The Noise Within

by Ian Whates

  He didn't really feel as if he was a genuine spacer any more and pined for the challenges of the shit-heap ships of yesteryear. On The Lady J he even had his own cabin for goodness sake, and yes, even it had carpets.

  Despite all this, Kyle still loved The Lady J. She was a beautiful vessel. It was just that actually working on her proved to be so utterly boring, despite the occasional diversion provided by Marie. He was fast coming to the conclusion that The Lady J's beauty was of the sort best admired from a distance, unless you could afford to be one of her passengers, of course.

  Fortunately, he was not the only person on board relegated to virtual irrelevance by the efficiency of the ship's systems. In Mac, he found a fellow sufferer and soul mate. The Lady J effectively flew herself, which meant that her captain's primary function seemed to be to smile at passengers and entertain them at the captain's table during formal dinners. So the pair of them spent much of their time hidden away on the bridge, where they swapped anecdotes about the days when they had been real spacemen rather than highly paid back-up systems.

  "And what's wrong with swans?" Kyle wanted to know.

  "Nothing, nothing." Mac held up a defensive hand. "It's just that I've heard enough about them for today, that's all."

  "All right, you pick a subject then."

  "Whatever I like?"

  "Anything."

  "Okay; that little trolley-dolly of yours, are her tits really -"

  "- Anything except Marie."

  Mac snorted. "I might have known."

  Further conversation was interrupted by a gentle alarm beep, an innocent 'ping', which was to signal an end to the pair's boredom once and for all. At their failure to respond immediately, the sound repeated, a little louder this time.

  "What's that?" Kyle wondered.

  "Just The Lady's way of letting me know that there's another ship in this sector," Mac replied, swivelling his chair and sitting forward to view the screens. Once he did so, he frowned.

  "Problem?"

  "Maybe. Our new companion is surprisingly close, and she seems to be chasing our course."

  Curious, Kyle stood up and strolled across, peering over his friend's shoulder to get a better look at the screen. "Coming up on us pretty quickly, too."

  "Hmm, I spotted that. Remind me, what's the maximum we can get out of those shiny little engines of yours?"

  He knew the answer to that, as did Kyle. "I forget," he said, daring Mac to challenge him.

  "Well whatever it is, how about we give The Lady a little exercise?" He ran his open palm from left to right over a sensor screen. A line of colour travelled across the crescent-shaped display, following the movement of his hand. The line changed from amber to red as it went, until the previously blank screen glowed a vibrant crimson.

  Being The Lady J, there was no vibration, no shudder to alert the passengers to the fact that the engines, inert since the minor course adjustments needed as they exited the last jump point, had started up again. The ship's gravity field would protect them from all sense of movement, so, as yet, there was nothing to cause those on board any alarm. Except for Kyle and Mac, of course, and they were beginning to get alarmed enough for the whole shipful, especially when the vessel behind matched their increase in speed without apparent effort, reacting the instant they began to accelerate and continuing to close at exactly the same rate as before.

  "The bastard's playing with us," Mac muttered. "Well, I suppose we might as well try being polite." He pressed a control. "This is the cruiser The Lady J, out of New Apolis, to unknown ship. Please identify yourself and state your intentions."

  To neither man's surprise, the request met with complete silence.

  They started to get some telemetry back on the other ship; in fact, they began to get a lot more information than expected.

  "Not shy, is she?" Mac commented.

  "What the hell is this thing?"

  "I was hoping you were going to tell me."

  "I've never seen anything like her," Kyle admitted, as the figures continued to roll in and the computer started to sketch an image of their pursuer from the data. A bulbous, ungainly craft, bristling with protrusions and arrays.

  The weapons systems revealed were daunting in the extreme.

  "I take it we're not going to fight." The Lady carried a limited complement of missiles and mines, enough to reassure the passengers that they were not wholly unprotected.

  "Are you kidding? Her armament reduces what we've got to the level of a peashooter. If we try to fight it'll only annoy them. I don't even recognise what half that stuff is, let alone what it might do to us."

  Kyle peered at the screen. "Those two have to be energy projectors of some kind, but I've no idea what sort."

  Mac grunted.

  As if to prove the point, twin beams of energy shot forward from their silent nemesis, neatly bracketing The Lady J in passing. The ship's systems efficiently analysed their composition and strength.

  "Shit," Mac said. "If either of those were actually aimed at us and got past The Lady's engine burn..."

  "Yeah, makes an impressive calling card. It's nice to be proved right and everything, but just this once, I could have lived with being wrong."

  Predictably after such a display, the pursuer chose that moment to break her silence. It was a cool, collected, male voice which addressed them. "This is The Noise Within, out of your worst nightmares. Please shut down your engines and prepare to be boarded, or face the consequences."

  Kyle and Mac stared at each other. Eventually, Kyle said, "I wish he'd stop beating about the bush and say what he really means."

  Mac gave a sour smile. "Funny."

  "It's at times like this I'm glad you're the captain and I'm just the grease monkey."

