Chaos Cipher (96 page)

Pania sighed
and took him by the arm.

‘
Where we
going?’

‘
You’re going
to get out of those rags,’ she said, ‘and into something
clean.’

‘
But
I-’

‘
It’ll make
you feel better.’

After he’d
climbed down a ladder, Kyo found one of the rooms where he knew the
crew kept their clothes and began rooting with Pania. He opened
metal lockers and removed pairs of pants and jackets and routed
until finding at last something he liked. It was a white sport
t-shirt, slim-fitting and marked with symbols whose meaning he was
unsure of. He imagined one of Krupin’s runners once wore it, so he
started to strip down and fit into it.

‘
We’ll find
Dak and Sonja,’ she promised.

‘
I know,’ Kyo
said, again with some distance as he continued to undress, stepping
out of the boiler suit and into a pair of dark jeans. He used a
kitchen knife to stab a hole in the back for his tail. Kyo sat down
as he slipped on some boots he’d discovered under a bench and
wiggled his toes inside before grunting dissatisfied and kicking
them off.

‘
You’re lucky
to be alive, you know that?’

‘
I’m
grateful,’ Kyo allowed, presently unable to express his gratitude
any further. ‘I’m just really tired now.’

Kyo looked at
himself in a nearby mirror to check his new attire. He looked pale
and tired, his eye was still bruised but slowly healing over. His
lip was still marked with dry blood from his scuffle with Vadim
during their tumultuous escape. He opened his mouth to see his
teeth, ensuring his lateral fangs were not dislodged and sure
enough they weren’t. He was dying to clean his teeth. It had been a
few days and he could still taste the foulness in his mouth. He
walked to the water dispenser and filled a cup and rinsed his
mouth, spitting onto a pile of clothes and did the same again a few
more times, swallowing the last cupful.

‘
I’ll be up
on deck,’ Pania said heading back to the ladder. ‘Come to us when
you’re ready.’

After she’d
gone, Kyo heard a sound from lower down the corridor where the
Perigrussia Skybus sleeping quarters was designated and he went
down to investigate.

After
throwing open the door Kyo found Hattle lying on his back now wide
awake and throwing a handball at the wall. It hit hard and bounced
back to him and he repeated, PUM, PUM, PUM. Hattle was still in his
boiler suit and he ignored the gene-freak at the door.

‘
How you
feeling?’ Kyo asked.

Hattle
stopped throwing the ball but didn’t respond. He guessed he was
trying to find the words but none came.

‘
I mean your
injuries, are you fully healed, do you think?’

Hattle glared
at Kyo disdainfully and his top lip curled with contemptible
expression people of his ilk were so very good at
demonstrating.

‘
Where’s my
father?’ he asked Kyo.

‘
I’m sorry,’
Kyo responded uncertainly. ‘Krupin killed him…’

‘
No.’

‘
You were
there, you saw it. They shot him…’

‘
That’s not
what I saw,’ Hattle glared menacingly. ‘I saw a gene-freak kill
him. Looked a lot like you.’

Kyo almost
laughed with disbelief. ‘You have got to be kidding. I was locked
away with you, remember? Why are you saying that?’

‘
Because you
killed him,’ he growled. ‘And I’ll make sure everybody knows it
when we get back. I’ll make sure everybody knows how dangerous
gene-freaks like you are.’ Hattle turned and launched the ball at
Kyo and he ducked into the hallway to avoid being hit.

‘
There’ll be
no coming home for you, kid!’ Hattle shouted as Kyo walked away
from the sleeping quarters vexed. ‘I’m going to get you exiled.’
Hattle shouted after him.

-78-

R
aven Protos sat in a deep trance,
the two remaining chrome spheres in his palm, circling smoothly as
he concentrated on his breathing, bringing his heart rate slowly
into control. The Nova Storm shifted slightly in the turbulence and
he felt the descent but remained in a trance, seeking out his
brother.

