Chaos Cipher (83 page)

-67-

HAVENBAND

A
dust storm had swept through the
municipality of Havenband province, a tireless tempestuous bluster
of dry, hot grit that sandblasted vehicles and buildings and turned
daylight into sepia. People ran around in their hoods and scarfs,
taking shelter in bars and canteens and databanks from the
bombardment. The shock of the recent collision in the canyons had
scattered the town into swivets, and somewhere out there in the red
rock, the local university detected high levels of radiation and
the motion of things yet unidentified by visual confirmation. Those
using quantics found their instruments suddenly unreliable,
unthinkable since quantum entangled devices ensured instant qubit
data transmission ubiquitously.

Androids had
collected the wounded and helped them into emergency medical
capsules for recovery. Not long after that a military command of
androids assembled and drove out into the dust storm, never to
return. Feedback from the data simply stated that the androids went
off-line nearby the phenomenon, with no visual confirmation and no
apparent reason. Once Adamoss confronted the problem, the android
mobilised help from outside Havenband, and a new tactical unit of
android military was mobilised.

Within a day
the sky was swarming with V-TOL android bombers, large unmanned
drone machines arching into the sky, jet streams vapored behind the
blue light where their plasma-jets burned. Below ground units
crawled and rolled through the town like a parade of insects
defending a damaged nest. The bulky, khaki coloured crawler tanks
stomped, various lenses glowing as they discerned from a multitude
of visual feedback, huge hulking legs lumbering over the dry dirt,
an arsenal of mounted velociter coils pointed forth, and tactical
micro-nuke warheads primed for launch.

Armoured
personnel carriers rolled alongside the crawlers, satellite guided
auto-vehicles stacked with combat androids, short, headless
machines of varying weight, size and mobility built for purpose.
Like the chimeric manifastations of ephialtes these anthropomorphic
versions sprung veritably forth. Of metal and alloy and polymer,
grenadier androids and enforced their battalion, resembling large
spiders, rocket launchers anatomically resembling headless canines
that cantered beside the caterpillar track vehicles and jeeps as
gracefully as war dogs. The most anatomically human were the
sharp-shooters, anthropomorphic droids designed to be controlled by
human hosts from a far distance via sensorium piloting.

The herd of
armed warriors flew, crawled, cantered and rolled into the settling
dust of the impact event and vanished in the grey clouds, Syridan
infantry units following close. Hardened cyborg soldiers perched on
the side of tanks as they ground quickly on through Havenband,
chasing after the front line androids and expendable units. Their
target stood waiting in a crater that was measured from satellite
relay to be a diameter of almost six kilometres. Roasting hot rocks
within the convex basin gave off waves of heat that stirred the air
like a sirocco. Around the mouth of the pit and within its inner
well were stood up to three thousand android avatars, drones and
machines and UAV’s left burning where they’d crashed to a
halt.

They were
still, the technological effigies left baking in the undulating
heat, their optics staring lifelessly out. Waiting. At the core of
it all, in the very centre of the pit, stood the Xenotech. Its huge
four quadriplegic limbs holding up an enormous radial chrome
shield, almost eighty metres above ground. The alloy was roasting,
searing unbreakably in undulating waves of heat and black dust.
Seemingly, the Xenotech machines were off-line, as still and remote
as everything else in the region. But nothing more came back from
the leading android infantry once they got close, they too went
into shut-down.

*

In the
following thirty six hours, an infantry encroached from the South
West where Ellvee lay only a few hundred miles away. Jeeps and
tanks bounded over sandy hillocks and dunes, riding into the
flatlands and pummelled desert surface where the ground was torn by
shrapnel rocks blasted out of the initial impact. This target, the
Atominii were beginning to learn, needed a human touch, or a cyborg
presence at least. Target crosshairs locked onto the phenomenon and
they approached the surrounding auto-tanks and drones left parked
around the crater. The infantry tanks ran down the drones and
combat androids where they stood, offline and frozen, a first
exploration infantry unit sent in to survey the danger. They rolled
on, smashing apart the unavoidable from steady figurines to
fragments all spun into a clutter of oil, polymer and circuitry
beneath their wheels.

‘
Slow down, for
fucksake!
’ One of the infantry leaders
neuromitted to the driver.

‘
There’s no
way through, sir,’ he grunted back. ‘Even if I slow down, they’re
just everywhere, y’know…’

‘
Just take
down as few as possible,’ said the leader as the personnel carrier
hopped over the crushed androids in its path.

‘
Doing my
best, sir,’ he shouted back, obedient and simultaneously vexed by
his superior. The driver was veering the vehicle towards the mouth
of the crater as it bounded and bunny-hopped on its suspension,
rolling closer to the target.

The convoy
snaked down the edges of the large hole, slaloming around the
dormant androids standing attentively in the smoke and roasting
black rocks.

‘
Temperature
is soaring’ said one of the infantry transentients.

‘
Almost
there,
’ the leader neuromitted before
announcing vocally; ‘Alright, pack-up, suit-up, pick-up your
ghost-loads. Let’s fuck this cosmic piece of
shit.’

