Pearce dropped low and spun around with a vicious leg sweep to Tango Three, sending him flying sideways in the air. At the apex of the spin with the soldier’s body nearly parallel to the deck he brought down the elbow of his already down-swinging gun hand with extreme force, sending the stunned man crashing into the deck. With his spreader now in his hands he quickly pivoted and fired at point-blank range directly into the head of Tango Two, who had nearly but not quite completed his 360 to bring his rifle to bear and realized with wide-open eyes visible through the clear helm that he had failed at the last moment.
In a flurry of spinning and shooting he fired consecutively at Tangos One, Four, and then finally Three. The spreaders deadly blast of wide angle particle beams was devastatingly effective in the close quarters of the airlock. With his zone clear he saw that the Marines had killed one of their three targets but were grappling with the other two. The closest enemy had his back to Pearce, and he took a quick leap forward and fired directly into his back, being careful that the blast would be entirely absorbed by the enemy and not fry the Marine struggling opposite him. The soldier slumped to the ground, and Pearce slid by him and the surprised Corporal Murrig to place the spreader directly against the visor of the enemy Allison was having trouble with.
The enemy soldier released his grasp on Allison and froze with his hands awkwardly up in the air. The Private took the initiative and disarmed the enemy, using his combat knife to slice the PB rifle’s sling and toss it to the floor. He removed the rest of the visible weapons from the enemy’s suit and then took up a position a meter away, aiming at the prisoner’s center of mass. That let Pearce pull his spreader off of the helm’s visor and check the aftermath in the rest of the airlock.
He found only one of the tangos still alive, and quickly finished him off with a spreader blast to the face. He carried out the execution casually and in full view of the captured soldier. There was enough atmosphere inside the airlock and umbilical now to hear the audible firing of the devastating weapon. Pearce’s VIA tracked the quickly rising pressure at 90% of normal. He took his first deep breath of thickening air since beginning the assault. His VIA marked that only twenty-three seconds had passed since the airlock had opened.
Pearce used hand signals to order Murrig to begin retrieving the rest of the crew. The Corporal maneuvered around dead bodies towards the airlock door to begin the RATT procedure. The RApid Tether Transfer was used in ship evacuations to assist civilians not accustomed to zero gravity in traversing null-g environments quickly.
The Captain tossed the specialized RATT drone into the umbilical from the other side of the corridor and it used on-board propulsion to quickly fly across the distance between the two ships’ airlocks. Trailing behind it was the lightweight graphene tether that all of the crew had secured to their persons. Murrig would grab the tether and use it to assist the crew across.
Meanwhile, Pearce moved quickly back to the prisoner and barked loudly at him. “Son, you are in a world of trouble,” he said, using his commanding officer voice from years gone by. “I’m Colonel Dargo Pearce, former CO of the 102nd SSG. This ship has engaged in treasonous acts of war against USC Fleet forces as well as egregious acts of mass destruction against Confederation citizens. You have one chance to cooperate with me in exchange for leniency. Otherwise I’ll execute you on the spot as a traitorous war criminal. Now tell me, how many more soldiers are aboard?”
When the prisoner hesitated to answer, Pearce stabbed the barrel of the spreader into the center of the soldier’s visor again and repeated the question. That was enough to convince the prisoner to talk, and he claimed that there were eight more soldiers, including not only a Lieutenant but also a Lieutenant Commander as well. That a hinge was tagging along with a small two squad special ops force was strange, but not unwarranted given the fact that they were protecting an ultra-secret next-gen ship. He also confirmed a crew of twenty to thirty spacemen. It was the soldier’s claim of ignorance that raised Pearce’s eyebrow.
“Thread that,” Pearce replied, using old Fleet slang for providing more details.
“Sir, we were detached months ago from 1st SOG-T to provide security for a black ops project with no name,” the prisoner said. He was younger than Pearce but certainly wore the weight of heavy combat experience on his face. “We still don’t know the official designation for the project. We’ve been in a total comm blackout for the entire duration. No outside contact. I literally don’t have a clue what you are talking about.”
