Aftermath - Opportunity
#3 of Aftermath
"Hello? May I speak to Mr. Eryn Snow?"
"This is him."
"Good afternoon sir. My name is Larry Grantham. I'm the president of the National Athletic Federation. We had scouts at nationals and I would like to talk to you about one of your team members."
"Really! Who?"
"It was your senior, Ryan Anderson. If he is interested, we'd like to invite him to shoot for the national team. We're not allowed to make initial contact with athletes so do you think you could inform him for us?"
"Definitely sir. I'll let him know."
"Thank you Mr. Snow. I hope to be in contact with you soon."
The phone clicked off. I was still astonished that they were recruiting Ryan for the national team. I needed to call him.
"Ryan, this is coach Eryn."
"What is it coach? Was there a problem with my final project?"
"No, it's nothing like that. Do you think you can come down to the shop later today? I have a bit of good news you may be interested in, but I'd rather tell you in person."
"Sure thing coach. I'll see you around one if that's alright."
I hung up the phone and grabbed my keys. I had just been preparing to leave when the phone had rang. I pulled myself into the car and drove to my small shop in town. As always, my assistant Jason, a chipmunk, had opened the shop. I usual didn't arrive until around eleven but I knew I could count on him to get the doors unlocked by nine.
"Ah, Eryn, good thing you arrived. A new shipment just came in and they need you to sign for it personally."
"Alright."
I wheeled through the store room where the double garage doors were open and a delivery truck sat pulled up to them. An older greyhound leaned against the side of the truck smoking. He turned to me and spoke with the cigarette protruding from between his lips.
"You Eryn Snow?"
"Yes."
"Sign here please."
He handed me a small data pad. I took the stylus and signed my name on the line before handing the pad back to him. He patted a stack of five crates that were on the ground just outside.
"They're all yours."
He climbed into the truck and drove off. I inspected the large, secure, boxes. I had been expecting a small delivery, but no more than two, maybe three packages. I opened the crates one by one to inspect their contents. The first two held my order. When I opened the third, I found the top covered with packing paper with a note sitting on it.
"Hey Eryn, if you've got everything handled here, I'm going to go run some errands."
"Sure Jason. I'll be fine."
I picked up the note and read over it.
Dear Valued Customer Eryn Snow,
Due to your continued and loyal business with us, I wish to give you a small gift as a token of my thanks and an offering for future business relationships. The contents of these boxes are concept pieces and have not been put into production. These are for your personal collection which I here is quite exquisite and hope to see some day. In the mean time, I hope these will augment its impressive contents. My only request is that you do not sell, or display these to the general public as I do not wish for my designs to be viewed by just anyone. I hope you understand.
Dr. Trace Easterling
CEO, Easterling Quakenbush Defense Solutions
I set the note aside and pulled back the paper. Of all the things I could have imagined being in this crate, I had never guessed this. It contained a beautiful sniper rifle. I lifted it gingerly from its protective housing and inspected every inch of it, admiring the metal and composite surfaces. It wasn't so much a weapon as a piece of art. Strangely enough, it felt and looked familiar, as if I had seen it and shot it somewhere else. That couldn't be the case though. I would have remembered ever handling a rifle like this. I looked down the scope, the pistol grip fitting my paw perfectly and my cheek resting against the perfect position on the spot weld. The balance made it easy to handle and I held it perfectly steady in one hand.
I read an engraving on the stock near the bolt. KH Custom VSR. I lifted the layer the rifle had been sitting in. Beneath it in rows were barrels, stock pieces, but plates, scopes, muzzle breaks and suppressors, bolts, chambers, what looked like a set up to make the rifle semiautomatic, and rail sensors. It looked like everything on this rifle was interchangeable down to the last screw. I had never seen anything like this before, not even in the military reports I read to keep an eye on upcoming technology that may be civilianized.
As I looked down the barrel of the rifle, a series of images flashed through my mind. I was lying on the ground at a training range shooting a target far down range. I swiveled in a tower tracking a moving target during a drill. I scoped in on the black haired head of an arctic fox. I squeezed the trigger and he collapse, the window in front of him splattered with blood. My cross hairs sat on the head of a black eagle with a line of red feathers on his back.
I opened my eyes and looked around. I was sitting in the door to my shop's store room and I had a pounding head ache. I placed everything carefully back into the box and closed the lid. I opened the second box. It contained an advanced looking bullpup carbine with some variable equipment for it. This one, the SAT 5, I knew was in limited use by military special forces. Next to this in the box however was a pair of strange looking sub machine guns. These were tagged as a C Series SMG. No idea what that was all about. Interesting design though. They were mirrors of each other and used an advanced horizontal feed system.
I finally opened the last box. This one was much heavier and seemed to be made from a stronger material. When I opened it I found out why. The crate was loaded to the brim with ammunition that must be special for all of these weapons. I pulled out a box a random and extracted a ten centimeter long round for the sniper rifle. Turning it over, I read the stamp on the bottom. EQ 107 .343 cal. The door signal for the shop buzzed taking me away from my inspection. I put everything away carefully and locked the crates before turning and heading back to the shop's interior.