And the
personnel in their seats began to chant and huff as they readied
themselves for war. The personnel carriers ground to a stop,
pushing up wedges of stones where the carrier’s wheels skid to
position. The side doors shunted open and the troops disembarked
and marched into the hot air and dust, armed with heavy weapons;
the long chrome cylinder shaped cannons of sonic propelled
explosive launchers, large, circular dishes of acoustic resonance
grenade launchers. Snap-return Assault-rifles with nano-tip rounds,
shouldered tight and aimed into the baking sand, their narrow
barrels smoothed and rendered with several different modification
ridges for lights and gadgets like suppressors. H.V-Long-barrels
were lugged out of vehicles and set up on the ground like mortar
shell rails. Particle grenades dangled at their belts like dull tin
hexagonal plates set into caskets, a whole arrangement of smoothly
shaped maser-breakers, EMP-breakers and dazzlers as well as close
combat weapons. Chaos-Eagles strapped to bandoliers and nano-edged
field-charged machetes.

The early
arrivals parked locally, while other convoys rolled on to intercept
from a more northern situation higher on the crater’s
edge.

The
infantry’s heavy weapons division set up close by the vehicles,
positioning snipers and sonic-grenadiers in safe zones to align
their weapons on the huge Xenotech machines stood baking in the
dust like the silhouetted profile of a deformed mechanical
spider.

Upon the
vehicles, huge maser weapons focussed their target beams onto the
dark ethereal machine, satellite dishes rotated to arrange a myriad
communication signals and scanner radars its way, yet no signs of
activity emerged. And light infantry shifted forward, Snap-return
Assault-rifles cozied to shoulders, feet marching over the crunch
and scrape of dry hot stones and gravel. Trans-data coherent
communication detailed their movement, communicating with the
northern team as they climbed into the lower regions of the
crater.

‘
Watch your
backs, team,’ their leaders warned, ‘that thing’s active and is
putting out some faint signals.’

Their helmet
visors mapped out the terrain, cartographic layering virtual mesh
over the environment, coordinating geometric shapes that were
materially divided. Angles were plotted for combat sequences,
allowing the soldiers to make calculated shots and
throws.

Further in,
they passed more androids just stood around, absently occupying the
space. One of the soldiers stopped to look at the lank battle
droid, its skeletal bipedal body a neat and simplified composition,
minimalized to only the necessary circuits hidden within its chest
cavity, a shell of carbon-nano armour. The rest was shaped for
balance and alacrity, making the headless machine as quick a killer
as possible. The arms were hinged with pincers, four arms, limbs
that were attached to weapons and also extra limbs for self-repair
and grabbing, lifting and using other weapons. He pushed it
slightly and the counter-balance automatically repositioned,
allowing the droid to rock and sway back to its place.

‘
Leave it,
Duke,’ someone said as they passed.

‘
Don’t touch
a thing,’ the leader said back to them quietly.

‘
Right, sir,’
he said, ‘just wondering why the hell they off-lined.’

The only
sound now was the sandy crunch and grind of their feet as they
swept their rifles over potential targets, glaring down their
sights.

‘
Activity!
’ Neuromission alerts
filtered through their neuro-ligature.

‘
Where...WHERE?’ the leader demanded, sweeping circular
movements with their rifles.

‘
Keep your eye on
that Xenotech, Sergeant.
’

‘
We’ve got
activity, we’ve got activity, I’m neuromitting coordinates to all
personnel.
’

Coordinates
of the phenomenon quickly appeared in their visors and optics and
the small three dimensional thumbnail maps showed an iconic signal
emanating from the Xenotech in the middle of crater. Suddenly,
their systems started to receive information, and communication
channels opened.

‘
What the
hell is that?’ asked one of the leaders, leaning over the
communication specialist in a personnel carrier as the he sat
diligently organising the information over the projection
screens.

‘
I don’t
know, sir,’ he said, ‘it seems to be a message. It’s coded – some
strange symbols. I’m running a translation tool.’

‘
Can you
decipher it?’

‘
Could take
some time.’ Said the specialist.

‘
All teams high
alert,
’ the leader then neuromitted,
‘
we’re receiving communication attempts
from the enemy.
’

‘
Sir!
Contact! The Xenotech is doing something.’

At the top of
the four huge limbs, where the machine’s large spherical shell was
based, a strange scarlet light began to blink through the dust.
Falls of dirt and rock unsettled from the shell and rained down
like sand streams as the shell began to open, and radiant light
emitted from within.

Mechanical
units within the light were spinning, turning, rolling, like a
complicated network of geometrical cogs winding together a
convoluted and delicate clockwork of gyros and gimbals. Huge
mechanical blisters underneath the machine bloated with pressure
and fired out the long nano-strings like molten glass anchoring
into the dirt and solidifying into wires.

‘
-The hell is
that?’

And as soon
as the question was asked, the semiotic symbol for chaos appeared
within their visors, the symbol’s multiple arrows aiming out of a
circular point, then printed in bold across the symbol appeared the
words...

Chaos
Cipher

More silver
nano-strings burst from the machine’s many bladders hanging beneath
it, launching thousands of proboscis like the milky latex branches
of ribbon worms rooting through the earth and connecting to
everything upon it. Then, a tsunami of light powerful and
scintillating swept over everything within the crater.
Neuromissions communication stopped working, multiple units dropped
out of their sensorium Nexus programs and most were declared
deceased immediately after the shockwave. They heard screams out
there in the dust and the ratter-tatter of rifles.

The leader
grabbed a short-barrel, pumped the uranium rounds into the chamber
and stepped out of the carrier to unexpectedly face the ductile
meat-grinder blades of a combat-mech. He bent over the grinding
instruments salivating long streams of dark blood, glaring eyes
wide in shock and terror. The android threw what was left of the
quartered corpse in several directions and aimed its energy weapons
into the carrier’s communication room where the operator sat
screaming until the radiation particles reduced him to slag. The
carrier exploded a moment later, tearing apart into a burning steel
frame.