the Noise Within (2010) (20 page)

"It might beg the question, but, to be frank, I couldn't give a damn. What I
do
care about is the fact that with a human crew on board the ship is going to be hampered. She'll have to take those humans into account in all sorts of ways; not being as fast or as agile is only the start of it. Will the crew be allowed downtime? It's all well and good that they're earning enough Standards from the raids and the ransom monies to buy a planet or two each, but where will they go to spend it? If they're not allowed to let off steam at all, how long before they start creating trouble for the ship? Let's face it, they're only human, and the sort who jump at the chance of joining a pirate vessel are unlikely to be the most disciplined of men. Clearly the AI wants them around, but how far is it willing to go to accommodate them?

"These are the questions which
The Noise Within
is going to
have
to find answers to, whoever or whatever's running the ship, and that gives us a real shot at her.

"We're mounting a determined campaign to either capture or destroy this pain-in-the-butt ship; make no mistake, this is the number one priority until further notice. That means decoy ships masquerading as cruise liners, security patrols in the systems we know she's hunting, and operatives among the crew of ships, all eager to join
The Noise Within
if invited. You lot here have the easy bit - the cherry among all those jobs. You're going to be haunting every leisure district, every watering hole, whorehouse, casino and dive within staggering distance of a spaceport that falls within these sectors.

"Congratulations, boys and girls, this is the assignment of your dreams. I'm ordering you to go and hang around bars and to drink!"

The announcement was greeted with predictable guffaws, muted cheers and mumblings of delighted disbelief from around the room.

"But," the commander spoke over the din, repeating himself once the chatter subsided, "but, woe betide
any
of you who are found to be drunk on duty
without
having first managed to gain a berth aboard
The Noise Within
!"

Philip found himself almost regretting the stimulants he had pumped into his system after the broken night which had started with such adventure and been followed by such bureaucratic tedium. At that particular moment he could have done with being a lot less alert. He hadn't been lectured to like this since childhood.

"I get the message, Catherine."

"Good; it's about time you listened to somebody..."

Philip held up a restraining hand. "You've made your point. You want rid of me."

"It's not a question of 'wanting rid'. It's more the desire to see you out of harm's way. Your father was a genius, Philip, and you take after him." That had to be the nicest thing Catherine had ever said to him, even if it did amount to a second-hand compliment. "Granted, you're not without fault, but you remain the closest thing to Malcolm we've got and you're far too important to be put at risk. All I'm proposing is that you go as far beyond the reach of this threat as possible until we're certain it's been well and truly dealt with.

"I can handle the business side of things until your return and from what I gather, the project itself is now moving very nicely under its own momentum again. Your research assistant, Susan Tan, seems to be more than competent..."

"She is," he said quickly, "a great deal more."

"Would she be able to take the reins from here on in?"

Philip had to admit that, with the new Syntheaven variant panning out so well, she almost certainly could. He found himself nodding, if reluctantly.

"So why do you insist on staying around on Homeworld waiting to be shot at?"

He had to give Catherine credit: she knew how to frame an argument. So did he, yet in this instance he was finding it difficult to contradict her; particularly as, for once, he was a step or two ahead of the old witch.

"Would it help if I mentioned at this point that my ticket off-world has already been booked?" he asked innocently.

She stared at him for long seconds. "It would; although perhaps you could have mentioned this a little earlier in the conversation."

"True." He smiled. "I suppose I could."

Catherine shook her head, as if exasperated by the behaviour of an irresponsible child, but there was no reprimand in her voice as she asked, "When do you leave?"

"This afternoon."

"
That
, I'm sure, is a relief to us all. Have a good trip, Philip. I'll make certain everything's in order for when you get back."

"I know you will," he said, but Catherine had already ended the call.

Philip took time to sip some chilled water. It might have been a little cruel to let Catherine sound off before telling her of plans already in place, but after the experiences of the previous night he felt he deserved a little indulgence. Next on the list was Susan Tan. He headed to the lab, reckoning she deserved to hear the news in person. For some reason he was looking forward to this even less than the conversation with Catherine, perhaps because he wasn't at all sure how Susan would react to his abandoning her at such a vital time.

Kaufman Industries could afford the best and Susan was up there, but she had been part of the project for a long time. Yes, she ran the team on a day to day basis, but she had always relied on Philip for direction and occasional flashes of inspiration when the need arose; perhaps a little too much. Philip was fully confident that she could oversee the project's final stages in his absence despite being lumbered with the new one month deadline, but would she be?

In the event, Susan took the news of his trip 'to visit some of the company's facilities on other worlds' in her stride, inevitably not believing a word of the official line.

"I've seen the news feeds, Philip. I might not know exactly what the situation is but I can deduce that you have good reason for wanting to make yourself scarce, and I know you wouldn't be leaving right now unless you had to." She then added, with obvious embarrassment, "If there's anything you ever want to talk about... well, you know where I am."

He smiled, genuinely touched by her concern, which was patently sincere. "Thank you, Susan; I appreciate it, really, but the situation you're referring to has been taken care of, hopefully."

"So your going away is..."

"A precaution, that's all. Me making myself scarce until the dust has settled. And besides, this gives me the opportunity to do a few things I've been hankering after for a while but have been too tied up with the project to pursue."

She smiled, clearly able to appreciate that sentiment. "Well, have fun then, but make sure you come back safely. I don't want to be fronting the research end of things on a permanent basis."

