by Ian Whates
Poverty. That was the inescapable, overriding factor that governed life here. Closely followed by Giazyu. Slip over and land face down in a puddle and the water was likely to be infused with so much of the drug that you'd stand up and find yourself in a different world.
Not that there was any evidence of puddles at that particular time. Leyton walked calmly through dusty streets as he crossed this depressing shanty town, oblivious to the stares and the glares, allowing all the malice and the need and the jealousy which those looks embodied slide off him. He had long ago learnt that confidence and an air of purpose were the keys to an untroubled passage in such threatening places. It was the timid and the uncertain who invited malicious intent to manifest as physical threat.
In the visor's absence, the gun chattered incessantly, warning of potential dangers on all sides, until he instructed it to stay quiet unless the threat was an immediate one.
Fortunately, the boy he was looking for lived only a little way into Paraíso, as those who relied for a living on the Strip and its surrounds often did. In fact, if Leyton's information was correct, he should be more or less there by now.
He saw a naked boy relieving himself outside a hut; noted the lithe, athletic body, the size of the lad's manhood and the sunburst tattoo on his right buttock, all of which tallied with the description he'd been given, so the eyegee felt pretty confident that this was the kid he was after. But he wanted to be certain before flashing any money about. Once they saw the colour of his Standards, any given local would undoubtedly be happy to claim they were Emilio, their own grandmother, or anyone else Leyton might want them to be.
So he used the gun to bully the kid into the hut, the inside of which nearly made him gag; it stank even worse than the air outside. Using the gun for such menial duty might have been akin to using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but the performance at least secured confirmation from the two young Giazyu-heads he found inside - barely into their teens by the look of them - that this really was 'Emilio'. He then scared the pair out of the room. Only then did he flash the cash and recruit the kid to the cause.
Leyton knew that Paraiso could be a dangerous place for the unwary, so he came fully alert as he stepped out of the hut to find a reception committee of disgruntled locals waiting.
"Thanks for the warning," he intoned.
"Just obeying instructions," the gun responded. "They weren't an immediate threat until you stepped outside."
In fairness, they were barely that even now. The group looked more nervous than menacing, as if they were embarrassed to be there at all. Emilio appeared from inside the hut before anything beyond posturing was required; their relief at seeing him was almost palpable and he soon defused whatever threat there might have been, leaving Leyton free to head back towards tourist town, where he belonged.
That was it; the final piece. If any of The Noise Within's recent recruits turned up on Frysworld, he now felt confident he'd hear about it.
Of course, from a purely statistical viewpoint the odds were against that, but if Leyton were looking for some R and R and money was no object, this would be one of the first places he'd think to head for, which might just tilt those odds a little in his favour. Who could say?
Whether they came here or not, all he could do for the foreseeable future was wait, while doing his best not to die of boredom in the process.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Drevers was not Mac by any stretch of the imagination, but he was sharp, no question about that, devious even. After a little jockeying, Kyle had settled into a banter-based friendship with the man which seemed to suit them both, even if it didn't yet encompass anything as profound as trust.
Drevers was a lot more vocal in his complaints about the situation on the ship than Kyle had been, making the latter wonder whether perhaps his time in the military made him prone to accept authority a little too readily. If so, clearly Drevers had never been a navy man; a fact Kyle was soon to be eternally grateful for, as the newcomer's frequent gripes and protestations appeared to have an effect. The two of them were even permitted to take part in the next action, the one that saw them recruit Blaine and Hammond. Kyle was convinced their presence was the reason why the latter pair defected to The Noise Within, a point which fully deserved to be emphasised.
"Let's face it," he said to Drevers later, when they were back on the ship, "our smooth talking and irresistible humour has to be more appealing than the usual blank-faced delivery of the zombies." The words were as much for the benefit of whoever was directing the ship as for Drevers himself.
Kyle had reached the conclusion long ago that everything they said and did was being observed. Without openly discussing the subject, he and Drevers had come to a mutual understanding about it. At first the thought of being spied upon irritated the hell out of him, but then he began to view it as a challenge and had determined to convince whoever the ship's real masters might be that he was a valuable asset, indispensable even, and certainly of far more use than the 'old crew', the zombies, whom he was increasingly convinced were not crew at all but uninhabited remote-operated shells.
Neither he nor Drevers were averse to manipulating the situation to their advantage.
"You see, they've got it all wrong," Drevers insisted, clearly playing to an audience. "Currently, we're treated little better than prisoners."
Kyle nodded vigorously in agreement. "Exactly. All four of us joined this crew because we wanted to, so you'd think they would be trying to make sure we were keen to stick around rather than making us regret we ever came here."
"Right. I mean, this place isn't exactly a holiday camp, and a man has needs..."
Kyle was nodding agreement. "What I wouldn't give for a really good meal, some decent beer - properly chilled - and a few hours alone with a willing woman."
"You and me both; anyone who could offer a package like that would have my loyalty forever."
"I'll drink to that!" And they clinked together their identical plasti-dure mugs, guaranteed to bounce and not shatter, before each taking a gulp of the near-tasteless recycled and alcohol-free beer which was the closest to a real drink The Noise Within provided.
