‘I am the pride of Kyklos.’ Raven said, heading further up the slope.
‘I hate Olympians,’ Mekho Serat declared. ‘Your kind is a fucking vermin. Funny they sent you. I heard Olympians don’t die so easy. I’m going to enjoy trying to put that theory to the test.’
He stopped, weapon tilted down and faced Serat with steady breaths.
‘Thou art but a child,’ he noted, ‘with too many toys.’
‘A child?’ Serat raged, a seemingly visible charge of electricity firing down through the cables to enter his extremities and lighten his armour with charge beneath his torn jacket. ‘I am an Eternal compared with you!’
Raven began to run, fangs flashing with rage, he swung the large sword and suddenly the four vertical faces of a triangular shape stabbed out of the ground tip first and swallowed Mekhos in its pyramid wedge, the sword slamming heavily over the immutable material. Raven watched the pyramid shape sink back into the earth and an identical one grew out of the ground elsewhere, opening like a flower head to reveal Mekho Serat safe inside. He stepped out of the device grinning, walking confidently at a distance from Raven as the Olympian heaved his heavy blade back onto his shoulder.
‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Oh, space man. This is kind of funny really.’
Raven started to move when suddenly he was struck by a flying cube and then a sphere smashed his face from the side, throwing him dazed to the floor. The Shadow Goliath landed with a heavy clang spinning across the sand and the Olympian looked around in confusion.
‘Why are you here, Olympian?’ he asked. ‘Are they so desperate now they’re waiving their policies on having Olympians on the planet? I’ll have to remind them that so long as they have rules, they better play by them. I don’t care how liberal they become in spite of me, I’m not going to allow it.’
‘Thou art a futile fool,’ said Raven, collecting himself and getting back to his feet.
‘Oh, is that right?’ Mekhos sniggered.
Raven was suddenly hit again, this time by a large and long shape speeding like a train. He was hauled through the air into what looked like the middle of another shape and Raven was falling. He plummeted down the long vertices, his gauntlet reaching out to scratch at the flat sides where the chaos cipher’s encryption blinked and flashed. He fell far into the throat of the tunnel, which suddenly opened up to a maze of clockwork. Raven gazed in surprise as he looked through the complexities of the shifting, moving giant machine, a living, flexing and enormous space of mirrors and twists and folds all servicing the operational functions of the hyper dimensional craft. He saw stairways and elevators shifting back and forth. He saw Mekhos running inverted on the walls, chased by what looked like a doppelganger version of himself lashing his long sword. He saw more doppelgangers and Arrowheads flying lost through the Hypermekhos, desperately piloting through its capacious, changing and confusing dimensions. Then, Raven fell through another trap, a triangular hole that led out into a white light. And Raven realised he was in the sky, plummeting through it towards the crater he had moments ago stood with Mekho Serat, thousands of feet below him now. He screamed with surprise, falling above the surface, swooping in free fall through the clouds. All around him appeared the random shapes and they clipped his shoulder as he fell beyond them, smashing into him and sending him into uncontrolled spins. And Raven dropped into another shape like a coin through a slot machine and this time he was hauled against gravity up out of the ground, as though the earth itself had spat him up into the cables and wires of the Xenotech’s many metallic tendrils. And the machine tangled him up, lowering him by the ankle back down to Mekho Serat’s level. He smiled odiously at the Olympian, hanging by the leg like a helpless chicken.
‘Heraclitus understood the continuum even if it was only very naively,’ Mekho Serat explained. ‘He knew that change was the only permanence.’
Raven was released to the floor and he collapsed in a heap, confused by the sudden descent and constantly altering directions.
‘No man ever steps in the same river twice,’ Mekhos explained, ‘because it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man. I’m like that man. I have many faces. Many obverses sides and inverses, I am multiple and singular. I am change.’
