The Noise Revealed (16 page)

Strange to hear himself spoken about in such terms, but he supposed Catherine had a point.

Kethi felt numbed by the news brought by
The Retribution
. Not merely because of her own personal loss, nor even at the thought of so many deaths. The habitat itself was the greatest loss, the only home she and most people aboard had ever known. With the utterance of a single sentence she had been transformed into a refugee; they all had.

Her response was to throw herself into her work in an effort to keep her mind busy.
The Retribution
had delivered several new data packages, collected from the network of beacon drops established by habitat sympathisers within ULAW's ranks. There was a wealth of new information here, which Kethi worked furiously to integrate with what she already had. Perhaps it was this new influx of data, or perhaps the renewed intensity she brought to the job, but she began to get a glimmer of something. There was a pattern here. Kethi could sense its presence even though the components of its design were scattered and buried deep beneath layers of apparently still unconnected data - a web of links so tenuous they barely existed; strands of the finest spider silk all but lost in the cracks between myriad blocks of solid fact and detail.

She continued to race through the accumulated reports, tagging incidents and then compiling a list of names, refining its composition all the while - adding this person but removing that one as more information came to light which perhaps eliminated one prospect by suggesting another. The framework of links Kethi could sense continued to grow. By the time the list numbered sixteen she felt able to take stock, and sensed immediately that there was something wrong. A few of the names didn't quite fit, though she felt certain they belonged to the pattern somewhere.

Tentatively, she drew one name out of the list and then another, moving them to one side, until she had two columns: five in the new list, leaving eleven in the original. Of course, it was obvious now. Two very similar interlinked groups which could easily be mistaken for one. She pushed the smaller list to the right-hand periphery of vision and the larger to the left, before continuing to work her way through the data, occasionally drawing out new names to add to one group or the other.

Finally she was satisfied. There was still some data to analyse, but this gave her more than enough to isolate and identify the nebulous pattern. What Kethi saw horrified her. She blinked, wiping the lenses and returning her awareness outward. Nyles and Leyton were still there, though neither was looking her way just then.

"Nyles," she said.

His head whipped around. "Anything?"

"Yes, and you're going to want to see this, both of you."

Kethi had wondered whether the shock would show on her face. Judging by the looks on theirs, it did.

She might have cleared her lenses, but Kethi possessed eidetic memory and was able to recall the two lists instantly, projecting them onto one of the virtual screens that surrounded the bridge. The longer list now held twenty names, the shorter eight. "Jim, do you recognise any of these?"

Leyton instantly fastened onto one name on the longer list. "Yes, I was with Philip Kaufman when he died, on New Paris... and these three in the smaller group," he highlighted the relevant names in red, "are all members of the eyegee squad."

"Were," Kethi corrected. "The larger group consists of politicians and corporate magnates. I'm pretty certain those in the smaller group are all ULAW operatives - though it's not always so easy to identify those for obvious reasons. Every one of these people has died by presumed accident in most cases, assassination in a couple, all within the last few weeks."

Nyles let out a hiss of breath. "Surely someone else has spotted this."

Kethi shook her head. "Group the names together this way and it looks significant, ominous even, but spread these across all of ULAW space and the result is well within statistical parameters, especially given that most of these are the victims of apparent accidents. No AI's going to pick up on it." She said the last with a degree of pride.

"Well done, Kethi, well done," Nyles said.

"Eyegees don't die easily or often," Leyton added.

"No," Kethi said, "I don't suppose they do."

"What's your reading of this, Kethi?" Nyles asked.

"That's simple. We're seeing here proof of what Mya warned us about. ULAW is in the process of tearing itself apart."

Nyles nodded. "All this at the same time the Byrzaens put in an appearance. It can't be simple coincidence."

"Agreed, and there's more."

"Go on."

"As I sift through the data and reports, one name has cropped up on several occasions, too often to dismiss as coincidence: Pavel Benson."

