‘Earn your name two, three, six.’ Vadim stated. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Hattle!’
A sharp pain lanced through Hattle’s temple and he fell dazed to his side. There were violent gasps and tussles as he felt hands seizing his ankles, and Hattle slid across the floor into the dark workshop. The clang of steel and the buzz of machines were all around now, and he heard the ringlets of an iron chain jingling from above where the pale evening sky shone through a square of transparency in the vertex of corrugate roofing.
‘Whu – what are you doing?’
‘SHUT UP!’ Vadim’s voice roared. Hattle screamed as he felt his ribs crack under Vadim’s foot. The chains fed around his ankles like hard metallic snakes. Hooks latched onto the orange jumpsuit they provided him. Hattle was hoisted, dangling inverted to the ground, thrashing for stability as he spun in helical motions, crying out with distress.
‘Let me down! Okay? Just let me down.’
‘Hold him.’ Vadim stated.
A series of hands held Hattle still. He saw scratched and stained welding masks. He saw men in oil stained uniforms. He saw vehicles suspended on platforms being stripped and reassembled. A fountain of amber sparks and embers showered from the depths of the workshop. The rattle of pumps and the grind of power generators throttled the air all around him. His head and ribs pulsed with pain and Hattle began to sob.
‘You can’t do this! Don’t kill me, men! You don’t know who I am.’
‘We will gut you like a pig, bitch!’ One of the masked men said, and a roar of laughter erupted from the workers.
‘No no…you’re joking, you’re joking.’ Hattle wept, forcing a desperate laugh and trembling into fearful tears again.
‘We already got one boxing champ here,’ said Vadim, holding up his hands. And a triumphant roar of support exploded from the workers, as they patted Vadim’s back victoriously and brought him into arms, sharing fist bumps and high-fives.
‘Why do we need another boxer?’ he jeered, as someone passed him a power drill. ‘You are going to do something new? Going to improve this place some how?’
‘No, don’t! Please, don’t!’ Hattle begged as she drill revved with a high-pitched whir and a jet of air. Vadim tested the trigger, a staccato revving and whirring from the power drill, taunting Hattle. He grabbed hold of Hattle’s ear and pressed the dull tip of the drill lightly into his opposite earhole, and between each his eyes were wide and spinning as he gasped for breath, making strange howling and groaning pants, anticipating the pain to come as he thought he felt the drill twist a little.
‘What is your name?’ Vadim asked, finger resting on the trigger.
‘Two…eh – eh no! I don’t remember! Tell me the number, please, God don’t fucking drill my ear…’
‘Your name?’ Vadim chided with a sadistic smile, pushing the tip of the drill deeper, toying with the trigger. Laughter and cheers started up from the back like a brontide.
‘It’s two…three six.’ Hattle gasped, deep panting breaths sucking in all the air. ‘Two, three, six. My name’s two three six champ.’
‘Champ?’ Vadim laughed.
A vivified roar of laughter roused up again and Vadim threw his arms into the air and embraced the applause from his audience, revving the drill in celebration. Hattle laughed nervously amongst the raptures, relieved to have the drill out of his ear. He wept in the next moment and hung from the chains, screaming out his tension. Vadim took a tuff of Hattle’s hair in his fist and steadied his spin again.
‘You’re in the hardlands now.’ Vadim smiled. ‘You must be fast learner here two, three, six. I like you accept me as champ, but it is not enough. There are some more lessons I have for you.’
‘Okay,’ Hattle gasped, nodding desperately, dripping with perspiration.
‘You are good fighter but shit thinker,’ Vadim noted. ‘Shit with tactics, shit with skill. You win because you are reckless. If I knew Cerise Timbers fighters did dirty fighting, I would never have taken my time to demonstrate my skill. So now…while you are here…I promise you two, three, six we can fight your way.’
‘I want to learn, I want to learn,’ Hattle pleaded.
‘Good.’ Vadim vivaciously cheered, handing back the power drill. He walked around some of the laughing workers to a man opening up a toolbox and taking out old long bandages. ‘I’ve one or two more things we can clear up.’ He said, as the worker started to swathe his fists. ‘It’s about punching.’