All that need
thee hear, brother. All that need thee know is thy daughter lives,
as I promised. Yet blindly, vengeance has been my wish since our
parting, it has been mine unwieldy in the name of the Kyklos. But I
have been short-sighted in my inference and she has seen to it that
my craving for vengeance goes unmade. Thy daughter Avenoir forecast
for me a different fate and I hath been chastised by the stars for
my hubris. What then is my mission, if I am to succeed as she
claims, I so valiantly do? Is now the time for me to rethink my
alliances? What be her wish that palters with my own tormented
mind? By deceiving the Galileo Coterie, am I indeed saving
them?

‘
This
is
Deacon Skies
,’
a voice then emitted through the cabin, and Raven opened his eyes
and held very still the chrome spheres. ‘This is
Deacon Skies
to Nova
Storm, come in Nova Storm.’

Climbing to
his feet the giant Olympian walked into the cockpit to investigate,
pulling out the pilot seat and stepping into the control husk. He
pulled the harness down and the flight decks responded, arriving up
to surround him.

‘
Nova Storm
receiving,’ said Raven. ‘Hath thee news?’

‘
This is wing
commander Lennox, sir of the sky force
Deacon Skies
,’ he introduced. ‘We’re
accompanying you to the impact zone.’

‘
I need no
company Commander,’ Raven declared. ‘I work best unguarded by the
shield of Titans.’

‘
Granted,
sir,’ Lennox replied, ‘but this is an unusual situation. You’re not
going to make it close to the impact zone without us.’

‘
I have the
Galileo Coterie waiting in Havenband Province. They are based and
require assembly from mine hands.’

‘
Beg your
pardon, sir.’ Said Lennox. ‘But Havenband Province is an open
grave. Nothing’s alive there. This thing is destroying everything.
I doubt there will be any Galileo Coterie to assemble.’

Raven
lamented dejectedly, tightening his countenance into a scowl of
utmost hatred and refusal to believe his ears.

‘
I can’t
accept that.’

‘
Then don’t,’
said Lennox. ‘It doesn’t change a damn thing; you’re not getting
near that impact zone without us. If you go alone, Serat will rip
you apart.’

Raven looked
out his cockpit window to see one of the Arrowheads matching speeds
and flying at his side. Lennox showed Raven a thumbs up, the masked
pilot barely visible in the glaring sunlight.

‘
I’m a
Friendly,’ he said, ‘I need you to open your autopilot for
accepting our instructions. The AI will allow us to program your
ship with our flight patterns and we can synchronise our
approach.’

‘
Would you
have me a fool, Lennox?’

‘
Sir, I’ve
been informed to get you into that place, not out. That’s my
mission. Are you going to work with us or you just going to throw
away your ticket to get close to Serat?’

Raven saw the
accept codes blinking on his dashboard already and he touched the
illuminated text and accepted the flight synchronicity codes. The
Nova Storm’s behaviour began to change as the cadonavis moved into
its vector alignment. A collection of Arrowheads raced ahead of
him, some passing just above his view and gaining some
distance.

‘
Here’s
what’s going to happen,’ said Lennox. ‘Your ship has boosted its
Magneto-tailored ion-shields to about ten meters. It’s not much but
it should act as a superficial defence. We’ll be taking the full
brunt of Mekho’s fury. While we’re keeping him busy, the Nova Storm
will make a landing in the crater. That’s where you can find your
target. Good luck, Olympian!’

‘
Luck is not
a characteristic I hold dear, Titan,’ said Raven. ‘But I do, in
this circumstance, understand the gesture and return it tenfold.
Good luck, Titan.’

‘
I don’t
think we’ll need it,’ Lennox said with a slight laugh. ‘We’re a
death squad, you know that right? We’re pawns, trained to accept
death. We’re not coming back from this.’

Raven looked
ahead into the untarnished blue sky and the baking white dunes that
passed rhythmically below.

‘
Why art thou
so readily resolved with pessimism?’

‘
Why?’ the
pilot’s voice replied with an inflection of surprise. ‘That’s what
we signed up for. The commission for passing recruitment for
Deacon Skies
wing is
unbelievable. Who wouldn’t sign up during global peacetime? We live
like freaking kings, until there’s a war. Then, when we get called
up…death is certain. There’s no coming back for us.’

‘
Why then
were thou to be mobilised?’

