the Noise Within (2010) (9 page)

The world came alive again. Doubtless only a matter of seconds had passed but it seemed far, far longer to the eyegee. Red dots appeared in his visor, concentrated in the corridor outside. Leyton snatched the gun up, almost yanking the tech's still-attached unit from the desk as he did so before the connecting lead fell free. The walls to the corridor were partition, which, to a gun of this calibre and at this range, might as well have been tissue paper. The eyegee squeezed the trigger and held it flat. Chewed-up shards of wood and plasterboard flew in all directions and screams came from the corridor beyond as the bullets tore into soldiers who had been attempting to storm the hard-pressed sergeant's position. Leyton moved his aim steadily along the wall, away from the door. Several dots winked out while others withdrew. The clip emptied, was ejected and replaced. He was at the door now, peering over Black's shoulder. The charge had been halted from one direction, but soldiers were edging forward from the other, using office doorways as cover.

Where the hell was Boulton? She was supposed to be ensuring this sort of thing didn't happen.

"Explosive," he sub-vocalised. At the first squeeze of the trigger one of the built-in grenades spun away down the corridor, at the second, with the gun held at a slightly greater elevation, its twin did the same. He grabbed Black and pulled him back into the room, clipping a replacement brace of explosive shells onto the gun even as the first explosion shook the building. The second followed an instant later.

"Energy," he sub-vocalised. He hated running the risk of depleting the gun but they had to force a way out of here, which meant clearing at least one direction of enemies, and 'energy' offered the precision needed to do that.

He tapped Black on the shoulder and pointed in the direction of the elevators, where the two shells had just exploded. "Cover me that way."

The sergeant nodded. The injured soldier pushed himself upright, as if determined to help, but Leyton waved him back.

As Black started laying down covering fire in one direction - his automatic chattering through the bullets - Leyton took careful aim in the other, using a combination of eyesight and visor to pick out even those targets hidden from view. With great deliberation, he squeezed the trigger, releasing it as one red light winked out before moving on to the next. He was a little surprised there weren't more of them, based on what he'd seen from the window. Perhaps Boulton had done some good after all. Either that or the other marines had sold their lives dearly.

After Leyton took out his fourth target, the remaining Holtan troops must have realised that staying where they were just enabled him to pick them off one by one. While two laid down covering fire of their own, causing Black to duck hastily back into the room, the others - five in total - again attempted a charge.

"Explosive."

The blast left one groaning, the rest unmoving and silent.

After the eyegee reverted to 'energy' and killed the soldier nearest him, the final defender chose the better part of valour and ran for the stairs.

"Glad you're on my side," Black murmured, with more than a hint of respect and perhaps a similar measure of envy.

The techs had gathered their equipment and were now crouching by the wounded marine. Leyton turned to them, whispering, "Ready?" Nervous nods all round. "Sergeant, lead the way to the stairs on my order. I'll cover. Be careful - one of them made a break for the stairwell."

Black grunted his understanding. The others clambered to their feet and bunched forward.

Leyton leaned out, catapulting his final explosive shell in the direction of the lifts, where some dozen red dots still showed.

"Projectile." He started firing even before the shell had landed, saying, slightly louder, "Now!" The others charged past him.

Leyton backed out, still firing. Contrary to his instructions, Black lagged behind the others, crouching where Holtan troopers had stood seconds before and firing towards the lifts and the remaining enemy. Needing no further urging, Leyton turned and ran, leaping over the bodies that littered stretches of the corridor, until he was past Black and able himself to stop to provide cover for the sergeant in turn.

There was now very little fire coming back at them. Leyton noted that only four red dots were showing on the visor, and there was no telling how many of those might be injured. Maybe they were going to get out of this after all.

One of their own troopers lay dead at the top of the stairs. The shimmer suit must have been damaged when the soldier was hit, because the body was clearly visible to the naked eye. Leyton saw the black shoulder flashes and realised this was the stubble-haired girl who had sat nearest him on the shuttle. Strange, but in the brief second they'd locked gazes he had felt a connection, professional to professional. He'd never even spoken to her, which was a fact he now briefly regretted.

He was about to move on when something caught his eye. One of the local soldiers sat slumped against the wall, blood staining the front of his uniform from a row of bullet holes. The man wore an unusual visor which had a faintly orange tinge. In fact, all the local troops seemed to have them. On impulse Leyton reached for the nearest one, pulling it off the dead soldier's head.

He slid his own visor up and held this orange one to his eyes, and cursed. "Sergeant!" The man glanced back from the top of the stairs. "These visors negate the effect of our shimmer suits."

"Shit!"

Which just about summed up his own feelings. The goggles on shimmer suits were designed to allow wearers to see each other, but intelligence hadn't suggested that Holt's defenders were equipped with anything as sophisticated as this. Either somebody had got things badly wrong in the preparation for this mission or there had been some major changes around here very recently. Whatever the case, their intel was clearly screwed across the board as far as this outing was concerned. It was beginning to look as if cutting short the gun's crash-course mission briefing during their approach had been the best decision he'd made all day; most of it would have been even more worthless than he'd feared. He didn't blame Black in the least for broadcasting the news about the visors over the radio for the benefit of his surviving men.

Now he thought about it, there was somebody Leyton wouldn't mind contacting as well. "Boulton, are you still with us?"

"Still here, still busy," came the clipped response.

Doing what, he wondered.

