Impact Event (Dargo Pearce Chronicles #1)

by David N. Frank

  He saw the fear creep into her eyes for the first time then, right before he grabbed the pistol and twisted it violently, breaking her finger in the process. She tried to use her fractured arm to land a blow in desperation, but only ended up further injuring herself as her forearm clubbed uselessly off of Peace’s shoulders. He reached out and grabbed both sides of her head, and she was helpless to resist as he violently snapped her neck.

  As she collapsed, he pulled the pistol free of her bloody grip and quickly slammed a foot onto the helmet of Broken Jaw, who was still lying flat on his back. That pushed his face shield back just enough for Pearce to almost casually fire two shots in the gap, splattering the inside of the clear shield with gore.

  Pearce blew out a breath and let himself hyperventilate a bit. His VIA told him sixteen seconds had passed since he had begun the engagement. The shots would have been heard even over the clamor of the various alarms and sirens still going off, and he didn’t have much time before he was discovered by the rest of the enemy. He retrieved the nearest assault rifle and looted the soldiers for a few spare magazines, considering his options.

  The service tunnel was clearly out. In fact, it couldn’t have been merely a coincidence that these soldiers had been investigating it. Somehow, they had known to look there, which could only mean one thing; there was a leak inside Omega, as unbelievable as that sounded. Add in the gunship, the rapid response teams…was he being burned?

  There was no time to ponder the intrigue now, however. His VIA produced a variety of new escape routes for him, displayed on a map overlaid on his OHUD. All of them were problematic in that they provided scant cover from the air. He chose one that wound its way through buildings, courtyards, and alleys and was about to turn to exit the alley when he heard the approaching swishing of the gunship. He raised the rifle as he backpedaled and aimed through the holo-optics where he thought the gunship would appear, finger tense.

  Pearce’s VIA highlighted a small cone of probability on his OHUD, marking its best estimate of the gunship’s approach based on the echolocation of the sound bouncing off of the walls of the alley and tiny changes in reflected light undetectable by his human eyes. The cone was almost precisely centered where Pearce was already aiming the rifle. Brain and machine in near perfect agreement.

  Pearce fired the instant that he saw the first glimpse of edge of one of the gunship’s ducted fans. It was moving in a strafing manner facing the alley, far too slowly for effective coverage. Pearce emptied an entire magazine of 40 rounds before the center of the attack craft began to slide into view. Even still, the rounds were mostly ineffective, banging off of the armored surface with loud but harmless noises.

  A more seasoned pilot would have ignored the small arms fire and brought the AP turret into a clean line of fire to rip the enemy into tiny pieces. Then again, a more experienced pilot would have never hovered at the end of the alley at all. Instead, they would have climbed to an overwatch position a hundred meters above the buildings where they could track and eliminate any target with ease. This guy was a rookie.

  And he reacted just as a rookie would. Fearing damage that was never going to come, the pilot jerked the gunship sharply up and away from the alley, sparing Pearce from the deadly threat of the AP turret. He quickly reloaded a fresh magazine into the rifle and emptied it too at the fleeing gunship before it disappeared out of sight. Then he slapped in a third magazine and raced out of the rear of the alley.

  The chase was on.

  FOUR

  Nouveau Toronto, Ontario System

  Independent Colony

  As Pearce burst through another building to cut across to the next main street, he briefly considered ditching the weapon and trying to blend in once again. However, the pinching sensations in his chest reminded him that he had taken several bullets which had turned his shirt into an ink-blot style piece of art.

  The wounds themselves were superficial; nearly every inch of Pearce’s body was protected by a layer of subcutaneous graphene armor that was capable of stopping nearly all conventional small arms fire. The armor was grown by his own body through genetic modification, an enormously costly and uncomfortable process that was part of a slew of genetic enhancements given to all SSG soldiers.

