Chaos Cipher (53 page)

‘
That’s it,
breathe easy…there we go…’ He instructed.

‘
Harbour
thine eyes,’ Raven told young Avenoir, ‘this culture considers it a
discourtesy to stare.’

Obediently,
Avenoir turned her eyes to the elevators across from them. Where
the spiral climbing framework opened in the centre, free-fall
experts dropped through the middle like parachute divers plummeting
through an open sky. Some altered their trajectory using skilfully
controlled arm motions, grabbing bars, eddying into a new
direction. One of them whooped a cry of joy, as he dropped head
first through the hollow station and it echoed in the capacious
hollows.

*

‘
One zero one
please step forward.’ The synthesised voice commanded. They’d left
the elevator and stepped into the centrifugal zone after a quick
descent from the axel docking sphere. Raven wiggled his toes in his
boots, sensing something odd about his bodily mass. He’d been used
to exoplanets in the Cygnus system, a standard Gee-force seemed a
lot lighter than he’d remembered.

A designated
passport clerk had been looking at him since he’d come down from
the elevators, praying that the large man didn’t end up at his
clearance gate.
Omicron
occasionally required human clarification on
certain customs, especially when it came to docking passports.
There was little trust when it came to androids.

‘
Shit,
’ he muttered, as Raven led the
little girl with a diamond freckled forehead.

He just
seemed to keep getting bigger with each step. The clerk made a
mental note of where his weapon was just in case Raven turned
violent. Raven’s pearl eyes glared steadily onward, reading the
clerk’s apprehension.

‘
Hold at the
line,’ the clerk ordered solicitously. Raven stopped on the white
line illustrated electronically across the holographic floor.
‘Please,’ the clerk added, slightly embarrassed by his own
impertinence. The tall and broad passenger looked irascible, and
Raven made no effort to alter his composure, so the clerk did his
utmost to avoid any unpleasantness. Numerical digits animated on
the floor across Raven’s toes. There were two extra letters,
probably flight code allocation details, assigning him as a
Constella Transit passenger. Raven wondered if anybody else felt
like a package being shoved through a series of postal allotments.
The scanners slid backwards, bringing the electronic gate over his
head. Raven bowed down slightly as the gate passed over him and
around his body. Several lights turned green and the second gate
opened, allowing him through.

‘
Just do as
the Titan says,’ Raven instructed the child as he stepped forth.
‘The earthlings enjoy their bureaucracy, let them have their
dignity.’

She stared
blankly back at him, then over at the clerk. Raven walked through
the gate and turned to wait for her. The gate repeated its scan
procedure and Avenoir was allowed to follow. When she stood beside
Raven, she followed him close as they walked into a long
hallway.

-38-

T
he Eastern Tower matched the design
aspects of the other seven towers on the inner circumference
of
Omicron’s
habitation ring. It allowed two tandem elevators down from
the axel docking sphere, one ascending the other descending in
turn, cycling between the tower’s passport customs based at its
farthest point. Further down, was a travelling lodge, built
directly into the towers for people who intended on long stays.
Many of the people staying within the facility were waiting to
rotate and replace another team working on Calisto’s resource
station, Archimedes II. Mainly they were subterranean drillers and
explosives experts testing antimatter weaponry. Harbeck and Co.
were responsible for supplying a lot of the latest drilling devices
used for mining out the toughest ores diggers have ever faced. The
Valhalla basin was their toughest yet. Sheets of ice had hardened
the properties of the rock they were up against, and ice crystals
proved troublesome for their laser-chronic diggers. Explosives were
the first step; controlled nitro-thermal blasts aimed at
kick-starting a meltdown, and directed and controlled antimatter
fusion bombs.

As well as
siphoning material, the science team were on a voyage of discovery,
to certify the planet’s age and origins. But the scientists working
on the Archimedes II were under a lot of pressure, as the
commission on Calisto ran into the decades. It would certify a job
on Earth anywhere for any scientist or technician with Calisto work
experience, but it would strip years from one’s life and was not a
job taken without careful contemplation. Raven saw the look on
their faces, some of the smartly dressed scientists wearing white,
clean hemp gowns, others dressed in fibre optic clothes and
smart-material writhe with symbols and changing advertisements or
segmented into helical and hexagonal colours. But their faces told
him every story of trepidation and dread he had ever seen. Some
missed their families, others who had no family yearned for change
and sunlight. It wasn’t enough that the UV showers were the only
comfort to their skin. As Raven thought about the Sun-tau’s
lustrous glow, he too could sympathise with that yearning in the
absence of her photonic comforts.

The hotel ran
through the core of the tower like a rounded spinal cord. Its
external shell was composed of Nano carbon, silicon and glass, very
thin but tough, and providing a beautiful view of the extending
habitation ring. Raven even stopped to appreciate it. They stared
from the tower’s upper floors as the ground below them curved up,
out and vanishing high above them somewhere behind the axel docking
sphere, looming like a silver moon. Lights blinked along the
elevator’s tunnel to its vanishing point in the axel sphere, like a
silver ladder hanging down from a paltry planet. The sunlight at
this distance was faint, but still strong enough to direct and
amplify her rays into the gardens below. The gardens were designed
in patchworks, with channels of water intersecting them. There was
nothing in the base that reminded Raven of anything naturally
constructed; natural aesthetics were sacrificed for efficiency. It
was all mathematically plotted, a tightly regimented space, where
science was their faith. It didn’t have the chaotic freedom of a
planet, pushing up mountains and boasting endless oceans. Its rigid
artificiality was not too different from life on the
Kyklos
, with its
rectangular silver pools of water and weather machines mixing up
mist and rain. The rain didn’t fall like on earth, on the
Kyklos
droplets of rain
were like flakes of snow, so the machines sprayed the water, making
a cold mist which faded out any discernible details of the gardens
as they eventually amassed into denser spheres.