‘Oh God please,’ Hattle begged. ‘Not like this!’
He reached up his guard, but suddenly found the ferromag-cuffs attracted to the floor with all the weight of anvils. Hattle screamed and fought against the magnetic pull, spinning in circular motions as his wrists bound together.
‘This is for you, two, three, six,’ said one of the workers, setting a clock beneath him and beginning the count-down from three minutes. ‘Good luck.’
‘I need to be keeping fit,’ Vadim laughed ebulliently, approaching his victim. ‘The best way of learning is from experience. How can you know how to punch a punch bag when you have never been a punch bag? For three minutes, two, three, six, you’re going to learn this.’
-54-
The neurosphere interface patterned through Ace Ripley’s mind, sequences of starlight, streams and effervescent swirls. Once the antimatter reaction had extenuated, the acceleration forces reduced, and he drifted through space at a steady rate.
‘Jesus Ace!’ Estella said. ‘You just shot straight past us. Damn near clipped my wings.’
‘I’m glad I was neurophased,’ Mortel adjoined. ‘That engine tail was bright enough to burn through my radiation shield.’
‘Keep us steady D.W,’ Ripley commanded. ‘CDR’s online.’
Aye commander.
Ripley dropped out of the neurosphere and stared into the void. A softly illuminated snowball hung in the vapid obsidian space ahead, surrounded by a thin haze of rings, a planet that was unmistakably Saturn.
‘Guys, you’re falling behind a few clicks there.’
‘Sorry Commander,’ Estelle said ironically. ‘Stymphalions don’t accelerate quite like Solitaire strike-ships. Even if we could do that antimatter hop-scorch trick, I doubt our bodies could hack it. We’re not all Olympians here, you know.’
Takes a little training Estelle. Said D.W, even for Ace pilots.
‘He’s not wrong, I’ve had my fair share of inertial black-outs.’ Ripley said.
Coming up on Saturn, his AI reported. Searching for the C.A.L.C station Luminate but I’m getting no readings.
‘What was the last ship berthed at the station?’ Ripley said.
The SC Pontiac, said the AI, detailing reports about the ship on a heads-up display for Ripley to view.
‘Hey Ace,’ Dwight Mortel’s voice came in on the network. ‘Got a large debris field near Telesto, that where the station was based?’
‘Affirmative,’ said Ripley.
‘Get your scanners on the area and check out the radiation. There must have been a massive explosion.’
Confirmed, said D.W, almost like our antimatter fusion reactor loosing stability.
‘Maybe it was antimatter,’ Ace Ripley pondered aloud. ‘In the briefing Adamoss reported that antimatter fuel cells were taken from the Hephaestus One.’
I’m tracing the source. D.W said. Got it, target’s heading steady rate Southern port-side.
The ship highlighted the area on a spherical starchart compass, but Ripley didn’t need it. Instead, he flipped back into the neurophase and got comfortable.
‘Alright killer ease up D.W before you fry your circuits. Don’t want to get too excited now.’ Said Ace Ripley. ‘Mortel, Bennett, where are you guys?’
‘Got you in visual range, commander,’ said Dwight Mortel.
‘Estelle?’
‘Almost with you.’
‘You both got a lock on our targets?’
‘Confirmed.’
‘Affirmative sir.’ E
stelle joined.
‘Follow my lead, back me up for an approach formation.’
‘On your tail, Commander.’ Said Dwight.
‘Copy that, sir.’
The two Stymphalions caught up at the rear, keeping back by three hundred meters as The Deathwind took the lead. They chased the three alien targets heading into the starlight of a shrunken sun. Its powerful white glare bleached the spatial uniformity of darkness, a presence that was represented in the neurosphere as a bright resplendent sphere from which loop prominances blasted out explosive tendrils far and wide. Scanners began detailing the three targets now. Ace Ripley analysed the geometrical designs of the Xenotech objects. They were identical in shape, with one slightly bigger than the other two, measuring in at just over a hundred meters. The other two were about two thirds that size and they chased the large leader in a spiralling orbit, wheeling around the machine like they were in a cosmic dance, engines synchronised. Ripley was already relaying this back to the Shield of Spheres for intelligence analysis.
