“Yes, Colonel.”
Two soldiers knelt facing in opposite directions and fired smoke charges down the hall. The charges burst five meters down the hall on either side, filling the air with a dense cloud that contained enough particulates of different kinds to not only block vision but also every other wavelength from radar down to infrared. The irony was that something designed to hide those behind it was also the most foolproof means of spotting anyone in stealth armor that rendered the wearer effectively invisible. Nothing could move through the smoke without creating an outline that would reveal its presence.
The five-soldier contact team moved off to the left, Private Pogue in the lead, vanishing into the cloud in that direction.
With six soldiers in the armory watching the interior walls, and Drakon in the doorway, Gozen and the lieutenant distributed the remaining nine soldiers facing both ways down the corridor, then took positions themselves facing in opposite directions. Gozen settled herself comfortably, knowing that distractions caused by an uncomfortable posture might divert her attention at the wrong time.
“Listen up,” Drakon said to the defenders. “Anyone who comes through that smoke in regular armor is probably one of ours. Anyone in a stealth suit is probably the enemy. You are weapons free for anyone in stealth armor. If your target is wearing regular battle armor they may be friendly, so wait for either I, Colonel Gozen, or Lieutenant Develier to give a firing order. Does everyone understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Gozen replied, waiting as the rest of the soldiers present also answered. She wondered why Drakon had given his order that way instead of simply telling the soldiers to fire on stealth armor and wait for authorization to fire on regular armor. After a long moment of puzzlement, Gozen realized that the general had actually explained why the soldiers should treat the two kinds of targets differently. Instead of being given apparently arbitrary commands, Drakon’s soldiers now knew the rationale behind them.
It wasn’t the Syndicate just-do-as-you’re-told way. And it meant these soldiers were far more likely to be effective and carry out their orders properly.
No wonder these guys kicked our butts on Ulindi. Gozen sighted down her rifle at the smoke filling the hallway before her, confident that her choice to join Drakon’s forces had been a wise one.
“I’m picking up noise,” a soldier to one side of Gozen reported. “It sounded like energy rounds impacting.”
“My armor didn’t pick up anything,” Lieutenant Develier said.
“Check my armor systems, Lieutenant. There’s the record. See?”
“Undetermined,” Develier muttered. “It could have been impacts. Echoes of impacts.”
“Then they’re coming from the way I’m facing,” Gozen said. “Give us another smoke round down there,” she ordered the soldier next to her. “Everybody stay sharp. Lieutenant, keep your people watching the other way even if we start shooting. It might be a diversion, or they could be coming from both directions.”
Gozen found watching the smoke through her face shield’s gun sight to be a bit disorienting, but she kept her eyes locked on the slow swirls, watching for any sign of a shape.
Shapes appeared, moving very fast, bursting through the smoke so quickly they would have vanished again in moments.
Would have, if Gozen and the others facing that way hadn’t opened up the instant the shapes appeared. Solid slugs and energy bolts slammed into the attackers, each one causing a gap in the stealth protection even if they didn’t penetrate.
Gozen was firing as fast as she could aim when an object raced overhead from behind. The grenade exploded among the frontmost attackers, knocking two off their feet and slowing those behind them.
She rose to a crouch, ignoring the shots coming at her from the attackers, and put a careful round straight into the face shield of an enemy barely a meter away. The soldiers with her dropped three more who were still charging.
One attacker made it past them, spinning to face the door to the armory then jerking backward under the impact of a shot from Drakon at point-blank range. The attacker hit the wall behind, then before he or she could leap forward again a dozen more hits from the other soldiers riddled the attacker’s armor.
“Get your eyes back on sentry!” Gozen yelled, seeing that nearly every soldier was now facing inward toward where the last attacker had fallen. “Comply!”
Under the lash of that command the soldiers hastily took up positions facing outward again.
Gozen checked her display for signs of damage to her own armor and to the other soldiers. “Lieutenant, have one of the soldiers on your side get Private Honda inside the armory and try to patch him up. Medina, how bad are you?”
“I’ll live,” Medina said. “It hurts and my sensors are degraded, but I’m still combat effective, Colonel.”
A warning note sounded inside Gozen’s armor, accompanied by a blinking red danger symbol. She was still lining up her rifle when two shots were fired from soldiers near her.
The not-quite-dead-yet enemy who had suddenly swung a weapon toward them jerked under the hits, then lay still.
“Make sure they’re all dead,” Gozen snapped.
More shots, each one aimed at the helmet of a fallen foe. Then silence again.
“They’re vipers all right,” Drakon said.
Gozen didn’t have to turn to see that he was kneeling to examine the attacker who had gotten closest to him. Her display showed Drakon’s position behind her. “Sir, are you sure that one is safe?”
“Yeah. I used a minipulse to fry her armor’s systems. Her systems are all as dead as she is.”
“Vipers usually operate in units of twelve,” Gozen said. “We only killed six.”
“That’s a good start,” Lieutenant Develier commented, his voice a little ragged. Common soldiers might hate the agents of the Internal Security Service who were nicknamed snakes, but even that hate paled next to their revulsion toward the elite vipers who were often used to execute battlefield discipline on soldiers who were thought to have committed crimes, or who were judged to have been insufficiently aggressive, or who had just been picked at random to be killed as lessons to the other soldiers.
“We don’t know which direction the next six will come from,” Gozen warned. “Everybody stay sharp. Drop some more smoke in both directions.”
They waited again. Gozen, her armor automatically tied in to the command net when she suited up, could see that Drakon was trying to work around the jamming still blocking their longer-range communications and the tactical picture outside their line of sight.
Her display abruptly came to full life and incoming calls began clamoring for her attention. Gozen was trying to grasp all of the new information when she heard Drakon bellow a command.
“Focus on what’s in front of you!”
Cursing, she raised her weapon again just as more shapes appeared exiting from the smoke. Gozen and the others on her side pumped out shots, this time joined by two grenades that broke the enemy charge.
As the last attacker fell, Gozen felt a twinge of something wrong. “How many?” she demanded. “Get me a count!”
“Four… no five. Five, Colonel.”
“We got one viper unaccounted for!” She switched circuits to broadcast that to everyone in the building now that her links were active again. “Eleven vipers dead at my position. Likely one remaining enemy still active!”
Lieutenant Develier spoke again, his voice worried. “I can’t spot the five soldiers we sent to link up with the command center.”
“Dead zone!” someone called. “We got a dead zone on our sensor displays! It looks active, but it’s a dummy picture!”
“It’s inside the command center!”