‘Come on you heavy bastard!’ Artex urged, lifting the Perigrussia Skybus into the grey solitude of the Siberian sky. But there were no cheers as they left camp, a rain of fiery bullets shooting after them from the Titan Chinook on the landing platform below. Artex activated the neuro-ligature’s basic network to visualise the areas outside. Sensory feedback detected the Chinook also taking-off from the pad in hot pursuit, its systems remotely piloted by B’Two’O’s neuromissions. Artex couldn’t believe that monster was still alive. He could have sworn he put a hole right through its torso.
‘That Titan back there is still neurophased with the Chinook!’ Artex said, ‘the bastard still isn’t dead and he’s on our fucking tail!’
The Chinook’s secondary gunners rattled out tracers of white light towards them, a hail-storm of high-velocity bullets clattering across the once, beautifully untarnished silver of the Perigrussia’s hull.
‘Cheeerist,’ Artex said, turning back over his shoulder to face Gus. ‘We’re in so much trouble.’
‘Go faster.’ Kyo responded, rocking in his harness as the ship bucked, his face ashen with consternations of imminent death.
‘I thought I killed that bastard down there.’ Gus shouted. ‘How is that thing still alive?’
‘You did kill it,’ said Pania.
‘But we’re faster, right?’ Kyo fretted. ‘We can get away.’
‘Faster than a military carrier?’ Artex asked. ‘Let’s hope.’
‘Release the cargo,’ Kyo suggested.
‘Can’t.’ Said Artex, ‘we left Hattle in the cargo hold.’
‘So?’ Pania called. ‘Release the cargo and ditch the rat-bastard.’
‘No Pania,’ Kyo cried.
More alarms began signalling through the ship and they once more dropped over fifty metres before recovering their altitude, a rain of fiery bullets from the perusing Chinook tracing their motions.
‘We might have to!’ Gus shouted to Kyo.
‘HOLD TIGHT, FELLAS!’ Artex screamed furiously.
Kyo turned back to see the Chinook out of an overhead visualisation screen. More shots rang through the hull and an arch of tracer bullets from the gunners tore a scorched line of holes over the left wing and one of the engines on the Perigrussia Skybus quickly burst into flames.
Artex gassed the engine with whatever coolant was left in the tank, but the ship was in a sorry state and the Chinook was getting closer, its gunners more accurate and powerful as the distance between them closed. The alarms sounded.
Coolant expelled...
‘Oh, Fucknuts,’ Artex cried frenetically and beat the unresponsive control deck with his fists. ‘We’ve had it.’
Kyo felt the rush of adrenaline race through his blood and he suddenly became aware of his glowing veins. The sonorous alarms and red lights bleating though the cockpit hung in a singular moment and everything for him began to slow. His mind worked to defy normal perceptions of time, bringing everything to a clear moment where seconds became minutes. He turned to see Pania, who had her eyes jammed shut and was mouthing a prayer to the heavens or soul seeking or something.
Sparks from the electrical failures hung like gloaming motes of scintilla and he watched them pass in slow motion like dandelion seed heads in a breeze, extinguishing innocuously over his skin where his veins still pulsed with light equally as bright. He heard his breath ease out, the throb of blood pressure squeezing beneath his ears, slowing to long palpitations, though he knew his heart was really racing. He saw the stir of objects unsettled from the broken parts of the bridge command and shards of brittle material arrowing around the room. Is this what happens at the moment of death? he wondered. In these last few seconds, does the mind fight to cling to reality just a little longer?
And then, ahead, he saw a new light glowing like a solitary star, falling through the sky, descending towards them. Its radiance was blinding, incrementally growing more brilliant than the sun as it appeared through the higher clouds. A light that bled into the cockpit through the view shield, and cast the shadows of their seats and the ship’s internal structure in tremulous black stencils proffered across the floor.
And he heard his name.
Kyo...
