Chaos Cipher (2 page)

‘
That’s
right,’ old Osmond then asserted with his hands formally behind his
hips. ‘Rynal, the Sacred Star Acolytes saw this thing for a reason.
The Chronomancer child wanted us to find it…’

‘
You don’t
know that.’ Rynal said.

‘
Yes, I do.’
Osmond continued. ‘It’s no coincidence. Just last month there was
an Earther here…a Titan.’

‘
A Titan?’
Rynal repeated. ‘What did they want?’

‘
He wanted to
speak with some of our leaders. He offered the Sacred Star Acolytes
pardon from Earth providing we sell them this very star system. It
seems they’re interesting in the appropriation of our new
planet.’

‘
We said no,’
Malla re-joined, her red eyes beautiful and resolute.
‘Naturally.’

‘
But that
doesn’t change the fact,’ said old Osmond, stepping forward, ‘that
our enemy knows where we are and they have targeted our system for
another use, probably for Obsiduranium mining.’

‘
How much
time do we have?’ Rynal asked.

‘
It doesn’t
matter,’ said Osmond. ‘We have a deterrent. They can’t bully us
into handing over this star system. With a catalyst in our
possession the Atominii won’t dare touch us.’

‘
And the
Elixir?’ asked Rynal. ‘Do they know?’

‘
I doubt
anyone outside of Kyklos knows of the Elixir.’ Malla
stated.

*

Where the
Kyklos station circled above the peridot planet Amora, with the
Suntau star suspended above the northern axis, Rynal’s civilization
had cultivated upon the circular station a realm of well governed
and coordinated peace. They had their own dreams for the young
planet Amora. Rynal imagined they shared his vision of building a
civilisation worthy of being called civilised, an extension of
autarkic holacracy they had realised together on the Kyklos
station. It wasn’t perfect, but it was peaceful. Like many
Olympians it was Rynal’s wish to have just such a world on Earth,
but he had lost hope for that dream long ago. And he had hopes for
his daughter as she lay quietly in his arms. Just a few months old
the sleeping baby had already made a huge impact on those who had
looked upon her eyes. They believed it was she who was changing
their outlook. They believed she was a Chronomancer. Rynal largely
ignored the claim. He’d never believed in such nonsense. After all,
nobody can see the future. It simply is not set.

He watched
her, wrapped in the warm thermal quilt that was silver on the
outside. Rynal was steady as
The
Cereno
lifted. He gently approached one of
the porthole windows to watch the land shrink away below the
cumulus. The rock and sea faded beneath the thick atmosphere made
denser by the huge stations still pumping pollutants into the sky.
He turned as his tall and laconic brother, Raven stalked into the
galley.

‘
I had rather
wondered,’ he began, uttering from the shadows, ‘if thine errand to
the terraforming station would be all but brief.’ Two small
chartreuse rings shone back where Raven’s eyes were.

‘
Why?’ Rynal
whispered gently. ‘Are you missing a sparring partner,
Raven?’

‘
Ney,’ Raven
respectfully confessed. ‘Only thy kin.’

Raven stepped
further into the light. He looked much like Rynal, only his hair
was longer, thicker and in strands that hung past even his hair cap
and his green eyes and fangs were the only visible mutation to
him.

‘
I’ve missed
you too, my kin.’ Rynal smiled. ‘And when we’re home we can head to
the recreational district and hammer back a few.’

‘
Nothing
would please me further.’ Raven said, bowing his head. ‘But hear my
words brother. These arms,’ he said, lifting his arms up with fists
tight, ‘forged as they are from years of training, have not the
will to carry thee again home from our intemperate
remissions.’

Rynal
laughed. ‘Like the last time?’

‘
Though I
never tire of the competition,’ Raven winked.

Rynal turned
his nose down to the child to see if she had woken.

‘
Thou hast
better be ready, brother,’ Raven said in a low voice.
‘
The Cereno
has
not the means of a gravmex. Canst thou yet sense the lack of
gravity? We will be in orbit soon.’

