The Noise Within

by Ian Whates

  He waited while the others took their seats before sitting down himself at the head of the magnificent polished rosewood table - so deliciously retro with its rounded corners and edges inlaid with gold and imported mahogany; so pleasingly incongruous in this setting. The room itself was a functional oblong space with plain walls and a trio of large plate-glass windows. The latter had been treated with a patented nano-coating designed to break up the rhythm of vibration and so prevent their being used as a sounding board by any would-be eavesdroppers. The imposing table with its complement of ten hand-carved and equally impressive chairs - four to either side and one at each end - might have been lifted from another world, another time. Furniture and room provided a jarring juxtaposition between the practical and the ornate, one which Philip delighted in.

  "This had better be important, Philip!" Benn growled before Philip even had a chance to bring the meeting to order.

  "Now, David, I'm sure our chairman would not have been so insistent we should be here in person if it weren't," Catherine Chzyski said before flashing her disgruntled colleague a misleadingly pleasant smile. "Would you, Philip?"

  Her mouth might have been smiling, yet those piercing blue eyes were anything but as they turned towards him. Philip could almost hear the unspoken 'dared to' in her gentle rebuke to Benn. He swallowed on a suddenly dry throat. "Thank you, Catherine. Indeed I would not."

  She was the key here. Even within such a small group as this, alliances and cliques were inevitable as people shuffled to gain advantage. Catherine represented the traditionalists on the board, with a history of influence stretching back to long before Philip's time. There were even whispered rumours of an affair between her and Malcolm, which Philip had never chosen to listen to or explore. At least two of the others here would follow Catherine's lead; if he could convince her of the significance of all this and what it meant to their project, he would all but have won the day. Philip took a deep breath and began.

  "I apologise for dragging you here in person, but, as we all know, any form of electronic or virtual conferencing is susceptible to interception, no matter how sophisticated the security safeguards, and what I have to show you is far too sensitive to risk a leak before we're ready to go public." He didn't mention that electronic communication was precisely how he had learnt of the matter in the first place.

  A holographic image of The Noise Within appeared, to take station above the centre of the table.

  "I take it we all recognise what this is?" he enquired. Judging by the nods and murmurs that went around the room, they did.

  "The Noise Within," someone muttered helpfully.

  "Indeed, but you may be surprised to learn that she's far more than just that." The image began a slow horizontal rotation.

  This time around the transformation was far more impressive than the dry simplicity Mal had presented the previous evening, which had resembled an academic teaching module. Philip had designed his version for maximum effect; taking full advantage of the larger scale and his own revised program. As the ship turned, gaining speed by imperceptible increments, individual arrays and attachments floated away from the hull one at a time, only to disappear as they departed. This happened slowly to start with but gained speed to match the image's rotation. Soon parts were detaching in rapid succession. Choreographed as if it were some elegant dance, the process was initially regal and restrained but built towards a flailing crescendo of disappearing parts, stripping the vessel down to its basic hull in the space of a few moments.

  Philip surreptitiously studied his fellow directors as the show unfolded, pleased to see that all of them were absorbed by the metamorphosis and delighted to hear a sharp intake of breath from more than one as the slightly stunted, uncommonly bulbous form of The Sun Seeker began to emerge. A few seconds' stunned silence greeted the ship's full unveiling.

  "You can't be serious," someone said - Pete Bianco, judging by the pinched, nasally whine of the voice. One of Catherine's lackeys.

  "Oh, but I am. This much-fêted ship, this latest cause célèbre of the media, is none other than The Sun Seeker reborn."

  A babble of voices erupted

  "But where has she been all this time?"

  "... can't be!"

  "And where did she get the armament and the modifications?"

  "Preposterous!"

  Philip waited until the initial reaction began to wane before holding up a restraining hand. "Please!" The babble died away completely. All eyes were on him. "I have no idea where the ship has been or what has happened to her in the meantime, but that's not the point. Am I the only one here who's able to grasp the significance of this?"

  Catherine had sat silent, watching him throughout. He suspected that she at least understood the implications.

  "That long-ago experiment which everyone assumed had failed hasn't," Philip continued. "The proof is out there right now. Think about it. This ship, which we've all heard so much about, this vessel which pops up out of nowhere to run rings around the space service, making the authorities look like a bunch of inept fools in the process, is The Sun Seeker!" These last words were almost bellowed.

  A few calculating glances flickered around the table.

  Philip's voice was again calm and controlled as he resumed speaking into the silence. "What further proof does anyone need that we are very much on the right track? The project puts us light years ahead of the opposition. We've always had our detractors and I know that even some of you in this room have harboured doubts of late, but what are they going to say now - those people who called the project folly, a waste of money and resources?"

  One or two of his colleagues looked fleetingly uncomfortable. Philip avoided looking directly at David Benn, whose overheard comment he had just quoted, but hoped the man felt as discomfited as he deserved. Realisation was starting to dawn on a few of their faces, but Philip pushed the point home in any case. He was beginning to enjoy himself. "Who else are the government going to turn to once the truth gets out? Who are the only people equipped to pull their collective arses out of the fire? Us! Nobody else has anything even remotely resembling the project in development. Since Shippeys pulled the plug on their own parallel project five years ago, we've been the only players in the game; which means that only Kaufman Industries have any hope of producing a system that can go head-to-head with The Noise Within and win."

  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 easil
y 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, theo
retically, 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.