  He’d have to pry out the flattened bullets embedded in his skin later. For now, they sufficiently ruined any chance of trying to pose as a bystander. He couldn’t risk wasting time looking for a new outfit with the enemy closing in by the second. Luckily, his Ultima hack was still doing its thing. Hopefully that would give him enough an edge to escape.

  Pearce quickly checked out the front door of the building he was passing through and didn’t see anything other than non-combatants, still trying to figure out what the hell was going on. He hopped down a few stairs and was halfway across the street when he heard the loud whine of an electric vehicle under heavy load above the nearby alarms. He turned to look and saw a black wide-body spherical-wheeled transport sliding around a corner a few hundred meters down the road at a terrific rate of speed. Part of the QRF, attempting to establish a perimeter. Fortunately, it wasn’t an armed transport.

  Without slowing his stride, he whipped the rifle up and fired a few short bursts at the vehicle, sending bystanders into a panic. The first burst he put through the windshield, and with the two follow-ups he aimed for the front left wheel. High-end transports like this one used spherical drive systems that relied on magnetic levitation to support the body of the vehicle.

  As the rounds shred the sphere apart, the maglevs failed and sent the vehicle lurching to the side. The self-driving AI brought the transport to a stop a block away as Pearce ducked into another alley.

  He made it several more blocks on the run, ducking inside a few buildings as the route his VIA displayed dictated. He was beginning to think he might be on the verge of breaking free of pursuit as he sprinted across a large quad surrounded by residential buildings on four sides and featuring a large central fountain complete with a towering statue made from stone. Just as he rounded the far side of the fountain he glimpsed motion in the reflection of one of the upper windows of the building he was running towards, and a split second later his VIA lit up with warnings.

  He reacted instinctively, dropping his body into a feet first slide and rolling to his left, just as a stream of bright blue particle beams zapped through the space where his upper body had just been. The nearly continuous line of fire quickly tracked after Pearce as he scrambled for cover. Large chunks of dirt and sod were blown into the air as the buzzing sound of hundreds of particle beam blasts overwhelmed Pearce’s hearing as if an entire beehive had gotten stuck in his eardrums.

  His only chance was to put the statue between him and the gunship. His armor could handle rifle bullets but sustained particle beam fire would melt right through it. The auto-tracking AP turret of the gunship would surely have torn him apart in just a second more, but the stream of fire next to him ended abruptly as a new series of explosions sounded behind Pearce. He’d made it.

  Pearce quickly rolled up tight against the edge of the fountain as pieces of stone fell like rain all around him amidst a cloud of fine dust that momentarily engulfed his position. The angry sound of the turret ceased for a moment, allowing him to glance above the lip of the fountain and see that the statue was still standing and had mostly shrugged off the PB assault. Thankfully it was real solid stone and not simply a synthetic substitute. It wouldn’t provide cover for long but had saved his life for the moment.

  And given him an idea.

  He raised the assault rifle above the fountain edge and leaned just slightly to the right, squeezing the trigger before he even caught sight of the gunship hovering a hundred meters beyond the statue. His aim was far from perfect, but he was sure he managed to hit the gunship a few times as he ducked back behind the protection of the sculpture.

  The pilot of the gunship must have realized that he was impervious to the small arms fire earlier, as he didn’t pull any evasives
but rather unloaded the anti-personnel turret into the statue again, clearly intending to burn right through to the gnat hiding behind it.

  Again, the air was filled with stone shrapnel and a fog of pulverized dust which quickly occluded the entire area between the fountain and the building entrance behind Pearce. He quickly removed the satchel bag from his shoulders and pulled the last of his ammunition from inside it. As the PB assault began to finally blast a few holes clean through the statue, Pearce hurled the satchel bag with all of his enhanced strength clear across the quad to his side.

  The turret fire swung away from the statue and tracked the satchel with lightning speed, blasting the satchel to ash before it hit the ground. Pearce had leapt to his feet as soon as the bag left his hand and sprinted for the door to the building, highlighted on his OHUD through the makeshift smokescreen the gunship had created for him.