We ready to intercept? D.W impatiently asked.
‘Alright, begin procedure.’
Copy that, target is cleared to engage. Interception procedure is initiated, launching primary probe.
From the belly of The Deathwind a slender missile detached and hovered for a moment, cruising steadily beneath. In the next instant, the missile’s engines released a stab of light and its chemical boosters carried it out through the silence to meet with the alien entity. They waited anxiously, the probe missile’s scanners feeding back preliminary reconnaissance to the others. Ripley adjusted his actuators manually, reaching up to corkscrew The Deathwind into a half roll. If something went wrong, he was positioned to quickly pull up for a fast get-away.
The shell’s armour is composed of a dense alloy, D.W reported. A lot of dirt and grime there, these things have been doing this for a very long time. Micro labs on the probe are carbon dating the dust particles.
‘Anything on the propulsion system?’
Not yet, looks to be some sort of plasma drive, said the AI.
Ripley analysed the cone shapes. The large symmetrical radial heads were almost spherical, below which a complicated network of cables enclosed into a cage of four powerful looking beams that were symmetrically ordered into a diamond shape, tapering out to the end. The engines seemed to vent ionised gas from gills in the armour just below the head, and he watched them adjust to orient their vectors.
The micro-labs are done Ace, said the AI, carbon dating puts origin at over thirty thousand years old.
‘Thirty thousand?’ Ace said.
‘Did he say thirty thousand years old?’ Estelle Bennett repeated.
Confirmed, said D.W, that’s a close estimate.
‘Well, that can’t be,’ said Ripley, ‘they must have been trapped in near a black hole or something.’
That wouldn’t explain it, the ship argued. Relativity does exactly what it says on the tin. The dust doesn’t lie. Even if they’ve been orbiting black holes, these things would have to have been doing so for thirty thousand years relative to them, not us.
‘You’re talking about their relative time?’ Dwight Mortel asked.
Sure am, said D.W. Those things are old.
‘Are they alien?’
I don’t think so, said the ship. Even stranger is these things are of a design that suggests human manufacture was involved. There are mechanical patterns suggestive of classical anthropic engineering. If these puppies were made by anyone they were made by human beings. I’m already scanning a potential manufacturer that matches specifics.
‘Wait, but how can that be?’ Ripley said. ‘You’re not making any sense here D.W. Nobody was around thirty thousand years ago to build these things…w-we were barely building pyramids.’
I don’t have the answers Ace, said the ship. I just do the maths. You’re going to have to come to your own conclusions I’m afraid because the rest just doesn’t add up.
Suddenly, the two wheeling Xenotech broke synchronicity, evening off on the leader’s flanks to fly in a lined formation.
‘Ace…what are they doing?’ Dwight asked.
A bright light issued from the central Xenotech as the four lineal frames spread open into an X shape behind the head, and a long tail of coiling wires lashed like strings of hot plastic twisting far behind the frame. The light shone from between them, glinting out any clear visual and they only had neurospheres to go on.
Detecting massive power readings from the core, the AI reported. Super-cold temperatures inside, minus three thousand kelvin. We lost the probe, launching secondary.
The Deathwind released the next probe, chasing off toward the three Xenotech but it never made it to the assembly. The confluence of metallic tentacles reached out and swallowed up the probe like a helpless silverfish netted in a cnidarian tangle of medusa tendrils, as though belonging to some huge, abhorrent scyphozoa.
Secondary probe lost.
‘What the hell is that?’ Ace Ripley almost whispered as they saw trinkets sporing into the vacuum. They watched the tentacles unfold, releasing bits of metal and what looked like people.
That’s Adamoss, said D.W, avatar models picked up from the Hephaestus One.
