Chaos Cipher (15 page)

We got them
checked with guns

Nobody out
there gonna own me

Our ranger’s
pickin up twelve gee

Got Lexy in
the back, enlightened

Stick a Gauss
up the ass of them Titans

My words if
nothing’s gonna frighten

Them Titan
niggas we’re gonna ride’em!

Belts
strapped and hearts jacked, sand storms and cataracts

Electric eyes
are flying high, my faith in God is running dry…’

Jasper had
pulled away from his binoculars at this point. Lexy sat up, head
bobbing to the plosives and syllabic delivery of Fimble’s prose.
And on he went for another minute, excited by his improvised
stanza, catching the words that described their jeep, burning
drones, the rolling endless hills of the Novus and the fall of the
Atominii. When Fimble was done he was standing on his seat, lapping
up praise from Lexy as together they howled chanting ‘We Novus
thrillers are drone killers, we thrill seekers and cyber reapers.’
Jasper tried not to show he was impressed.

‘
How long you
had that one in the bag?’ Jasper asked with a half-smile, returning
his gaze to the binoculars.

‘
Every time
we come out here,’ said Fimble, high-fiving Lexy and swinging on
the jeep’s frame back into his seat. ‘I think up a little more
every day.’

‘
You liked
it, didn’t you?’ Lexy teased Jasper, kicking his seat.

‘
Knock it off
Alexis! I need to watch out.’

‘
We should
have brought some kind of canvas out to cover us because it is hot
as hell today.’ Lexy complained, rocking back into her
seat.

‘
Six more
shifts,’ said Jasper into his binoculars. ‘That’s what we promised.
Duty served.’

‘
Duty
served,’ Lexy echoed.

Fimble was
drumming again, humming his words, rattling out another rap in his
mind.

‘
Hey,’ said
Jasper over his shoulder. ‘Lex, look here.’

She sat up,
nudging her helmet back slightly over her shaven head, kneeling
across the gearbox to see through the binoculars.

‘
What am I
looking at?’

‘
About twenty
clicks North West,’ he said. ‘See that?’

‘
What?’

‘
It looks
like a building, really faint but just visible over the hills. It’s
a mirage; you can only see it because the air is hot.’

‘
Oh yeah,’
she mumbled.

‘
Know what
that is?’

She sat back,
shrugged, set her hands on the front seats for balance.

‘
That place
is an old fulfilment centre,’ he said sitting back and resting his
wrist over the steering wheel. ‘It was once a place where
wage-slaves worked to make electronics, Capitalist gulags. Then the
industry changed. It’s called Encybleron now.’

‘
Funny name,’
said Fimble.

Jasper
suddenly noticed Fimble had stopped his perpetual tapping and was
sat chewing loudly, his right leg bouncing on automatic, sunglasses
casually concerned with the horizon.

‘
Yeah well
you wanna stay the fuck away from that place if you can help it,’
Jasper said. ‘That place is twisted.’

‘
What’s it
used for, Jasper?’ asked Lexy.

‘
Neuro-commerce,’ he said. ‘It’s a testing facility for
researching cyber-bio neurology on live subjects.’

‘
What kind of
research?’

‘
The kind
that’ll give you nightmares.’

‘
Nightmares
and cheap scares, neuro-phasing creepers.’ Fimble went on, humming
the rest to himself. ‘Hey.’ He suddenly said, as if snapping out of
his creative stream. ‘You ever been there, Jasp?’

‘
No man,’
Jasper said, laying the binoculars down on the dash. ‘Too
dangerous.’

‘
How do you
know what goes on in there?’

‘
I saw them
taking in the bodies. Missing people from the hardlands. They take
them there and put them through different experiences for sensorium
data harvesting. If there is a demand for a certain sensory
experience in the Atominii and they haven’t logged that experience,
then Encybleron wire up a subject and put them through it. They
record the experience and sell it off to whoever can afford
it-’

‘
Jasper!’
Lexy suddenly uttered, pointing to the sky.

