the Noise Within (2010) (6 page)

He paused and stared at each of their faces in turn. Then he continued, very deliberately, "We are the only people
anywhere
who might stand a chance of actually beating mankind's first AI-controlled starship."

CHAPTER THREE

A
few seats away to his left a marine snapped open the magazine compartment on an oversized cannon of a gun which was currently perched on his lap - the type of weapon that Leyton would never dream of carrying into battle in a million years; too heavy, too restricting. After a few seconds' close examination, the man slammed the flap shut again in a dramatic gesture which was clearly designed to emphasise his macho credentials and reassure anyone interested that he was not in the least bit nervous. A sure sign that he was. The soldier caught Leyton watching him and glared, as if inviting a comment.

Their destination, Holt, was a grubby ball of rock at the fringe of human space. Fourth planet out in a solar system which boasted several smaller worlds and one more distant gas giant, it was a little smaller than Earth and a little denser, with marginally less gravity and a day-night cycle which was fractionally longer. This was a barren, inhospitable world for the most part, the only exception being around its equatorial belt, where a few humans scratched a living. It boasted just a single major town - a former mining settlement.

Holt had a port, a trickle of exports from the few mines which stubbornly refused to close down, an abundance of drinking houses, a relaxed attitude to the law, and a dislike for the new order. Holt had been on the losing side in the War. Memories lingered in this region and resentment ran deep. It was a place where terms such as 'resistance' and 'piracy' were easily confused. In short, this was a perfect bolthole for the freebooters and opportunists who plied their trade in the gaps, the gaping holes which were inevitable in the fabric of a society still knitting itself together following more than a century of conflict. This was one of several fringe worlds to declare independence at the end of the War, and the newly constituted government, the United League of Allied Worlds, had too many other priorities at the time to afford it much notice. A situation destined not to last. Leyton suspected that the name 'Holt' appeared on a long list somewhere and it was only a matter of time before the ULAW authorities turned their attention this way. In the meantime, the current situation gave the authorities all the excuse they needed to teach this rebellious world a lesson.

Until a few hours ago, Leyton had never heard of Holt. Now he knew far more about the place than he ever wanted to - the terrain around their projected landing area, the layout of the town centre, approaches and entry points to the spaceport's admin and control centre, the strength of opposition they were likely to face from local militia, population density...

He felt a little punch-drunk, as if he were being shunted from pillar to post without the chance to catch his breath. Everything was being done in a rush. They hadn't even paused to give him a proper debrief following his last mission, but instead had thrown him straight into this one. In place of the usual detailed preparation, he was being force-fed the lowdown on the target world through his visor-gun link while in transit. Diagrams, schematics and 3D mock-ups flashed across his vision, while the gun's placid voice unveiled detail after nit-picking detail. No formal briefing, no opportunity to get a feel of the situation, just a constant flow of facts on the run. Until, that is, he put a stop to it by saying, "Enough!"

"Know thine enemy," the gun admonished.

"I now know plenty, thank you."

"The condensed information has been carefully calculated to..."

"... drive me nuts. I said 'enough'!"

The woman in the seat opposite smiled sympathetically, as if to indicate she knew exactly what he was going through. But he didn't trust that smile. It was easy enough to twitch the corners of your mouth upwards, but when he looked beyond that surface expression at the eyes which watched him from beneath a visor identical to his own, they seemed mocking, suggesting that she was laughing
at
him rather than with him. He allowed his gaze to slide away, feeling indifferent to the assumed superiority he had sensed in the woman from the first. Leyton had no idea if she had a problem with men in general or just with him specifically. Nor did he care.

He knew most of the other eyegees - after all, there were as yet only a dozen or so of them in total - but she was new to him. She had been introduced as Boulton, and was perhaps a year or two younger than him. Her body was as fit and well toned as he'd expect in an eyegee, and she was pretty enough in an austere sort of way, but there was a coldness about her, a frostiness which precluded attraction. They'd exchanged polite banalities on meeting, enough for her to make it clear that she preferred their interaction to remain at this sort of superficial level. Surprisingly, despite the rarity of encountering a fellow intelligent gun-toter, so did he.

He wondered whether Boulton's gun had been lecturing
her
en-route. Probably not; doubtless she had been afforded the luxury of a proper briefing.

Having dismissed the girl, his gaze settled on the other members of their 'team'. Tellingly, they all sat a little away from the two eyegees, even the soldiers. It was subconscious, he felt sure, but there was a two-seat gap between Boulton and the rest of the group; three on his side of the craft. Along from Boulton, one of the two techs fiddled with laptop equipment of some sort, forehead creased in a frown as if unhappy with something. His older colleague appeared oblivious to any problem and was currently leaning forward, nattering to the trooper who sat nearest to Leyton. She wore the black flashes of special forces on her suit and her ginger hair was little more than freshly cropped stubble, lending her head an angular, block-like severity. Despite that, she looked to be barely out of her teens. Beside her, one of the other troopers sat back with eyes closed, saving his energy for when it would be needed. The man seemed skinny, barely bulking his suit out at all. His relaxed posture might account for some of that, but not all. Opposite him sat the marine with the cumbersome gun. He was staring away from the two eyegees, towards the front of the shuttle. The gun was now propped against an empty seat beside him, its butt resting on the floor while the business end pointed towards the ceiling. It stood as tall as its seated owner. Leyton just hoped the marine had remembered to leave the safety on. Beyond the two techs sat the soldiers' commander, a Sergeant Black. He was evidently absorbed in checking his shimmer suit's various sub-systems for the umpteenth time. An obsessive-compulsive, but presumably that didn't interfere with his efficiency or he wouldn't have been there.

