The Covert Academy by Peter Laurent Page B

regarding an upgrade to the suits with temperature regulators. It wasn’t enough that they masked thermal he at signatures and offered limited protection from external heat sources; they needed to be comfortable too.
    Basic things , he thought, shaking his head.
    Hashi Ichiro followed Joshua’s lead and wiped his face off, but he always kept one eye on ridge line, even as he leaned over to ask, ‘What is the plan?’
    Joshua liked that about Ichiro, he was all business, all the time. He pointed at the coral that ran along the rim of the lagoon.
    ‘The two of us are going to leapfrog over to that clump of coral, then make a dash for the tree-line on the ridge. That’s the only place left she could be. Meanwhile, Ryan... Ryan!’
    He swung an arm out his other side, hitting Ryan’s shoulder to wake him up. Ryan shook himself and became instantly alert. He ripped his hood off and threw it down.
    ‘This is stupid,’ he complained. ‘We’ve checked the entire bloody island. If Sarah was going to-’
    At that moment, the area around them erupted in laser fire, seeming to appear out of thin air. The three of them flinched and scrambled to get their hoods back on. The fire abruptly ceased, and an eerie quiet filled the lagoon.
    ‘She i s toying with us,’ Ichiro observed.
    ‘Stick to the plan.’ Joshua pointed towards the coral, ‘Move out, active camo engaged until we make a visual on her location.’
    His teammates obeyed without a word. Joshua could start to enjoy being in command, even though it had only come when their previous team leader, Phil, caught the first one of Sarah’s stun rounds. She was good. Very good. Which was why she was on a team all by herself.
    Their jumpsuits slowly melded with the landscape, bending the light around their bodies to create the effect of invisibility. But a keen observer would still be able to find a shimmery ghost flitting from cover to cover. The midday sun amplified the shimmer, even casting the occasional reflective glare as the suit fought to compensate. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but they had to get out of the lagoon.
     
    The exercise had begun at sunrise, when they had been ferried up to the surface of the island, the lagoon having been drained to knee-deep before they arrived. That was no coincidence, it had slowed them down long enough for Phil to be eliminated early on.
    In fact everything they had run into had been carefully laid out by Sarah. Being by herself, she was allowed access to the training ground the night before, and she hadn’t been sleeping. She only had the suit and the single Stunner the rest of them had been equipped with, but somehow she had rigged the entire island with traps.
    By midday, Joshua’s team of ten had been whittled down to three by snares, deadfalls and other traps. All non-lethal of course. When they had stopped to rescue their teammates from Sarah’s traps, she had used the distraction to close in with active camouflage. She could pick off the stragglers with her Stunner rifle, specially tuned for this exercise to bypass the jumpsuit’s defences. A couple of the younger members had panicked, making easy sport for Sarah.
    Joshua was determined not to lose to her yet again.
    He ran past Ichiro, reaching the first of the coral outcroppings that led to the ridge. He slammed into it, looking around for any sign of the ghostly shimmer that would mark Sarah’s whereabouts.
    Nothing.
    He signalled to Ryan, who ran from his cover position to take the head of their column. Joshua and Ichiro scanned the coral and the ridgeline with the Stunners, ready to provide covering fire if necessary.
    The Stunners had notoriously bad aiming; the bulky cannon shaped rifles were mostly for show. The non-lethal guns were good substitutes for real weapons during these training exercises, as long as it was combined with muscle training to make up for the weight difference. Confederacy guards used them because they were remarkably light, weighing only