Raven suddenly envisioned Avenoir, her saddened face staring up at him, her eyes tearful. She had told him he was the pride of Kyklos. She had told him she was sorry for her betrayal. Raven even now couldn’t understand it. Why hadn’t she warned him of this impossible enemy? Why had she used him this way? He could have assembled the Galileo Coterie and with such an allied force, they certainly would have smashed this opponent from a distance. But perhaps, he would not have listened. How often, Raven wondered, did it happen that he failed to hear others? Raven listened now to the Mekho Serat’s narcissistic soliloquy going on about change. Perhaps he was right. Maybe he was here to realise something, maybe he was here to realise change. Avenoir used Raven as a sacrifice. He had come here with a phalanx of pawns called the Deacon Skies. It was no coincidence. Raven Protos was to die this day. This was not to be a victory. He was destined to buy them some time.
‘You will succeed in your mission.’ Avenoir had said. Even now, he could hear her faint gentle voice whisper contritely. Raven spat up a dark spot of blood and climbed once more to his feet, to face his smiling enemy.
‘Ah man, you just keep getting up,’ Mekho Serat shook his head, hands on hips. ‘Don’t you remember what just happened to you? Hello! You can’t win this gene-freak. The rules are stacked really heavily against you.’
‘Hast thou ever known a thing about love?’
‘Love?’ said Mekhos, glowering with anger. ‘I only ever wanted the love of my mother. But I was just a tool for her personal success. I see now how love destroys nations. Love is sickness and madness. Only the selfish are pure, only the individuals are honest. Lovers lie and lie to each other. Their jealousy and ownership they claim for each other is toxic. Love is as chemical as acid and just as deadly. I do nothing for love anymore and nor should you. Love is the most deceptive of notions.’
‘One should not show love to simply have it returned,’ Raven spoke. ‘Or thou art running a business. One should show have it without condition.’
‘You idiot,’ Malik sniggered. ‘So you should show love because it feels good? That’s pretty selfish. I think love is boring anyway. It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.’ Said Mekhos decidedly, ‘my brother would have said that, and he was able to own half the planet. The world respects power, it fears it. It is the only language humanity understands. I will teach them something about themselves and the destructive forces of love. I will show them something about themselves, something about humanity, things they do not know they really know about themselves.’
Raven dashed for his sword and seized the hilt. He spun quickly, charging the weapon with his gauntlet and descended the blade toward Mekho Serat’s head. A large black bar speared through the air and stopped the Shadow Goliath with a heavy clang, and Raven’s veins started glowing as more nanology permeated his glove and powered the sword. Heavier and heavier the blade became, causing the mysterious shape to crack under the weight. Mekhos looked surprised, and he quickly sent a sphere smashing into Raven’s gut. The Olympian huffed out a long breath of air and pulled the Shadow Goliath free, spinning it out and releasing it toward Serat. He ducked in time, moments before the weapon could decapitate him, and Mekho Serat was suddenly seized by the giant. Raven drove his fist deep into Serat’s gut and he roared with pain, his eyes returning to colour, his black nanologic armour cracking under the force. Raven spun Serat gliding over the glass dune and he glissaded to a stop, clawing furrows in the ground before scrambling to his feet.
Ahead of him, he opened a tesseract of shapes and darted evasively into it, vanishing out of their dimension, and Raven grabbed his blade and chased his assailant into the Hypermekhos.
They ran over platforms, shifting walkways and floors that seemed to defy logical or
der. Raven was able to jump from one of the platforms onto a vertical wall and keep running, as though gravity was relative to his position. And Serat dashed ahead, taking a running leap to a higher point almost fifty feet above him. Raven leapt the wall, sprinting after Serat and swinging the Shadow Goliath mercilessly. He followed him into the heart of the machine and was surprised the air even here was as hot and dry as the desert. The roaring engines of a distant Arrowhead fired above them and the sonic wave sent explosive air through the hollow space, spinning out cubes and triangles from their orbiting positions. Raven looked up and saw his earlier self-plummet through the middle of the structure, and he continued to swing his blade like an axe after Serat. The Hypermekhos opened ahead of them now and Serat stepped through, back into their normal dimension and Raven quickly began writhing as he collided with the thousands of lashing cables and tentacles of the Xenotech. He roared as they pulled him up into the air. And tore into his body and branched into his skin like poison ivy, spreading and slicing his flesh.
