Chaos Cipher (11 page)

‘
Major damage
to the anchors and stabiliser arrays,’ an operator reported. ‘Looks
like a tear, part of the ship’s external riggings torn away. Some
superficial hull repairs have also been carried out on the
fuselage. It looks like the crew deliberately cut parts of her
away. What a mess...’

Sweeping
scans revealed three potential life forms on board. Two revivable
entities were in deep freeze, but one had thawed out three weeks
early to wonder the ship. Colonel Max Elba had been through an
intensive three week series of training exercises for this,
preparing his crew for a variety of potential scenarios. He had
once been part of a growing culture of impoverished migrants
surviving systemic racism in the precariat zones of the
Megalo-Britai’s capital, Londonii. Most of his youth he’d spent
savaging scraps of the old world from the flooded city beneath the
Atominii for gold, circuits, batteries, data-documents, or fighting
off cyborgs and rival gangs trying to occupy storm shelters. With a
hard life behind him he saw no harm in joining up for Syridan, they
were always keen to take on meat shields for their various
Peace-Keeper projects across the old world of Europe, and one way
or another Max Elba swore he’d give his life fighting on his feet
and not starving in the gutters anymore. Joining the enemy was a
common route that he knew had no real honour, but not everybody had
the physical capacity to make it too and when it came to his
strength he held himself in high regard.

Max wasn’t
shy for beating heads, but when it came to murder he always found
an alternative approach.
Can’t shoot this
one, Max, not when you can pretend your gun jammed. Whoops, missed
the target, must be tired today, right?
Where he lifted his reputation, was in his high mission
success in protecting the powerful. He had grown highly experienced
in security and hand to hand combat. Years of Peace-keeper service
for the Emperor states in Europa’s Atominii had already conditioned
him to take on almost any physical force short of an Olympian
soldier, but that had not been the focus of his training. The
radioactivity training was mandatory, various cabin hazards were
just some of the obstacles they were trained to avoid, isolating
dangers and quarantining outbreak hazards.

Max watched
the dynamic line feed down into the darkness of the space shuttle
before clipping his karabiner to it.

‘
Lend me your
ears, team,’ Max started, his voice deep and confident ‘gotta
isolate that target ASAP. Keep one another updated via neurophase
sensorium. We’ll only have semi-qualia peer to peer sharing so rely
on your neural avatars. We won’t have Nexus access in here so we’ll
need to stay close. Stay alert. I’m taking point. Tanya, I need you
on back up and I want you dressed to kill.’

‘
You sure
about that, sir,’ said Tanya Medina, looking just about ready to do
so.

‘
I don’t want
any blood spilled,’ her leader clarified, ‘I just want you to look
as though you can.’ And Max turned to Rufus and said: ‘You prepare
for psychological arrest. This bloke is most likely disoriented. I
don’t want anybody unnecessarily putting their neck out if he’s
psychotic.’

‘
You’re the
boss,’ Ed Rufus added.

‘
Okay kids,
no lemons. Let’s get in that hole and look for the survivor. Make
this a clean job and the rest is duck soup.’

Max lowered
down the line and into the darkness, his one suit glowing with
bands of light on his ankles, shoulders and wrists. Tanya Medina
lowered in close behind and Rufus followed next, their boots
landing heavily onto the solid alloy floor of the airlock reception
gate.

Inside, the
Erebus was like a black sepulchre, minimal lights blinking from
consoles and terminals, the smell of circuitry and
plastic.

‘
Scans reveal
that the man roaming the ship is the navigation officer, Scott
Barnes,’ Max whispered. ‘Use your neuro-ligature to convey all
future communications.’

Max suddenly
saw Rufus and Tanya’s avatars spontaneously appear in the lower
right area of his field of vision. Their neurophases were set to
semi-qualia sharing. The avatar heads exactly captured each
micro-expression, the merger even made them all share in the
solidarity of mission determination. Max stalked ahead, magnetic
solenoid boots attracted to the emergency walkways. Their feet sent
ripples of piezoelectric light reacting ahead of them, glowing
warmly throughout the hallways and spreading like a magnesium fuse.
The hallways were quiet, absorbing their soft steps in its muted
vapidity.

‘
Total
blackout
,’ Rufus’ avatar
neuromitted.

‘
This starnavis
has thirty million cubic feet to its overall
capacity
,’ Tanya informed,
‘
that’s a lot of ground to
cover
.’

‘
We won’t be
covering that kind of ground
,’ said Max,
‘
the scanners did most of the work. Let’s
just find this bugger and isolate him
.’

‘
He was last
located in Engineering, sir
.’

‘
Thanks Rufus.
Alright, elevators are inactive. We’ll use the personnel
chutes
.’

Max led them
further down the docking corridor and they passed into the main
walkway, an elegantly designed tunnel expressing the length of the
ship. It was littered with various items, half eaten packets of
soup, ice crystals and balls of oil slithering around the place.
Sweeping clouds of mist where the air was thicker, dust collecting
in communes. The Erebus had been in micro-gravity before joining
with the counterweight centrifuge of the
Orandoré
station, so things once
floating around the place had now slumped into piles and splotched
around. Max noticed that the walls were thatched with markings of
what looked like chalked symbols.