Pearce couldn’t get a read on the guy. His PCA was active and had been analyzing the prisoner from the beginning, but it too was inconclusive. Trying to read the truthfulness of a subject in an e-suit with only a portion of their face showing was incredibly difficult. Pearce’s gut didn’t buy it though. It wouldn’t make sense to put honorable yet clueless special forces soldiers onboard a ship with this kind of mission. You’d want true believers crewing and defending it. Zealots who wouldn’t think twice at wiping out a small colony if it meant that the independent worlds could finally be brought to heel.
The truth was these types of people weren’t extremists at all, but closer to mainline Confederation thinking, especially amongst the military. Pearce probably could have assembled a similar platoon of ask-no-questions men from the SSG ranks. The ends justify the means was a saying that never went out of style, and the military practically bred this type of thinking into their troops.
Pearce looked directly into the prisoners eyes. “I don’t believe you,” he stated as he aimed the spreader at the man’s right knee and fired. The shot blew the leg completely off from the femur down. The soldier wobbled for a second and then toppled over without even a yelp of pain. His body would recover from the shock in a few minutes. The particle beam itself would have fused the wound shut, preventing any risk of bleed-out.
“Secure him and prepare to breach,” Pearce ordered Allison. The private didn’t blink an eye as he scrambled to immobilize the prisoner’s arms and remaining leg with restraining ties.
Pearce joined Murrig at the airlock, where he was slowly but surely reeling in the combined mass of crew from the Nightingale. He jumped in and grabbed the tether, pulling at an increased rate. “Double time it Murrig!” The two men heaved the tether hand over hand furiously. Just over a minute had elapsed since the jamming began and it wouldn’t take much longer for the enemy to figure out what was going on and react. When they did, the most likely course of action would be to blow the umbilical, and while the unsuited Nightingale crew could survive for a time in vacuum it would not be pretty and would render them all completely combat ineffective or worse.
Finally, the first of the dangling crew approached the airlock threshold, and the two sweating men dropped the tether and stepped back to help them all adjust to the “fall” into normal gravity. They dropped in quickly one-after-another and in short order all stood within the tight confines of the airlock, staring at the bodies littering the ground surrounding them. Pearce realized his mistake as he saw several of them start to turn green.
“Eyes up everyone, try to keep your composure,” he said, even as he saw that it was too late. Pilosni leaned over and vomited over a bulkhead. Meson looked like he was about to follow suit, but instead held up a hand and started breathing rapidly in a desperate attempt to keep down his stomach.
No time to tend to the weak-bellied now. He sent another coded pulse message to Emma, and the outer airlock door slid shut. They had safely transferred from the crippled Nightingale to the enemy grav-ship. As he turned to face the inner airlock door, he took his own steadying deep breath. This had been the easy part of his plan. They now had to storm the rest of the vessel, fight a superior entrenched enemy force in unfamiliar territory, and capture it before the OPFOR either killed his entire team or scuttled the ship. Pearce smiled despite the daunting challenge and mentally recited one of the oldest Fleet sayings in the book.
“The only easy day was yesterday.”
NINETEE
N
Interstellar Transit Zone, Jericho System
Unknown enemy vessel
The inner airlock door slid open revealing a short five-meter passageway beyond that ended in a “T” intersection. There were only two people in sight; a spaceman standing by a medical cart and a solider wearing armor that appeared very similar to SSG-issue leaning against the bulkhead with a PB rifle held casually in his hands.
Pearce didn’t hesitate, drilling the soldier in the head before he could react and the medic milliseconds later. Before their bodies hit the deck he was advancing into the narrow and relatively dark passageway with Murrig and Allison on his heels.