Ryan was standing there looking over a rack of target and biathlon rifles. He turned to me and pointed at a pair of rifles. They were colored differently but other than that identical.
"These the new eighty o twos?"
"Sure are. I used out grant money to help purchase a set for the A squad next year. The B team will get the old eight thousands."
"Lucky bastards. I wish I got a chance to shoot them next season."
"I suspect you'll get a chance to shoot better than these next season."
"What are you talking about? These are top of the line. To get better you'd have to almost go custom. There's no way my college team will be able to afford that, and I know I can't."
"Perhaps not, but the national team could."
"What!"
"I got a call this morning form a certain Larry Grantham, president of The National Athletic Federation. He was looking at recruiting you for the national team."
Ryan stared at me, speechless.
"If you're interested, I've made arrangements for bus tickets for the two of us. They want to talk to you down in Raleigh where the National World Games training center is. What do you think?"
"What do I think? Of course I'll go. I can't believe they want me to try out for the national team. Most of those shooters are ex military snipers. When do we go?"
"Tomorrow."
"Awesome. I'm going to run home to pack!"
I smiled as he ran out. I knew how he felt. After high school, I had been offered a position on the national biathlon team, but I had turned it down for... for what? I couldn't remember. As I thought that, I became surprised that I could even remember something from my high school years. This had to be a first as far as I knew. As hard as I tried though, I couldn't remember anything else. On top of that, the strain had turned my head ache into a migraine.
The next day Ryan and I caught the buss out of the mountains. Strictly speaking, I didn't need to go, but we both felt it would be better if I was there for guidance and reference. The ride took slightly over two hours. I would have driven myself, but with my condition, it was illegal for me to have passengers, and there was no reason for Ryan to put the miles on his car.
When we arrived, I told the receptionist at the visitor's center that we were here for a meeting with Mr. Grantham. The doe got up and walked to a back room. She returned and informed us he would be right out. Fifteen minutes later, a black panther stepped in through the large entry doors. He walked up to us.
"Ah, Mr. Snow, glad to meet you in person. I'm Larry Grantham."
He extended his paw to me. I grasped it firmly.
"Nice to meet you sir."
"And you must be Ryan."
They shook as well.
"Thank you for considering me sir."
He lead us to a conference room where he and the head coach of the marksmanship team, a dingo, talked about the commitment, schedules, sacrifices, and rewards of joining the team. I listened to all the chatter. After two hours of talking, Larry took Ryan on a full tour of all the training facilities, leaving the dingo in the room with me.
"Sorry, I don't think we were introduced, I'm Tristan."
"I'm Eryn."
"I know, I saw you at nationals. That's quite the squad you've got."
"Thank you. I'm very proud of them."
"You should be. You've done a good job coaching them."
"I may have done some but, you know, you can't teach a def rabbit to hear."
"Well, I'm sure you did more than you're giving yourself credit for. Even the sharpest eyed eagle needs to be taught what to look for. I have an idea of what to look for too. Just out of curiosity, would you be at all interested in a coaching position?"
"I've got a pretty good position where I'm at, and I'd hate to desert my team back home, but if the chance arose, I'd have to consider it. In high school I was offered a slot for the national biathlon team and turned it down. Can't really remember why, it was all before the accident, but I'd hate to make the same mistake twice."
"Indeed, well, I'll keep you in mind. By the way, do you want to look around a bit? You don't need an escort, but I could give you a trainer pass and you could give yourself a private, back scene tour."
"I'd like that."
He handed me a white card key. We said our farewells and he went one way, and I went the other. I rolled through the halls for half an hour. I watched a martial arts practice, looked at the fencing mats, inspected the shooting range and looked into the racquet ball courts. I made my way down to the massive pool and diving center. I watched through a large glass window below water level as swimmers propelled themselves back and forth across the expanse. Finally I decided it was probably time to go back and meet up with Ryan.
As I passed a door marked athletes only, a slim, red haired, otter walked out and turned down the hall going the opposite direction as me. I moved my chair over to get out of her way, but other than that didn't take much notice of the stranger. I was about to open the door leading to the main hallway when someone shouted out from the far end of the corridor.
"Kirian!"
I opened the doors and rolled though. The sound of running footfalls filled the hall behind me. The doors swung shut and almost as soon burst back open. Startled by the noise I wheeled around. I saw the same otter I had passed in the hall. Why did she look so familiar?
"Kirian? By the gods, it is you! I knew you hadn't died eight years ago like they said!"
She ran up and flung her arms around me. I rolled backwards and pushed her off.
"Whoa lady! I don't know who you think I am, but I'm not that person. My name's Eryn and nobody said I had died."
She looked at me, sadness filling her expression.
"Oh Kirian, what have they done to you?"