The sky began to glow steadily, in the passage of time the luminous bullets from the Chinook racing ahead of them. He could see them pass as though they were beams of narrow ephemeral visages, like tensile strings catching the sun. Yet, the light in the sky was dominant, swallowing the tracer bullets, overwhelming now even the red caution lights pulsing on the bridge. And he squinted to protect his eyes.
Who’s there?
Pania’s eyes eased open and in slow motion, her expression tightened to utter surprise when she realised she was not feeling the glowing sun, but something much brighter and closer.
Who are you? Kyo pleaded as the glowing light grew larger and more prominent.
*
LAUNCH?
The word had 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 had felt the movement of the station travelling in retrograde to the Earth’s rotation…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...’
Avenoir had pushed the button, fully aware of the consequences of her actions.
With a blast, the capsule fired away from Orandoré station, ejected out towards the planet’s orbital plummet. Capsule B’ One, zero, zero, zero had travelled thousands of kilometres, curling into earth’s pull. Upon its journey, the planet had spun out many hours during its gradual descent. It smashed silently into orbital debris, unsealing a house of cards that brought down with it satellites, a whole chaotic system that began burning up on re-entry through the planet’s atmosphere. And a rain of fire fell through the sky, destined to plummet down above the Siberian surface. Unmanned and damaged, the capsule’s life systems did not trigger reverse jets and parachutes, and since no civilisation was around for hundreds of miles, the capsule had descended unnoticed, catapulting through the strata, just one more piece of orbital debris burning down to its terminus.
‘JESUS!’ Artex squalled, pushing the Perigrussia Skybus into a sudden nose dive. He very scarcely avoided the fatal collision with the hurtling fiery supersonic debris. A furnace of white hot fire scorched the Perigrussia Skybus as it passed overhead, leaving a great black tail smouldering through the sky. With hardly any deviation to the capsule’s deathly journey, it crashed right through the Titan Chinook and split the machine into countless particles, leaving fire and smoke to spill into the unmanned moors hundreds of metres below the cloud. The Chinook’s gunners had suddenly vanished with the rest of the ship in the melting, tumbling debris, a smashed shell of metal crushed explosively into foil.
Artex breathed a great sigh of relief and started to program the ship’s nanomes for instant and much needed repairs. He found the nodes for the alarms and deactivated the monotonous bleating noise that had long ago started his headache.
‘Wha- wha- what happened?’ Gus gasped incredulously. ‘Did that thing just take out the Chinook?’
The shock and relief had caused Kyo to start laughing with utter surprise. Nothing about today was a surprise for him anymore.
‘Must have fallen out of orbit,’ Artex noted, unable to blink since their near brush with death. ‘We’re lucky as hell it didn’t hit us.’ And he dropped out of the neurophase and set the autopilot, then turned to lean out of his command seat to face the others. ‘I’m not a religious man, but I’d say someone was looking out for us.’
Kyo had also never practiced religion, nor did he care for grand epiphanies or divine intervention. Yet,
part of him couldn’t help but agree.
‘I heard something,’ he started, confusion tensing up his face.
‘What?’ Pania asked. ‘Just now?’
‘No, no,’ he explained. ‘Earlier. When that thing was falling through the sky, I thought I heard somebody say my name.’ He looked at Pania. ‘Did you? Did you say something to me?’
‘I-’ Pania shrugged and shook her head, baffled, rubbing her brow. ‘I don’t know. Possibly. I was shocked so I don’t remember what the hell I said.’
‘I heard someone,’ Kyo insisted. ‘…who was that?’
-71-
A formation of Arrowheads cruised in from the North, their slick titanium shells slipping through the airstream, hot thrusters burning at the wing lengths behind exhaust grills, glowing like a furnace inside the propulsion, manoeuvring fins and spewing sulphurous undulating waves of heat. Vance had assigned twelve of them for private escort towards the enemy zone. Vast desert planes rolled beneath them as the baking sun beat across the barren dunes. A leading Arrowhead made a quick pass to ensure the target was still in the crater and provided visual feedback to Vance’s vessel.
