‘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.
Avenoir stepped away from the pod’s door and looked up at the organised symbols and semiotics of the escape capsules. They were lettered from A to D, and numbered with codes. Feet pattering lightly across the panels, she meandered around the letter B hatches and carefully analysed the numbers. Zero, zero, zero, one. Zero, zero, one, zero. Zero, one, zero zero...
And Avenoir entered the escape capsule, B’ one, zero, zero, zero. Inside, she looked at the confusing array of switches and neat looking air-valves built into the walls and electronic instruments that seemed strangely archaic compared with the rest of the ship. She rested her hand on the circular glass where the blackness of space reached forever beyond and activated an image of the capsule’s programmed destination. The escape capsule was directed to go to Earth’s surface in the event of an emergency. But she could see too that the couplings were only open in an emergency situation. To launch, she would have to operate the capsule manually from inside the station. Avenoir hurried back inside the operations room with the busy personnel. She accessed the wall panel for the escape capsule B’ One, zero, zero, zero and a computer requested a launch code. Avenoir punched in the required key and the computer signalled the green light. The moment it did, she closed the doors to the escape capsule from the outside and stared at the wall panel button now pulsing with a soft mantis green hue. It was never her intention to use the escape capsule for her personal escape. This one had a much bigger purpose, but the timing had to be right.
LAUNCH?
The word continued to beat softly and she positioned her finger over the button.
And waited.
Waited until the alignments were perfectly right. Her eyes dilated to suck in all the details around her, every vivid moment falling into her extrasensory perceptions. In that moment, she could feel the movement of the station travelling in retrograde to the Earth’s rotation. She felt the flow of the planets relative to them, spiralling earthly bodies racing through space, she felt the shifting spin and forward momentum of the solar system, the very movement of the sun itself, all the intricate and salient patterns of physical life compiled, crystallised into one perfect point. As the temporal horizon approached, time became slower. She could hear now the shaky draws of her own breath taking in one deep inhalation of air.
‘Kyo...’ she uttered.
…and pushed the button.
Attendant personnel of the docking control atrium jumped from their seats on hearing the alarm sound and their eyes befell the girl at the escape hatch, looking back at them impassively as the door sealed shut beside her and the escape capsule fired into orbit.
‘Escape capsule B’ One, zero, zero, zero away.’ Someone shouted.
And she smiled through the porthole, watching the capsule drift further and further away from the station, on course with its final destination somewhere on the planet below.
*
The Shield of Spheres base was one of many private operations taking place on the Orandoré Orbital Station. Most of the station’s departments were housed by universities and other privately operated education facilities, as well as The Solar Alliance, Aurora Weather Watch, Virgo-Stars Communication Network and Epicurus labour legislation offices. But the Shield of Spheres was the only private defence contractor that had offices here. The Orbital Guard comprised mainly the best of Atominii state pilots and occasionally hired the Shield of Spheres as stand in.
Max Elba, Tanya and Rufus had been assigned to escort Avenoir back to the Shield of Spheres to the others. Nitro was waiting, a displeased expression on his face.
The Shield of Spheres reception was a large ovular field of light through which they passed, its foyer an arrangement of seats and floor panels decorated with the luminous glow of light strips forming more ovular sha
pes. Walkways and stairwells zigzagged to service two layers for their operations all manned by several Adamoss units, both multi-formed and anthropomorphic as well as security personnel.
This was where they parted way with the soldiers assigned to assist them to base. Nitro had politely requested them to leave after reaching the main conference room. Avenoir and Raven had both been forced to wear manacles, especially after the Chronomancer launched an unmanned escape capsule. Nitro knelt down to her level and looked into her eyes, one green the other red.
‘What the hell was all that about?’ he asked. ‘Hmm? Were you trying to get down to the planet? Is that it?’
Avenoir stared back at him indifferently, feeling increasingly misunderstood.
‘You can tell me,’ he said with a smirk. ‘Tell me or I’ll arrange for your big ass body guard here to be taken to the Atominii incinerators.’
‘Hey!’ Kelly suddenly snapped, pulling Nitro aside. ‘Don’t.’ She warned. ‘She’s still just a child. Chronomancer or not.’
‘Let me do my job,’ Nitro scowled, ‘first thing you’re going to learn about working with Shield of Spheres is not to question your superior.’ And Nitro stared at her for a while and made sure his message was setting into her thick skull before turning back to Avenoir. ‘Why did you launch the escape capsule?’
Avenoir bit her lip hard, squeezing her fists. She was dying to tell them, holding it in was killing her. But she mustn’t. She opened her mouth, smirking ironically at Nitro Harbeck.
‘I can tell you how you’re going to die,’ she threatened suddenly.
‘Cute,’ Nitro said dryly.
Ethan was smiling, close to laughter.
‘Something funny?’ Nitro asked.
‘That kid don’t speak much but when she does,’ Ethan said, ‘she’s pretty dark, right?’
‘Right,’ Nitro agreed, kneeling to remove Avenoir’s shackles.
Raven looked around as Nitro showed him the same courtesy, handing the handcuffs to an Adamoss unit. There was a great horseshoe conference table with mounted holographics in the centre and what must have been three dozen levitation chairs, and above them the ceiling was panelled with more gravmex devices. Several Adamoss avatars strutted casually around, their skin a translucent and rubbery silicon surface coating the complexity of glowing optics, artificial muscle fibres and fluxing neon wires. He could tell by the way they looked they were service droids, not designed for combat. They were mostly composed of different variations of plastic; it would be no problem for him to smash them apart if it came to it. But, Adamoss, he knew, was an artificial intelligence which governed several different avatars at once all varying in size and shape like these. It wouldn’t be unfair to assume he didn’t also have anatomical combat avatars somewhere on the station.