"Nor would anyone on the board want you to, I can promise that much."

"What?" She looked up sharply, as if taken aback by the implied slight.

"It would mean we'd have to pay you more, for starters," he explained, his face deadpan, though he was grinning broadly by the time she jabbed him on the arm with her balled fist.

There remained a series of necessary calls to make, including those required to ensure Catherine's authority would go unchallenged in his absence, yet in a surprisingly short time he was left with just the one outstanding. He left this until last because it was the call he begrudged making the most, almost as if he hoped something would delay his departure and render this unnecessary. There had been a distinct temptation to stay one more day, but he couldn't face another night like the last, and the assassin responsible for that was still out there somewhere, so...

He found himself talking to her partial, disappointed yet at the same time relieved when it informed him that Julia Cirese was indisposed. The partial promised to relay his message, sound and vision, as soon as she was free to take it.

"Hello, Julia; I really hate to do this, but unfortunately I'm going to have to postpone this evening. Something urgent has cropped up and I'm going off world, leaving today. So I'll get in touch on my return and, ehm, rearrange; if that's all right. Sorry again; can't tell you how much I was looking forward to this evening. Anyway, goodbye for now."

He cut the connection before the opportunity to babble further caused him to make a complete fool of himself.

Damn! He hoped fervently this didn't turn out to be one of those things that were destined to never quite happen.

Then he stopped and analysed that thought. Was he really so attracted to this Julia Cirese, a woman he'd barely met? Honest answer: yes. She was stunning and he was totally hooked, not by her depth of character or personality - which as yet he knew next to nothing about - but purely by her looks. Was he really that shallow?

All the short term relationships which he had flitted in and out of over the years, growing bored and moving on before anything serious could develop; he had always blamed the breakups on shortcomings in his lovers and perhaps, by inference, on women in general, telling himself that each was too limited, too shallow. Had he been wrong; did the fault lie with him rather than them? Was he guilty of projecting his own shortcomings onto any partner who threatened to get too close?

The thought was an unpalatable one and he dismissed it instantly, blaming it on the unsettling events of recent days. Julia Cirese was a beautiful woman. What man wouldn't be attracted to her? There was no need to analyse anything beyond that.

Having reached that conclusion, he did his best to forget about Julia Cirese; for now at least.

Philip had scant minutes in which to gather his thoughts before heading for the port. He would be driven there in an unmarked company car and was travelling under the anonymity of the Kaufman Industries corporate banner, as many did every day. This struck him as preferable to the alternative of surrounding himself with heavy-handed security. The latter would be the equivalent of hiring a marching band and waving a flag that read 'I'm over here, assassins, come and get me', or so it seemed to Philip. This way, he felt there was every chance of his slipping away unnoticed.

It felt odd. Not just the rushed manner of his leaving and the unfortunate timing, but everything. The project had been the centre of his professional life for so long that he was finding the idea of its not being there surprisingly hard to contemplate. Somehow, with the end in sight, he was already suffering from a sense of impending anticlimax.

Was this it? Was his work essentially done? The project's conclusion would leave a whopping great hole in his life and the truth was that this prospect frightened him, because he had absolutely no idea what he was going to fill it with.

PART TWO

CHAPTER NINE

K
ethi kicked off, flinging herself along the tube at a shallow diagonal. Her left hand snaked out ahead of her to grab one of the handholds which were spaced out in a long line throughout the chute's length - the fifth one to be precise, the one she always went for. She did so not for support but rather to gain a little added momentum and make a slight course adjustment. As soon as her fingers clasped the cold metal of the flattened hoop, she used it to drag her body forward and push herself onward again; this time straight along the tube.

This procedure was now so familiar that she had long since passed the point of feeling proud at not needing to make any further adjustments to either speed or direction, at not having to reach for any more of the handholds to correct even minimal rotation. She simply took all that for granted.

Unlike some of her colleagues, Kethi felt no discomfort in zero g; in fact, she positively revelled in it. Her destination, the observation pod, was coming up fast, though not too quickly; as ever, she had judged her approach to perfection. Grasping the bar guard with both hands, she used it to stop her upper body even as her legs swung underneath to slip into the pod, which was essentially a transparent bubble built around a comfortable chair and a mess of equipment.

By entering this way, Kethi was able to slide feet first into the chair and grab the arms to stop herself from bouncing off again, then fasten the seat ties to ensure there would be no floating around while she concentrated on other things.

There it was: the quickest, simplest way to get from the habitat to here; and she still held the record. No one could shoot the chute faster. Except for Demahl, of course. He
had
managed to beat her time. Once. But in doing so he'd overdone it, coming in too quickly. The dislocated shoulder suffered as a result of stopping himself with a combination of the bar and the pod's wall at the end of his run had rendered the time null and void. So Kethi still reigned supreme.

She always looked forward to her shifts out here. Solitude was a rare and precious commodity. Besides, the sense of wonder that gripped her the very first time she gazed out at the universe had never diminished, and there was nowhere in the whole of the habitat where that sense was sharper, more immediate than here.

Kethi relaxed, settling into the chair and focusing her concentration before she opened the feed. A bewildering array of information flooded her awareness, playing across her lenses as she reviewed and correlated the data from a battery of different sensors to create a rapidly drawn digital picture of how the surrounding universe appeared from this vantage point at this specific time.