The mechanical men fell out towards them, dropping through space to litter over the three pilots and one of the androids suddenly reached out and grabbed The Deathwind, the velocity tearing off one of its limbs. Another smashed into silent pieces as it spilled across the canopy, the upper body clawing for stability before falling into space, and another, this time gaining some traction on the armour.
I can’t shake em!
‘Evasive manoeuvres.’
They’re on the hull.
The androids clambered across the wing, an array of modified tools working to expose weaknesses in the armour. They dug and tore into The Deathwind, hammering relentlessly, twisting and sawing into the shell of the strike-ship with tentacle arms and hammer shaped appendages.
They’re breaking through.
‘Mortel, I need you.’
‘Already on it, Ace.’
‘Blast those things off the side,’ he ordered, ‘check my shield calibrations, keep the maser frequencies below the armour’s fluctuation tolerance, I need my MLI intact.’
‘Roger.’
Ripley held The Deathwind still as parts of the armour heated exponentially from the touch of maser fire from Dwight’s Stymphalion. The armour blushed and a rash of red-hot blotches dotted the wings and fuselage as the invisible rays stabbed silently upon him. The androids reacted differently, some slowed down as though freezing up, others burst into boiling oil and polymers depending on the model.
‘Put us in a spin.’
Initiating verniers.
And The Deathwind began a death roll. Ace Ripley gritted his teeth and watched the sun strobe as it curved around and around his canopy clockwise, flashing in and falling beneath again. Ripley grunted as he felt the Gee-forces, holding on tight, trying to keep himself conscious as the death roll continued, and the AI hugged John Ripley tight into his seat to prevent him flying up into the space above. The androids spun away from the centrifuge, smashed in the propeller twist of the wing span. They lost hold and flew out into the blackness.
‘ACE!’ He heard Mortel shout.’ Get out of there NOW!’
Incoming! Deathwind reported.
Deadly long medusa coils reached out of the Xenotech machine to obtain the ship, and a brilliant explosion suddenly burst from outside as Estelle launched her Javelin-missiles.
‘Move it, Commander, we got your back!’ She shouted.
Mortel stabbed at the cables with his maser weapons and gave Ripley time to recover. But he suddenly realised the wires and cables were knotted at the front of his ship, attaching him to the Xenorb, and it was pulling him in, closer to the core of light.
Engines aren’t responding, the ship reported, sounding emergency alarms. Not looking Commander, you better eject.
&n
bsp; ‘No way in hell I’m leaving you out here, D.W.’ Ripley said. ‘What about weapons?’
Not responsive, this isn’t good, sir.
The two Stymphalions raced to attack the large Xenotech. Radioactive flashes and blasts pulsed like lightning outside, as a blitzkrieg of missiles and masers assaulted the machine’s armour.
‘We still got the antimatter, right?’
Five grams of it. Said The Deathwind.
‘Pump it into the reactor, we’re gonna make another jump,’ he said. ‘Let’s rip big daddy’s legs off.’
Copy, loading the reactor.
‘Commander, this thing is tough,’ said Estelle, ‘whatever it’s made of, there is no damage on the armour.’
‘Give it space, Bennett,’ Ace Ripley ordered. ‘I’m loading the reactor again. Making another hop-scorch.’
Reactor loaded, said The Deathwind.
‘Analyse where that light is coming from, I wanna see into that thing’s guts before we do this.’
Roger.
‘Got anything yet?’
Maybe…but I can’t hang around here much longer. Those tendrils are cutting into my armour.
‘Alright go for it.’
Preparing to release the isolation field. Main engines on in three…two…one…mark.
The long resplendent tail of light beamed from The Deathwind’s engines far out towards Saturn’s distant globe, pushing the Solitaire strike-ship into high Gee forces. Ace Ripley felt the back of his head press hard into the cushioning of his seat and watched the worming metallic tentacles tear away from the body of the Xenotech. He arrowed into space far ahead of the extraterrestrial machines, his eye balls squashed into his skull, his face wrinkling under the stress of the acceleration.
‘Let me know when we’re clear, Mortel.’ He neuromitted.
Chaos Cipher Page 50
