Chaos Cipher (18 page)

Laux pointed
to a cabinet across the room marked with a caduceus symbol,
stencilled above it were the words
first
aid
.

‘
Here’s where
the magic happens,’ said Edge as he strutted over to the cabinet.
He opened the shutters to reveal several pickle jars, beakers,
flasks and vials all filled with different substances. He turned
back to the professor looking puzzled.

‘
It’s in the
big Erlenmeyer flask.’

‘
Th’fuck is
that?’

‘
The one that
looks like a cone!’ Laux snapped with frustrated disbelief, holding
out his arm and smacking his own forehead. Edge popped the cork and
offered Daryl the first sip.

‘
Changed my
mind,’ he said shaking his head.

‘
You?’ he
offered Enaya.

She leaned in
to smell the flask and also shook her head. Laux was looking
hopeful until she declined.

‘
Suit
yourselves.’

Edge Fenris
chugged back the golden liquid and quickly lurched forward and spat
out the contents, angrily hurling the flask shattering at the
professor’s feet.

‘
DAMNIT
LAUX!’ He yowled. ‘Tastes like piss and vinegar.’

‘
Because you
have to let it mature, the nanomes can only do so much!’

‘
You’re using
nanomes?’ asked Enaya.

‘
The
filtering process is experimental,’ Laux explained. ‘Unfortunately
the nanomes here are in limited supply. They take a long time and a
lot of equipment to create them. We don’t have good resources for
that kind of technology. But it just so happens we do have dead
nanoctors in our blood just waiting to be reactivated.’

‘
You can do
that?’

‘
Course,’ he
said, trying his best to come across as charming now, downplaying
his technicalities to romance mode. Laux cleared his throat and
leaned back. ‘Yes I can. Easy. The problem is reprogramming them.
After we leave the Atominii these nanomes usually cause tumours and
kill the person, or blood clots and other such nasty things. If you
survive that things get worse, eventually they stop functioning as
an immune system, making us vulnerable to other diseases, some
natural, some designed. It keeps people dependent on the Atominii
you see, in order to live you have to update.’

‘
Yes I know,
I used to live in the Atominii once myself,’ Enaya
revealed.

‘
But…’ Laux
went on, holding up his finger proudly. ‘I have managed to isolate
and extract nanomes from my own blood, some of which I put in that
flask to ferment the yeast and barley.’

‘
Oh my god,’
they heard Edge heave, still spitting and salivating over his knees
and clearly now privy to Laux’s techniques.

Laux put his
welding mask on the worktable beside him and brushed down his lab
coat. He leaned over the table, still regarding Enaya.

‘
After which
I attempted to make some adjustments under that microscope. With
the right tools they can build themselves, but I need things like
polymers and alloys. With nano-metallurgists we will be able to
advance Cerise Timbers electronics. With nanoctors we can upgrade
our medicines.’

He pulled
back a dustcover from one of his machines, a huge iron coffin with
levers and valves and pressure gauges clocking the internal
temperature. Laux kicked the machine hard and the coffin opened up
to reveal a deep bath of cold water, within which floated hundreds
of petri dishes like Lilly pads.

‘
In each of
these petri dishes I’m cultivating nanomes, but they are very
delicate. Just shining a torch on them will disturb their
development. And they have to be kept reasonably cold. That’s why
the water is…’ Laux stared at the external thermometer reading and
suddenly shouted. ‘DAMNIT!’

‘
What?’ Enaya
cried.

‘
They’re at
room temperature.’

And he
slammed the coffin closed and pulled down the dust
cover.

‘
I’ve been
working on that batch for three months.’ He said shaking his head.
‘Three months for nothing.’

‘
The Atominii
are very careful with nanome controls,’ said Enaya, ‘if they learn
about this they’ll nuke us.’

‘
They won’t
learn about it,’ Laux assured. ‘By the time they do, we’ll be
advanced enough to defend ourselves, providing I can read a simple
external thermometer.’

