Kyo paled and backed away in shock, even Pania now moved away as Gus took full merciless control of the interrogation.
‘This could go bad for you!’ Gus said, hanging over Lyov’s semi-blind face. ‘I don’t mind killing your fat ass!’
‘Fuck off!’
‘Tell him!’ Pania screamed, and Gus twisted the blade deeper, drawing out Lyov’s vocalised pain.
‘I don’t know,’ Lyov tried with heaving respiration. ‘I don’t know. A lot of people get kidnapped not only from Cerise Timbers, but from various other hardland zones.’
‘Do they work alone?’
‘Blue Lycans are hired hands,’ he said. ‘They’re fucking Mercenaries! You know that! Are you telling me you don’t know that? They work with powerful groups to crush anarchist start-ups. They test new weapons and work for whoever is willing to supply them. They take hostages and feed them back to sensorium recording camps. They work for whoever they feel like.’
‘What are these sensorium camps?’ Gus asked. ‘Be specific!’
‘A place called Encybleron,’ Lyov revealed. ‘It’s a goldmine for spare meat. If the Blue Lycan’s ain’t already mashed them up for sport, then they took your friends to Encybleron.’
*
Gus had just finished with the last bit of polymer duct tape he’d found on the ship. Lyov was strapped good and tight to a seat in the cockpit. He patted the man’s stitched up knee and Lyov huffed painfully.
‘Stay right there, sunshine,’ he told the body guard. ‘Or I’ll skewer your other knee cap.’ Lyov scowled and followed Gus with his eyes until he’d left the room.
‘What are we going to do with him?’ he asked the others in the main cabin of the Perigrussia Skybus. Kyo was staring out of a window thoughtfully. ‘I mean, we’re going to be back in Cerise Timbers within the hour and we don’t keep prisoners.’
‘What do you think, Kyo?’ Pania said.
‘I don’t care.’ He suddenly spoke, looking down at his grotty overalls.
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-
Raven 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 d
oesn’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.
-79-
Raven Protos fished through the darkness. The smell of jet fuel was all around him and the distant crackling of fires kindled outside. He used his gauntlet to crush and pry away parts of his support harness still holding him in place, then fell to the ship’s ceiling, coughing in the thick veils of smog. He dragged himself out of the cadonavis and stood in the warship graveyard, poised listening to the fires in the black smouldering bistres. High above, the sky was tarnished with the vaporous foam from destroyed ships, the remains of Deacon Skies Wing scattered through the welkin. And explosions tore on through the massive impact zone as more Arrowheads nosedived towards the Xenotech machine below in a suicide flight. But they wouldn’t get close. Raven watched them collide with the ephemeral geometric shapes which appeared to obstruct their kamikaze before vanishing after the Arrowheads were either swallowed of vanquished.
Raven lifted his blade above his shoulder and began making his way towards the large four legged machine. He saw the tiny wires hovering around it, though he knew close up they were big enough to wrap around your wrist and pull off your arm. He saw the machine thrumming, lights pulsing, dust and sand falling from the bulbous head and from the mechanical contours of its legs. Raven followed paths through smashed up Chinooks and parts of engines. He saw armoured bodies lying dead in their masks. He saw bits of limbs and parts of cyborgs st
ashed around where they fell, and stacks of deadly weapons, all unused, all failed against this monster. Raven drew close now; ascending a small hill in the middle of the impact zone, a fused mound of black glass mottled with fractures and shrapnel, parts of machines and crashed ships. The Xenotech stood upon it, those countless wires and cables now floating like a shoal of silverfish circling in a steady clockwise current. Sitting beneath the machine he saw Mekho Serat, his dark pearl eyes turned up to the sky where the shapes were manifest. He was sitting back on the cables, they attached to the back of his legs and shoulders to support him in the air. Mekhos regarded Raven at last and slowly came to his feet with a juvenile smile. Then, he issued a laugh, an excited and steady laugh that came from the gut, a genuine laugh of pure ecstasy.
‘If thou has a joke,’ Raven told, sword balanced over his shoulder, ‘then perhaps thou should share it.’
Mekho Serat’s smile faded to a very serious countenance and he began to analyse Raven.
‘They’ve sent everyone to stop me,’ he said ‘-from suicide pilots to androids and now a cosmonaut with a sword.’
Raven began to walk closer until he was at the bottom of the mound.
‘But you’re not like the others, are you?’ Mekho Serat noticed, prowling upon the glass dune beneath his monument of mechanical chaos. ‘You’ll bleed all the same. You’ll die just as easily. But you’re different. You’re an Olympian, aren’t you?’
Chaos Cipher Page 67