Serat stalked below him, smiling proudly as the Olympian struggled. Raven held tight to his blade and began to overmass the Obsiduranium. The Xenotech’s wires were pulled into tension as the sword became unbelievably massive, pulled down to the Erath’s central body, heavier and heavier until they could no longer hold Raven. And he crashed to the ground, the blade shattering the glass dune and throwing up billows of black sand. He breathed the dust in heavily, coughing and spitting. And through the twirling clouds he heard Serat’s manic laughter pitch.
‘You’re much more fun than the others,’ he shouted. ‘At least you put up a fight. Not like these weak Titans of flesh and so called Eternals.’
Raven looked up at the Xenotech. He had to get rid of that thing if there was any hope of beating Serat. Suddenly, he noticed something unusual about the machine. In the shaded area beneath the head, he saw ice. What manner of technology produces ice in such hot and stifling deserts?
‘But you can’t destroy the Hypermekhos, Olympian.’ Mekho Serat was shouting. ‘It took years to build it. Centuries to plan it, to pull it through to this dimension took nothing less than planning on a scale that defies centuries and starscapes. But now that it is here, I have the key. I have the knowledge of its being. I am the master of time and space.’
Mekho Serat suddenly appeared in the dust. He reached up to the giant and grasped his throat, arms reinforced by the tangle of the Xenotech’s tentacles, pulling Raven off the floor choking.
‘Are you afraid, Olympian?’ asked the Mekhos with black and endless eyes. ‘Are you afraid of dying?’
Raven felt blood spill down his front as the wires began to saw at his flesh. And he fished one of the Elixir spheres from his bandolier as the arresting nanologic vines raced to entwine his wrist in their terrible slicing embrace. Raven activated the chrome sphere and the device jumped into the air and burst into a radiant blinding flash. A lustrously and compelling light was born and Mekho Serat gasped in horror as it bled into his sight, swallowed by an everlasting whiteness...
‘What’s happening…?’
*
‘Malik?’
‘Malik…open your eyes…’
‘Look at me Malik…that’s it…it’s alright, you’re safe…’
Malik Serat opened his eyes to the warm spaces of the Erebus medical centre as Penelope Hurt stroked her fingers softly through his hair.
‘Don’t get up,’ she said, her pale angelic features blanched in his adjusting vision. Her face was smiling, young. Her short blonde hair hanging in a fringe that was cropped longer at the front. Her unusual eyes, one green and one red, stared sympathetically down to him.
‘It was an accident,’ said Dale Hister from the side of his recovery bed where Malik lay. Dale Hister shook his head regretfully, face tattooed with pneumatan markings, tribal patterns that represented the man’s beliefs. ‘I don’t think we’re ready for this. If we can’t even manage simulation…’
‘Hister, calm down,’ Penelope said. ‘He needs rest. We are fine.’
‘Okay then,’ Hister said softly, moving to leave the room, he chuckled amicably. ‘We’re doing good. It’s okay. Just an accident. I was worried about you, Malik. We all were.’
‘You’ll be fine.’ Penelope promised softly.
‘We’re not in deep space just yet Malik.’ Said Hister. ‘But try and imagine we are. Out there the risks are real. I don’t want anything bad to happen to any of us. I’m glad you’re okay my friend, but please take more care.’
As Hister left, it was Captain Zemi who leaned into the door. He doffed the peak of his baseball cap and winked at Malik.
‘You’ll be fine skud, take your time,’ said the captain softly, following Hister.
‘I can’t remember,’ said Malik. ‘What happened?’
‘You lost concentration, that’s all,’ said Penelope. ‘Butter fingers. You crossed a fuse line during a repair routine. As fate would have it, you didn’t blow yourself to pieces.’ And she lightly petted his shoulder.
‘Yeah,’ Malik uttered. ‘I’m lucky to be alive.’
‘You’re lucky to be with us, Malik,’ she said touching the side of his face. ‘We only have each other on the Erebus. There’s no going for help. There’s no calling back to Earth. All we will have is each other. We have to depend on each other. I’m lucky to have you.’