‘
Laux,’ Daryl
started, ‘just what the hell are you a professor in? Didn’t you
study quantum electronics?’

‘
Why,
nanalchemy and neuro-ligature engineering of course.’ He said it as
though it was obvious. ‘It’s a branch of quantum
electronics.’

Enaya had
been more interested in one of the upper levels above them. She
could see a plane wing had been constructed as a bridge platform
from one side of the hangar to the other.

‘
What’s up
there?’ she asked.

‘
It’s where
we sleep,’ Edge spat.

‘
You and the
professor?’

‘
Actually my
place is in the lab,’ said Laux. ‘As a matter of fact I don’t
sleep. My neurophase with the Atominii reprogrammed my cranial
activity. The sleeping process can be cancelled out with the
release of certain chemicals. I rest my brain when I’m awake so
basically my life feels like a constant dream. It’s a common
phenomenon for those unplugged from the Atominii.’

‘
Not for all
of us,’ said Edge. ‘I personally like to sleep after a good old
rousing drink.’

‘
And who else
sleeps here?’

‘
Pan,’ said
Edge Fenris. ‘She’s our security officer. She’s on an errand right
now with Biter.’

‘
You have a
dog?’ Enaya asked.

‘
No,’ Edge
Fenris scowled folding his arms. ‘Just a smartass gene-freak with
an oral fixation!’

*

Kyo chewed on
his necklace relentlessly as it hung upside down over his chin. He
liked to wedge the wire behind his front fangs and tongue the beads
of wood and it disgusted the hell out of Pania. He clacked his
teeth as he bit the wooden carvings, a gift from the fields of
Minerva Meadows he’d bitten and chewed into near disintegration. He
did this all while in a handstand, balancing inverted through the
fields. He had wooden carvings and rings threaded onto his tail,
which was plastered in areas from the many times he’d stepped on
himself. Kyo wore a white hooded shirt, his favourite jogging
tracksuit pants and bare foot finger-shoes.

Pania
meanwhile, was testing the target of a weapon on the gun ranges.
She aimed along the sight and took deep draws on her rolled
cigarette. Kyo walked around on his hands, his legs and tail hung
backward over his head like a one man circus act, chewing on the
necklace as he moved in circles.

‘
C’mon Pan,
this is taking too long!’ He complained.

‘
What?’ she
said, unmasking her one ear from the protective muffs.

‘
I said it’s
taking too long,’ he moaned still chewing on his necklace and
almost loosing balance for a second. He recovered and continued
hand walking. ‘Feel like I’ve been here for hours.’

‘
Excuse the
fuck out of me pint-size, but where the hell else are you actually
thinking of being right now?’

‘
I dunno,’
Kyo confessed, ‘anywhere but the gun ranges.’

‘
Kiss my ass
small-fry.’ Pania rebuked, returning the earmuffs and lining up the
weapon to the target. A makeshift man-sized dummy stood at the end
of a hundred meter field before a reinforced concrete wall. It had
been put together with sandbags and pots.

‘
This is my
favourite place to be.’ She smiled, licking her lips and returning
the cigarette.

She pulled
the trigger and rattled out a few rounds. Her face lit in the
blasts, a staccato shuddering of bullets hammering down the field.
Once the cartridge was spent she smiled at the shredded target
which stood smouldering and bleeding sand, the distant wall mottled
with smoking holes.

‘
Shit! Boy,
this one’s a keeper,’ she said, holding the gun in her leather
gloves and admiring the craftsmanship.

Kyo sprang to
his feet and strutted over as Pania removed her goggles and
ear-muffs.

‘
Oh, bully,’
he said dryly, standing just above her shoulder height as to
observe the rifle. ‘So you’re done selecting your instrument of
mass murder then?’

‘
Yep,’ she
said proudly, throwing the weapon over her shoulders.