During the years he had spent in the shipping wilderness following his discharge from the navy, Kyle encountered just about every type of decrepit and malfunctioning drinks dispenser and neglected unhygienic autogalley that man had ever devised; servicing and repairing each one with loving care, if only to prevent them from poisoning himself and the rest of the crew. When he first saw those carried by The Noise Within, it was like a reunion with old friends. These were exactly the same models he remembered from his navy days.
In the long period of unrelenting tedium following his arrival on The Noise Within, Kyle kept himself busy by taking apart, inspecting, cleaning, and then reassembling each and every unit the ship boasted, piece by piece, ensuring that they were all operating at optimum efficiency.
Evidently, his proclivity for such things had not gone unnoticed.
When the hulking form of Zombie Number One loomed over Drevers and himself, both assumed this signalled another raid, despite it coming so soon after the last one. However, the suited figure soon made it clear that on this occasion only Kyle's presence was wanted.
"You have technical expertise which is needed," was the anonymous figure's sole effort at explanation.
Kyle had no idea whether this was the genuine reason he was being singled out or not; his imagination went into overdrive and started painting sinister alternatives. Perhaps he had said too much in his criticism of the situation, perhaps he was being summoned to be punished, condemned to the brig or jettisoned from an airlock... In the absence of any explanation from his blank-faced escort, paranoia born of bizarre circumstance ran riot.
To compensate for his nervousness, he talked. "So, did you always want to be a pirate? Bet you did. I reckon your mum was a pirate before you - a lady corsair of the spaceways - and you grew up thinking: 'One day I want to be just like my mum'; th
ough wearing different underwear, obviously."
Kyle was babbling, spouting nonsense, and he knew it. In truth, he didn't expect a response from the zombie, so could hardly claim to be disappointed when none was forthcoming. He read stoicism into the resultant silence, on the part of those guiding the suit if nothing else.
At first Kyle was hoping to be taken to the bridge. He'd been itching to have a look at the control systems ever since he first caught a glimpse of The Noise Within's weird adaptations and weapon arrays from the bridge of The Lady J. However, it soon became clear that he was being directed towards the lower decks rather than the more central areas where the bridge would be.
So, assuming he was not about to be thrown into some previously unsuspected dungeon room hidden deep within the ship's bowels, it had to be the engines. That prospect intrigued him only marginally less than being able to tinker around on the bridge itself.
At least he was being led to a bulkhead door and not an airlock, so, on the plus side, he wasn't about to be forced to 'walk the plank' without a suit.
Being around the silent, inhuman-seeming zombies was an unsettling experience, and Kyle had quickly come to view his original separation from them as a blessing. The mechanic in him was hoping to be let loose on one of those suits at some stage to see what made it tick, but at the same time he was grateful that his current guide walked ahead of him, so that he didn't have to continually stare into that opaque faceplate, which he was increasingly convinced hid only emptiness.
They finally arrived at the engine room; the ship's internal layout familiar enough that Kyle could happily have found it on his own had he been trusted to.
The sense of familiarity ended the instant he stepped through the door. Not that the Kaufman Drive units were anything other than he had expected; it was everything else.
The business end of the engines lay in shielded compartments beyond this room, where titanic energies were generated, clashing to produce the violent forces needed to power a starship; where those same energies were channelled and harnessed and regulated into useful form. What confronted Kyle was the control element of the process, the governing systems which kept those furies tame and prevented them from ripping the fragile ship apart.
The familiar sleek banks of moulded metal which housed the monitoring arrays and adjustment interfaces sat upon their plinth towards the centre of the room as usual, but on their far side was... something else. Kyle struggled to identify the thing that stood there, even in the most general terms. It was unlike anything he had encountered before and his mind baulked at trying to allocate any label to what his eyes reported.
Dark, pulsating pillars which rippled with energy and on which he was finding it impossible to fully focus - their edges ill-defined and blurred. It literally hurt to stare at them for too long, causing his eyes to water, but the afterimage when he blinked the tears away left him with a sense of deepest purple shading into onyx black, of scarlet sparks glimpsed at the very periphery of vision and hints of other colours he couldn't even begin to identify. Beyond the pillars sat something else, sensed as a bulk but so dark that it was beyond his capacity to identify any details of form. He had the impression that whatever he was seeing was not wholly there, that by merely trying to look at this thing he was gaining a glimpse of somewhere else, of a place other than normal reality.
The Kaufman Drive console was linked to this outlandish object by several veils; which was the only way Kyle could describe them. He was uncertain whether these shifting, inconsistent curtains had any substance at all or whether they were composed purely of energy.
"What the hell...?"
"The engines have been augmented to enhance performance."
Augmented? Not in any way Kyle had ever come across. He stared at the zombie in disbelief. "You don't honestly expect me to go near that, do you?"
"It is necessary. Drive systems are marginally out of synch, enough to drop engine performance to little more than ninety per cent of optimum. Due to the nature of the engines' augmentations, recalibration cannot be accurately achieved from the bridge, only from here. You have the skills to do this."