Rynal
returned to the cradle and rested the sleeping baby within. Robotic
polymer arms adjusted to guide the infant down on the soft cocoon
of fleshy white materials and Rynal moved over to a ladder to head
for the bridge. Raven slouched over the galley’s table and watched
him leave.

*

Osmond
observed
The Cereno’s
functions as the autopilot command took them out of Amora’s
stratosphere. From here they could see the Kyklos ring station, a
large wheeling habitat kilometres in size. An elegant structure,
the Kyklos wheeled and sparkled where the mirrors winked back from
the spherical axis, a large docking harbour for deep space
starnavis. Lights cruised back and forth on the spokes as elevators
serviced the ringular centrifuge. As he watched, Rynal winced at a
glimpse of the Suntau star as it flashed through one of
The Cereno’s
portholes
and he steadied himself on a solenoid footpath. Malla swam through
the low gravity to join him and he helped her down onto the path.
She was smiling as her boots secured. The micro-gravity never
failed to amuse Malla and it always sent waves through her stomach
and chest.

‘
Coming up on
the Kyklos,’ old Osmond said.

‘
I’m looking
forward,’ Malla told Rynal.

‘
To what?’ he
asked.

‘
Getting
back,’ she said. ‘Having you home, away from those atmosphere
stations on Amora.’

‘
Well one day
we’ll be calling Amora our home if all goes well.’

Suddenly the
power cut and
The Cereno’s
bridge fell into a dark silence. Osmond held up
his hands, confused, ready to admit he’d touched something he
shouldn’t have. Spots of light moved around the bridge, beaming in
from the windows as they cruised through the Suntau’s
light.

‘
Osmond?’
Rynal’s voice uttered.

‘
I-I don’t
know…’ he stuttered.

And then a
brilliant light cast through the windows causing Malla to scream
and turn away. The transparent material quickly reacted, becoming
opaque enough to dampen the radiation, discerning a huge fireball
silently bloating ahead through space.

A searing
nuclear dawn had burst above the high orbit of planet Amora and
from the ring habitat a thousand shocked faces issued up to its
corrosive light. For a few nanoseconds the pernicious radiation
bled through the station’s surfaces before the dome filters
adjusted. It wasn’t much exposure, but ample enough to burn
thousands and completely vaporise those in the full exposure. And
it was in that moment the dreams of the
Kyklos
culture turned to
sand.

From the
explosion’s epicentre, a coronal shockwave washed over the
Kyklos
station’s armour
in blazing tides, shaking off defensive mechanisms above and
blasting away the station’s polarised field potential. Hundreds of
starnavis already docked with the spherical core disintegrated into
metalliferous segments, fragments of material dragged on a nuclear
gust. They collided into exposed domes on the radial sides of the
habitation ring, spinning off into space. Then, long range
astro-javelin missiles cut through local space and smashed into
the
Kyklos
shield
plating, marking the start of a second wave assault on the arc
station. Soon, a third salvo slammed into the circular habitats,
and again as one of the turbo elevator spokes leading down from the
spherical harbour shattered, a frozen string reposed of
tension.

Fires sluiced
through the micro-gravity. Red hot nanotube riggings exploded and
tore up the vast superstructure, swallowing desperate citizens
vying to flee. From the carnage they watched helplessly as
herculean slates of orbital debris clattered into yet more
exposures, further weakening the material and causing it to crack.
Large shells of viscera hurtled along the direction of the
station’s centrifugal spin, as others returned on centripetal
forces, turning the whole locality into a death wheel. Boiling
water spilled out of the reservoirs and flared into the backdrop of
the nebula, a faint rainbow set aglow in the spectral vapours.
The
Kyklos
had
become a Catherine wheel, a burning aureole reducing everything
living to cinder, fragments getting smaller, ground to pieces as
the spin increased.