They all saw
it, falling through the blue, a streak of light tumbling down to
earth, sparkling as though reflecting the hot white flare of the
sun. A parachute opened to slow the plummet and they watched it
glide down into the faraway lands.

‘
What
the-?
’ Fimble whispered.

‘
That ain't
no drone,’ she said. ‘Ain't no cloud-seeders either. Looks like a
supply drop.’

‘
Belt up!’
Jasper ordered, turning the key in the ignition.

The jeep
grinded to life all smoke and buzz, and Jasper slammed his foot
down, spinning the wheels up. Lexy settled on her back under the
velociter weapon, pulling out the target screen to see ahead of
them from her reclined angle. From the screen she controlled the
movement of the gun, frames and lines and geometric folds of
lightweight pulleys all latched to her target screen pad, allowing
her free mobility to aim the weapon with her hands.

‘
Direction?’
Jasper asked.

Fimble chewed
on his gum, fingers doing the math, maps and coordinates printed
out in green fonts behind his glasses.

‘
We’re on
track, bearing West ten degrees.’ He said.

Jasper pulled
the wheel slightly, watching his compass close as he steered over
rough terrain. The vehicle bounced forth, lurching on, four
polymerite honeycomb airless wheels constricting and restricting in
reaction to the ground. The AI pneumatics analysed the passing
terrain, responding, giving suspension to their bounding advance.
Lexy pushed her feet into the back of Jasper and Fimble’s seats for
extra security.

They’d just
rounded a huge boulder on a downhill skid, Jasper steering expertly
into a tailspin. The jeep slalomed and he pulled the wheel to get
her back on track. Then suddenly something major broke under the
cabin. Jasper’s last thought as he tumbled through the air was the
transaxle had snapped. Then he hit the rocks, rolled for a few
meters and lay still, unconscious and breathing dust. Fimble hit
the ground hard, falling out from the passenger door and Lexy
screamed as the jeep hitched vertically into the air and slammed
onto its side, hauling her from the rear seats. As it trawled to a
stop the jeep let out a great breath of smoke and dust. Lexy took
in shallow breaths of her own and struggled, feeling that something
was terribly wrong. She lifted her head and realised she was pinned
beneath one of the frames; a broken spear of metal impaled her ribs
and right lung. Her quivering hand reached out as the pain set in,
a dreadful pulsing ache that was growing with intensity. And she
could not even scream to appease its jarring
persistence.

‘
Jasper!’ She
heard Fimble call. ‘Aw-shit my arm! Jasper…where you at? Lexy?
Lexy?’

Lexy reached
out with her free arm, dripping with her own blood and shaking from
an adrenaline rush. She mouthed his name, barely able to croak
Fimble. The sound of footsteps, dense and steady trudged somewhere
nearby. She saw the smoke shift in a strange way, as though curling
in on itself without wind to move it, like a mirage on the horizon,
a veil of heat causing an illusion. She saw the shape had body, it
had weight to it, and although it appeared as a ghost, it had an
unmistakable shadow that crossed the ground like a snake below. As
it passed between Lexy and the sun she saw how the daylight changed
in its hollow skin, saw the tones of sunlight reduced to an
artificial projection, saw the sky darken in the form of a man. She
knew this technology, she’d seen it before. This was
photo-diffraction camouflage, optical-PDC like the kind used
by…

By
the…

‘…
Blu-bhhlue
Ly-khans…’ she uttered, desperate to scream. Lexy coughed, a
splatter of blood spraying onto the figure’s boot, lining it with
blotches of red, as though sitting on an invisible dome.

‘
LYCAN!’ She
managed, screaming at last to the others. She reached painfully
down for the targeting pad. The Mag-Spear weapon angled to her
transparent enemy.

Fimble heard
the call come from the other side of the toppled jeep where plumes
of dust and smoke still swelled. He called for Lexy but there was
no response.