  Pearce had correctly guessed that the novice pilot would have set his turret AI to the most aggressive setting, which would track and fire at anything moving in the engagement zone. He just hoped that between the diversion and the chalky dust he’d be able to make it safely inside. The incoming fire died again as the satchel was obliterated. If the gunship was able to detect him through RF or thermal imaging inside the dust cloud he’d probably be dead before he knew it.

  There were three short steps leading up to the door to the building and Pearce simply jumped past all of them and barreled through the door, just as those same steps began exploding behind him. As soon as he was through the threshold he dove to his right and slid up against the wall there, out of the direct line of fire through the doorway. A line of blue particle beams zigzagged across the room quickly, smashing through the door and the surrounding area of the entranceway, and tearing up pieces of the floor. When the incoming fire stopped, small fires burned where many of the blue bolts had struck.

  Pearce tried to regain his senses. Between the overwhelming noise of the particle beam turret and the constant shrill of various alarms that were still going off, it was nearly impossible to use his sense of hearing to determine what was going on outside of the building. If the gunship had tracked him here, the rest of the soldiers in pursuit wouldn’t be far behind. He needed to get some eyes on what was going on out there, and the main doorway was not an option.

  He pushed through the nearest door, which led into a small empty apartment that only had a few bare bunkbeds left in it. A quick VIA query confirmed that the entire complex he was in was a small college residence development, currently empty in-between semesters. That would make things considerably easier as he didn’t need to worry about running into civilians. Thick drapes were closed over the windows, and Pearce took great care in gently creating a small crevice which he could see out into the quad through.

  Sure enough, on either side of the far end of the courtyard more spherical-wheeled transports had arrived and were already disgorging troops. His VIA counted eight per vehicle, already fanning out and closing on the building Pearce had taken shelter inside. He tagged a soldier who took up a covering position on the opposite side of the fountain and then let go of the drapes and backed away from the window.

  His OHUD kept the position of the kneeling soldier clearly transposed through the curtain and after backing away a few steps he fired a quick burst through it right at the head of the unsuspecting enemy, and then turned to run out of the room as a fusillade of return fire poured through the windows.

  After exiting the apartment, he turned towards the rear of the foyer, where an elevator and stairs were located to one side, and took the steps two at a time up past the second floor and exited onto the third. Somewhere beneath him he heard a door crash open, which likely meant more troops had just entered the rear of the building. He quickly checked in a rear-facing apartment and glimpsed a third empty transport parked just underneath the window he peered out of.

  He checked his ammo; a mag and a half for the assault rifle, and two for his pistol. With potentially twenty-four enemy soldiers in battle armor to deal with. And a gunship.

  He hadn’t fought under odds this fun in years.

  The alarms blaring across the entire neighborhood suddenly fell silent, and Pearce could hear boots in the stairwell below. It seemed the Ultima hack was being shutdown bit by bit. If he didn’t get away from here by the time the local surveillance grid came back, it would be close to impossible to make a clean escape. The thought of fighting his way all the way to the spaceport and stealing a vessel under fire was one that Pearce would rather not have.

  First, he had to get out of this particular mess.

  Pearce fired a short burst from the rifle down the stairs to slow down the enemy and then quickly ascended to the fourth floor. There was only one additional floor above, and a sign on the stairs indicated that it was a common space with a gym and lounge for the residents.

  He opened the nearest apartment door and found the same identical interior as before; a small two room suite with a bunkbed in each. Pearce had noticed downstairs that the bunks were the type that easily separated into two single beds. He grabbed the top of one now and hauled it back into the hallway, and then promptly tossed it down the stairs where it crashed into the landing between the floors. He retrieved the other three beds and likewise added them to the heap. He was left with a crude but serviceable barricade. With the elevator still disabled by his hack, the enemy would have to find another way of gaining the upper floors.