True - at least as far as the Kaufmans were concerned. Kyle looked back at the pillars and the hidden bulk of the mechanism beyond and licked his upper lip, feeling less than thrilled at the prospect.
What about radiation? "Is it safe even being in here?"
"Brief exposure will produce no discernable detrimental effect," the zombie responded.
Kyle grunted. As reassurances went, this fell a long way short of ideal. Not that he had much choice in the matter. He briefly considered refusing to do as asked and wondered what would happen if he simply turned around and walked out of here. Would the zombie move to stop him? And what then; thrown off the ship, perhaps? He wasn't prepared to find out. Besides, the sooner he was done here the 'briefer' his exposure would be.
"The necessary equipment has been provided," the zombie said.
Sure enough, a standard set of diagnostics and repair tools sat at the foot of the console. With a sigh and a muttered, "I must be mad," Kyle stepped forward.
Ignoring the shifting, almost seductive lure of whatever occupied the room's far side, he concentrated on the familiar Kaufman units before him, initially running through a series of diagnostics so that he could get a feel for these particular chunks of hardware and judge exactly how well they were running. As ever, he could not help but admire the sheer beauty of these machines which, presumably, had not been properly maintained or supervised in a fair old while, yet still they performed with quiet efficiency.
The zombie was right; they were slightly out, but not by anything like the margin suggested. He was relieved to see that it would be a comparatively simple task to recalibrate and correct. As Kyle worked, he was careful not to touch the enigmatic, veil-like intrusions which were fused to the console's far side. Those apart, it was easy to become absorbed in the job at hand and forget about the surreal aspects of the situation.
After a gratifyingly short period of time he was done, but he didn't give any indication of that fact just yet. A vaguely rebellious thought had occurred to him. In the early days, before mass production made the custom impractical, each and every Kaufman Drive console had two pieces of apparently trivial information coded into their registration signature: the date the unit was completed, and the name of the ship it was destined for. This was not a practice that had lasted long, as the engines proved their worth and demand for them grew exponentially, but seeing as these were Mark Twos, it seemed worth the effort to check.
As Kyle gave the system one final run-through, he brought up the registration details, without any real expectation of learning much. He made sure to keep his features impassive as first the completion date and then the ship's name appeared on the display. The latter sent a chill running down his spine; it was a name which nobody with a serious interest in anything to do with starships could fail to recognise: The Sun Seeker.
He had no idea whether he managed to prevent the shock of this particular revelation from showing or not. He was too stunned to think about it for a second.
Suddenly, a lot of things fell into place - The Noise Within's odd variance from the classic military vessel she was clearly based upon, the unfinished nature of many of the fittings, the vessel's uninhabited feel, and the mystery of the zombies. No question in his mind now that the 'original crew' were simple husks, operated by the controlling AI. From everything he had heard, there was little chance anyone unfortunate enough to be on The Sun Seeker when she went rogue could have survived the breakneck multi-g acceleration of her escape.
Remembering himself, he banished the display and made a big show of stepping back with a relieved, "There."
"A job well done," the zombie said. Praise indeed, but only after brief hesitation, as if it were consulting with someone or confirming something.
If the animated suit realised what he had discovered it gave no sign, but instead turned and led the
way out of the engine room. Kyle could not get away quickly enough and was convinced that what he had seen and felt in that room would haunt his dreams for many a night to come. Not to mention what he had learned.
He recalled the stoicism he had attributed to his escort's silence on the way down here, and smiled to himself, realising that this could only have been a product of his own imagination, since it seemed unlikely that either the zombies or the intelligence guiding them were capable of anything that flirted so closely with emotion.
The walk gave him time to think, to take stock of the situation. He was on board arguably the most infamous ship in the history of space flight. That fact almost overshadowed the awe he felt on discovering the unfathomable and extensive modifications that had been made to the ship's engines. The realisation that these were not the product of any technology he was familiar with - and he was, after all, something of an expert on the subject - was a particularly sobering one, the implications of which he shied away from grappling with at first, as if unwilling to face them until the shock of recent experience had grown a little less immediate.
Yet his curiosity started to win over his disquiet, and he began to wonder exactly what those bizarre 'augmentations' were and what they were supposed to achieve. Clearly they were revolutionary in concept. The thing that puzzled him most was exactly how The Sun Seeker had become The Noise Within, and, perhaps most intriguingly of all, why. If this was an example of what an AI could achieve when left to its own devices for a few decades, what did that mean for the future of poor little organics like him?
The brief visit to the engine room had one further unforeseen consequence. As Zombie Number One led him back to the unrestricted sections of the ship, Kyle found himself reaching a newfound resolve, one which surprised even him.
His growing sense of regret at joining The Noise Within had now been swept away, and any thoughts of jumping ship should the opportunity arise were completely banished. Irrespective of what lay ahead, this was history in the making, and he was at the very heart of it. Sure, he had taken part in the War, but so had a few billion others. This was different, more concentrated and more personal. The return of The Sun Seeker, and he was there to see it, to live it. His rashness had just gifted him a once in a lifetime opportunity to witness momentous events which were bound to reverberate throughout human civilisation, and there was no way he was going to miss out on something like that.