The Noise Within

by Ian Whates

  "Want a bet?"

  New Paris wasn't helpless. Her builders had not simply sent her sailing on her way with a wave and a smile but with no recourse. She had engines. Granted, not particularly powerful ones given her mass, but there was no need for them to be. The idea was not for her to go gallivanting around the solar system on some merry jaunt but rather to remain here, in the sedate orbit chosen for her; which was where the engines came in. They were there to effect the small adjustments occasionally required to maintain the station's orbit.

  Now, for example. Except that, ever since a love-sick jilted maintenance engineer had attempted to seize control of the engines and plunge the entire station into a suicidal dive towards the planet it circled, access was strictly controlled. Subsequently, the engines could only be fired once authorised via a ten-digit code, which Sam knew the second half of. The other five numbers were known only by the mayor. The same mayor who had left strict instructions that he was not to be disturbed under any circumstances.

  Sam and Denni both knew what that meant.

  The institution of marriage might have been abandoned long ago on most human worlds, but not on New Paris. Here, in a community where the Jesuit faith remained strong, marriage and its attendant handmaiden fidelity were still viewed as integral pillars of social structure. Particularly by the mayor's wife and her parents, who represented the more traditional elements of New Parisian society, and who also happened to be the mayor's chief political and financial supporters. Which was why the mayor's liaisons with a certain Mrs Lindstrom - twelve years his junior and fifteen years younger than his wife - were such a secret. Unfortunately for the mayor, they were very much an open secret as far as the station's small band of civil servants was concerned.

  It just so happened that Mrs Lindstrom was best friends with Beryl in finance, and couldn't resist filling her friend in on all the lurid details of her clandestine trysts with the other's boss. Of course, there was no way Beryl could keep something like that to herself, so she told two close colleagues at the office about it, in strictest confidence, and they each did likewise. Before long, everyone at work knew precisely what the mayor was up to when he disappeared for one of his 'very important, not to be disturbed' meetings.

  Interrupting one of these 'meetings', as Sam was preparing to do, was by no means a prospect to relish.

  He pressed the button, preset to activate the alarm on the mayor's pocket comm. A minute passed with no response.

  "Eh, Sam, I hate to state the obvious, but the further off course we go the harder it's going to be for the engines to get us back there."

  "Don't you think I know that?" He tried again, with the same lack of result. "I don't suppose you've the faintest idea where the mayor goes for these meetings of his, have you?"

  "Afraid not."

  Sam had a sudden thought. His head snapped up to look at Denni at the exact same instant Denni stared at him. They said together, "Beryl!" and both leapt from their seats, sprinting down the passageway towards the office marked 'finance'.

  Jenner was learning in a very direct way just how much the ship had become an extension of his body, or rather to what extent he had become a mere component of its being. He felt it when the ship took damage - not in an abstract, detached fashion, nor as acutely as if he'd taken a blow to his flesh and blood body, but in a strangely unfamiliar way which lay somewhere in between. There was instant awareness that this was him being injured, which his brain wanted to interpret as pain, but the nerves that would have registered said pain were not there, so the result was muted and easily dealt with, not debilitating as it might otherwise have been.

  A missile detonated too close for comfort, thermal energy smashing against his hull. He could feel the outer skin of metal blister and bubble, knew without needing to check any instruments how near the hull came to rupturing; and when a concussion blast caught him in the middle of a desperate evasive flip, he could tell immediately how close the resultant torque came to tearing the frame of his vessel apart.

  Yet he survived.

  In every practical sense, all definition between craft and pilot had become meaningless; and Jenner loved every second of this expanded form of being. Even as he flung himself out of harm's way while delivering measured doses of destruction to the target, his spirit sang.

  He might not experience damage to the other members of his group in the same direct fashion, but that didn't prevent him from 'seeing' with senses far more sophisticated than mere eyes when one needle ship exploded in a blaze of blinding energy, and he knew immediately when another went inert and started tumbling away from the battle in the general direction of this system's sun.

  Yet they were winning. Despite the advantage of superior weaponry, much of which was still beyond the grasp of ULAW experts, The Noise Within had clearly been caught cold by the needle ships' stealth and accuracy, losing her main drive and several primary weapon systems before even knowing she was in a fight. The pirate's ripostes were now becoming more sporadic and less focused. This was a crippled ship which would never be able to leave the system unaided.

  But she still had teeth.

  As if mounting one final act of defiance, The Noise Within suddenly let loose with multiple salvos from her surviving weapons, focusing on her three remaining tormentors. Jenner threw his ship into a long elliptical curve, initially taking him away from the pirate and out of the firing line of the assorted energy weapons which she had just discharged. Three missiles came after him. He littered his wake with decoys and interference, physical chaff and electronic ghosts - packages of code squirted towards the missiles, designed to penetrate and befuddle their guidance systems. One pursuer took the bait and veered off in completely the wrong direction following a ship that wasn't there, while a second detonated, too distant to cause any damage to its retreating target; but the third came on.

