Chapter 2

Ghost

"Stiles! Get off your ass!" the voice yelled angerly through the radio. Eric woke from his sleep with a start and fell off the red boulder he was laying on. He slowly fell fell to the ground.

"It's about time you guys got into position." laughed Eric as he grabbed his sniper-rifle and repolarized his visor. His smile quickly disappeared as he darted across the red, barren martian landscape toward a dome in the distance. He stopped at a cliff and dropped to his stomach. He opened his rifle's bipods and activated his active camoflague, turning him and his gun as red as the ground around him. "Two sentries on the front, civilian suits, so no armor. Both with small arms." Eric said over the microphone in his helmet.

"Do you have eyes on us?" replied the commanding officer.

"Affirmative. Orders?"

"Quickly and quietly."

Eric lined up his shots and fired two rounds so fast that the rest of his unit could not tell who he had shot first. He then saw the rest of his unit move forward toward the front of the dome when a round slammed into a rock near them and the unit jumped into cover. Out of the corner of his eye Eric saw the dust kciked up by the sniper's gun and readjusted his gun to take aim at the sniper. The low gravity combined with force of the bullet launched the sniper into the air. "Heh, amatuers." Eric said as he declaoked and slid down the ridge toward the dome and his team. He met the commanding officer at the main entrence to the dome.

"How many inside, Stiles?" asked the man.

"Infared shows five but the generators could be hiding more."

"Alright, we're moving in once the other teams are in position at the other facilities.

"Got a plan to get inside sir?" asked Eric.

"Take two men with you through the service entrance, I want you to find any intel you can on these guys and we'll handel the hostages." The man said and Eric nodded the signaled for two of the soldiers behind him to follow. He led them around the dome to a small unscrewed a sheet of metal. He led the two men down a shaft to a three foot tall door with a numberpad. The three men stopped as Eric pulled out a knife and jammed it into the numberpad.

"Never been one for computers." Whispered Eric as the two soldiers chuckled. The small door hissed open and they continued through. When they finally made it out of the service tunnel they stumbled across four guards but silently dispatched them and secured the room. "We're in, we've taken out four tangos. But these guys are decked out in armor and heavily armed, I don't like this." Eric said as the sounds of a firefight ecoed across the dome, telling him the the rest of the soldiers where inside the dome.

"Continue with your objective, we are mopping up the contacts around the hostages." Yelled the commanding officer over the sound of gunfire in the background. Eric grabbed his rifle and lead the two soldiers out of the room and headed toward a room nearby when bullets ripped through the heads of the soldiers killing them and a third round hitting him the shoulder as he dove behind cover.

"This guy is good." he whispered to himself. Another round was fired, this time it richoceted off the wall in front of him and impacted a couple inches from his leg. "Definitly not and amatuer." He huffed as he lifted his rifle. A fifth round slammed into the storage container Eric hid behind as he tried to peer around the corner. The sixth, seventh, and eigth rounds richoceted off the wall each getting closer than the last. Eric noticed a small mirror hanging from the ceiling, he could see the sniper but he knew that the sniper could also see him. He pulled out his sidearm and destroyed the mirror, rolled out from behind cover, fired three rounds in rapid sucession, and rolled back into the cover before the sniper could even react. The snipers rebuttle was two more rounds into the container. Eric knew that with his wounded shoulder he knew that he could not take out the sniper fast enough if he rolled out of cover. Instead, after a few calculations and a minor adjustment to his rifle, he fired at the wall in front of him and it bounced off the wall toward the sniper. A loud metal ping was followed by the sniper's laughs.

"You missed!" Laughed the sniper.

"Did I?"

The sniper's smile disappeared as the cable holding snapped and, before he could grab a handhold, the sniper was sliding off the cat walk. He slammed into the railing of a lower cat walk before landing, facedown, on the concrete floor. Eric rose from cover and walked over to the body. "Unfortunately for you, I'm also not an amatuer." He said coldly as he put a bullet in the man's head for good measure. Ge followed a hallway down to a room which was full of holo-pads and maps. He grabbed them all and shoved them into his rucksack. He continued from room to room before finding a room with an office chair and a table. Eric slumped into the chair as switched on his locator, now all he had to do was wait for the rest of his team to meet him. He decided that he would continue his nap from earlier and leaned back in the chair. As continued to lean back farther and farther the chair slid out from under him and he slammed his head agaisnt a button hidden on the wall. The sound of gears groaned as a door slid open revealing a hidden room. Eric stood up nursing his wound and walked into the room. Flood lights turned on revealing a massive storage area full of wooden crates labled with the logo of a fruit company. From what he could see Eric knew that they definitely did not hold fruit.

"Uh,Sir, you might want to double time it here. I have somethings you might want to see." Eric said over the radio as he pryed open a crates full of everything from pistols to mobile artillery exosuits. When the C.O. arrived a couple of medics patched up Eric's wound as best they could but told him he would need surgery. He was loaded onto a dropship and preped for surgery. When he woke up in the infirmary on the ship his C.O. was sitting in a chair next to him.

"Those guns you found were headed toward a terrorist cells across the colonies, you probably saved millions of lives with that find. Good work, Stiles." Said the man as he stood. "I'll let you get some rest."

"Thanks sir." replied Eric as adjusted his pillow. His commanding officer left and Eric had started to drift back off to sleep when the door swished open again. "Did you need somethings else ,Sir?" Eric said "Wait who are you?" Eric asked as he rose in his bed. A figure walked forward revealing a tall man wearing a black suit and sunglasses.