"The same Pavel Benson who runs the eyegee unit, the one Mya reported to?"

"Yes. He's involved in whatever's going on here, I'm sure of it."

"I
know
Benson," Leyton said. "I can't believe he'd be disloyal to the Union."

"Perhaps he isn't," Nyles replied carefully, as if testing the sound of the words even as he spoke them. "Perhaps it's simply a question of which version of the Union he's loyal to."

"That makes sense," Kethi agreed. "It might not be a matter of trying to bring down ULAW at all but rather a disagreement over which direction the Union should go in."

Leyton indicated the two lists of the dead, which still hovered in the air before them. "That's one hell of a policy dispute."

"People have been killed over a lot less, and I agree the theory has its appeal. It's certainly worth investigating." Nyles appeared to reach a decision. "Kethi, you take command of
The Rebellion
and continue to the next beacon. The more intel we can gather the better. I'll take
The Retribution
to New Paris. We need to confront Benson."

"He's no longer at New Paris," Kethi said. "He's returned to the honeycomb." It was the notorious headquarters of ULAW's intelligence operations.

"Getting in to see him there will be easier said than done," Leyton said, "but I'll go with you to handle that side of things."

"No," said a new voice. "I'll deal with this." Mya entered the bridge. "It's about time I contributed something. Besides which, Benson owes me an explanation or two."

"Very well," Nyles agreed. "We'll divide our forces. Leyton, you stay here with Kethi; Mya, you come with me on
The Retribution
."

Kethi watched Leyton carefully, curious to see his reaction to this enforced separation from the woman they'd all risked so much to rescue and whom he clearly still loved, but the former eyegee simply nodded, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. Privately she wanted to applaud Nyles. Decisive action was exactly what everyone needed. News of the habitat's fate had hit the crew hard. Anticipating the possible loss of their home was one thing, dealing with the fact as reality quite another. People would be looking for a continued purpose and Nyles was giving them just that. Nor was it an empty one - a goal set simply for the sake of having a goal. Kethi felt increasingly certain that Benson would prove the key to their discovering what was going on within ULAW, and that would put them one step closer to learning what part the Byrzaens played in all this.

Chapter Ten

Jenner neither knew nor cared where the intel had come from. He was just relieved to confirm its accuracy. Finding the buoy had proved a time-consuming process, even though they'd been told where to look. Nothing stayed still out here. Things drifted, orbited, wandered off, so being assured that the object would be orbiting a given planetoid still left a pretty vast haystack in which to find their needle. Particularly when the needle in question was so small and completely dormant, primed to broadcast its location only once invited to do so by the appropriate trigger pulse from an approaching craft.

However, a systematic and meticulous search by nine ships, each housing a human/AI pairing operating in gestalt, eventually tracked down the innocuous-seeming beacon, allowing Jenner to set his trap.

He had at his disposal the bulk of ULAW's first ever needle ship squadron - still the only one of its kind until the Kaufman Industries advisors helped the government train and prepare another batch of pilots. Two of their number had been lost battling
The Noise Within
, while another, Fina, was still recovering from injuries sustained during that encounter, and three more had been co-opted for a separate mission, but that left him with eight ships in addition to his own. Twice as many as he'd commanded when taking down the pirate ship. For back-up, stationed a little further in-system and hidden in the shadow of the nearest planet, he had a ULAW dreadnought to call on. Not that Jenner expected to need it; he was fully confident of success.

He arranged his squadron precisely, so that the ships bracketed the buoy from every angle and were in position to engage an enemy caught between them no matter which way that enemy might turn. Now all they could do was wait.

Not long ago he would have dreaded the thought of such protracted inactivity, but that was before he'd taken a needle ship out for the first time - not in simulation but the real thing. He could never be bored, not now, not when there was so much continually going on in his own ship/body and, more especially, beyond.