The stubble-haired girl glanced across at Leyton. They locked gazes for an instant - long enough for him to note how pale a blue her eyes were; almost grey. She nodded before turning her attention back to the tech - an expression which conveyed respect but no hint of warmth. There were special forces and special forces, it seemed.

Leyton decided to emulate the example of the skinny trooper and sat back, closing his eyes, but found himself overly aware of the woman in the seat opposite. He couldn't shake the feeling that she was staring at him, though he resisted the temptation to open his eyes again to check.

It was rare for members of the so-called Intelligent Gun Unit to work together. The technology involved in creating the guns and the human-weapon pairings was prohibitively expensive and still in its infancy, which was why there were so few of them. As a result, demand for the gun-human partnerships, across a spread of nearly three hundred inhabited worlds, moons and stations, far outstripped their availability. Besides, the eyegees were invariably loners by nature.

So why did this smug cow remind him so much of Mya?

Leyton knew that elsewhere in the sector, at that very moment, a stealth shuttle similar to this one was dropping towards another planet bearing its own hand-picked team which likewise boasted two eyegees. For the powers-that-be to commit as many as four of them to a single venture spoke volumes about the importance they placed on the mission.

No question,
The Noise Within
was the hot topic of the moment, though all this seemed like complete overkill to him. After all, pirates were hardly the usual concern of eyegees. What was the navy there for, for goodness sake?

They came in hard and fast, shedding velocity as the craft tore through the planet's atmosphere. How in the name of heaven this qualified as a 'stealth' shuttle was beyond Leyton.

He must have sub-vocalised the thought, because the gun responded. "Circumstances dictate this particular approach; the craft
is
capable of far more subtle atmospheric insertion. Currently, much of the energy generated by our entry is being absorbed and stored by the hull, and this will be used after landing to maintain stealth functions. Velocity, heat signature and other indicators have been carefully calculated to match those of a meteor smaller than the actual shuttle. Meteor strikes are not unknown in this region."

The eyegee let the words wash over him. Half of this he knew already, while the other half undoubtedly consisted of leftovers from the aborted briefing. If the gun was really this determined to impart its programmed knowledge, best to get it out of the way now rather than later on when they were groundside and into the mission proper.

Without warning the craft shuddered and all on board were thrown sideways in their harnesses. Leyton knew this must mark the release of the 'cannon ball', which meant they were nearly down. A lump of iron fired from the craft to smash into the ground a short distance from their designated landing site, the cannon ball served two purposes: the act of firing would rob the shuttle of some of its momentum and, just as importantly, the impact would be consistent enough with a meteor strike to keep any groundside seismologists happy. Almost immediately on the heels of this jolt came the landing itself, which, theoretically, was 'cushioned', the shuttle's passengers spared the worst effects of accumulated g-force as the craft dumped a significant amount of residual velocity at the very last minute. Leyton had experienced plenty of 'cushioned' landings in the past so knew what to expect. A huge weight pressed down on him, as if determined to grind his body into the seat. One of the techs let out a muffled whimper, so presumably he was that lucky individual for whom this was a whole new experience, but everyone else bore the brief seconds of intense discomfort with stoic determination. Thankfully, it really
did
last for only seconds, and the pressure was guaranteed not to be beyond the body's ability to cope; though Leyton had yet to discover who issued said guarantee.

The weight lifted. They were down.

Leyton slapped the release and the seat straps sprang open. He was on his feet instantly and was first across to the door, arriving even as it hissed open to allow the landing ramp to unfurl. A wall of chill air greeted him, sucking the comparative warmth from the confines of the shuttle's interior and stinging his cheeks. Before the sun had a chance to warm the world, temperatures here tended to hover just a little above freezing. Breath plumed around his face and Leyton shivered, even though he was ready for the cold. Fortunately, there was no time to hang around. Without waiting for the ramp to fully deploy, he crouched and dropped to the ground - actions made only marginally awkward by the armoured shimmer suit. Boulton was out a second or two behind him, dropping from the shuttle on the other side of the ramp.

Leyton pulled the hood of the shimmer suit up, sealing it around his visor and activating the suit itself. He always left this to the very last minute, feeling one step away from reality once the suit was sealed and ears and nostrils were confined to the same limited space as the rest of him. Oh, the suit's sound system was excellent, but it was still hearing once removed and provided an oddly disassociated sense of being.

Around him, the marines were doing the same; sealing their suits in preparation of moving out.

The gun stayed silent, which meant there was no obvious danger close enough to worry about. Nonetheless, Leyton scanned the terrain, examining every nook and cranny for sign of potential threat. The area was a barren one, depicted in shades of listless grey, probably not helped by their choice of landing time - a few minutes before dawn, intended to catch as few of the locals awake and alert as possible. They had come down behind a low bluff of rock which hid them from the town. The terrain in the immediate vicinity seemed to consist predominantly of loose stone, mosses and sparse tufts of scruffy grass, as if more complex plants struggled to establish themselves here.

The ULAW strategists who planned this mission reckoned that stealth was likely to prove more effective than force, so their party had deliberately been kept small. The idea was to ghost in, grab the information they needed and get out again before the locals even knew they were there - less complicated and decidedly less messy than a full-blown military assault. Personally, Leyton could have done with the group being smaller still. A total of one would have suited him perfectly.

Their progress was to be aided by the navy, who were supposed to provide a distraction at the appropriate time, but the eyegee knew better than to count on such things.

Their actual deployment had been settled in advance. Leyton took point, moving out immediately while the soldiers organised themselves in protective formation around the two techs. Boulton would lag behind and act as rearguard, so maximising the cover provided by the two eyegees.