the Noise Within (2010)

In memory of Bill Whates, who, I like to think,
would have been proud of his son.

First published 2010 by Solaris an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,
Riverside House, Osney Mead,
Oxford, OX1 0ES, UK

www.solarisbooks.com

EPUB ISBN: 978-1-84997-172-0
MOBI ISBN: 978-1-84997-173-7

Copyright © Ian Whates 2010

The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

Designed & typeset by Rebellion Publishing
eBook production by Oxford-eBooks

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

L
eyton crouched beneath the wall, waiting for the right moment. Two red dots moved across the inside of his visor, steadily converging: the two guards on their rounds, about to cross almost immediately above him.

As they drew nearer, he stepped away from the wall and raised his gun, holding it ready.

"Another two degrees higher," whispered a voice in his ear.

He hated when it did that, but made the minute adjustment in any case. As the two dots on his visor touched, he squeezed the trigger. The gun featured two grenades built into the unorthodox and slightly bulky base of its barrel. One of these now flipped up, to be catapulted forward, spinning as it flew over the wall and onto the balcony beyond. Brief seconds later, the night's stillness was ripped apart as the shell exploded.

Something flew past, arcing over his head to land wetly on the lawn; it might have been an arm or some other body part, but Leyton didn't wait to find out. He was already racing up the broad stairway, gun levelled and firing as he reached the veranda, sending a stream of pulsed sonics at the glass doors before him. Bullet-proof and reinforced, the glass had resolutely withstood the force of the blast, but the machine-gun-quick pulses set up a resonance within its structure before delivering a sonic hammer-blow. The doors shattered spectacularly, enabling him to run without pausing through a curtain of glassy splinters and into the building beyond.

More red dots; three of them, approaching at a run. He sub-vocalised the word 'projectile' and then moved quickly away from the doors to stand against a wall, relying on the eye-foxing qualities of his shimmer suit to do the rest.

Three more guards came charging from the narrow corridor that emerged beside the stairs. They ran straight past him and then slowed as they approached the gaping expanse of doorway, seeking an enemy.

"Body armour," whispered the voice.

Now standing at their backs, he raised the gun and fired, raking a stream of bullets across the trio at knee level. Body armour protected the torso, but not the legs. All three went down, screaming. One of them let off a burst of bullets from his own clutched weapon, an instinctive twitch of the trigger finger as he fell; enough to turn the face of the man beside him to bloody pulp.

Again, Leyton didn't pause to finish them off but charged on, taking the marble stairs two at a time. Sensors and alarms showed up in his visor as orange beams criss-crossing the stairs. He ignored them. If every alarm in the place wasn't going off already, then these guys had some serious technical issues.

"Automated weapon placement," the voice whispered, and his visor highlighted the centre of a fast-approaching pillar which marked the top of the stairs.

"Best counter?"

"Energy, not projectile."

"Energy!" he snapped at once, then raised the gun and fired. The centre of the post exploded, a fraction of a second before he reached it. Shards of marble stung his legs, slicing through the shimmer suit and damaging its integrity, though hopefully he wouldn't need it to pass close inspection from here on in.

He ordered the gun back to 'projectile', knowing how quickly 'energy' depleted its power reserves. Two more red dots went down as he tore along the corridor. A spent ammo clip was jettisoned and replaced, and then he was at The Door.

The visor reported two occupants, one hiding behind a false reinforced wall in the room's left hand corner, the second pressed against the wall to one side of the door. The latter was armed. No concealed weapons.

"Armour-piercing."

The gun carried just three such shells, tips constructed of a polymer tougher than diamond with sharpened edges that would put a razor to shame. He put two of them through the wall and the man hiding against it, then kicked the door open and stepped into the room.

The readings on his visor confirmed the identity of the surviving occupant. He fired the final armour-piercing round through the false wall and the man behind it, then swapped instantly to projectile and put a dozen bullets through the hole left by the shell. The red dot faded. Mission accomplished: scratch one drugs baron.

But more red dots were converging on this room from both directions in the corridor beyond.

His shimmer suit was still sound everywhere but the legs, so he dropped to his belly when peering out into the corridor and fired to his left from the resultant prone position, instantly rolling over and doing the same to the right, before scrambling back into the room. There were a few bursts of answering fire, but all of it far too late. A couple of the red dots winked out on either side and the others stopped their advance, for the moment at least.

It was going to have to be the window. He raised the gun.

"Opening the window might be quieter," said a familiar voice.

Good point. He pressed the wall control and the glass panes instantly slid upwards, smooth and silent - the system clearly not fingerprint-coded, which made sense in a place with multiple occupants. Besides, the focus of security here was to keep people
out
rather than in. Not that they were doing such a great job of that, either.

He returned to the door and fired a further burst blind down the corridor for good measure, then holstered the gun and dashed across the room, using the noise of the red dots' inevitable response to mask any slight sound as he eased himself out of the window. No red dots outside, thank God. For a brief moment he hung from the sill by straining fingertips, his arms fully extended, before letting go, to roll as he landed on the veranda. He came to his feet and sprinted the few steps to the wall, which he vaulted, pivoting on one hand while gripping the balustrade's top in order to come down in its shadow. He crouched, hugging the wall as he had before entering the house.

Only once he was there, at the very edge of the building's dampener field, did Leyton open up the appropriate frequency and fire off the retrieval signal; a microsecond burst on a very tight beam which would make it impossible to pinpoint should anyone be trying to.

Now all that remained was to wait.

Voices from above him, presumably from the window - the red dots still one step behind. He edged along the wall, crouching low, just in case his exit had been picked up on any security cameras.

Where was his damn pick-up?

Four red dots closing fast, too quickly to be human.

"War hounds," the voice whispered; "armour plating grafted to head and shoulders."

He knew the type: all augmented muscles and steel teeth. They
could
be stopped by a bullet if you were very accurate and very lucky, but there were four of them, and he didn't feel
that
lucky.

"Sonics," he sub-vocalised, reasoning that dogs were sensitive to sound and so might be confused, distressed, or even stopped by it. Though, of course, anything he did was likely to leave him exposed to the guards at the window or elsewhere. Where the hell was that pick-up? He felt a mounting sense of doom, but was determined to fight until the last.

A long bass howl filled the night, sounding as if it came from just around the corner of the house. Seconds left before they arrived. He licked his lips, aware that he was breathing harder than at any time during the mission. Would they come down the steps, over the low wall, or both?

He wanted to step away from the wall and give himself some room, but knew that would leave him exposed. Guards were bound to be hot on the hounds' heels.