As Jenner prepared to relax, he thought of Lara, the fiancée he hadn't seen since training ended, when the needle ship squadron had left Home bound for New Paris. At first their separation had been torture, but he'd been surprised at how quickly he'd adjusted. Not that he didn't miss her, not that he didn't still love her, but those absent pieces of his life were no longer the yearning pain they had been, more of a dull ache, one which gestalt with the ship could soon assuage. Most of the time that struck him as a good thing, since it removed a distraction and enabled him to work all the more efficiently, but on occasion he found this development disturbing and feared the implications, worried that it might mean he was becoming a little less human.

He dismissed such speculation; this wasn't the time. Instead he concentrated on relaxing.

Even in this enlightened age of interstellar travel there were still people who thought of space as being empty, which it isn't, not by a long shot. The interstellar medium is a tenuous but dynamic soup of dust, gasses, magnetic fields, and charged particles, specks of matter created and destroyed in an instant, echoes of cataclysmic events carried by microscopic debris. Jenner allowed his consciousness to be fully immersed within the body of his ship. Time ceased its relevance as he basked in the myriad sensations of the quantum foam that played against his hull - sensations which he knew no human had ever experienced before him. He might have been content to stay there forever if a sudden pulse of concerted energy hadn't drawn his awareness back into sharper focus. The trigger signal.

The beacon came to life, broadcasting its position, and the habitat ship made its approach. Big, that was Jenner's initial reaction; far larger than
The Noise Within
. Her design was unorthodox - bulkier than ULAW vessels, if far more elegant than the Byrzaen-modified pirate ship had been. She reminded him of a gigantic stylised teardrop with an extended, tapering neck, as if a glassblower had fashioned her but then had forgotten to properly crop the end. The position of her weapons placements was also far from obvious, and Jenner didn't want to risk probing for them any deeper for fear of prematurely revealing his presence. He'd simply have to be content with targeting the ship's drive for now. No doubt her armaments would become apparent soon enough, once the shooting started.

The ship stood some way off from the beacon, albeit still within the dispersed cordon of needle ships Jenner had established - merely closer to one edge of it than was ideal. This put his own vessel further away from the target than he'd have liked, but that couldn't be helped. He risked a very low level burst from the manoeuvring thrusters, which were specifically designed for stealth, and started to drift nearer, knowing that others in the squadron would be doing the same. The net was tightening. Presumably, the habitat wouldn't want to linger here. He detected a squirt of energy, very tight beam, projected from the beacon to the waiting ship. That was it, what the habitat were here for. They'd be leaving any moment now... just a little closer; another few seconds and he'd launch the attack.

"Captain."

Kethi looked up, still not fully accustomed to being called that. "Yes?" It was Simon who had spoken, from his station monitoring the sensors. She was grateful he'd remembered her rank this time, even though she nearly failed to.

"Nothing, sorry," he said with typical awkwardness. "I thought I saw... but it doesn't matter."

Simon had his faults, not least his forlorn devotion to her, but he wasn't stupid. "Thought you saw what?"

"A faint energy signal, but it was
really
faint, barely even there, and now it's gone completely, so probably no more than ambient..."

"Show me." She hurried over to where he sat staring at the projection hanging in the air in front of his station.

He moved his good hand deftly over the controls and Kethi saw it - a slight blip, too insignificant to be called a spike. But all sorts of energy and particles were floating around out here. She might just have caught a distant echo of a star's death or a planet's birth... or maybe not.

"Weaponry, prepare to bracket these co-ordinates with anything and everything you can bring to bear - a sustained burst in a wide fan. Acknowledge when ready. Helm, I want maximum acceleration on my mark."

There was no reason for them to hang around. The transmitter had sent them the data packages they'd come to retrieve scant seconds before. She hoped to goodness this wasn't what she thought it might be. If not, they'd have wasted a few munitions and everyone could laugh at her jumpiness; if so... embarrassment would be a small price to pay, given the alternative. Kethi remembered all too well what had happened to
The Noise Within
.