Chaos Cipher (23 page)

‘
What’s that
supposed to mean?’

‘
It means,’
Serat grimaced leaning forth on his seat harness. ‘That while
everyone else sits here contemplating a descent, or while the three
of you neurophase a transqualia link to debate good old Malik Serat
in the comfort of your personal mental space, you’re the only one
with the stupid fucking face that gives your thoughts
away.’

Ed Rufus
flashed his teeth and Serat sat back and smiled.

‘
Yeah,’ he
said. ‘I know about neurophases. I know about transqualian links
and semi-qualia techniques. I also know that some can manage it
better than others. It seems you only just scrapped the licencing
exams for the military hardware package, didn’t you?’

‘
That’s
enough Doctor!’ Max said.

Malik smiled
at them wryly. It was a smile that held no pleasure, but rather an
embittered deduction of scorn.

‘
You can
think what you will of me, Canaries,’ he said. ‘I’m the only one
here on the right side of history.’

‘
Open your
mouth again Chrononaut and your balls will be history,’ Rufus
seethed.

‘
I said
enough,’ Max said, addressing Rufus now. ‘Let’s try and be civil
while we are in here.’

Rufus sat
back, holding the handles at the front of his shoulder harness. He
let his head drop back as his listened to Max’s
semi-qualia.

‘
Share my sense of
calm
,’ he said, ‘
here’s a mnemonic quale from when I was at the ocean.
Template from a beautiful day as you can tell. Just let that
feeling sink in
.’

Rufus
suddenly felt euphoric, slightly intoxicated by a feeling of joy
and Serat shook his head across from him and rolled his eyes as
once more Rufus’ face was giving away what was happening. He
couldn’t even enjoy a simple memory transfer without that bastard
somehow knowing, and his smarmy grinning sucked the pleasure right
back out of it.

‘
Don’t let him get
to you, Rufus. He’s testing us. He’s bored and he wants to humour
himself. Best to just ignore him.
’

‘
So!’ Serat’s
voice suddenly broke the silence, ‘whose for a game of
charades?’

He smiled
wide and unceasing as he glared at their blank faces and added:
‘-do people still play charades or do you prefer twenty
questions?’

-15-

E
naya Chahuán didn’t know Fimble.
She’d never met Jasper or Lexy. But she still felt it was important
to attend the funeral. Like most occasions like this the
proceedings were carried out in the night. The bodies were swathed
in a special fabric, networked with spores and vines that would
later digest the body nutrients and grow into a tree. They were
like cocoons waiting to hatch, surrounded by wreaths on a carrying
stack hitched onto shoulders. And sure enough the spore fabric
would ensure that, from a corpse to a network of trees and roots.
The fungal spores would take everything. And in the forest their
new lives would continue their symbiotic cycle. Enaya held a candle
as she followed the procession. The ones carrying them were close
friends, military service people from the Novus, and one or two
Mercs, private trainers from the Atominii. One of them she knew. He
was the one with the bird who worked on the air zones keeping the
skies clear, a large number 5 bevelled onto his armoured chest
plate.

The
procession wondered through the woods. They followed a path
prepared for the ceremony. It was lit by bioluminescent plants,
spliced weeds that were cultivated from experiments long forgotten
in history. Today, they used them as guides, potted them in ceramic
bowls to control their growth. The path wound through the dark
forest, and now and again they would see an area of trees lit by
luminous glow sticks and chemical lights. Once they reached the
graves they saw a large dug out hole and gathered there. Enaya
noticed the parents clinging to one another. Ceremonies like death
in Cerise Timbers were usually more upbeat. The celebration was
supposed to symbolise the continuity of life, their symbol of death
being the mushroom, a vessel sprouting new life from old. But this
time the tragedy was these youths were taken too soon. There were
no jokes. No smiling faces. Artex noticed Enaya as the bodies were
lowered into the hole by winch and rope. He bowed to her
respectfully and she returned the nod. There was a pneumatan
present. She gave praise, told others to lift their spirits. She
said that the years these three had lost will continue through the
Earth. They’ll soon run in our very veins as we feed on the fruits
of the forest. They’ll be part of us. Enaya didn’t know how much of
that she believed, she could appreciate nature, but was never one
for nemophilist romanticism. They believed, somewhere in these
forests somebody planted a seed on the day Fimble and his
companions were born, and out there it grows yet. Through the
network of fungi coursing beneath the forest’s soil, they hope
he’ll find his way back to it, the new vessel by which he can
reconnect to our dimension.

‘
Did you know
them?’ Enaya asked Artex on their walk back to the city.

‘
No,’ he
said, ‘they were on rotation shift, filling in for a work pattern
for East B’ One’s Eagle-Clan scouts. All the Eagle-Clan is here.’
Artex looked around, recognising some familiar faces from other
city districts, people he’d never spoken to but respected due to
their Clan group affinities. ‘Eagle-Clans came from North A-Two and
South West C district to be here. They’re all paying
respects.’

‘
Extended
family,’ she noted.

‘
They were
out in the Novus for three days,’ Artex explained as they slowly
wondered back toward the city. ‘They’d gone far.’

‘
What is the
limit for travelling the Novus?’ Enaya asked.

‘
It’s no
man’s land. The void between Moscowai and China. Even our boats
don’t go that far north. Nobody is supposed to go in the
Novus.’

‘
Then why
were they out there?’

‘
That’s what
scout rangers do,’ said Artex. ‘They scout for enemies coming
towards us. Mainly they’re drone hunters. They shoot down the
drones and come back with new resources and information. Can get
quite fun for some of them. Some of what they bring back we can
use.’

‘
So what
happened to them?’