  "The only grease you've been anywhere near on this trip has been the stuff you put on your hair."

  There followed a few seconds' further silence. "I don't suppose we've got much choice."

  "Not unless you can think of something I haven't."

  Kyle shook his head.

  Mac moved his palm across the crescent-shaped screen again, this time from right to left, shutting down the engines. The ship would continue to sail forward, of course, but at a constant velocity, making it easier for their pursuer to match speed and dock.

  "We'd better call in the service crew supervisors and bring them up to date before saying anything to the passengers," Mac said.

  "I'll wake the other shift as well." He didn't see any reason why the off-duty members of the ship's operational crew - Mac's co-pilot and his own assistant - should miss out on the fun. "And, Mac?"

  "Yeah?"

  "You know all that complaining I did earlier about being bored? Forget I ever said it, will you?"

  "Consider it forgotten."

  Kyle saw what Mac was busy calculating and asked, "How long have we got?"

  "Well, allowing for her mass and assuming she can perform to a similar spec as The Lady J," which seemed unlikely given the quality of their ship's drive, "I'd say we have about ninety-three minutes before she can be in position to board."

  The Noise Within managed it in a little under sixty-seven minutes, which went far beyond the limits of being impressive and entered the realms of scary.

  The problem the pursuing ship had just overcome so effortlessly was not so much that of overhauling The Lady J - she had already shown she could do that - as doing so in such a way that her speed exactly matched The Lady's as the two ships drew alongside. If she had continued accelerating at the same rate as when Mac shut the engines down, she could have been there a lot quicker but would have shot past The Lady and been forced to turn around and start again. Starships are big behemoths and Kyle knew it took time and deft piloting to slow one down and match velocities with another ship. Much of her final approach would have been spent decelerating rather than accelerating.

  He was there with Mac, Brad the elusive navigator, and the other two members of the ship's crew - Bryant and Sol -
when the main hatch hissed open and six armed and armoured figures came aboard. The armour and weapons were the type of heavy-duty kit that Kyle had not seen since the height of the War, and the boarders operated with clinical, military proficiency. They kept their helmets on and visors darkened, so no one had a chance to see their faces.

  The pirates' intelligence was impressive, because they winnowed out who they wanted and didn't want from among the sixty-odd passengers in no time at all, ending up with a party of eight hostages, three women and five men. Even Kyle recognised two of those selected, a politician and an actress, and guessed these would be the eight with the highest net worth.

  Clearly it was not just the passengers their captors had designs on, but also The Lady J herself, because everyone else, Kyle and Mac included, was herded to the life boats. Fully provisioned and well equipped, the boats would support the whole party for several weeks, and this was not so off the beaten track that they wouldn't be discovered before then, particularly given the strength of the life boats' distress beacons.

  A few of the passengers whimpered and one or two cried, but none of them gave the pirates any real problems. In fact, they had given the service crew a great deal more aggravation before the actual boarding, when hysterics and threats abounded, as if the situation were somehow the crew's fault or something they could affect.

  At the very last, as everyone was about to be forced into the boats, one of the pirates, his voice turned flat and tinny by the helmet, said, "We're looking for volunteers to join our crew. Anyone interested?"

  Kyle was amazed to hear a voice declare, "Yes, me." He was even more amazed to discover it was his own.

  Philip Kaufman was not looking forward to this evening. He hated public speaking and avoided it wherever possible, which was ironic when you considered that this was precisely what he was most famous for. Not his ideas, not his achievements, but for talking about them. Though, of course, that wasn't really him doing the talking, and therein lay the crux of the problem.

  Three outfits were laid out on the bed, ranging from traditional black evening suit - a one-piece affair with smart trousers that could be adjusted from above-the-knee shorts to full-length longs with a single thought, depending on circumstances and local fashion expectations, to the purple tarlken - a wraparound garment harking back to the togas of ancient Rome, favoured for formal occasions on certain provincial worlds. The suit in the middle, the uniform, had been a mistake and was no longer in the reckoning.

  He gazed in the mirror again, picturing himself in each of the outfits in turn. False modesty had never one of Philip's failings, yet at the same time he had few delusions about his appearance; a little taller than average, with a physique that leant towards the athletic but had never been impressively so and a face which boasted pleasant enough features without any that were striking; 'reassuring' was how one girlfriend had described it. His dark eyes were matched by dark brown hair, worn conservatively short even by his own estimate - a habit he'd adopted when first taking control of the company, a deliberate gesture intended to emphasise his maturity and help cement his authority. He smiled into the mirror, revealing a row of even, white teeth, testing what people would see later. The expression helped to round out a face that sometimes verged on being too angular and the result was not too shabby, if he said so himself. Philip was fully aware that the camera liked him even if it would never quite love him.

  The truth was, he was capable of carrying off either suit well enough.

  He knew what he ought to wear, what he would be expected to wear, but a certain impish side of him was tempted by the tarlken. After all, he was the Guest of Honour, so could get away with being unconventional. Besides, if they would insist that he actually attend their ghastly function in person, let it be on his terms. On the other hand, in the tarlken he would stand out like a sore thumb and that would only make him more self-conscious and, if he fumbled the speech, seem even more ridiculous.