Avenoir approached Raven as the others shifted into the conference room and took their places in seats. Ethan bit the end of his vapour-pipe and twisted the cap to start the toxins, and took his place standing discreetly at the back with his hands on his hips, smoking. Pawel was beside Caspian who stood and leaned both knuckles on the table, while Kelly stayed close. Raven skulked at the top end of the table, shoulders big and unyielding. Centre place, an effervescent light pulsed up from the quantum photon layer to construct a holographic representation of the Ambassador Felix.
‘Is the subject secured?’ he asked, ‘my god, you have him in the conference room?’
‘It’s fine,’ Nitro assured, hands casually held behind his back, ‘he’s cooperative.’
‘You better know what you’re doing,’ he said, fiercely ‘one slip up with this guy and I will seal up your department and purge you all in a heart-beat. I heard what this guy did to Omicron.’
‘T’was the foolhardy and temerarious actions of a Syridan RIG who executed the damage to Omicron, not I. Whence thou confer with the devil, thou should knowest the consequences.’
‘I’m serious,’ the Ambassador reiterated to Nitro, ‘one false move and you’re all blown out the hatch. It’s in all your interest to keep the Gene-freak in check.’
‘Goodbye Ambassador Felix,’ said Nitro, severing the communications. After that, the room lights dimmed slightly and the doors automatically locked, slightly surprising Max who hadn’t seen them shut until he heard the gentle thump.
One of the Adamoss avatars approached Ethan, palm up and indicating toward his vapour pipe. Ethan swatted the android’s hands away and indignantly stepped away from the android. He continued to suck on his vapour-pipe and warned the android to ‘step off, robot-man.’
Nitro hitched his boot up high and stepped on the table, leaning over his knee as he ran through a selection menu on the pale surface. Touching the screenless projection options, he started a new call and once more the holographic constructions began to build up an image. This time it was Chief Claudia Noble. Her thick red hair was bunched into a large styled curl on her head, short, grey flanks at the sides. She had green eyes and her lips were glossed pale, breaking into a slight smile as she beheld them all for the first time.
‘Well then,’ she said, ‘we meet at last. Under very inappropriate circumstances, I should say.’
‘Watchye mean abowt circumstints?’ Caspian asked with his arms wide. ‘Toymin couldn’t be bettah.’
‘Your candid disconsolation is duly noted captain Mowser,’ she nodded, ‘thank you for your opinion, please sit down.’
Caspian folded his arms and remained standing.
‘Where is the Chronomancer child?’
‘She is with I,’ Raven allowed.
‘May I see her?’
Raven looked down to Avenoir and she seemed to decide for herself, stepping up onto the table and into the light.
‘It’s true what they say about the eyes,’ Claudia realised. ‘So...a Chronomancer. Hard to find. Dangerous to see one.’
‘Dangerous how?’ Nitro asked.
Avenoir stood and listened to their discussion, her gaze switching from person to person, feeling angered by their malapert disregard to address her directly.
‘Dangerous because,’ Claudia started, ‘you can never know what they’re planning. They are unpredictable, chaotic. They see the impossible and the improbable. We were tracking a Chronomancer on Kepler. He was much older than this one. He’d assembled a very dangerous group of people, killed tens of thousands. Planned to take over the colonies for his own ends. We had to eliminate him. Sadly. And he seemed so cooperative at first. She’s controlling our destiny,’ said Claudia, ‘each and every one of us are merely her figures to play with...’
‘I might be a child in your eyes,’ Avenoir said defensively, ‘but I’ve had to mature very quickly. My home was destroyed before I ever knew it. All my life I have been running just to survive. My gifts cause people to die when I mean only to save them.’ Avenoir came close to tears, angry at the insult. ‘You don’t know what it is like.’ She said. ‘Can you remember what you did yesterday? How about last week? How about last month? Well, that’s what it is like. You’re aware of the future vaguely like a memory. Each moment comes a little brighter. Each moment a little clearer. I have an idea of what is coming but it’s not exactly clear until it is almost upon me. Sometimes, I know things that make no sense.’ She looked to her guardian, Raven who stood shocked. He’d never heard her say so much. He hadn’t heard her speak since she was only an infant. ‘I’m sorry.’ She declared, her eyes running now with tears, spilling onto the floor by her feet. ‘I’m so sorry uncle but I must disclose this now. We’re not here to seek revenge. You won’t make it to the Galileo Coterie if you try to get there. They’ll be wiped out before we reach them.’
‘But I hath seen thy dreams,’ he uttered.
‘I dream like everyone else.’ She smiled faintly. ‘I can’t stop myself projecting them. I’m sorry. Sometimes they make sense. Sometimes…they’re just dreams. Other times…they’re your dreams.’
‘No.’ Raven shook his head. ‘NO! You tell me this now? Why now? W
hy when I stand so close to reaching my destination?’
‘Because,’ she started. ‘There is a man down there who is about to come into great power. He’s going to use it to bring all life to its knees because he believes blindly in an ideology that is based on chaos. In a small way…if we do what must be done from here, we can stop him.’
‘Who?’ asked Raven. ‘Who is he?’
‘He’s the one who will destroy the Galileo Coterie.’ She told Raven. ‘You can only save the Galileo Coterie by stopping him. They call him the Mekhos. But his human name is Malik. Malik Serat.’
Chaos Cipher Page 57