  Jenner's craft boasted a single aft-mounted cannon, but it was rendered useless in this situation by the wake of his own drive. The missile was sticking firmly to his course and closing; the curve that Jenner had embarked on was not acute enough to grant him a clear shot past his own wash, and if he attempted to turn any tighter and so gain a better perspective, it would reduce the speed of his escape and allow the pursuing missile to close all the quicker. A dilemma he needed to solve swiftly or the missile would be too close for it to matter.

  Seeing no other option, Jenner threw his ship into the tightest turn he could, bringing him almost sideways-on to the missile that streaked unerringly towards his midriff. At the same time, he fired the cannon as soon as a clear shot presented itself.

  The missile exploded. Too close, much too close. He felt his hull rupture, precious air and vital fluids spewing into the void, while the ship as a whole was tossed sidewise and twisted, as if caught in a giant hand which then attempted to bend and crumple it where no joints existed to accommodate such actions. Desperately he tried to compensate for the force of the blast; he fired the craft's multitude of manoeuvring thrusters in a dazzlingly quick sequence, improvising to relieve the tension and prevent the ship from snapping in two. For a horrifying second he thought he had failed, but then he felt the pressure ease and knew that the worst was over.

  Conscious of the enormous strain the encounter had placed on the craft's chassis, he treated it gently, almost tenderly, as he brought his ship's course fully under control again. Then it was just a matter of assessing the damage to the hull, diverting certain vital fluids from ruptured conduits, pumping quick-hardening sealant foam into the hull rupture while sealing off the compromised compartments, and rebuilding command structures to those systems disrupted by the damage. Within a handful of seconds he was ready to rejoin the battle.

  That violent outpouring of munitions might not have been The Noise Within's death throes but it was certainly an act that smacked of desperation, and Jenner was not in the least surprised to discover the fight was all but over.

  As he approached the stricken pirate, a message came i
n from Fina, one of the other pilots, to say that her ship had been severely damaged during the last bombardment and so she was forced to withdraw, but that still left his own craft plus one other, which even now danced around the larger ship, inflicting wounds. A single rail gun appeared to be The Noise Within's only remaining defiance. It spat shards of molten metal at him, but he avoided those with ease before pulling the pirate's last tooth with one brief, precisely aimed burst.

  Throughout the fierce engagement there had been no attempt to communicate by either side, no quarter offered and none asked for; but now, when he was in a position to do so on his own terms, or at least ULAW's, it was time to talk. Jenner prepared to hail The Noise Within and demand her surrender.

  Given the potentially lethal consequences of a collision, proximity alarms were standard on just about any ship you cared to mention, but not on the needle ships. Their pilots didn't need anything to alert them to whatever their ship might have detected; they were the ship, receiving data directly from the sensors.

  So it was that Jenner knew immediately when a ship started to emerge into normal space close to the battle scene. That should have been impossible. According to every rule of science he had ever been taught, no wormhole could possibly open here, this close to a sun. Clearly, there was a rule or two he had yet to hear about.

  The craft that began to take shape was huge - far larger than any vessel Jenner had ever seen before. It dwarfed The Noise Within, let alone their needle ships. Yet the size was only the first thing to impress the young pilot. The greatest shock lay in her shape, her design. Bulbous and inelegant, with great spines that swept forward from behind what would otherwise have been her nose like the tentacles of some mythical deep space monster, to form a perfect circle with their tips, well in advance of the ship's main body. These spines alone were each some ten times the length of the needle ships.

  The whole vessel screamed one thing: alien.

  Yet, once he discounted those ominous spines and considered the rest of this bloated, disfigured craft, he could perhaps see a vague resemblance to something he recognised - The Noise Within.

  As Jenner watched this apparition, half the sensors on his hull began to report a change. Nothing to do with proximity this time; energy was starting to build in the circle formed by the spine tips - a staggering amount of energy, though he couldn't identify its type or purpose.

  A call came in from Muller, pilot of the other still functional needle ship, "Well, skip, what do we do now?"

  An excellent question. Jenner dedicated all of his human/AI fused intelligence to analysing the matter for a split second before giving his considered answer: "Hanged if I know."

  Beryl in finance claimed to have no idea where the mayor and Mrs Lindstrom had gone in search of a little privacy. New Paris wasn't that big, however, there couldn't be too many options. None the less, Sam and Denni hesitated about making a public appeal which would inevitably flush out the two lovers but would almost certainly expose them in the process. The mayor would be disgraced and out of a job and, most likely, so would they.

  Yet, as they watched the station slide ever further from its proper course, they were forced to contemplate the unthinkable.

  "He must have recorded it somewhere," Denni muttered. He had hacked into the mayor's personal account and was searching through files. "I mean, what if he dropped dead all of a sudden?" At that thought Denni stopped what he was doing and looked up at Sam. "You have yours, haven't you?"

  "Yes," Sam admitted, "in files that will open to my successor after I'm legally declared dead."

  "Oh," Denni looked crestfallen. "Do you reckon he's done the same then?"

  "Most probably."

  "So I'm wasting my time."

  "I reckon so."

  New Paris continued to slide ever further away from a stable orbit. The two friends looked at each other, both knowing they were out of options.

  "Well," Sam said, "I guess it's down to me. Goodbye job, it was nice knowing you."