‘Confirming target is still in place and seems dormant again,’ said the pilot. ‘Returning to back-up.’
Vance had also ordered two V-TOL Chinooks loaded with troops and armed with heavy artillery. He leaned forward in the silence of his own private V-TOL ship and glared out the window where the sky donned a harsh and hot sun. One of the troopers saluted Vance from the Chinook’s window, a show of courtesy he did not return.
‘We’re coming up on the landing site,’ said Filipe, now sat up front and staring through the forward windows of the automated V-TOL. Malik was still in his wheelchair, its mechanisms adjusted to lock down firmly in case they hit any turbulence, but the flight had been smooth since leaving the northern storms.
‘You have to stop these nerve harmonics, Vance,’ said Malik weakly. ‘I have to see it. I need to be able to move.’
‘I’ll let you walk again,’ Vance promised, gazing out at the far horizon of hot sand blemished into dusty pale clouds, smoothly blending into an untarnished blue sky.
‘Coming up on Havenband,’ said Filipe. They watched as the destroyed city glided beneath them quietly, while the low bass rumble of the engines droned into the carrier ship. One of the Chinooks levelled with them, a dust cloud suddenly spurring from the buildings as something exploded in the desert city.
They secured a perimeter. Vance knew he was taking a real chance going out to see this thing personally. As the V-TOLs and Chinooks set their bellies flat against the floor, troops were already unloading moments before touchdown, dropping the last couple of feet and sprinting into positions.
All around the huge impact crater stood the semi-destroyed avatars and androids like mechanical sculptures. The bodies of cyborgs lay festering in the sun, drawing to the fresh meat a hungry buzz of flies. Vance’s V-TOL opened up, the door gull winging above the roof. He stepped out proudly and three military personnel hurried to his aid. Vance was already holding his arms out wide, welcoming their support as they attached armoured plates to his torso and spine and hips and activated the mechanisms. Malik watched as the plates began to join, constructing a well suited exo-skeletal protection around him. A high neck collar lifted to protect his jugular, and Vance peered over the top proudly. His hands fitted into powerful gauntlets and he stepped into power boots that latched around his shins and calf protectively, climbing his leg to construct power conduction nodes. Vance turned to face his brother, the heavy mechanical boots of his exo-suit stomping with a dull whomp.
‘You didn’t think I’d come all the way out here unprepared, did you Malik?’ He chortled derisively.
Malik wanted to say yes, but decided against it. The wheelchair suddenly uncoupled from the ground, stability arms folding away as it rolled automatically out of the V-TOL and descended the ramp to meet Vance at the bottom. Filipe was slipping into a shear-phasing armoured vest, lightly constructed compared to Vance’s parsimonious expenses. Malik could see now the quadruped machine glistening beneath the sun. Distantly, it waited in a spinning cloud of dust surrounded by a scrap-heap android and cyborg graveyard. Tanks and armoured vehicles were propped up around the area, half buried in the sweeping gusts of dunes. The armoured troops led the way, securing each perimeter before allowing the Serats to follow. Above them, the roar of Arrowheads thundered, like a sharp knife lashing through tightened fabric their engines produced a larger and deeper sound as they flew, tearing out a sonic explosion rumbling in their wake. The Serat brothers climbed into the crater, angling carefully down the deep furrows of the basin. Vance had to climb. Malik was impressed by the dexterity of the wheelchair’s intelligent balancing systems. For him, it was a smooth and effortless descent, the chair’s alternating wheels and spidery legs did all the work.
