the Noise Within (2010) (19 page)

It was this remembered impression from childhood which came flooding back when he first clapped eyes on the interior of
The Noise Within
. Kyle had served on many ships, most of them possessing a distinctly lived-in quality; even the naval vessels, though they were invariably cleaned and maintained to rigorous standards, while
The Lady J
might always have been pristine and sparkling, but she still felt occupied and she still fitted together as a whole.
The Noise Within
didn't.

At first Kyle couldn't put his finger on what was missing, but then he started to notice the little things. He recognised the ship's general type immediately, and could probably even have named the shipyard that built her if he put his mind to it, but the closer he looked, the more he found it hard to believe that any yard would have launched a vessel in this state. She was a ship put together in a hurry, without due care being taken over the details and a noticeable absence of finishing touches. Welds were still clearly visible - ripples of congealed metal at the base of walls which normally would have been smoothed out long before the ship was unveiled, and rivet heads remained exposed without any attempt to mask them. The walls were bare metal, the flooring likewise in many places. The precision he had come to take for granted on any ship simply wasn't there. It was as if this were a first attempt at something, a working life-size model that was intended as a template rather than an actual spacegoing vessel. Just like Aunt Tamzin's series of homes,
The Noise Within
fell short of the real deal, as if the ship were little more than a mock-up of what she was supposed to be.

Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect though was the lack of human touches, either personal or corporate. There was nothing anywhere to suggest that people lived aboard or that they ever had. Kyle was willing to bet that, internally at least, she looked little different now from the day she had rolled off the production line.

Nor did she
smell
like any ship he had served on before. No matter how much a ship was cleaned and polished or how many times the air was refreshed and recycled, there was always the ghost of human odour, of sweat and scent; all but intangible smells which had been absorbed by fitments and bulkheads or simply lingered in the air. Kyle had never really considered it before, and he only recognised this background odour of human habitation now by its absence.
The
Noise Within
smelt new and unlived in, yet, conversely, the air also carried with it a hint of mustiness, and perhaps even of death.

From his very first moments on board, with the luxury ship he had so wantonly abandoned only a short distance away - a captured trophy now slaved to
The Noise Within's
systems like some cowed lapdog - he began to wonder what the hell he was doing. Never before on any ship had he felt so completely alone.

The most disconcerting thing of all was the existing crew. All right, perhaps he shouldn't have expected too much banter as they all scrambled along inside the hastily attached umbilical tube which connected the two ships, all suited up and helmet sealed - a manoeuvre that took him back to his navy days. But once safely back on
The Noise Within
surely
anyone
would want to celebrate. Even one whoop of elation or relief would have satisfied him, but nothing. No excitement, not even a slumping of military-stiff shoulders to indicate a degree of relaxation. Instead, everything continued with the smooth efficiency the boarding party had displayed aboard
The Lady J.
They didn't even take their helmets off.

Kyle had served with all sorts in the days immediately following his discharge. When he deserted
The Lady J
in favour of
The Noise Within
he had expected to be joining a gang of merry adventurers; treacherous and deadly no doubt, but nothing he couldn't handle - a group who would be happy to accept him as one of their own, to welcome him onto the 'gang'. In retrospect, such expectations might have been a little naïve, doubtless spawned from his growing sense of frustration and boredom. Perhaps he also missed his days in the military more than he realised and had seen joining
The Noise Within
as an opportunity to regain the addictive spirit of camaraderie which he had only really encountered during the War, when lives - including his own - were being put on the line for the sake of others.

If so, he was destined to be sadly disappointed. Kyle was not exactly held prisoner, but there were certain sections of the ship which were out of bounds, such as all the areas where the rest of the crew spent their time. And, even after
The Lady J
and the selected passengers were returned in exchange for the equivalent of several princes' ransoms, he still was not allowed to see any of his new shipmates with their helmets off. They claimed this was for security reasons, a temporary measure until he had proven himself, but as time went by he began to wonder whether there was more to it than that. Kyle was fast reaching the conclusion that he might be the only real human aboard
The Noise Within
.

Drevers' arrival came as a Godsend. After several days of kicking his heels in growing frustration, Kyle was notified that the ship was about to embark on a second attack. He wasn't allowed to participate but
was
given a ringside seat, with full audio and visual feeds which enabled him to follow everything that went on.

As far as he could tell, this was more or less a repeat of the attack on
The Lady J
, with the target vessel standing about as much chance and offering a similar lack of resistance. From his perspective, the chief gain from this raid was a second new crewman: Drevers. Finally Kyle had some company.

If
The Noise Within'
s
original crew had proven to be something of a disappointment, Drevers proved to be anything but. His uniform might have been shiny white and spotless but his spirit looked to be as dark and twisted as anyone could have wished for.

As soon as Kyle saw the twinkle in the man's eyes and heard the newcomer's opening words: "So, what the hell does a man do for entertainment on this tin heap?" he knew that life aboard
The Noise Within
was about to get a great deal more interesting.

The mess hall was a functional, soulless place, the food served there only marginally less so, but, looking on the bright side, at least nobody was shooting at him. Leyton spotted someone he recognised and steered his feet that way. Carver was stocky but strong, not an eyegee but still a useful man to have by your side in a scrap. His face bore a scar running from ear to mouth across the left cheek - not an angry mark, simply a crease in the skin which shouldn't have been there but which the man had never bothered to get removed. Leyton could understand why. It broke up the symmetry, banished the 'cuteness'. In basic training, Carver had been nicknamed 'baby' due to his round face, clear complexion and innocent expression; not a comfortable label for someone who valued his cred.

