the Noise Within (2010) (4 page)

"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 Within
."

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.

"You see?"

"Oh, come on," Philip said, recovering from his initial shock. "You could probably do that with almost any ship; after all, there are only so many basic hull shapes. Knock bits off a million vessels and you'd come up with something that looked like that."

"But this doesn't simply 'look like that' and you know it. This is identical in every respect. I'm telling you, Philip, it's her."

"You can't be certain..."

"Of course I can!" His father's voice rose for the first time. "I designed the fucking thing. Stop being so stubborn, Philip, and trust me on this, will you? It's
The Sun Seeker
.
She's finally come home."

The hovering ship faded, to be replaced by an image which Philip had determined never to gaze upon again: that of his father's face.

He went with the dinner suit in the end, deciding there were enough distractions already and he could live without
looking
as incongruous as he was inevitably going to feel.

As he sat in the back of the limo en route, it wasn't his choice of clothes that occupied his thoughts or even the imminent speech but rather Mal's revelation about
The Noise Within
. He would be studying the images received in minute detail, yet gut instinct told him that the old man was probably right. Much as he hated to acknowledge the fact, no one knew ships better than Mal Kaufman.

Bad enough that he was about to be upstaged by his own partial's reputation; being made to feel inadequate by
two
partials in the same evening was more than any man should have to put up with, particularly a man reputedly as brilliant as he was.

But such, it seemed, was to be his fate.

CHAPTER TWO

T
he craft was an odd one. Bulkier than the speedsters commonly used for racing, larger than the one-man exec ships designed for the in-system hopping of business magnates and playboys, and smaller than just about everything else. She was also equipped with more manoeuvring vents and thrusters than any standard vessel had a right to. She needed them.

Jenner, the ship's sole occupant, felt completely at ease as he swooped in on the target asteroid, following its course and rapidly overhauling. He deftly turned his craft through 180 degrees some distance before reaching the rock and fired the engines so that he was accelerating hard against his original momentum. The asteroid commenced to shoot past him, seeming to slow the whole while until the final section drifted past as if in slow motion, allowing him to appreciate the sheer brutal size of the thing as it sailed majestically on a predetermined course, an inanimate leviathan of the spaceways, its irregular surface pitted and craggy, composed mostly of dirty ice. At a little over 12 km, this was hardly the largest asteroid even in this sparse belt, but it was big enough. Soon the entire rock was fully in front of him once more. By the time it was mere tens of metres away Jenner had matched velocities perfectly, to hang behind it like some diminutive, unwanted shadow.

Then he started to ease the ship forward, sliding towards the asteroid's underbelly from his perspective. Jenner had marked the spot he wanted and knew his timing had to be perfect. He also had no doubt that it was.

The rock's steady rotation made the term 'underbelly' inappropriate, since every part of the thing was destined to be 'underneath' at some point, but Jenner always preferred to make his approach this way, watching as one particularly large shadow rolled around the back end of the object. The shadow represented an unusually deep pit, one that was far from natural, and his approach had to be timed perfectly so that his arrival coincided with its. He checked constantly to ensure that it did and that no last-minute adjustments were needed, multiple calculations flying through his brain in fractions of a second.

His craft slipped smoothly into the opening, which was less than double the width of the vessel. Once inside, the fun really started, as he brought the full array of ship's thrusters and vents into play, nudging it this way and that in a lightning-quick series of short, sharp manoeuvres, all designed to match the asteroid's rotation while continuing to move into the chamber hollowed from the rock's innards. The chamber was considerably wider here than at the entrance but, even so, a single miscalculation could spell disaster. Which was fine with Jenner, who had no intention of making any.

In terms of the asteroid's overall size, the chamber was a small one - the rock had not been completely gutted, merely pitted, a cavity gouged into the surface rather than a full coring - leaving enough mass to still be consistent with its size. Jenner eased the small vessel towards the far wall, where a framework of metal braces and mechanical grapples stood ready to receive it. As he felt the ship grasped by the docking mechanism and so made one with the rock, he cut the engines; not with any surge of triumph or flood of relief, but simply with satisfaction at a job well done.

He started to unbuckle his harness and could dimly see movement on the outside of his gel suit as others hurried to help. The figures became clearer as the gel drained away to reveal a trio of white-suited assistants. Then somebody disconnected his head-jack and he forgot all about the figures as reality came crashing down and consciousness fled towards aits central core, withdrawing from the wider world as if it were shallow water draining down a plug hole, or a two dimensional scene folding rapidly in on itself, until all that remained was the limitation of 'me.'

Jenner blinked at the hands which now reached to help with his harness, and squinted up at half-familiar faces which he felt certain would be fully recognisable once he had regained some equilibrium.