Pania had a
shaven head, but she left a long strand of black hair fringing to
her jawline. She also let two more strands hang by the sides of her
ears. Like Kyo, she too wore the wooden carved necklaces and
trinkets of jewellery custom made by the craftsmen of Minerva
Meadows. Sometimes she had fishnet stockings. Today it was torn
denim shorts and thick black leather boots as provided by the
military culture out in the Novus. An ammo belt hung across her
shoulders and bosom, under which she had a torn up white blouse
worded
Party Crasher
on the back. Kyo couldn’t count her tattoos. Her left arm was
a sleeve of designs and skulls and monsters and tanks and drones
and machines firing rockets. She had one which was a chainsaw
slicing open a love-heart somewhere at the small of her back.
Others were improvised squiggles and words, art and poetry, each a
memory, each an event significant to her. He sometimes asked her
about them and Pania wasn’t shy to show him. His favourite was the
Otter she had tattooed onto her side. It was snaking from her ribs
to her hip, a stylish insignia that represented the military clan
she was a part of.

For some
reason she also wore a plaster across the bridge of her nose, not
due to bruising, but because she thought the old societal
perspectives on beauty were bullshit.

‘
And just how
many people can you kill with this exactly?’ Kyo questioned
sincerely.

‘
As many
people as it can pack bullets.’ She guessed, checking the cartridge
slot for grease.

‘
Which
is…?’

‘
Eighty
bullets a cartridge.’ She smiled, teeth biting hard on the
cigarette.

‘
You’re a one
man army,’ he congratulated, correcting himself. ‘A one woman army,
I mean.’

‘
Yeah, I’m
just glad the militia are kind enough to let me take the equipment.
Had to trade in my other firearm though. Apparently one’s enough.
Apparently.’

They left the
gun ranges, Kyo stooping to pick up the bag of copper cylinder
flasks and vegetables as per requested by Professor Laux. He looked
curiously at the tattoos on the back of Pania’s legs as she walked
ahead. Kyo didn’t have any of his own. They didn’t interest him
much on his own body. Having a tail, fangs and big iris eyes was
enough of a head turner anyway. But he let Pania cut his hair.
She’d shaven it short at one side, allowing his long hair flop into
a fringe, getting shorter the further back it went until there were
spikey tufts behind his head. She even shaved an arty pattern into
the short side. He always admired her artistic flair. Pania had
stayed up late nights when Kyo was a little boy, teaching him how
to draw and paint, though he never really developed much beyond
finger painting.

She looked
unapproachably tough with her piercings and tattoos and crazy hair
style, and undeniably she knew how to handle herself, and Kyo had
seen it. But Kyo knew the soft side of Pania, he knew her warm
heart and loving nature, she’d always made him feel safe when they
were both younger, back when he was toddling and she was just
entering the double digits.

They followed
the gun ranges out, listening as various other militia men and
women went about their training. They marched through fields,
jumped through obstacles, sloshed through swamp pits. The
occasional snap of gunfire in the distance. She approached the
checkout point where one of the military registration staff waited.
He was reading a book about rifle ammunition. Pania stomped her
feet together and saluted.

‘
Sargent
fuck-wits reporting for duty, sir!’ she mocked.

The book
slowly lowered, the man peered over at the two idiots smiling and
saluting with their Heil pose, right arms outstretched. His eyes
fell on the rifle at Pania’s leg and he nodded, stating
cheerlessly: ‘At ease fuck-wits. That what you’re taking-’ he
asked, pausing to add with doleful irony ‘-private?’

‘
Sure is,’
she smiled.

The man stood
up to receive the weapon. He ran a scanner over it and assigned the
weapon to Pania Kedash of Cerise Timbers defence militia via the
terminal.

‘
Are you a
mercenary?’ Kyo asked the guy.

He half
smiled and raised his eye brows as Pania chuckled and flicked Kyo’s
ear.

‘
Not me,’
said the man, finishing the assignment process on a computer screen
at his desk. ‘I’m militia, like Pania here. The Mercs are
ex-Atominii badasses from the Syridan army. They’re training people
like us.’