Leyton recalled spending one semi-drunk evening long ago trying to persuade the younger Carver that this could work to his advantage, that by building up a reputation for toughness and cockiness he could turn the situation on its head and wear the cutesy nickname as a badge, an ironic antonym of who he truly was, but Carver never seemed to buy into the idea and remained determined to leave the belittling nickname behind. As far as the eyegee was aware, he'd succeeded.

Carver grunted a greeting as Leyton placed his plate on the table and dropped into the seat opposite him. The man looked up without raising his head, intent on shovelling the next forkful of slop into his mouth. One of the things that Leyton tended to miss out on, being an eyegee, was the 'barrack room' gossip. For the most part, this was something of a blessing, since the majority of it tended to be bullshit and outrageous hot air, but every now and then the grapevine brought along something worthwhile, and Carver had always possessed a knack for separating the wheat from the chaff. He also couldn't resist showing off if he
did
know anything of value, so Leyton didn't bother pushing him - not wanting to give Carver the satisfaction - but instead kept quiet, waiting for the other to speak first.

"How's life with the high-fly-gees, then?"

One thing Leyton had forgotten, or perhaps deliberately blanked out, was the man's puerile sense of humour. "Busy, as ever."

"Not likely to get much quieter anytime soon either, from what I hear."

"No surprise there, then." Leyton still refused to bite, but instead concentrated on his plate, trying to decide what the long, green, listless stems might have been before they were irradiated into anonymity. Vegetables of some sort, certainly, though their elusively faint flavour offered no clue.

"Big op coming up," Carver said. "There's going to be a mass briefing called tomorrow, or the day after at the latest. All hands freed up for this one, you eyegees included. Least, that's the word."

Leyton's turn to grunt. He shifted his attention to the meat, lumps of which stood proud from the gloppy brown gravy like islands in a swamp. The lumps were no easier to classify than the vegetables.

A mass briefing for a major op? To Leyton that had the promise of him riding shotgun on somebody else's mission written all over it. He also had a terrible suspicion that this would have something to do with that pirate ship again - a prospect which produced a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach; an effect caused by something more than the muck masquerading as food before him. Having failed to glean any useful intelligence from the series of raids on freebooter friendly bases and planets, the authorities were bound to try something else at some point, though he hadn't reckoned on them organising anything this swiftly. Suddenly Leyton found he'd lost his appetite, and pushed his plate away into the centre of the table.

Carver looked up, his gaze switching between the eyegee and the rejected food. "If you don't want that..."

"Help yourself." The man always did have a cast=iron stomach.

Carver grabbed Leyton's plate, as if afraid someone else might claim the 'food' ahead of him, tipped it up and slid the contents onto his own.

Leyton shook his head, then pushed his chair back and stood up. "See you, Carver."

"Yeah, have fun."

The eyegee walked off towards his quarters, very much doubting that he would.

It was occasions such as this that reaffirmed Leyton's faith in human nature, or at least his faith in Carver's ability to tell the difference between nuggets of worthwhile information and bilge swill. The meeting was called for first thing the following day.

At the front of the room stood Commander Roberts, all neatly pressed uniform, gleaming buttons and razor-sharp creases. He had obviously drawn the short straw and been given the task of delivering the briefing. Behind the uniformed officer stood two men in civilian suits: Benson and another man, whom Leyton failed to recognise; a fact which surprised him. He made a note to find out who the mystery man was. He liked to have a handle on everyone in a position of command, particularly those whose pretensions of authority might affect him in some way.

Leyton barely heard the opening words of the address; he was too busy concentrating on the other two men. Typically, Benson stayed in the background, content to watch from the shadows. The newcomer stood beside him, the pair exchanging occasional whispered words which Leyton was unable to catch; cupped hands hiding mouths, or said mouths barely moving when uncovered, rendering his lip-reading skills useless.

The room was packed, with well over a hundred field operatives in attendance. There were a few faces he recognised, though not many. He exchanged nodded greetings with some of those he knew, including Carver, who gave him a smug 'told you so' grin in response. As he quickly scanned the crowd he counted a total of six other eyegees - a good half of the total unit - though neither Mya nor Boulton were among them. The thought did occur to him that if some dissident group knew enough to smuggle a bomb into this place, they could cripple the government's intelligence and black-ops capabilities for years.

Purely from a selfish perspective, he hoped that no one had.

"As you know, it was initially assumed that the reason these 'boarders' kept their faceplates opaqued was to hide their identity," Roberts was saying, "but analysis of readings taken from the first two raids confirms that, in actual fact, they don't have faces to hide. The suits are empty. They're nothing more than remotely controlled shells."

The Noise Within
. Again. He was beginning to hate that wretched ship with a passion. Surely there were more important things he could be doing, such as bringing down crime lords and preventing rebellions; though judging by the size of the assembly for this briefing, others clearly didn't think so. Perhaps there was more going on here than met the eye.

The commander was still speaking. "At first we assumed that the suits were being operated by the real crew who were back on their own ship keeping their heads down, but recent intelligence suggests a different possibility: that there
is
no crew. It appears that
The Noise Within
may be an AI-controlled starship."

Murmurs rippled round the room.

"We're now confident that she is, in fact, an old Wartime experiment called
The Sun Seeker
, returned to haunt us." Roberts' next five words were spoken precisely and a little more loudly, effectively quieting the residual mutterings. "It Stands To Reason, Therefore... thank you..." he continued in his usual voice, "... that the same AI is operating the shells. Lack of a human crew would certainly go a long way to explaining the ship's manoeuvrability and the adroit way she handles such impressive acceleration and decel. All of which begs the question, why has
The Noise Within
set about recruiting a human crew?