‘
Well,
according to briefing,’ he said, ‘the chaos cipher is very
successful at reprogramming Nexus interfaces and usurping
neurophased pilots. So they sent us in. We’re traditional pilots,
sir. We’re not cybernetic, we’re not neurophased. We’re flesh and
blood in super-sonic fighters.’

‘
An older
technology,’ Raven realised.

‘
Exactly.’
said Lennox, ‘from what I heard, some strange things are happening
out there. Reports saying UFO’s are slipping in and out of
wormholes or something. They move fast and destroy strike-ships
and-’

Lennox signal
went dead. A second later Raven saw an Arrowhead burst into fire
and spread across the sky. The smoke and debris shot above as he
overtook the burning ship and he thought he saw a black incongruous
shape slipping in the opposite direction. The Nova Storm’s shields
suddenly flashed as something ahead struck them and proximity
alarms began to sound. Raven saw them now, the strange black shapes
shifting through the sky, their surfaces coated with jasper
symbols. He heard a scratch as something hit the fuselage and Raven
saw another Arrowhead outside, collide with one of the shapes.
The
Deacon Skies
wing descended, holding their flight pattern. The Nova Storm
followed, keeping in alignment, and he had to have faith that the
program would carry him safely to his destination. At five thousand
feet, Raven climbed out of the pilot seat and hurried into the main
cabin to get prepared. He fitted his hand into a stretchy polymer
glove and then fitted the same hand into his gauntlet. The
technology secured itself to his forearm, tightening at the wrists
and pinning wires painfully stabbing into his bones to fuse the
nanology. He hissed through his fangs at the slight pain as the
connection was made. Then Raven checked his bandolier for the two
Elixir spheres before taking the hilt of the Shadow Goliath sword.
His boots stomped weightily as he made his way to the loading bay
and waited for the Nova Storm to touch down. The cadonavis trembled
as the shields took another hit from outside and an explosion
thundered through the air. It rumbled violently and rocked, yawing
to keep stability and he felt the Nova Storm’s nose dip for a fast
decline. Without warning something appeared inside the cabin,
something dark and moving. He shouldered his sword and snapped
around.

‘
What in dead
stars?’ he gasped.

Raven beheld
a rotating cuboid shape now occupying the space in the ship’s
passenger cabin. It twisted, the equal faces elongating, forming
into a pyramid, then a long angular blade, and pointed towards him
before turning a fierce red. Raven dove for the ground as the shape
fired through the loading bay door, tearing off the large metal
hinges like a grappling hook and causing the internal pressure to
chase it into the hot air outside. The roaring Nova Storm’s engine
blasted into his ears as Raven held on for his life after almost
being flung into the sky. He watched helplessly as the Shadow
Goliath began sliding down the ramp towards the end and made a
quick grab for the hilt. And Raven was soon sliding with it and he
used his gauntlet to seize hold of one of the broken bits of
framing jutting out from the destroyed loading bay door and stopped
himself from going over the edge. Fire from the engines roared
behind him just outside the busted door.

Out in the
sky he saw the myriad geometrical shapes slipping in and out of
reality, appearing and vanishing, sliding through the sky,
disappearing again. And Raven pulled himself safely aboard his ship
as they approached the ground. He saw the crater’s edge race past,
its black lips glazed with layers of dried molten sand, deepening
furrows leading down to hundreds of military vehicles and machines
and AI units wasted in a hopeless battle. And he felt a sudden
vibration and saw one of those strange shapes zip past, slipping
into the distance and he thought he saw a piece of the Nova Storm
fly away with it. A thick cloud of black smoke started spuming from
the Nova Storm’s thrusters, devastated by the impact. From the
distant cockpit, alarms were bleating and Raven knew now what was
coming, they were in for a heavy landing. He hurried back into the
cabin and sat into one of the side chairs, pulling down the support
harness. Raven balanced the Shadow Goliath between his knees and
used his gauntlet to power the weapon, making it heavier until the
tip pressed deeper into the metal floor, pinning him securely in
place. And with a mighty crash the Nova Storm slammed into the
crater amongst a heap of junk where the bones of V-TOL ships and
tanks and androids lay to waste.