Emergency
escape modules dropped from the huge ring habitat and fled into
orbit, chasing the early evacuees. Falling with the debris they lit
the Amorian twilight like napalm raindrops.

Helplessly
they watched this from
The
Cereno
, a disaster unfolding in the
silence of space. Only their confined breaths and gasps now filled
the bridge command. Rynal lurched forth as the initial shockwave
spread far enough to finally reach them and passed over
The Cereno
with a
turbulent rocking. Without another moment to lose old Osmond
rebooted the power nodes.

‘
SIT TIGHT!’
He raged, fastening himself into the seat. ‘Full throttle on the
retros. Repositioning our orientation.’

‘
Malla, get
to the cabin,’ Rynal told her, taking her shoulders in his grip.
‘Make sure she’s safe and sit tight. We have to get out of here
fast.’

‘
Rynal!’ She
gasped fearfully, her skin tanned from the kiss of nuclear light.
‘My god! What was that?’

‘
We have to
go we have to go!’

‘
The
Kyklos
!’ She uttered
frantically. ‘Jesus! Our home!’

‘
Malla! The
cabin!’ He shouted, throwing himself toward a pilot
seat.

Malla hurried
towards the ladder and disappeared into the lower levels. Rynal
secured himself in the inertial material and the pilot seat
reclined into a laying position.

-2-

A
t almost two million kilometres
from the
Kyklos
orbit, the four assailant battle ships emerged from their
force-envelopes. The starnavis
slithered
in from a pseudo-horizon
like warping metallic eels. The long Jackal starnavis began to
power down, huge toroidal rings shielding the vessels, relinquished
electromagnetic gravmex field-distortions to bring them from
faster-than-light speeds, and by half a million kilometres the
saltus-carrousels appeased. The huge prismatic machines cruised
toward the devastation in a tactical approach, each an immense five
kilometres long. They were narrow vessels, frosted chrome
platforms, each encompassed by three large and thick toroidal
saltus-carrousel rings from bow to stern like a cage.

The Jackals
targeted their diamond shaped bows on the burning
Kyklos
station in
predacious advance. The leader raced ahead, cuttlefish pulses of
light blinking across the windowless fuselage. The long machine
detached from the saltus-carrousels, ski couplings pulling away
from the inner circumferences, folding towards the body. Boosters
fed the heavy starnavis forward, leaving the three warp rings to
hover in a local Lagrange point. The three remaining Jackals
arranged a tactical approach vector, also leaving their
saltus-carrousels in far orbital positions of the planet Amora. As
they moved, huge conduction points spiked from the backs of the
ships, glowing to a heated red as thermal radiation was drawn from
the super-hot cores to be purged into space. And as the rods glew
white hot they detached into space, shedding the internal heat from
the ship’s massive energy cores.

They coasted
forth, ready to destroy any targets meandering from the
devastation. Giant exhaust casts cooled, leaving vapours of liquid
oxygen behind them, as scores of Arrowhead Strikers sprang from
their launch runways and swarmed out to meet with the life boats
fleeing from the
Kyklos
disaster.

*

Rynal’s face
was tight with anger, camphor beads of sweat collecting over his
desperate and pained expression.

‘
They’re from
Sol!’ He barked, turning back from his ship’s display field. ‘I’m
seeing deep space starnavis. Jackal Dreadnaught class! There’re
four of them.’

‘
It’s not
possible!’ Said Osmond. ‘No! No they must have been waiting here
for years!’

Rynal dashed
around to the main bridge console. A multitude of holographic
display fields enclosed, gloaming around him and interacting with
the dendrites of nanology trafficking through his luminous,
opalescent veins. His electric, green eyes dilated to absorb data
traffic projecting through the bridge. Osmond glared up at the huge
holographic orrery projected around on its digital gimbals in the
domed roofing of the bridge, orienting their position in space.
Rynal could sense his brother by the airlock. His long antennae
merged with his brother, a full transqualia request.