‘Yeah,’ Malik smiled in relief. ‘I’m lucky to have you, too.’
*
As the spurious light cleared, Malik Serat stared at his trembling hands and fell to his knees in shock. He reached to his face, touching the parts of his skin where dead nanomes flaked away like thin plaster. Parts of his forged armour now pealed from his flesh, the gathering of nanomes washing away like sand. All around him the cables and wires of the Xenotech were hanging like tinsel festoonery, flaccidly dangling from the powerless machine.
‘No,’ he said, suddenly realising he had lost control of the Hypermekhos. ‘No! NO! Where is the key?’ he screamed, searching desperately for the small black cube that had fallen away from his body.
Raven crawled further beneath the Xenotech, fingers clutched to his bleeding throat. The Olympian warrior choked and gagged on his own blood, drawing a long trail of it beneath his stomach as he drew closer to his sword. Meanwhile, Malik searched desperately for the key, the incorporeal geometric shapes in the sky now became less frequent, disposed in less situated locations as the Hypermekhos drifted out of their dimension. Malik searched through the sand and glass, the nanology of his once proud armour, now dulled to his mere draping jacket, his pale skin bleeding from the wounds Raven had opened without him realising. Malik looked around the sky. The myriad tentacles of the Xenotech dangled and rang like loose chains now, and he searched around for any signs of the Hypermekhos, but the sky was clear.
‘C’mon…c’mon where are you?’ he stated, eyes searching hungrily for one of the shapes, eyes no longer blackened but clear and almost recognisably human again. Suddenly, a prism appeared a few meters ahead of him, and Malik made a desperate dash to grab it, but the shape was gone and he crashed to the sand.
‘NO!’ he screamed, looking for another piece of the Hypermekhos he could interact with. ‘She’s falling…SHE’S FALLING! NO! You Olympian BASTARD, what have you DONE TO ME?’
Malik turned vengefully to Raven and crouched into the sand to find himself a shard of glass and he took up a long and sharp piece and stalked towards the bleeding warrior to finish the job.
‘You made me lose the Hypermekhos,’ he roared. ‘For that, I’ll take your fucking head with my own two hands. That light! It was that light! What was that thing?’
Raven climbed to his knees, still pulling away the metallic tentacles of the Xenotech from around his bleeding throat. He seized his sword and powered the Shadow Goliath with the last of his nanology.
‘I can still find the key, you gene-freak!’ Malik Serat promised with a wild laugh. ‘I can still find the key and when I do…I’ll show no
mercy on this world. I’ll bring the Hypermekhos all around it and crack the planet like a giant egg.’
Raven held his arm like a javelin thrower, up high above him, his other firmly held of the Shadow Goliath’s handle. Malik held the shard in his hand, keeping a safe distance from the Olympian. With his throat bleeding like, that he guessed Raven wouldn’t have much strength. All he had to do was dodge his attack and slice the rest of his throat up until the head was off.
‘Let’s go, you fucking freak!’ Malik cackled, a mad and skinny creature in torn leathery armour and frayed jacket with a mane of frowsy black hair and a wild smile that had all the signs of murderous intent.
Raven swung the blade, pivoting on his heel and released it up, high, high into the icy belly of the Xenotech machine, smashing tip first through the armour of its power generator. And a fierce and blinding light burst from the aperture. Raven dropped to the floor and welcomed his death, satisfied the target was hit. And the supermassive Shadow Goliath tore out the machines guts as it fell in overmass back down to the ground.
Malik squinted into the light, shielding his face as gusts of cold air began jetting out of the machine’s bulbous armoured head. He suddenly became aware of how intensely cold the air was becoming, and before he had the chance to scream, the beaconing light emitted, blowing open the reactor and turning all the light touched to solid ice. A precipitous grey cloud burgeoned from the machine and the dreadful rents of thunder ruptured through the skies. Lightning tore out threads of pulses, the sudden cumulonimbus growing to dominate the once clear blue skies. And Havenband quickly vanished beneath its obscurity.
Chaos Cipher Page 68