‘
Tanya, where’s
engineering from here?
’

‘
The next level
down sir.
’

‘
Which way to the
bridge command?
’

‘
Two levels
up
.’

‘
And our
target?
’

‘
Still where he
was, sir
,’ said Rufus,
‘
engineering
.’

Max crouched
by a personnel chute and pulled himself through, dropping slowly
feet first along the tunnel to the next floor down. He used the
ladder cages on the inside of the chute for extra support as he
stepped down. Rufus wasn’t far behind, crouching into the conduit
and reaching about for support, and then Tanya secured the upper
level, giving the hallway one last check before they
left.

Engineering
had a much more complicated network of pathways, forking and
branching to various operational sections of the ship. Some paths
weaved to sublevels, others to mid-levels around the ship’s
aneutronic crossfire power-hub. The great machine was supported by
various carbon composites, hexagonally positioned support beams. A
gentle continuous humming vibrating from its centre where the fuels
fed in pulses to keep basic life support systems operational. Max
sauntered carefully around the fusion hub, his shadow quivering in
moiré jitters as the aneutronic radiation danced like lightning
chasing its own tail.

‘
The fusion hub is
spent
,’ Rufus neuromitted.
‘
This starnavis is
parched
.’

‘
Why the hell are
they using the fusion hub? Wasn’t this thing fitted with molecular
diodes? I thought it ran on space energy?
’

‘
Zero-point-energy
diodes were damaged
,’ Tanya explained.
‘
This place must have gone to hell and
back. Even its saltus-carrousel is missing
.’

‘
Christ,’
Rufus said on an exasperated breath, ‘no wonder it took them
centuries to get back.’

There, in the
darkness, by one of the consoles, Max saw motion. His oculars
mapped out a man behind the integral structures. He was sneaking
cautiously around the fusion hub, as curious about them as they
were about him.

‘
Can you see
him?
’ Max said, neuromitting his team and
sharing his visual qualia.

‘
Is that
him?
’

‘
I think
so,
’ Max said, ‘
Tanya, I’m going to speak with him, take the other side of
the fusion hub and cut him off from making a run for it. Rufus,
ready to apprehend. You may have to calm him
down.
’

‘
Roger
that
.’

‘
Scott
Barnes?’ Max shouted, his voice filtering on a metallic echo as
though trapped in a plastic tube running miles underground. ‘Scott
Barnes is that you? We’re here to help. There’s no danger. You’re
safe now. You’re home.’

‘
Sir,
’ Tanya neuromitted as Max
followed the figure slowly around the fusion hub.

‘
Can you see him
now? I’m following him round...
’

Max’s oculars
locked onto another figure and he paused, alert. There stood Tanya,
confused and shrugging.

‘
Sir I didn’t
see anybody come this way.’ Tanya spoke.

‘
What the
hell? Impossible I didn’t lose him for a second.’

‘
It must have
been me sir...’

‘
You were
behind me the whole time I was watching him, Tanya, the whole time,
until I told you to head him off. The signal just switched to yours
somehow seamlessly.’

‘
I don’t
believe in ghosts, sir’ said Rufus. ‘But this shit is
freaky.’

‘
Did you find
the signal Rufus? It wasn’t just me, right?’

‘
There was
something there for sure,’ he confirmed, ‘but the signal vanished.
For me, it was very faint to start with.’

Rufus traced
out the signal and detected a life presence squatting twenty metres
ahead of them, somewhere in the viscera of the ship’s mechanisms.
Rufus led the way, holding his palm out, ready to stun his target
if need be.

‘
This way,
sir,
’ he said, returning to the private
space of a neurophase communication.

Tanya
tightened her fists and stepped forward in her boxing stance,
following close and ready to strike. Max watched their backs as
they shifted through the dark tunnels. He pointed to the
piezoelectric floor ahead of them. Twenty metres of the hall was in
darkness, and then a soft strip of light was glowing in the
distance ahead where the floor lights had been triggered by recent
footsteps exclusive to their group.

‘
Somebody is
definitely down there,
’ Rufus
reported.

‘
I see
it,
’ said Max, ‘
hold it there Rufus, I’m taking point
.’

‘
Roger that,
sir.
’

‘
Cover me,
Tanya.
’

‘
Got your back,
sir.
’

They followed
walkways until they reached the activated floor panels, and then
looked left and right where the floor was still glowing. Max
noticed the medical centre was open; a small flicker of light was
pulsing inside, as though trying to find the energy to stay
alight.

‘
Barnes!’ Max
shouted. ‘My name’s Colonel Max Elba, we’re an away team from
Earth. No horsing around here mate, alright? Stay calm. We’re here
to help.’

‘
Tell him we have
medication,
’ Rufus
suggested.

‘
Don’t tell him
that, sir, he may think we’re going to sedate
him...
’

‘
But if he’s
hurt...hell we don’t know what condition he’s
in...
’

‘
Quiet!’ Max
vocally ordered, ‘Goddamn it, we’ll see when we find
him.’

The medical
facility was a long and narrow room, equipped with recovery pods
and two operating tables. Max looked around curiously and saw more
markings of white and yellow chalk marks hatching large X’s onto
the inner walls of the ship.

‘
Man this is
weird,’ he said.

He’d only
ever seen medical facilities in old reports, the fact that the
Erebus had one, only demonstrated its age.