He turned
back to see the hotel entrance. There was a doorway like this to
every sub level right down to the ground; big rectangular openings
presenting tidy modern lounges. Auriferous chandeliers emitted a
yellow hue, which glittered over mother of pearl floors. Raven led
Avenoir into the reception and approached the automated desk. A
holographic woman started to construct before them, a friendly face
representing the Hotel’s custom standards, while behind her, a
large robotic arm ordered room passes, lockers and keys, while
authorising room services and cleaning.

‘
Haf-lah, and
Welcome to The Royal Twilight, would you like to make a booking?’
she chimed with a delightful young smile.

‘
Doth thou
provide spare abode to starlight itinerants?’ said Raven, ‘we seek
a temporary stay.’

‘
We have
rooms with a spectacular view of the station’s panorama in the
Venster suite, or we can offer you something a little more
modest…’

Avenoir
pulled on his sleeve, she was pointing now to the main entrance.
Raven held his finger up to the holographic lady displayed in the
glass panel, indicating silence he turned to Avenoir and crouched
to her level.

‘
Where?’ he
asked.

She stared to
the doorway as voices began to mutter and chirp from outside. There
was laughter and there was some aggression and excitement in their
tone. Raven stood to look at the receptionist again.

‘
The Venster
suite is an acceptable domicile.’

‘
Okay,’ she
said.

Raven’s
personal identification number illuminated on the floor at his feet
and turned green. ‘You’re covered for the room,’ she said gladly,
‘you’re also covered to three daily meals of breakfast, lunch and
an evening meal. We’re pressing everything from test-tube burgers
to worm patty, quite an unusual one for this station and a rarity
for astro-culinary…’

‘
Where art
thy abode?’ Raven interrupted as the voices from outside grew
louder.

‘
I’ll just
program your guide now, sir.’

Behind her,
the robotic arm assigned a digital chit to Raven which he could use
for his door. The arm passed over the chit and Raven quickly took
the small transparent card with the hologram chit spinning on its
display. Then, another hologram at his feet illuminated a yellow
trail along the mother of pearl floor which led to his room. ‘Just
follow the bread-crumb and you’ll find your room.’

Raven turned
to see several people enter the hallway. The one at the front was a
middle aged man, well-built and still rubbing his head, irritated
by the decontamination which had burned away his hair. To his right
was a woman laughing hysterically at him, and occasionally, even
her own bald reflection when she saw it in the glass or
marble.

‘
Jesus
Caspian it will grow back, dude!’ Said the third member of the
party, a juvenile with a cheeky smile and black goggles over his
eyes.

‘
I dun care,
ownes!’ The deeply tanned captain bulled, making his irritation
known.

‘
It’s just
hair, it will grow back.’

‘
Did you keep
it?’ asked the woman with a sublimely rich accent regular to areas
around the Megalo-Britai.

Caspian
reached into his pocket and fished out a large ball of entwined
hair, once individual dread locks, which rested like a dead pike
slouching in his hand. The woman broke into laughter again and
pointed at it. Caspian wanted to stay disgruntled but couldn’t stop
himself from smirking.

‘
Sha, I’m
flat cuz I’ve been growing these locks fir yiers,’ Caspian
complained, ‘and the A-holes shave me nut and burn eet
bowld!’

‘
They did all
of us, you realise,’ said Kelly shoving his shoulder with a playful
punch. ‘Look at me. This makes a real change from my style. But
screw it. It’s a necessary sacrifice.’

‘
I preferred
your silky long hair!’ The young man, Scuttle said unctuously,
finally removing his goggles. ‘But your head is much…much smaller
than I thought it would be…’

‘
Cheeky
bastard,’ Kelly cordially derided.

‘
Well I’m
glad we ken blast at how dwas we look,’ said Caspian, stuffing his
shaven hair into his pocket. ‘But we’ve ghowt ah graze n’ graft
naw, ek-se.’

‘
Graze and
graft?’ Scuttle asked, dropping his goggles to the floor as he
tried to work the band tightly around his bald head.

‘
It’s eat and
work,’ Kelly explained to Scuttle at her side. ‘Get your slang
right. Honestly Scuttle, you Cymorgs are supposed to be the most
sophisticated linguists in the solar system.’

As they
entered the reception, Caspian caught sight of Raven and the little
girl following the electronic bread crumb.

‘
Chroist,
ee’s towl, aah?’ said Caspian with an astonished glare.

‘
Shitterbugs!’ Scuttle exclaimed in surprise.

Kelly and
Scuttle watched the big man and the girl stroll quickly down the
corridor. Avenoir looked back over her shoulder and her eyes met
with Kelly’s before she followed Raven out of sight. Caspian saw
the sparkle of those diamond freckles on her face, and her
remarkably strange eyes, one green and the other red.

‘
Dhid yew see
the diamonds on thet kid wif the hud, aah?’

‘
Colony
trash,’ said Scuttle smugly, ‘they’re drifters, Casp. Do you think
those diamonds are worth anything?’

‘
You aren’t
surely thinking of picking those off her skull are you?’ Said
Kelly, ‘do you know why they do that, by the way? They compress the
bodies of their ancestors. Each diamond is a family member. They
were probably surgically attached to her skull by
nanoctors.’

‘
Do you think
it hurts?’ Scuttle asked.

‘
How the
bloody hell should I know?’ she shrugged.

‘
Wish I’d
have known about that when my Grandparents were still alive, that’d
be an interesting contract for them to sign.’

‘
Scuttle yew
really ahh-ae heartless lil’ sheit,’ Caspian said casually,
‘anyway…let’s ghit our digs.’