Several of Pearce’s suspicious were thus instantly confirmed. The small passageway on the other side of the airlock meant that the ship was not any sort of troop transport; otherwise it would have had a large ready-room and armory for troops to stage from adjacent to the airlock. The non-alertness of the two tangos in the passageway meant that the ship had not yet gone to general quarters. This meant that the shipboard ASI had accepted his override codes, as it would have been monitoring the security feeds from the airlock and sounded the alarm otherwise.
That further meant that those in charge of the ship didn’t comprehend that they were already under assault, didn’t realize their ASI had gone dark, and likely were not directly monitoring the ships security systems as would be the procedure when an ASI was not available. In all likelihood the enemy troops in the airlock had been preparing to initiate their own spectrum-wide jamming as part of the assault, meaning that everyone thought things were proceeding according to plan. All of this meant that they still held the element of surprise, which was a crucial edge in the coming battle.
They checked the bodies quickly. Both were KIA, and the soldier was indeed wearing special operations style armor, sans any insignia or rank. It was more advanced and offered more protection than the Marine standard armor that Pearce had donned, but it would be more trouble than it was worth to try and give it to anyone on the team now. He likewise didn’t want to hand the rifle to any of the novice’s, but he reluctantly decided to let Pilosni sling it over her shoulder, just in case it was needed later.
When finished, Pearce pulled free two of the stun drones and tossed them casually towards the intersection. In mid-air the ball-shaped drones deployed four small rotors, stabilized themselves, and then shot down each respective side of the intersection. With the jamming they had limited autonomous capabilities when away from line-of-sight. He had ordered them to proceed ten meters and return, which they quickly did.
The drones updated the battlenet with any detected enemies as well as providing a map of the layout around the corners. There were currently no threats in the immediate vicinity, and both passageways curved significantly making it impossible see much farther. It seemed that the interior layout of the ship was circular to conform to the spherical makeup of the hab module. That meant it would be one long process of “clearing corners”.
The interior of the enemy ship otherwise looked like any other vessel in the Fleet. Unpainted bulkheads and exposed conduits, with standard Fleet compartment numbering in bright chartreuse. As such, it was easy to determine that left headed towards the CIC and right towards engineering.
Pearce motioned for the Marines to stack up on the right side, and he hugged the left corner. Behind them, the rest of the crew was exiting the airlock, aiming their weapons at the deck as they had been instructed. In the frantically short firearms safety training Pearce had provided, avoiding friendly-fire was the first and last part of every instruction. They split up into pre-determined fireteams and prepared to proceed further into the ship.
With another hand signal the two teams were in motion, the stun drones scouting ahead. Pearce was followed closely by Captain Lillywhite, Pilosni, Dewey, and Jula. The Marines led Venano and Meson towards engineering. Both the CIC and Engineering were critical control points for any vessel, and any shipboard assault had to deal with capturing them both. Otherwise if you simply took over the CIC engineering could just blow the ship up with a critical power core overload. If the ship’s layout followed any semblance of Fleet design, the path towards engineering would offer much less resistance. The remainder of the enemy troops would most likely be concentrated along the route to the command center.
Pearce’s squad found nothing as they advanced down the passageway. The only doorways led to equipment lockers and technical rooms. Soon, they came to a ladder well leading up to the next level; they were apparently already on the orlop deck. The drone slid stealthily above the next deck and instantly lowered back down. Pearce’s OHUD superimposed the red outlines of four soldiers striding purposefully towards the ladder, about fifteen meters away. They appeared to be walking “above” the passageway’s overhead, in the exact relative location they occupied on the upper deck.
Pearce held up a closed fist indicating that everyone else should hold their position, and then gauged the distance the ladder rose and the size of the hatch. The ladder was a standard Fleet width, with the 68-degree standard Fleet incline. The hatch opening was a square meter, and was currently locked open. It was on the larger side, as far as hatches go, but more importantly there was plenty of room for what he wanted to do.
