the Noise Within (2010) (2 page)

Another howl, much closer this time. The red dots were on the veranda, almost on him.

Stuff this! He pushed himself away from the wall, standing upright with gun at the ready. Then came the boom and he felt the push of wind as a craft dropped from the sky to hover above the lawn scant metres away.

"Come on!" yelled a voice.

He didn't need any further urging but was already sprinting towards the gaping hatchway. From the corner of his eye he caught a flash of fur as something large hurtled down the veranda steps. An energy beam sizzled past, fired from the hatchway, and he heard a yelp of pain behind him. But he could hear the other dogs now. It was going to be close.

A machine gun chattered from the direction of the house, though whether aimed at him or the rescue craft he would never be certain. It didn't seem to hit either. Answering fire came from figures crouching in the hatch.

Then he was flinging himself aboard.

"Go!" yelled a voice and the craft lifted, his feet still dangling from the open doorway. Even as someone pulled him in, steel teeth clashed shut a finger's breadth from his ankle, the leaping hound falling back as the craft continued to rise.

Leyton rolled onto his back and let out a whoop of laughter.

"How the hell can he laugh about it?" somebody said.

He sat up, grinning at the soldier who had asked such a stupid question, even though it wasn't directed at him. "I'm alive; how would you expect me to react to that particular revelation - cry?"

A figure loomed forward out of the shadows as he got to his feet. "How did the new visor work out?" That was Benson; the man had no sense of occasion and even less patience, which was typical of government officials in Leyton's experience. He wondered whether they deliberately bred them to be that way.

"Fine; no problem at all."

"And the gun?"

"The same - worked perfectly."

"Naturally," said the gun's familiar whisper. "Did you seriously expect anything less?"

Kyle was on the bridge when the emergency began; which was kind of funny really, because he had just spent the best part of the previous hour moaning to Mac, the ship's captain, about there being nothing for him to do except sit around on the bridge and moan. That and talk about swans, of course.

The only part of the preceding hour not spent on the bridge had been when he slipped away to accost Marie. Marie was petite and cute, with large brown eyes, full lips, a pert little nose and a way of wearing the requisite black and white uniform which seemed to have passed the rest of the passenger service crew by. She somehow made the outfit look sexy, whereas it reduced everyone else to a state of bland androgyny.

You had to admire the young woman's skill and professionalism as well. She never spilled a drop, even when two arms enfolded her from behind without warning.

"Stop that!"

"Stop what?" he said softly into her ear. "I only grabbed you because you looked a little unsteady; thought you were about to fall over."

"Well I wasn't, so you can let go." Her words said one thing, but the way she pressed against him, turning her head to nuzzle his chin with her forehead while grinding her buttocks against his groin, suggested quite the opposite.

"Now why would I want to do that?"

"Because I'm on duty, and I'm holding a tray of drinks... and mind where you put those hands!"

"That's not what you said last..."

"Don't you dare!" Marie stepped away from his embrace and turned to face him, the tray and its liquid burden staying improbably level as she revolved around it. She was evidently trying to look stern but failed dismally; the smile which tugged at the corners of her mouth wrecking any pretence of severity.

He studied her with the sort of quizzical consideration people normally reserve for wall pictures that are hung slightly askew.

"What is it?" she asked, suddenly concerned. "My hair, my makeup...?"

"No, no," he assured her, "nothing like that. You just still look a little... I don't know, unstable. Here, maybe this will help."

He reached forward and picked up two of the chilled champagne flutes, one from either side of the silver serving tray. "Better?"

"Kyle! You know that's for the passengers. I'm not supposed to serve crew."

"Shhh."

"You're unreal."

"Now that's more the sort of thing you said..."

"One more word and I'll throw the whole trayful at you!"

He mimed a kiss, then, grinning, turned and walked the few steps across plush, deep-piled carpet to the door marked 'Flight Crew Only'.

He stared into the retinal scanner and the door swished open. On its far side, the carpet became more practical; harder wearing, but the fact there was carpet at all told you all you needed to know about
The Lady J
.

Contrary to several regulations, the door to the bridge stood open. Nonetheless, he paused at the threshold.

"Permission to enter the bridge?"

"Quit fooling around and get in here with those damn drinks," said a rich, baritone voice. "What took you so long, anyway? Flirting with that pretty brunette waitress, I suppose."

"I wasn't flirting with her, she was flirting with me. And she's not a waitress, she's an In-Transit Passenger Entertainment Officer."

Mac grunted. "She can entertain me any time she likes."

"Ah, but you're not the one she flirts with," Kyle pointed out. He had reached the pilot's chair in which Mac lounged, and now held out one of the drinks.

The slightly older, slightly broader man frowned at the proffered glass. "Champagne again? I thought you were going to get beer." It didn't stop him accepting the glass.

Kyle shrugged. "I can only bring back whatever Marie's carrying. Seems you just can't find the right class of passenger these days."

"Ain't that a fact?"

They clinked flutes and each took a generous swig, the dry effervescence tingling against the back of Kyle's throat as it slid down.

He slumped into the deep leather of the absent navigator's chair. He had no idea where the seat's official occupant, Brad, was at the time - probably cosying up with one of the off-duty service crew. "Now, what were we talking about?"

"Don't care," Mac replied, "so long as it's not swans again."