One in particular loomed closer as the helmet came off, the air feeds pulling out from his nostrils, a young woman. Pretty, with a small mouth, cute snub nose and large almond eyes - a little bloodshot as if overtired, but still pretty - a face which he categorised as being vaguely oriental.

The headache kicked in; a searing lance of pain which emanated from somewhere deep in his skull and found a focus in the centre of his forehead.

He must have winced, because the young woman asked, "Are you okay?"

"Yes," he lied automatically. The pain had settled now to a throbbing ache. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking, but this time around it seemed less intense than usual.

Gel clung to his face in amber globules, tickling his cheek where a clump slid down, while its antiseptic taste clogged his mouth and nose. "Yes I'm fine, thanks," her name came to him at the very last second, "Lara."

She smiled, and only then did he remember that he loved her.

Philip Kaufman suppressed a stab of envy as he watched the young pilot, Jenner, being helped from the simulator. His gaze flickered down to the multiple readings on the desk screen before him, which looked perfect at first glance. No question that this was their best prospect.

In truth, Philip was finding it hard to concentrate on the figures. His thoughts were still preoccupied with everything that had happened the previous evening and that morning. On arriving at work he had cleared his diary for the day, told his staff he was not to be disturbed for anything short of imminent global disaster and then spent the best part of the morning tinkering - dissecting the images Mal had sent through last night, deconstructing them and then building a program which could exactly mimic the stripping away of the ship's hull. After that he refined it, so that the initial three stages occurred in ever smaller steps, until individual attachments could be plucked away at will. Once perfected, he applied the result to a series of standard hull designs, running the program backwards and forwards, adding layers of body kit, sensor arrays, weapons systems and the other accoutrements that
The Noise Within
boasted, before reversing the process and taking them away, only to begin again.

Several times he had ended up with something that outwardly resembled
The Noise Within
but which, under closer examination, never quite measured up; literally. However similar the resultant image might appear to be, detailed analysis would reveal that the actual proportions varied significantly from those of the enigmatic pirate vessel. Only in a single instance was the match perfect in every determinable regard - the very last hull on which he tried the process; that of
The Sun Seeker.

One of a multitude of pioneering ideas developed during wartime and spawned by the insatiable quest for tactical advantage,
The Sun Seeker
was a unique vessel - it had to be. True, Malcolm Kaufman had begun the design with the specs for a standard ship's chassis, but he and his team had constantly reconfigured them, changing dimensions and proportions as the project evolved. The hull which the shipyards eventually produced for him was not quite the same as anything they had birthed either before or since.

And now Malcolm's son and heir had become completely absorbed in analyses inspired by the ghost of that vessel, attacking the task with an obsessive focus that precluded all else. By the time he had finished that morning, any doubt regarding the true identity of
The Noise Within
had been well and truly swept away. Gut instinct was shown to be right again; his father's partial really
had
stumbled on the truth.
The Noise Within
was definitely
The Sun Seeker
reborn.

Whatever his misgivings where Mal was concerned, the partial had given him exactly what he needed, what they all needed. If this didn't spur on those board members whose resolution had begun to waver of late, nothing would.

Having reached this conclusion he took time to review everything, to ensure that he had considered all the angles and covered every pitfall. Only then did he summon the other board members to an extraordinary meeting.

It had come as no surprise when Catherine was the first to call.

Catherine Chzyski was one of the most formidable people Philip had ever met. He was told that she had been a great beauty in her youth. He didn't believe it.

Philip had seen photographs and holographic recordings of the younger Catherine and he still didn't believe it. Perhaps his perception was too clouded by the image of the hard-faced woman he knew - pepper-grey hair habitually pulled back from her prominent forehead to reinforce the severe countenance - for him to ever see her as beautiful, or perhaps she never had been, whatever reports might claim to the contrary.

"You should have known her back then," one of his father's colleagues - a man who
had
known her in her youth - once told him, "before she partnered, before she had responsibilities, in the days when she didn't have a care in the world. She took society by storm. It wasn't just her looks, you see, it was her spirit - the force of personality which animated the flesh. She had an aura, a genuine presence. Magnificent, truly magnificent." This last was spoken wistfully, with a shake of the head as if to dissipate lingering memories.

Philip was still far from convinced.

Catherine's face peered at him from the viewscreen, her mouth pursed in waspish disapproval, momentarily diverting his attention from her too-sunken cheeks. She had always spurned the temptations of rejuve and instead flaunted her age as if it were some badge of honour, famously destroying one young and pretty reporter impetuous enough to raise the subject in the space of two sentences: "I earned this face and I'm going to keep it. Can you say either of those things about your job?"