‘
I dunno,’ he
sighed, breathing heavy through his nose. ‘Ranger jeeps have
recorder systems on them. We’ve got someone working on finding out
what happened to these kids. But there’re hundreds of hours of data
to shift through.’

‘
Some of the
doctors said before Fimble died-’

‘
I heard,’
said Artex. ‘Blue Lycans.’

‘
Yeah.’

‘
Well,’ he
said looking up, ‘I’ve got old Cedalion up there keeping an eye on
things. She can fly two hundred miles on a good day. Got a
semi-qualia neurophase on her.’ He said tapping the communication
unit plugged into his implants, a small circular node on the side
of his head. ‘Let’s me use her eyes and feel the air.’

Enaya smiled.
She noticed a tattoo of a scorpion behind his ear but decided not
to ask about it. For a moment there she thought it was a real bug
crawling behind his ear.

‘
I thought
the Atominii shut down your neural hardware when you’re thrown out
of the city?’ she asked. ‘-And your nanoctors too, I
thought.’

‘
There’s a
guy around here who helped me,’ he said, ‘comes from the Atominii.
Apparently he’s a whiz with neurophasing technology and
nanomes…’

Enaya laughed
slightly. ‘His name wouldn’t be Professor Aldous Laux, would
it?’

‘
Sounds like
you know him,’ he said. ‘Then you know what he can do.’

-16-

T
he fortification garrison stood
tall, a conical shaped building amongst the conifers, almost a
hundred metres high, solid and windowless. An array of satellites
and microwave transmission disks for its power grid set upon its
crown. Cerise Timbers had once had a satellite transmitting solar
energy to the network using microwave transmission, but since the
rebellion rising, the city’s old autocracy disengaged the
satellite. It was later destroyed by Atominii solar naval forces.
Outside the garrison stood a group of militia enduring training
drills under the watch of mercenaries. The Mercs were the only ones
in uniform, their copper coloured visors encased in black helmets,
armour thick and silver and black with huge powerful
boots.

Inside the
garrison was a matrix of security levels, a spiral stairway
occupied the centre and reached every floor, the spine of the
building. Soldiers in a mixture of uniforms operated the gate
house, carefully planning, watching maps and keeping an eye on the
forest activity. It was a mix of defensive militia and ecological
research parties. Artex headed into the forensics lab where he knew
parts of the ranger jeep from the Novus had been taken. Hans
Greiber had been checking the data records for the ranger. He’d
spent many evenings flipping back and forth through the image data
files. His room was dark and quiet at the top floor of the
garrison. Artex took a moment after climbing the stairwell to
appreciate the view of the forest through the panoramic
window.

‘
Any
progress?’ he asked Hans as he entered the dark room.

‘
Yes,’ said
Hans Greiber, fingers crossed and elbows at the table surface. He
stared ahead at several monitors where he’d been unscrambling the
damaged data files.

‘
Talk to
me.’

‘
Actually,’
said Hans. ‘Think you ought to see for yourself.’

Artex stood
behind the man’s seat as he played out the data. They saw the jeep
bounding through various terrains as though out of the vehicles
headlights, from the highland frozen tundra to the low land dusty
and rocky lands. The data was coming from several perspectives, one
of which was a camera at the front of the jeep, the other a
headlamp attached to Lexy’s helmet. They saw Fimble tapping on the
dashboard and rapping. Jasper was smiling and nodding along and
Alexis challenged Jasper to make a similar effort. There was a
moment where Fimble was laughing as he taught Jasper to rap and
match words. Fimble’s hand was on Jasper’s shoulder as he spoke to
him. Artex smiled at the interaction. The three of them joking and
teasing and playing. He knew they were close, these three
friends.

There was a
visual from Lexy’s helmet, something in the sky. It wasn’t a
drone.

‘
Freeze it,’
Artex said. ‘Zoom into that.’

‘
I can
already tell you what it is,’ Hans said sitting back and stretching
his arms. ‘That is a supply drop.’

‘
From
where?’

‘
High
altitude.’

Artex was
about to ask his next question but Hans had already
anticipated.

‘
You’re about
to see for whom,’ he said.

He leaned
forth and touched one of the screens, dragging the next data file
over to the player software. He played it in slow motion. The jeep
was shooting around a corner. Artex saw dust scatter ahead as it
veered and there was something in the road, something made visible
by the cloud of dust. It was the semi-visible glimmer of a man. A
giant, he thought. The jeep seemed to bolt ahead as though unaware
of what obstruction stood before it, and the figure moved, wedging
something into the wheel, after which he saw cloud and sky and dust
and blackness.

‘
The girl’s
headlamp and camera mount was damaged in the crash,’ Hans sighed.
‘But I got what I could out of it.’

Hans found
the one still image and unscrambled the static and lighting and
rendered the final image onto the screen. Artex saw it. The
infamous Blue Lycan. For almost a century they stalked the Novus as
ghosts. This was the most recent image they had on them. Artex
analysed the suits, the armour, the photo-diffraction plates, the
weapons.

‘
When was the
last reported sighting?’

‘
About
thirteen years ago,’ said Hans. ‘Young couple went out to the city
Onyx Waters.’

‘
They get a
visual?’

‘
I think so,’
said Hans. ‘Recorded on ocular contacts.’

‘
Show
me.’

Hans took a
few minutes to dig up the folder and eventually found what he was
looking for. Artex mused over the images.

‘
They’ve been
upgraded,’ he explained. ‘They’re not rogue militants like we
thought. They’re getting help.’

-17-

T
he smell of sweat was thick, even
through blood filled nostrils. It was a taste that saturated the
small gym, the air salty, humid. His breaths rasped from swollen
lips, and sizzled through his narrow clotted nasals.