  All this fussing amounted to procrastination, and he knew it.

  Yet the fact remained that he was about to stand up, open his mouth and disappoint people. It was inevitable. He could never hope to match up to the competition, even though said competition was, in a sense, himself. The problem was that all those famed lectures and speeches had not really been delivered by him at all. Oh, those were his thoughts, his words and they appeared to come out of his mouth, but they had all been delivered by his partial. After all, that was the whole purpose of partials: to do all the things the original organic individual had no time or inclination to do themselves, such as answer the door, take calls, fend off the unwanted, conduct basic research via the infonet, and even deal with routine interviews and deliver lectures if they were sophisticated enough. His was. Of course, the partial was not Philip Kaufman as such, but only a reflection of certain elements that made up the actual man.

  The thing was, with partials there would always be the temptation to tinker, to tweak ever so slightly. After all, if you could have a lecture delivered by an idealised version of you rather than by an exact reflection of flawed reality, why not go for it?

  All the imperfections he perceived in himself had been ironed out from those elements of Philip Kaufman that constituted his partial. It was the perfect orator: suave, confident, never losing its place or pausing for an 'ehm,' each phrase pitched in the appropriate tone, every syllable delivered with exactly the right emphasis. How could the real him possibly hope to compete with that?

  Ridiculous but true, he was about to fall short of his own partial.

  A discreet tone sounded in his ear.

  He sighed. A call was the very last thing Philip needed right now. Though maybe not; maybe this was exactly what he needed: something to while away what little time remained, so that when the call ended he would be forced to make a snap decision, throwing on one of the two garments and rushing down to the waiting limo. A decision he could then regret all the way to the venue.

  "Who is it, Phil?"

  "Your father."

  Oh no, not now. The announcement sent a chill down his spine. This was not his father, of course; his father was dead. It had been typical of the man, though, to ratify his partial; typical of his arrogance. He couldn't have it erased like any normal person, or allow it to fade after a decent interval, no, not the great Malcolm Kaufman. Once confirmation came in that he was dying, he had to enhance the thing, uploading as much of himself as modern technology would allow, so that he might live on in virtual form: trans-human. Usually, such ghosts lasted only until the money ran out - supporting a partial carrying that much detail was expensive. Unfortunately, Malcolm Kaufman had enough credit at the time of his death to leave his son comfortably off and support his partial for an eternity or two.

  That was a decision Philip would never forgive him for.

  "I've told you not to refer to him as that." Why did Phil persist in doing so in any case? A display of solidarity among partials, perhaps? He hesitated, tempted to refuse the call, but he knew that if he did so that would only be storing up aggravation for the future. "Put him through. Audio only."

  "Mal, I haven't got much time."

  "Yes, yes, I know, the Gügenhall lecture," his father's voice said dismissively, "but this is important."

  And the Gügenhall isn't?

  "Go on."

  "You'll need to patch in the visual."

  Again Philip hesitated. Hearing his father's voice was difficult enough; watching the man's face as he spoke to him from beyond the grave was too much, so he never activated the visuals when Mal called.

  "Don't worry, it won't be me you'll be looking at."

  At least that was something. "What then?"

  "Go visual and you'll see."

  Despite the fleeting conviction that he was going to regret this, Philip complied. Instantly, the 3D image of a ship hovered in the air before him.

  "Recognise her?"

  Philip frowned. "It looks like..."

  "It's The Noise Withi
n."

  Of course it was. "The pirate ship they've built the latest media circus around?"

  "That's the one."

  This vessel had already achieved folklore status courtesy of the glamorous coverage afforded it. Despite any suggestion to the contrary by writers and the makers of popular dramas, piracy was not an easy thing to perform. Quite apart from the vastness of space, there were practical considerations which made overhauling and capturing a ship far more difficult than it had been in the days of the Jolly Roger, eye patches and the simple two dimensions of an ocean's ruffled surface. Yet The Noise Within was making the act of piracy look very easy, first appearing out of nowhere to attack a luxury cruiser called The Lady J and then returning three times within as many months, capturing a plum prize on each occasion. All of which was ambrosia to the sensationalist press and reporters desperate to titillate the palate of a jaded public, but what was Mal's interest in the thing?

  "Now watch," his father's ghost instructed.

  The Noise Within seemed to be anything but coy, leaving itself open to surface scanning with an insolence, a cockiness, guaranteed to fuel the media hysteria. From the resultant telemetry, a detailed picture of the ship's appearance, surface structure and overt, not to mention formidable, weapons capabilities had been produced.

  As Philip watched the image before him, elements of the ship's structure began to fade and then disappear entirely. This happened in three stages, with extrusions, bumps, vents, weapon arrays and other parts along the length of the vessel stripped away, layer by layer, to leave a simpler, sleeker shape each time, until it was pared back to a very basic design. One that Philip recognised all too well.

  "My God." Of course the design was basic; it had only been a prototype.