Veraa used her gloved hands to scoop out a hollow in the frosty soil in front of her, lowering her profile. She was very aware that the white tab on her watchcap would be visible to anyone on the hill. The crest was no more than a hundred metres away, and appeared to be slightly fortified around this side of the slope. While things were still quiet and squads were moving stealthily into position, she looked around herself. Amy was some way off to her right. Sgt Weaver had donned a reflective vest and was conferring with another referee, way back to the left, the direction they’d come from. Tahj was below her on the slope, a few metres back. He winked at her and mouthed “relax”. She smiled back at him. He was right; she had done this kind of thing as a kid, back in Cadets and in the Volunteer Militia.
A figure appeared at the top of the hill, over the earthworks that defended the hillside. With a single, smooth movement Veraa raised her rifle and lined up the sights. She recognised the lanky recruit from One Platoon that had argued with her on the way to the briefing. Her neck prickled, feeling like someone was watching her. She kept her sights on target, watching him walk back and forth along the wall with a pair of binoculars in his hand. He looked out over the slope, and hesitated as his eyes swung over her semi-concealed position. The human eye is very good at distinguishing shapes and patterns that are out of place, especially the shape of a body. He raised the binoculars and peered at an uneven mound slightly behind and to the left of a tree stump. There was a tiny flash of light and an echoing crack! from the mound, and he jumped. A whistle sounded and he lowered the binoculars, seeing a referee in an orange vest pointing at him.
“You’re out!”
Veraa shuffled back behind her tree stump as a chorus of gunfire erupted around her and at the top of the hill. She twisted her watchcap around so that the large white tabs were once again at the front and rear of her head. O’Dell, the swarthy New Brittanic recruit, charged past her and dived into the cover of a thick tree trunk. “Nice shot!” he called out to her.
She gave him the thumbs up and picked up her rifle again. Recruit Ross ran up behind her and practically dove on top of her to get into cover of the tree stump.
“Nice work, Kul’hura,” she said. “Move across and push forward with Alteh’l.”
“Roger,” said Veraa, spying Tahj, who was now holed up a few trees to the left. “You covering?”
“Yep.”
Ross started spraying blank rounds from her rifle. “Go!”
Veraa dived out of cover and scrambled toward Tahj’s position. He saw her coming and slid sideways as she dived headfirst into cover. He had taken up a fighting position in a pit hollowed out by rainwater running through a hollow, broken log lying across the top of the pit like a wall. There was a whistle and a shout. “Kul’hura, wounded, left thigh.”
She swore and clamped her hands down on her leg as though trying to stem an arterial bleed. Tahj leaned over and unzipped one of the pouches of her PCH, marked with a red square; her medical kit. He strapped a tourniquet around her leg and hesitated. The tourniquet had to be pushed all the way to the top of the thigh. They looked each other in the eye for a moment, and she nodded. He grimaced awkwardly and slid it all the way up to the groin, cinching it down and giving the screw a couple of turns—the band was not tight enough to cut off the blood supply to the leg, but that was preferable in a drill for obvious reasons. He pressed a wad of gauze onto the top of her thigh, which she held in place while he pressed another one against the underside, over the imaginary exit wound. He then wrapped the thigh, trousers and all, with a tan-coloured bandage. Veraa grunted and rolled onto her ‘good’ knee, keeping her head down. Tahj reloaded his rifle and they both peered through holes in the log.
Veraa spotted a dark grey box lying about ten metres away, ahead of them and off to the left. It had white letters on the lid that she couldn’t make out, but she could already guess the contents.
“Tahj, there’s the box. Ten o’clock, ten metres off.”
Tahj saw it and nodded. “Cover me.”
He moved to the edge of their shelter. Veraa glanced at the clear window on the side of her magazine, showing plenty of brass left inside. She dug another mag out of her PCH and stuffed it up the side of her watchcap, past her ear. Through the holes in the log, she saw two of the enemies on the hill duck down to reload. She sprang up and began firing at the third man, jamming her finger down on the trigger again and again, spraying imaginary bullets all around the top of the earthworks. Tahj scrambled out to the box and grabbed it, slinging his rifle onto his back and galloping back down the slope to their little bunker. Veraa ran out of bullets, thumbed the mag-eject lever, and pulled the spare mag out of her cap before the empty one had even hit the ground at her knees. Three fast moves with her hands reloaded the weapon, and she covered Tahj’s retreat. He dived into the pit, listening for whistles. The only whistles they could hear were being blown on the hilltop; a good sign. He showed her the box. The white letters on the lid read “C.A.S.”, and inside were a short-range radio and two smoke grenades, just as Ross had described.
“We’ve got Close Air Support,” said Tahj triumphantly.
Life on the Fringes 