Bridger: a Dystopian Serial

All I do is mess up my life

"Goddamn, that smoke smell though!" Leander said, practically in Char's ear. She turned, cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted in the direction of the ocean, "Aren't you all burned up by now, Tokyo?"

The others, standing in a knot on the snow a few feet away, snickered.

"A little farther." Char peered through the rangefinder at Linc, who stood just shy of a thousand yards down the packed snow.

He took three steps backward.

"One more!" she said into the comm, and watched as he stepped back. "Yes, good."

The two other soldiers set up targets in line with Linc's and snowmobiled back to where she, Leander and two others stood waiting.

"All right, then," Char held up a long-barrelled sniper rifle. "Linc, I know you know how to use this. The rest of you, here's your chance." She glanced at Leander, who stood, arms crossed, eyes hidden behind reflective sunglasses. "You wanna take first pop?"

"Sure thing." Leander held out her hands.

Linc was already taking another rifle and jamming in a magazine.

Leander lay prone on the ground and tinkered with the elaborate scope on the weapon. "How 'bout you and me use this set of targets and we'll see who shoots better," she said.

Char grinned. "You're on."

As the first set of shots cracked out across the frozen ground, Char's comm beeped. "Char, come in?"

"Yeah, doc," Char said into the pod.

"I've cleared Venn to leave the infirmary. Erwell indicated she'd want to test this portal business today."

"Oh!" Char said. "Did she say how soon?"

"Sorry?" Seth's voice crackled through the comm.

"Is she doing it right now?"

"She had some stuff to get together." A pause. "I'm heading out for a bit, but I think she'll be ready to go soon."

Char ran her teeth over her bottom lip. "Okay, thanks."

"I see we're past the 'Captain Lee-Thompson' business," Leander said, leaning into her scope. Her shot rang out. She chuckled.

"Did you hear what he said?" Char said to Leander's back. Her blood was beginning to thrum through her veins.

"Yeah." Leander took another shot, sat up and to adjust one of the dials on the scope. "What do you figure Erwell will do if she finds there really is a portal?"

"She'll send people through," Char said without hesitation.

Leander glanced over at the red flag Char had set up as a makeshift wind indicator. She settled back down on the snow. "That's what I thought too. She'll want some of us to go with, don't ya think?"

"God, I hope so." Char said. "There's no way in hell I'm turning that down."

"Agreed." Leander took the shot.

Char settled down on her knees beside Leander and fixed her binoculars on the target down range. Leander had a nice group of bullet holes in the right-hand target, a tad high, just off centre. "Nice," she said.

"Good enough for a dead Chinese," Leander sat back on her haunches and picked up her shell casings. "Your turn, boss."

Char ejected the spent magazine and popped in another. She lay down in the impression Leander had left.

"I mean, if there is a portal it's probably a deathtrap," Leander said as Char peered into the scope.

Char fired. The bullet sliced through the target perfectly on centre, slightly low. The image came into her mind of herself, sprawled in a ditch somewhere in Japan with the body of one of her soldiers splattered all around her.