by C.S. Stinton
* *
‘There you fucking are,’ Harrigan hissed as he spotted the speck of black in the sea of blue.
Searching the skies manually had not been their best plan. The car’s audio feed was ranting about how Graham Locke had just got to the stage, he had no idea what was going to happen when, and he had been about to descend into sheer panic before he saw the car. It was parked on lane 26-Omicron some hundred metres above the level of the First Landing Plaza and its museum, the repulsors blazing away to keep the vehicle stationary in mid-air. It was an older model vehicle, the hood and thruster carriage well-rounded, and its roof had been retracted.
On the one hand, this meant it was very likely his car’s engines had been heard by anyone inside, and he let his vehicle drift to the left so he was approaching from the rear. Anyone shooting out of the right-hand side in order to see First Landing Plaza would have a harder time repositioning to get at him. Which was the other hand - he could see, as he drew close, the long barrel of a rifle resting on the car door, and as he eased across the distance, saw the muzzle flash and jerk.
Fear surged within him, old and familiar. He’d felt it a thousand times before. Hearing allies call over the comms that they had contact, seeing signs of a fight with comrades that he couldn’t influence. His only option was to carry on with his job and trust them to be able to do theirs.
Even if the gunman had only been able to let off a shot because he’d taken so long.
The radio was going ballistic with words he was only half-hearing, then his earpiece beeped and he sagged as relief chewed through the fear when he heard Ramirez’s voice. ‘Harrigan?’
‘I’m comin’ in on him, Ramirez, I -’
But she carried on, fraught and frantic. ‘Locke and I are breaking cover in three seconds. If you’re in any kind of position to keep me from getting my fool head shot off, please do.’
He squinted. ‘Locke and you…?’ She didn’t reply, and he realised three seconds wasn’t a lot of time for him to get an explanation. It wasn’t much time to come up with a plan, either, but there was one simple, effective way to throw off the aim of anyone sat in a car. He checked his safety belt and accelerated.
He had a split second to remember that this car was old and cheap - then he knew nothing but the screeching of metal, the crunching of the two vehicles crashing together, his body jerked against the safety belt. His head snapped forward and he felt the strain in his neck, and he had to fight to think clearly enough to slam his foot on the brake. He didn’t want the two cars to be knocked too far apart.
The other vehicle had been tipped at an angle at the impact, and, programmed to hold location, the car wasn’t yet righting itself. That would leave anyone scrambling while he could keep on moving, though he told himself he needed to come up with less crazy plans. Though all he had time for now was Section B of Crazy Plan, and with shaking hands he unbuckled his webbing and kicked the car door open.
He’d been holding Tycho’s spare pad with one hand when he’d crashed, and dropped it at the impact. Opening the door sent it spinning out of his lap - and then into the howling winds of the abyssal drop outside.
Shit.
He tried to not look down as he secured his gun, then he grabbed the door-frame to drag himself out of and onto the car roof. The hood had crumpled in the impact, the metal still hot as he scrambled up, steam hissing out from the engine block underneath. Wind rushed along the lane, threatening to tip him off the edge and down the long, long drop to the surface of Thor.
On the one hand, the impact would kill him. On the other, the fall would take so long he’d have time to reflect on all his sins.
There was movement from the back seat of the other car, and Harrigan tensed as he saw a figure struggling to sit up. Blood was encrusted down the side of the man’s face, dripping onto the black military-cut jumpsuit he wore - and as he looked around, he spotted Harrigan and grabbed his rifle.
Harrigan was out in the open as it was levelled at him, and so did the only thing he could: leapt.
Air rushed around him, a spray of automatic gunfire rained overhead, and there was nothing underfoot as he tumbled down, flailing. Then his reaching hands touched metal and latched onto the frame of the other car, jerking him to a halt and slamming him against the door. Already he was scrabbling, bracing one foot against the thruster to pull himself up and over the side -
And the butt of a rifle slammed into the side of his head.
His vision exploded in front of his eyes, stars flashing and the world spinning, and for a moment he thought the crack he’d heard at the impact was his skull. Only through desperate survival instincts did he manage to hold onto the car with one hand, knee braced against the door as he was knocked back. Through blurry vision he could see the Ragnarok gunman twisting the rifle to bring the barrel to bear on him, and his free hand pulled his gun.
He raised it and let off several desperate shots, too wild to hit anything, but they were enough to make the gunman duck. Teeth gritted through the pain, Harrigan yanked himself up to tumble into the back seat of the car, still seeing double.
But the gunman was waiting for him. No sooner had Harrigan hit plush leather seating before an arm locked itself around his neck, pinning his back against the gunman’s chest. A strong hand slammed his wrist against the door-frame and he dropped the pistol.
The gunman was on his back on the rear seat and had let go of his Machenry in the chaos - but he had Harrigan in a strong grapple, forearm tightening against his windpipe. Still reeling from the crash and the blow to the head, Harrigan found himself quickly weakening, his struggle against the iron grip futile, black spots erupting in front of his eyes. His left hand flailed for the car floor, trying to find his pistol, but the gunman’s free hand grabbed that arm, twisting it almost to the point of breaking.
Harrigan gave a gurgled yell of pain - then, with both of his opponent’s hands busy, acted. His right hand reached for the gunman’s hip, gambling, praying - and finding a sidearm nestled there. The weight of the pistol was solid and comforting in his hand, and the gunman didn’t have time to do more than shout before Harrigan had shoved the barrel over his shoulder and pulled the trigger.
The gunshot was deafening in his ear, but then the pressure around his neck weakened, and Harrigan collapsed even as he felt his left shoulder get drenched. For long moments he just lay there, gasping for breath, blinking clarity back into his vision, fighting to not pass out or throw up. That was all that mattered - burning air into aching lungs, not the blood and brain-matter soaking into his shoulder, not the corpse he was collapsed on top of whose head he’d just blown off, not the world below with its panic and politics and Ramirez.
Ramirez…
Harrigan struggled to sit upright, hissing in pain, and pressed a hand against his right ear. ‘Ramirez?’ His voice sounded both distant and like it was echoing in his head, but he realised he’d have a bigger problem with communicating than his deafness: his earpiece was shattered. That had been the crack he’d heard when he’d been smacked in the head.
He’d need another comm.
Gritting his teeth, he looked back to the gunman’s corpse. There wasn’t much left of his head, and with the forced detachment which came of experience, he began rooting through the man’s pockets. Spare ammo clip. Pad connected to the earpiece - as gone as the man’s skull was - registering only one call from a blocked number, much like Wainwright’s setup when he’d tried to shoot Ramirez. And while Harrigan could use the pad for contact, with a sinking feeling he realised he didn’t know Ramirez’s frequency by heart. But there was something else about the pad which caught Harrigan’s eye, and he peered at the screen.
An activation button for the targeting beacon.
He looked over the side of the tilted car. First Landing Plaza was tiny below, details impossible to make out beyond the wire mesh over the square itself. But that was only with his eyes. With the scope and range of a 2288 Machenry rifle like the one lying
on the car floor, he would be able to see more.
And with a targeting beacon activated he could find where the trouble was.