Kyle had been fascinated by these long-extinct birds ever since he was a kid, when his father had first shown him archive footage of them. He could remember it clearly to this day: a picturesque scene with trees and mountains in the background, a mirror-surfaced lake in the middle-distance and a meadow in the foreground. Perspective had shifted almost at once, zooming in on two white smudges, which started out as mere dots on the water but were now revealed to be magnificent white birds, sailing majestically across the lake as if they owned the place. Their precise posture, even down to the curve of their necks, could not have been more perfect had they been sculpted by a master aesthetician. It was this deportment that he especially loved, a way of carrying themselves which declared to all the world that these birds were beautiful and they knew it.

Good looks with attitude. Just like
The Lady J
.

Apparently, there had once been a myth that while swans might look serene and elegant on the surface, out of sight, beneath the water, they were paddling away furiously to maintain that image. Which was
exactly
like
The Lady J.
For most of her staff at any rate.

The Lady J
was a pleasure cruiser; top of the line, attracting the obscenely rich and famous as well as those with ambitions to become such. In theory, as the ship's In-Transit Systems Engineer, Kyle was one of those responsible for keeping her paddling. In practice, he was barely needed at all; a trophy spaceman to be paraded in front of the passengers from time to time to demonstrate that they were in safe hands.

The ship was just too damn efficient. Or, to put it another way, Kyle was just too damn good. He had managed, in effect, to get himself promoted out of the job he loved. Having cut his teeth in the navy, Kyle found himself at something of a loose end once the War ended. Still a young man, he got a berth as flight engineer on
The Star Witch
, an aged rust bucket of a private trader which should have been sold for scrap long ago. Somehow he performed miracles and kept her engines ticking over. He didn't stay long and there followed a period which saw him flit from one vessel to the next, each subsequent ship being a few notches higher on the evolutionary scale which culminates in 'fully space-worthy'.

Along the way he began to build a reputation as one of the best mechanics around, which brought him to the attention of an altogether superior class of ship owner and eventually led to his current position. Only the best for
The Lady J
; a maxim which extended to her engines and systems - state of the art in every regard, requiring virtually no maintenance whatsoever, which was kind of hard on the man employed to maintain them.

When he first joined the crew of
The Lady J
, Kyle was unable to believe his luck. She had the latest Kauffman Drive, the Mark VI, engines he had never dreamed of seeing, let alone working on. What could be better than this?

That first trip had been the most frustrating of his life. While the cabin crew ran themselves ragged to produce the illusion of effortless efficiency, he could only twiddle his thumbs and look on. His most challenging moment came when a vending machine malfunctioned and started to dispense lukewarm bucks fizz.

The entire ship's systems were subjected to a full diagnostics test at the end of each and every trip. If anything showed up as performing at less than perfect efficiency, that part was immediately replaced. Even the ones that consistently registered as perfect were routinely discarded after a specified time, well within recommended performance parameters. On top of that, multiple redundancy had been built into every conceivable system, leaving Kyle very much the last resort. He found himself relegated from being a hands-on mechanic to simply being on hand in the unlikely event that something should go wrong; but how could it, with a maintenance regime like that?

He didn't really feel as if he was a genuine spacer any more and pined for the challenges of the shit-heap ships of yesteryear. On
The Lady J
he even had his own cabin for goodness sake, and yes, even
it
had carpets.

Despite all this, Kyle still loved
The Lady J
. She was a beautiful vessel. It was just that actually working on her proved to be so utterly
boring
, despite the occasional diversion provided by Marie. He was fast coming to the conclusion that
The Lady J'
s beauty was of the sort best admired from a distance, unless you could afford to be one of her passengers, of course.

Fortunately, he was not the only person on board relegated to virtual irrelevance by the efficiency of the ship's systems. In Mac, he found a fellow sufferer and soul mate.
The Lady J
effectively flew herself, which meant that her captain's primary function seemed to be to smile at passengers and entertain them at the captain's table during formal dinners. So the pair of them spent much of their time hidden away on the bridge, where they swapped anecdotes about the days when they had been
real
spacemen rather than highly paid back-up systems.

"And what's wrong with swans?" Kyle wanted to know.

"Nothing, nothing." Mac held up a defensive hand. "It's just that I've heard enough about them for today, that's all."

"All right, you pick a subject then."

"Whatever I like?"

"Anything."

"Okay; that little trolley-dolly of yours, are her tits really -"

"- Anything
except
Marie."

Mac snorted. "I might have known."

Further conversation was interrupted by a gentle alarm beep, an innocent 'ping', which was to signal an end to the pair's boredom once and for all. At their failure to respond immediately, the sound repeated, a little louder this time.

"What's that?" Kyle wondered.

"Just
The Lady'
s way of letting me know that there's another ship in this sector," Mac replied, swivelling his chair and sitting forward to view the screens. Once he did so, he frowned.

"Problem?"

"Maybe. Our new companion is surprisingly close, and she seems to be chasing our course."

Curious, Kyle stood up and strolled across, peering over his friend's shoulder to get a better look at the screen. "Coming up on us pretty quickly, too."

"Hmm, I spotted that. Remind me, what's the maximum we can get out of those shiny little engines of yours?"

He knew the answer to that, as did Kyle. "I forget," he said, daring Mac to challenge him.

"Well whatever it is, how about we give
The Lady
a little exercise?" He ran his open palm from left to right over a sensor screen. A line of colour travelled across the crescent-shaped display, following the movement of his hand. The line changed from amber to red as it went, until the previously blank screen glowed a vibrant crimson.