Chaos Cipher (81 page)

‘
Ace Ripley
destroyed one of those things, right?’

‘
That’s
right. It was heading for an archology.’

‘
And the
other two?’ Nitro inquired, ‘I mean there were three,
right?’

‘
The biggest
made a crash landing in the Nevada Desert near Heavenband
Province,’ Chief Noble explained, ‘we’re still not entirely sure
what it’s doing, intel suggests it’s collecting resources for
something. The other is fighting us off in orbit making global
loops and transmitting some message on replay.’

‘
What
message?’ Nitro sniggered, ‘take us to your leader?’

‘
Nitro...there’s something else you ought to know,’ said
Noble, ‘they’re not alien.’

‘
They’re
not?’

‘
Before he
died, Ripley updated our intelligence.
The
Deathwind
was able to carbon date them.
It’s man-made. They’re extremely advanced.’

‘
Wait...wait
what?’

‘
They’re
man-made, off-worlder technologies. We’re looking at a potential
off-world manufacturer called Ampotech as the main
culprit.’

‘
Jesus…they
supply our resources. I got the damn Obsiduranium edge drills from
them.’

Pawel had
been doing his best to close his ears to the surfeit of abstruse
information openly debated in the dialogue, feigning a stolid
interest on the view screen of concomitant information raining from
the ship’s sensorium. He thought if he heard too much, they might
kill him.

‘
Need us to
heat n’ treat some off-world colonies?’ Nitro asked.

‘
No,’ Noble
allowed, ‘this matter is too sensitive for that. It’s political.
The Megalo-Britai deal with off-world colonies,’ said the Chief,
‘advanced hardware manufacturers like Ampotech Industries, for
example, are protected by the Britai political vehicle.’

‘
So, what’s
our bag?’ Harbeck folded his arms and shrugged.

‘
Our
mission?’ she asked, ‘well, get on the station and we’ll brief you
on that. Because that message those Spydrones are issuing has just
put a whole weird angle on all of this.’

*

The Griffin’s
Claw
glided over the sea of unpieced
astro-debris, where brittle segments of metallic junk seemed to
endlessly shower and collect. Frequent collisions with the solid
shell of the
Orandoré
orbital station rang out dull vibrations and set off alarms,
prompting staff to attend defence positions at the hammer-cannons.
The station’s large lenticular perimeter was amassed with
evacuation carriers, and starnavis desperately seeking aid after
leaving the Orbital Guard’s retaliation effort. Some of them were
burned and severely damaged, while others were still afire and
crumbling apart even as they chased after the station’s spin,
sections of which fell into the Earth’s pull and drifted with the
debris into the sky.

The station’s
alarms triggered targeting lasers to direct high powered beams onto
flaming capsules which had long since lost control and was now on a
dangerous approach. The lasers quietly directed invisible and
powerful rays through space, heating the careering vessel before
hammer cannons smashed into its hull and corrupted the core. The
starnavis exploded into a million pieces crumbled into the sky,
slowing down as it spiralled out of orbit far behind the station
and spilling into space like a dried up sandcastle.

Pawel could
scarcely believe his eyes. The fire and shrapnel spread
behind
Orandoré
in a benign splash of white light that seemed to spray over
the camber of the station like water, fading away in fulvous
serrations as parts collided innocuously of its armoured
carapace.

‘
Griffin’s Claw,
mandate approach vector...
’

‘
It’s
fine,
’ Pawel neuromitted over the
interface. ‘
We are arranged to dock with
Shield of Spheres harbour. Liaising details now.
’

‘
Copy
,’ the voice returned,
‘
you are clear to
embark.
’

As the
starnavis slowly shifted in towards the docking harbour, he watched
the mechanisms transforming to receive the kind of shuttle that was
unusual for
Orandoré
Orbital station. In the other harbours, the carriers had a
very universal design to them, but
The
Griffin
was irregular in shape, requiring
the harbour to quickly alter its holding mechanisms and adapt to
receive the atypical shuttle with a suitable apparatus. Pawel
matched speeds, and they all felt the station’s centrifugal inertia
upon them as the engines carefully aligned with the harbour and the
merger was agreed.

Retractable
titanium claws reached out to slow the heavy ship and magnetic
fields interacted with the Griffin’s exo-magneto-nodes, stabilising
its approach until load bearing pressure bumpers met with its
tapering arms and brought the massive shuttle to a gentle stop. The
clamps gradually turned the ship, drawing it deep into the
station’s reception, until the hatches and bulkheads were
sedulously oriented.

*

The shivers
began to tingle through her skin and Avenoir felt the fabric of her
being breaking apart again. The fissures of light were vibrating,
everything reduced to undulations and waves that interacted in
complexities made clear to her vision, her hearing, her skin, all
of which was one and the same, and for that brief moment of
enlightened sentient profundity all her divided preconceptions of
reality coalesced to a less manageable, more chaotic and
complicated artifice of faceted material unity. Despite the
vertiginous complexities, it was a dimension she understood well,
one of tones, quantum vibrations and marginal separation. Their
voices were a billion microscopic waves, a multitude of particles
shaking the environment, disturbing the arrangement of atoms and
molecules to shape their meaning, vibrations cascading against her
skin, flowing through her ears, forming interference wave patterns
for her eyes and she could feel now what the crew were discussing.
They hadn’t noticed her like this, in a state of heightened
awareness, but their voices bickered.

‘
You’re
protected!’ Nitro promised Raven.

‘
I am no
fool!’ Raven snapped. ‘There is no protection for Olympians on
Earth. None! All who are associated are considered
treasonous.’

