's sharp teeth, and a pair of slitted, angry eyes. Under that, he wrote "Kill made by The Wolf."
He then closed the notebook and handed it back to Marina.
Private First Class Cezary Regard was a tall, lanky young man of twenty-three. His messy silver locks of hair were constantly getting in his blue eyes. Always looking out for number 1, that is to say, himself, he had specifically trained to be a sniper so he'd be far removed from the front lines, so he thought at least. He was born and raised in the Deserts of Barious, and knew the area quite well. Marina Wulfstan was a twenty-four year old hunter-turned-sharpshooter who hailed from the woods of Kloden. She was shorter, but also more athletically built and very quick on her feet. Her short jet black hair, with her long bangs covering her left eye, fine girly features and beautiful lavender eyes had earned her a lot of love letters from all over the Militia. After burning every single one before reading them, she had received no more. Much unlike the other three snipers in their squad, neither Cezary nor Marina were much of a team player. This meant the two of them rarely got along. Today would be an exception.
"You're a lot more patient than I am, Wulfstan." he told her. "Why?" Marina asked. Cezary chuckled.
"I would have shot the fucking canteen."