  At which point, the phone rang. An old-fashioned piece of retro-kitsch which Sam had insisted on having installed - mock handset and all. Sam and Denni stared at it for a second, then at each other, daring to hope. Taking a deep breath, Sam answered. The contact was audio only, but the caller was unmistakably the mayor - a decidedly pissed-off mayor - who wanted to know what the hell was going on. Sam mouthed a silent "thank you, Beryl," and proceeded to tell him.

  Moments later, with the mayor hightailing it back to his office as fast as he could manage, the two friends keyed in the requisite ten digit code and activated New Paris's engines. Sam even thought to make a public announcement, after the engines had fired, informing people that this was just a routine course adjustment and that they should not be alarmed by any slight vibration or sense of movement.

  They could leave being alarmed to Sam and Denni, who studied their screens intently, analysing the massive station's ponderous response to the attempted readjustment.

  "It's not enough," Denni murmured at length, voicing what was becoming increasingly obvious to both of them. Too little too late. The delay in obtaining the mayor's part of the code had proved a critical one. Dionese IV had already begun to suck hungrily at their fragile home. "We've slipped too far off course and the engines aren't powerful enough to nudge us back on."

  Over the years, New Paris had been expanded, added to both in terms of size and complexity, which had combined to almost double her original mass. The engines, although carefully maintained, had never been upgraded. They didn't need to be. After all, they were still sufficiently powerful to nudge the station back into proper orbit in the event of minor decay. Constant monitoring ensured that this was as much as they were ever asked to do. Barring an emergency, of course; such as this.

  "We're screwed," Sam muttered.

  When somebody had suggested moving New Paris into a geostationary orbit a few years back, Sam had been dead against the idea. Not for any strong reason he could put his finger on, just in principle - a feeling that such a step would somehow upset the status quo. Oh, he could appreciate the reasoning behind the proposal; accepted that by remaining fixed over the same spot on the planet's surface they could establish a permanent link, a commercial elevator operating between New Paris and Dionese IV. After all, the planet had always been their main resource, and there was no denying that such a link would make transporting everything up from the surface a great deal easier. Yet he'd felt instinctively that the whole thing was wrong. Thankfully, so had many other people, and, despite strong support in some quarters, the proposal was defeated.

  Now, for the first time, Sam had cause to regret that fact.

  "Oh for a working elevator," he said, mostly to himself. It would have made planning the evacuation of the entire station a whole lot easier.

  The comment might have been intended as rhetorical but clearly it had been louder than he realised. "Wouldn't be much help," Denni said. "The elevator would have been the first thing to go when we were knocked out of orbit - torn to shreds."

  "Yes, I know." Sam sighed. "Just daydreaming."

  "Glad you've got the time to."

  Not that either of them did, of course. Planning the emergency evacuation of a tad under 13,000 people from the stricken station was keeping them more than occupied. By Sam's reckoning, if they were to commandeer every available ship and set up a non-stop shuttle from the dock to the planet below, they could get everyone off in a little over three days. Assuming, that is, that everything went smooth as a baby's bottom and there were no glitches of any sort. The only problem being that, if Denni's calculations were correct - and he had no reason to doubt them - they had something less than two and a half days before things turned decidedly hairy up here.

  The stark reality was that unless they could conjure up a minor miracle, more than two thousand New Parisians were not going to make it. So, Sam was now busy looking into supplies of spacesuits, oxygen, rocket sleds - anything that might enable as many people as
possible to survive off-station until a ship could return to collect them.

  It wasn't looking good.

  Jenner watched as the energy continued to build within the 'claw' at the prow of the enormous vessel. He had no idea of its purpose but presumed it was nothing good.

  He tried hailing. "This is Captain Jenner to unidentified craft. You are in ULAW space. Please identify yourself and power down your weapon."

  He received exactly the response anticipated - none - but determined to give it one more try. "If you do not power down your weapon you will leave me with no choice but to treat this as an act of aggression and respond accordingly."

  Silence.

  "All right, Muller, follow my lead and give her all you've got."

  The two needle ships leapt forward. Still the energy levels cupped within the intruder's crown of tips continued to build. Like gnats attacking a bull, the ULAW vessels closed in. Muller must have realised this was tantamount to an act of suicide, even as he did, but neither of them wavered, which made Jenner feel oddly proud. He let loose with his primary energy cannon, following up with secondary guns for good measure. Beside him, Muller did the same.

  Their attack spent itself against an energy shield, the section immediately in front of them lighting up as beams dissipated and missiles detonated, their fury and force quenched. Where Jenner's primary beam struck, strands of impermanent silver lightning flickered across an area of shield lit up in a pale blue nimbus of coruscating energies, but none of it broke through. What he found most disconcerting was the fact that the interloper made no effort to respond, as if their efforts were beneath its notice.

  We might as well be chucking stones at the thing. Yet they had to keep doing something. The long body of this enigmatic ship, with its still-building sphere of controlled energy which surely had to be reaching some sort of critical point soon, was orientated directly towards New Paris.

  "Muller, centre your beam on exactly the same section of the shield I'm hitting. Between us we might just be able to break through." A forlorn hope, but better than none.