The number of bodies sprawled across stairs and on the landing below paid testament to how hard the stubble-haired girl had fought. They had to carefully pick their way around the fallen to avoid tripping over. Hampered by the wounded soldier, the two techs had not gone far ahead and Black was soon able to resume his position at point. Leyton stayed at the back, keeping a wary eye on the red dots on the fifth floor, but they made no attempt to follow. No sign of the one who had fled down the stairwell, either. In fact, the visor showed no other hostiles in the building. So, had they successfully dealt with everything the locals had to throw at them? Judging by the occasional burst of gunfire from outside, not yet. Who were the Holtans engaging? Was it the two men Black had assigned to cover their retreat or had Boulton finally decided to pull her weight? They'd find out soon enough, no doubt, as the sergeant led them from the fire exit stairs towards the front door. Again, a good choice; the side door was almost bound to be smaller, less easy to escape from and the perfect place at which to get pinned down. The more Leyton saw of Black the more he approved of him.

It looked as if the marine left to guard the front entrance had chosen to make a stand behind the security desk on the gallery floor. At least, that's where they found his body. A big man, whom the eyegee remembered from the shuttle due to the smashed remains of an overlarge gun which now lay beside him on the floor.

Black was already halfway down the front stairs, the others behind him. The visor didn't show any hostiles in the immediate vicinity but Leyton still felt uneasy. There could be a ring of snipers outside the visor's range all targeting the front door for all he knew. Gunfire still sounded sporadically, a reminder that they weren't home and dry yet, as if any were needed.

"Boulton, what's your status?"

"Bruised and dirty, with a compromised shimmer suit. You?"

Compared to her previous communications this was almost a speech. Leyton didn't respond immediately. He joined Black who had paused at the front door.

"Think I saw some movement out there," the sergeant told him.

The visor agreed. Now that the eyegee had moved forward to the very front of the building it showed a cluster of red dots at the extreme reach of its range. "You're right," he told Black. "Looks as if they've set up between the two buildings across the avenue, waiting for us to come out."

"Figures. What do you reckon, should we try the other door?"

Even as the sergeant asked the question, the visor showed a mass of red dots streaming up to and into the other entrance.

"Too late. They're already coming through that way in force. We just ran out of options."

"If we ever get out of here," the sergeant muttered, "I'm gonna kill whoever drew up the intel for this mission."

"You'll have to stand in line." He switched back to the radio. "Boulton, we need some of that interference of yours to clear our path, and we need it now!"

"I'm on it."

Seconds later an explosion from within the ranks of entrenched local soldiers suggested that she actually meant what she said. Black meanwhile was talking calmly into his radio, instructing the two soldiers he'd left to cover their retreat to move up and support Boulton.

"Come on," Leyton urged, pushing through the door himself and firing as he emerged. An armoured truck had been parked across the gap between the two buildings they'd used in their approach. As the eyegee watched, the truck lifted slightly and rocked on its wheels, while the top peeled back like an opening seed pod to vent fire and fury, the accompanying roar only slightly muffled by the truck's armoured hide. Red dots winked out. Gunfire came from the wrecked vehicle's vicinity and the dots kept fading. Only a few in that direction now and it looked as if Boulton had their attention, so Leyton directed Black and the other survivors that way - the quickest route back to the shuttle.

At that moment, the still-murky sky was lit by a bright flash from somewhere high in the atmosphere. The navy's diversion. Better late than never.

When they arrived at the outskirts of this system, two vessels had been spotted in orbit around Holt. Both were identified as freebooters responsible for assorted acts of piracy and both had 'shoot on sight' directives logged against them. The plan had been for the navy to destroy the two ships at roughly the same time as the team on the ground made their incursion, so distracting the authorities' attention. It seemed unlikely that taking out ships in orbit would have produced such a spectacular display, however, so Leyton presumed this was the navy's way of being additionally helpful by triggering attention-grabbing incendiaries in-atmosphere; either that or they had just taken out a shuttle or something of the sort. Leyton didn't really care, explosions in the sky were fine by him whatever the cause - anything that increased their chances of getting off this rock alive had his vote.

They reached the smouldering truck. No red dots showing here now. Behind the wrecked vehicle, a dozen or so orange-visored corpses and a clutter of dropped weapons, beyond which stood Boulton, flanked by a single marine.

Black looked at the man and asked, "Cutter?"

The marine shook his head. Four down.

Red dots again, coming out of the control centre - the soldiers who had gone in via the other door.

"Move!" Leyton urged.

They all ran to the derelict shuttle, where Leyton squatted down, preparing to cover the others' retreat, but just then the air reverberated with the sound of engines and he looked up to see a fully operational shuttle,
their
shuttle, coming in to land on the field beyond, so he turned and sprinted with the rest. A few optimistic shots pursued them but little else. The locals appeared to have lost heart. Somebody seemed to step up and take responsibility, however, as the shooting suddenly became more accurate. Leyton almost stumbled as one shot ricocheted off his left side - unable to penetrate the body armour at this distance - while, another found a softer target. As Leyton caught up with the younger tech, the man jerked and cried out. Blood spattered the eyegee's uniform and he watched the red stain of it blossom on the man's lower arm, immediately below the body armour's seam. It was hardly a fatal wound, but the surprise and abrupt pain were enough to cause the tech to stumble and fall. Leyton pulled the man back to his feet and helped him onward to where the others were already piling onto the waiting craft.

They lifted immediately. Shimmer suits powered down and hoods were pulled back to reveal relieved smiles mingled with wide-eyed surprise at still being alive. Now that they were out of immediate danger, Leyton had time to think about the mission itself. He caught the older technician's eye. "Well, did you get anything?"

The older man tapped his valise. "There's a lot of data in here and it'll need to be analysed, but from what I saw... I don't think so. There was no mention of
The Noise Within
as far as I could tell. Wherever she's set up base, I don't reckon it's here."