The hundred meter tall machine waited in the eye of the hole where the crater levelled out flatly. Its radial head was motionless, giving off no signs of activity. Its four stilted legs evenly spread out, displaying a transformative complexity to their mechanical joints that Malik imagined would be suitable to adjusting to different gravity settings or mountain regions. The myriad tentacles latched down tight to the ground, extended wide like the camping lines of a circus tent. And each of the wires led into some target, still resting within the damaged and pierced armour of a truck or a tank or a V-TOL, pinning down the devastated corpses of once proud Syridan machines. They stood beneath its shadow at last, walking through the web of wires, careful not to spring one in case triggering some sort of trap. Vance’s boots stomped into the clearing beneath the tension of metallic cables. Malik took a moment to observe.
‘Your move, Malik,’ Vance stated.
Malik Serat gasped as the nerves in his body began to tingle. He lifted his quivering hands and tightened his fingers. He twisted his neck, a sensation that had been troubling him the most, and he stretched his back and his legs and groaned with pain. So many hours had they been still. For so many hours now his hips had been aching to move. With the nerve harmonics abating, Malik climbed to his feet with the help of Filipe. He grabbed onto his shoulders for support, gasping at the shoots of pain, now lancing through his spine as he eased his body up.
‘Come on, come on.’ Vance pressingly urged.
Malik looked around and listened to the vast space of the desert. They stood beneath the huge mecha-quad, but all Malik heard was the dull gust of hot air and the distant growl of Arrowhead engines zipping above. Each of the dozen masked troopers kept their weapons firmly on Malik, rifles that bestowed Syridan only knows what sort of destruction and Malik sure as hell didn’t want to find out.
Vance’s eyes and nose were glaring over his exo-suit’s collar, eyes like ice even in the hot air, cold and calculating. ‘I’m waiting,’ his voice issued from behind the armoured collar.
Malik smiled nervously at the armoured troops. He was improvising from here on. Hard to discern exactly what the fuck was happening to him. In fact, he just wanted to walk again, if only for a few minutes. With a bit of luck he could get them all killed by this thing somehow.
‘Malik, are you fucking around with me?’ Vance shouted, his voice loud but dead on the vast open space.
‘Let me try something,’ Malik stammered, holding up his hands fearfully. ‘Just…wait.’
He turned to the huge machine and looked high up at the apex of its radial sun gleamed head. Where it’s four legs joined, he saw ice crystals collecting on the underside of the machine’s armour. Ice? Malik wondered. It’s a hundred degrees Fahrenheit out here. He moved slowly beneath the large rounded body, beneath the tall quadruped structure, where the wires pitched to a grill and worked their way into apertures, in the underbelly of the machine’s armour. Once he was almost fully under the machine, Malik genuflected to the sand.
‘What is he doing?’ Filipe asked Vance in confusion.
And Malik began to mark a large X into
the sand by his feet. He waited a moment, staring at the impression he’d left and looked up again at the motionless Xenotech.
Nothing.
Malik then began to draw an ampersand, followed by phi, and theta, and a range of basic symbols used in the chaos cipher’s structural logic. Once he was happy, he stepped away from the markings and waited.
‘I hope you’re not taking this time to build sandcastles,’ Vance called, and a jovial chuckle came from some of the armoured troops. Vance hadn’t expected them to laugh. It pleased him to greatly humour them at the expense of his brother and he took this moment to push his jokes further.
‘Did anybody bring a spade? Perhaps we can build a moat as well…?’
Just then, a garish emerald fantail of light cast down from the Xenotech’s middle and swept across the embossed symbols in the sand, first vertically, then horizontally. A high pitched whirring sounded with the mysterious sweeps of light. And in the next instant, they heard a loud hollow rattling, the sound of a boot clattering around in a tumble drier. The troops aimed their weapons high when a sudden azure illumination bled through the machine’s ringular gills, casting blue circles of light on the sand below it. Metal and iron scratched and crashed as the wires pulled free of their anchorage, sending spills of sand from its armour raining down and reflecting the waves of light as conical diaphanous skirts. The troops were unsettled. They stirred around, milling between targets, aiming and following the cables as they pulled free and slithered through the air, twisting intimidatingly above them like an octopus showing off its many arms.
Chaos Cipher Page 62