‘
I told you,
we know of loopholes,’ Nitro winked. ‘And technically, you’re not
on Earth, son. You’re on an orbital station, that isn’t Earth.
You’ll be on our property.’

Avenoir
became suddenly aware of the myriad devices in motion beneath them,
the complicated skeletal web of metallic structures holding in
place simple and elegant technology designed to create oscillatory
waves of energy that powered different sections, the kaleidoscope
of diaphanous quantum-matter tunnelling through starnavis crafts on
the station periphery like sands designed to fall through the
hourglass, pulling at the fabric of things she had no words
for.

‘
I have thy
word.’ Raven sneered.

‘
You got it,’
Nitro promised.

‘
What about
us?’ Kelly asked, looking nervously over to Pawel.

‘
You made it
aboard as well,’ said Nitro. ‘Didn’t you hear? Half my team are
dead and we’re recruiting a new ship. Welcome to the Shield of
Spheres.’

*

Pawel was
astonished at the new high-tech military equipment stalking the
passage conduits. He hurried through the various sub-levels of the
starnavis as the dozens of Opilion robots scurried around like
crystal harvestmen cantering on long and frail looking arachnid
legs, like quadrupeds ambulating on glass stilts, their lights and
scanners buzzing and sweeping, their lasers targeting, their
various optical lenses resizing. They hopped and fell through the
conduits of
The Griffin’s Claw
like cybernetic cephlapods, spreading their legs
like umbrella frames to pin themselves at security doors while they
worked, others skittered underfoot as small as hands spread, others
stalking the halls as large as Olympian warriors. A myriad
different models of the Spydrones operating on many levels to make
detailed scans of
The Griffin’s
Claw
, all for reasons he did not know, but
it looked like a thorough investigation was going down. One by one,
the team made their way to the Shield of Spheres department down in
the station’s habitation zone, with Nitro Harbeck leading the
way.

‘
Hey!’
Caspian shouted. ‘Yew ghot sum explaynink tu do!’

‘
Later
Captain,’ Nitro said, ‘we’re in a hurry. We must get to briefing
first and then we’ll fill you in.’

‘
Weyl ya
better have ai gud explaneisen, men. This ees still ower fukken
ship, fundi!’

Kelly took
Caspian by the wrist as she led him towards the docking port,
shaking her head slowly to discourage his dissent. Her worried eyes
told him they were in it up to their neck as it is.

After the
umbilical they reached the main station port and waited, carrying
themselves through the station’s periphery. An assembly of guards
were already waiting for them; security seemed tight at the station
since the Xenotech’s latest rampage through the solar
system.

‘
Hey, he’s
with us!’ Nitro assured as the security team closed in on
Raven.

‘
He’s not
registered!’

‘
Hand’s off
him!’ Nitro warned, ‘or I won’t stop this guy from snapping your
necks.’ Raven looked ready to do it. Kelly hooked her feet into a
stability hold for her solenoid boots and the magnetic pressure
brought her firmly down. She glanced around, suddenly realising
that all was present, arguing with a security team in some way or
another, while Avenoir had gone missing.

‘
The kid!’
She suddenly exclaimed.

‘
Whut keed?’
Caspian remarked.

‘
The
Chronomancer,’ she whispered as Raven raged, scowling at two of the
security team now.

‘
I had known
thy kind had set for me a trap.’ He harked at Nitro.

‘
Work with me
Raven, work with me here.’ Nitro encouraged dryly before addressing
the guards. ‘Guys, shut up and let me speak with my boss. I’ll get
us out of this.’

Avenoir had
wondered the vast open areas of the large station, her face pale
and fearful as she gazed out of the transparent dome at the large
beautiful blue planet above them and the inharmonious violence and
crashing shuttles burning in orbit. A creeping fear rose in her gut
and she whimpered a little as busy personnel of the station were
all designated to their locations and preoccupied with their roles
and duties. They sauntered over walkways and bridges, around
platforms muttering and discussing in their various technological
vernacular.

Avenoir made
a dash for a corridor, approached a corner of a large open room and
waited there a moment while she got her bearings, looking around
for familiar exit routes and appropriate allocations.

Then she saw
it, B-1 exit. Avenoir ran sneakily under the bridges and through
hallways unnoticed by the various business personnel and military
men discussing the horror of what was happening in orbit. A tide of
people also marched and ran against her through crowded conduits,
pushing back as she squeezed between them.

Avenoir found
the room she was looking for. Inside the large open space, she saw
people reclined in their chairs, operating the ship’s various
esoteric computer functions, their eyes aglow with information,
neuromitting through neuro-ligature and Nexus servers. Their lips
moving, yammering like the glossolalia tongues of cosmic sycophants
giving unintelligible praise to their digital gods while their
hands touched and moved things that existed in a digital realm, not
a part of this world. It was a part of the station’s docking
platforms, navigation and flight coordinators. Avenoir looked
around in confusion. She’d never seen such technological
organisation. Carefully, she sauntered through the
space.

The crew were
organising, communicating, operating, optimizing, but nobody had
seen her. It was as though her existence here did not matter to
them. Avenoir suddenly collided with one of the operators and the
man grabbed her shoulders and moved her gently out of the way as he
continued to speak in whatever reality he was involved, walking
away as he muttered and neuromitted.

At the end of
the room, she saw an escape life boat. An entire row of thirty two
assembled one beside the other to eject an evacuating crew during
emergencies. Avenoir reached the hatches and peered into the open
doors. There was enough space for two people in each capsule, two
seats back to back with shoulder harnesses that locked tight to the
seat below them. An ovular window presented a view of space and she
saw the bright streak of an exhaust cast from one of the Arrowhead
strikers outside suddenly flare across the planes of the Earth’s
geology below.