He gripped his rifle in a battle stance, slightly bent and tensed his legs, and with a thought sent the small stun drone hurtling through the hatch and down the passageway beyond. It covered the distance to the troops in less than a second and promptly exploded exactly in the middle of the four tangos. The drone was designed to provide an overwhelming concussive blast rather than a deadly rain of shrapnel. The outcome was a blinding and deafening explosion that was slight less powerful than the stun grenades he had used on the surface of Vegas. At such close range, it hardly mattered.
Pearce leapt to the deck above with ease. He was firing as soon as his rifle cleared the hatch opening. The explosion had tossed all four soldiers against the bulkheads, but they were already recovering like the elite troops that they were. Luckily their reactions were purely instinctive as their hearing and eyesight were compromised from the explosion.
Pearce killed two of them before he landed on the deck and took a knee next to the bulkhead. The remaining two began to blindly return fire. To their credit, their aim was true to the center of the hatch, but the shots all passed harmlessly to the left of Pearce’s crouched position. He finished them off and launched another drone to scout ahead. If the prisoner had been telling the truth, only four soldiers remained, but Pearce was doubtful.
Pearce signaled down to the Captain at the bottom of the ladder and he began climbing up. Then he focused on covering the visible portion of the passageway while the drone disappeared around the bend. Almost immediately, there was the zapping sound of a PB rifle and the bulkhead near the curve’s edge quickly reflected the bluish flash of a particle beam blast. The drone didn’t return, and Pearce assumed it had been destroyed by hostiles just out of sight.
That meant that they had lost the element of surprise and could expect a counter-attack imminently. As if to accentuate Pearce’s thought, the general quarters alert began blaring throughout the ship and then a voice came over the 1MC.
“Security Alert! Security Alert! This is not a drill! Prepare to repel boarders! Away the Security Alert team! Away the Back-up Alert force! All hands prepare to repel boarders! Location 4-32-25-E! ” Hardwired systems such as alarms and internal wired intercoms wouldn’t be affected by the jamming signal.
Hoping to catch whomever was calling in their attack before they could relay too much information, Pearce charged down the hall in a battle stance just as Captain Lillywhite reached the deck. The lack of corners in the curved passageway made things difficult, as there was no obvious location to be wary of and no natural cover to hide behind. Pearce’s VIA overlaid a rough approximation of the engagement zone based on the distance travelled by the drone and the tangent from its last location.
As he quickly approached th
e edges, Pearce pulled free his second to last drone and tossed it towards the deck, sending it a quick order. The drone unfolded and sped quickly away at about knee height, weaving erratically. It would make it harder to shoot at, but also increase the ability for the enemy to spot it. Which Pearce was counting on.
Steps before he reached the sharp diagonal edge of the red zone indicated on his OHUD, a trio of particle beam blasts whizzed by the dodging drone, which exploded barely a second later. Pearce’s eyes were protected by his OHUD’s pre-dimmed filter, and he continued to aim around the inner edge of the corridor.
Just before engagement range, Pearce leapt sideways and began wall-running on the inner curved bulkhead. An enemy started to come into view, kneeling and aiming at the center of the corridor and most certainly not expecting the enemy to be attacking from above his head. He took one more step along the bulkhead and then pushed off with his outside leg into a side flip that sent him across the entire passageway.
Halfway through his rotation he fired his first shot, before the whole body of the target was even in view. He fired a second time just before his feet touched the deck. Both shots were dead center mass, sending the body of a pistol-wielding spacer flying backwards.
Pearce didn’t slow down, using his momentum to carry him across the passageway and to run up the other concave curved bulkhead. In addition to the dead tango there were two other spacemen aiming sidearms in the general vicinity of where the drone had exploded, still squinting and turning their heads away from the blinding concussion. A fourth spacemen was further down the passageway, crouching on the deck just below the local MC interface with an arm shielding his face.
Impact Event (Dargo Pearce Chronicles #1) Page 24