‘
LEXY!’ He
shouted again, scrambling painfully to his feet, his dislocated
shoulder causing his right arm to hang limp. Just then he heard the
whining grind of the Mag-Spear velociter weapon charging up to make
a shot. The whole jeep suddenly jolted and a snap of lightning
flashed from where it lay, blowing out the smoke and unzipping the
horizon with an ephemeral beam of fire. Fimble dropped on his knee
as the explosive shot tore out through the Novus and not a second
later a tiny mushroom of cloud burgeoned from the distant mountains
where the Mag-Spear’s shell landed. He heard screaming. An ear
piercing shrill that came from the jeep. Fimble sat on his backside
in horror, throwing his dusty broken sunglasses away to ensure
clarity. The jeep rocked back up onto its wheels and rolled away.
Above it he saw Lexy levitating out of the vehicle, her spine
arched backwards, as though she could not prevent her stomach from
floating into the sky. She twitched painfully, screaming, reaching
out to Fimble in tears. He watched as the blood flowed from her
mouth, spilling down from her lips inverted, over her nose and
eyes. Fimble cried out in horror, a startled wail of confusion and
fear, as though he was seeing her possessed by some sand demon. She
seemed to hover ten feet in the air and her stomach was coming
apart, bulging, splitting as though something was breaking out.
Lexy was sliding down an invisible beam, her intestines and blood
coating a dark red fist above the exit wound. An arm, seemingly
from nowhere, painted in blood, an arm finding entrance to this
world through his friend’s abdomen. She slid a little further down,
her eyes wide and pale, lifeless now, without pain. The reddened
fist opened out into large mechanical fingers, spreading,
stretching in the glory of blood. Then, segment by segment the
optical plates began to deactivate and the Blue Lycan slipped into
visibility. Its chrome poly-metalloid armour deadened out the
sunlight into silver contours, an eight foot tall armoured machine
with a fierce helmet and mouth grill. He discerned no eyes on the
beast, but a semi-translucent skull from which he saw a faint pale
face staring back. The armour was packing weapons and instruments
of which he had never before seen.

The Blue
Lycan threw down Lexy’s body and casually brushed off its palms.
Fimble turned, began to crawl away. The tundra was vast and open,
with nowhere to hide. But the compulsion to move was overpowering.
He climbed to his feet, stumbled and rolled. Back up quickly again
he froze on realising there were others, more like the one that
killed Lexy.

This one was
not as humanoid. The Blue Lycan seemed to drop from the sky,
leaping from a rocky high land it bounded towards him on its fists
like a silver back gorilla. And it stayed low, assertive, inhuman
growls and slobbering breaths droning from behind its mouth grill.
Whatever monster was housed within the helmet he dared not wish to
know. Hoped never to see. Death would be a much kinder fate than
unmasking such things.

‘
No,’ Fimble
uttered, turning back to the one with the blood soaked arm.
‘Please…please don’t…’

It stepped
towards him, hulking stomps throwing up clouds of dust. The Blue
Lycan reached down and arrested Fimble by the throat, heaved him
choking to the sky, grappling with the bloody iron clad
fingers.

‘
Wait,’ a
voice suddenly called.

The Blue
Lycan stopped, head turning to another armoured giant soldier. This
one was slimmer, more lean, his voice snakish.

‘
Paladin Xon
ordered that one must live, Ulysses,’ it reminded, walking towards
them. ‘How can we remain infamous when dead men tell no
tales?’

-9-

E
naya Chahuán was growing weary. For
the last seventy minutes she had been engaged in a heated debate
with certain vociferous groups in Cerise Timbers who seemed to
think they had a right to run their own government, a
representative one. This had all come about due to somebody spray
painting the word fascist onto Pierce Lewis’ property. Daryl
Sanders stood idly by occasionally rolling his eyes at the claims
and ridicule coming from the talking heads up on the vertical
screens around the local Federation’s main hall.

‘
My house was
vandalised,’ he complained. ‘My dog had been drugged by the
culprit. What kind of monster hurts an animal?’