  In the meantime, Pearce had to find a way to escape. That meant finding a way to neutralize the gunship. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any real options for doing so. He hadn’t seen any of the soldiers carrying explosives or anything more powerful than the QBZ-135 he was holding now, which was just not powerful enough to do any significant damage to the military armor of the gunship. He’d kill for his old railgun right now, or even a PB rifle.

  Pearce’s wishful thinking was interrupted as he glimpsed movement at the far end of the hallway, where two front-facing windows looked out over the quad. His eyes widened as he was stunned to see the gunship sliding into view. The pilot was hovering barely a few meters away from the building, breaching just about every rule of safety and common sense.

  Pearce lunged for the relative safety of the stairwell as the turret cleared the window and began pouring fire into the hallway. He recognized immediately that the pilot was attempting to pin him while the soldiers breached the barricade, so he fired a burst towards the landing and then proceeded up to the top floor. If the reckless pilot was foolish enough, he may have his way out.

  He emerged on the fifth floor into a far smaller hallway that didn’t run the span of the building and only had two prominent doors; Fitness Center and Lounge, respectively. He shoved his way into the gym and quickly spied what he was looking for.

  The gunship finally let up with its assault of the fourth floor, and Pearce knew that he had only seconds to act before the opportunity would be lost. He sprinted towards the windows at the front of the building, vaulting over and dodging around gym equipment. Right next to the window was a free weight bench press, setup with several dozen kilos. He grabbed the center of the barbell and used it to smash through the window. Below, the gunship was slowly rising towards him, only meters away. One of the enormous ducted fans that provided the gunship with thrust was directly in front of him.

  Pearce hurled the barbell like a javelin directly into the fan.

  The result was instant and explosive. A hundred kilos of dense mass shredded the fan blades and sent pieces of shrapnel large and small in all directions, sending Pearce flinching away from the window. The entire left side of the gunship was blown apart, and it pitched sharply down and away from the building with a plume of smoke. Pieces of the aircraft smashed the entire front of the building and peppered the quad and other surrounding buildings like an enormous shotgun blast.

  The inexperienced pilot had no chance of recovering as the gunship smashed through the statue and crashed to the ground, practically on top
of a group of the enemy still holding position behind the cover of the fountain. The second fan was still thrusting and sent the gunship cartwheeling across the quad before it finally collided with the building on the far side and came to an abrupt halt.

  Gunship down.

  Pearce had been hit with a few small pieces of shrapnel, but it was nothing serious. A quick glance at the quad below showed at least six of the enemy troops had been flattened by the crashing gunship. Pieces of debris looked to have incapacitated or killed several others. Everyone else seemed shell-shocked for the moment.

  He heard noise from the hallway and quickly fired a burst from his rifle towards the gym room door. Then he quickly surveyed the front of the residence hall by peeking out. Almost every single window had been completely blown out by the explosion of the ducted fan.

  He quickly formulated a plan and fired the rest of the rifle’s magazine at the hallway. This time, return fire came back through the doorway, but it was blindly aimed and didn’t come close to hitting him. Pearce dropped the empty rifle and hopped out of the window.

  He let himself fall past the fourth floor before he threw his arms out and grabbed onto a shattered window on the third. He let his arms extend and his feet slide on the exterior, using his arm strength to slow his fall rather than jerk to a halt. Pieces of glass bit into his hands, but he ignored them and pulled his body quickly into the room.

  He made his way to the suite’s door and exited the room once he saw that the hallway was empty of troops. They all had scrambled past his makeshift barricade and were likely stacked on the fourth and fifth floors, thinking that they had him cornered.

  He returned to the same room at the rear of the building where he had spotted the transport earlier. The windows were still intact here, so he quickly opened one and slid silently out, landing on the roof of the transport, pistol in hand. He didn’t see signs of anyone manning a perimeter, and expected that their attention would be focused on the massive crash in the front of the building at this point. He hopped down and sprinted away from the building, following once again the escape route his VIA laid out.