Chaos Cipher (54 page)

*

The Venster
suite was softly illuminated in amber light, panels that hung from
a large purlin, designed to match the plush colour of the room’s
amethyst cornice designs and frescos. An ovular double bed governed
the centre of the room, surrounded by padded cushions and velvet
quilts. Admittedly, Raven had overpaid for her comfort and privacy,
but the child’s rest was important to their mission. He was
satisfied knowing this was one of the safest guestrooms available
on
Omicron
. She
could stay here and sleep, while he scouted and secured the area
and hunted down their targets. Suspiciously, Raven checked into the
darkest and most discrete parts of the room for any signs of
surveillance while Avenoir, detached from the luxurious aesthetics
of her abode, made way for the window. The material transformed
from opaque to limpid as she closed in on it, revealing the
station’s habitat outside. She was engaged in the view with firm
interest, the plants and intricate selection of luminous mushrooms
freckled in the gardens like radium spills, surrounded by
hexagonally rigid moats and linear canals making the water appear
sulphurous. The whole thing felt unnatural to her. The free fall
instructor in the elevator said the northern quarter of
Omicron
was undergoing
an expensive face-lift so that agriculture could develop. There
were even rumours of cattle being tested for the environmental
switch, a sort of test run to make the air less artificial. This
was an example of mankind’s effort to imitate a small part of earth
and the whole thing became one large mathematically austere system.
Like many other habitats she’d visited, it lacked the quality that
the human spirit so desperately sought, turning space travel into
the single most vapidly depressing and lonely voyages of the
century. It wasn’t science that was the problem, it was
hubris.

Welcome to
the future; they had told Raven. The
Kyklos
had orbited the super-giant
Suntau star, caught in her immense gravity where time moved much
slower, they hadn’t had stations like this when he was last in the
solar system. They hadn’t the technology to match the
Kyklos
, at the time it
was a spectacle. This was the future, his future. Raven’s powerful
feet dredged the floor as he ambled for the kitchen area. He
touched several panels on the wall and a cabinet swept quietly
open. Arms and platforms unfolded gently, offering thin plates,
utensils, glasses and cold beverages, composed of elegant
light-weight materials geometrically unfolding without an energy
source like some sort of intelligent responsive origami. He sat on
a kitchen stool, another unfolding feature, and rubbed the scarred
part of his right forearm that ached for his gauntlet
again.

‘
Were they
our new crew?’ Raven asked her.

Avenoir
turned to him then bowed her answer. Raven brushed his hand through
the bristles on his head. The dry scrape of palm against the short
hair vibrated through his skull as he scratched, flaking the skin
away. They had been sterilised before even entering
The Constella Transit
,
he was only grateful they didn’t need to go through that
again.

He’d heard
about the lice. For some humans, the tardigrades were bothersome.
They carried diseases that would kill in a matter of hours, if not
treated. The cure wasn’t the problem, identifying the symptoms was
the main issue. Since the creation of the nanome industry, diseases
had been somewhat altered in their role in human society. Immune
systems throughout generations of Titans had been replaced with
nanoctor micro-immunities, causing a strong dependence on the
industries just to fend off a simple cold. Medicine became a thing
of the past, while Micro-Immune-Updates fast became the new
treatment. Those not wealthy enough to afford the MIU’s were
subject to unethical ends. For Olympians, it wasn’t a necessity.
MIU’s were the out-dated technology, synergy was the new evolution.
All this had happened in his time, he’d have hoped mankind and the
Titans of the Atominii had altered their mode of existence for
something more equal and to the benefit of all. But then if that
was so, all this vengeance and hatred would be unnecessary. It
wasn’t science that was the problem.

Raven picked
his gaze up from the floor and stared out the window where she
stood. Avenoir looked at the skin on her hand. It was growing pale
and starting to peel. Raven had noticed it too. Even his skin was
beginning to flake away for the new cells underneath. But he knew
now that these cells would be different. His skin was changing,
losing its colour with each shedding layer. Avenoir would stop
shedding her skin eventually, but Raven would continue until
wasting away, his reliance on the glow of the Elixir had only now
demanded its payment, how he missed its healing light. He peeled
away a large flake and twisted it into a roll between his
fingers.

‘
I will not
weaken my composure’ said Raven, ‘but I will try to be civil. Once
we emplane
The Griffin’s Claw
we must seek a commodious resolve. Whence we are
settled will so the genesis of our uprising commence.’

The girl
looked concerned and he felt her worry. ‘What is it?’ he asked over
his shoulder. ‘Will they cooperate?’

Her head
nodded.

‘
Good,’ Raven
sighed. ‘Do not allow thy compassion for life to enervate thy
resolve. This altruism, young Avenoir, must be supine in the wake
of what need be done. The Titans must learn their lesson. I hope
only the crew do not impede this plan; it’s not their blood I aim
to spill.’

-39-

‘T
here’s no doubt
in my mind that Regallio will help us,’ said the Atominii Lawyer
stiffly. ‘He’s under a lot of pressure as it is. What I suggest we
do, is show him how much of a threat these two will be to
the
Omicron
station. This is our best tactic.’

Robert Alker
sat opposite the peculiar little man as he clung to his portmanteau
and ranted on about his tactics. He stared back at Alker through
those big greedy glasses of his, eyes constrained as though to
prevent sunlight reaching them, although there was little but soft
panel lighting in the shuttle. Alker had selected him carefully
from his team of commissioned campaign runners; he was a real
persistent son-of-a-bitch and that was his winning characteristic,
though he’d been tempted to pick a more suave and charismatic
individual simply to show face. But it wasn’t looks he needed for
this PR operation, it was skill, and Mr Kintz had just the right
gumption at driving people mad with good-cop-bad-cop routines and a
subtly threatening vernacular. For this meeting, the station owner
had to be convinced that the terrorists they were after are a real
danger to the integrity of his orbital station. The politician
returned a sanguine smile.

‘
You’re here
to document the conversation for legal purposes, Mr Kintz. We’ve
discussed our tactic already and I don’t wish to think on it any
further. I.O.W, Mr Kintz, shut up and enjoy the
silence.’

The Lawyer
sat back further into his well-padded seat and listened to the
droning of the ship’s engines and the occasional hissing as the
oxygen tanks were stirred and a new batch was added to the
environment through the filters. He scratched his nose irritably.
Alker had his head back calmly and his eyes closed.

‘
It’s a long
journey, don’t you think?’

Alker didn’t
reply.

The Lawyer
sniffled and found a pipe running under the mash floor to look
at.

‘
How much
longer?’

‘
Why?’ Alker
finally asked with a frustrated sigh.

‘
It’s the low
gravmex-field environments…’

‘
They call it
micro gravity, if you want to be accurate.’

‘
Yes, well it
makes me a little sick.’

‘
You had your
training.’

‘
I didn’t do
well in the training.’

He wasn’t
lying. Alker hadn’t picked him for his gravmex adjustments either.
He’d vomited in the centrifuge, he’d vomited on the sky-dives, and
he’d even vomited on his way to the parliamentary building and put
it down to nerves.

‘
Is there
definitely a gravmex field on the
Omicron
? I couldn’t stand this for
another couple of weeks. I get paranoid.’

‘
They have a
centrifuge.’

‘
Oh god,’
Kintz uttered, ‘centrifugal motion makes me dizzy.’

‘
You’re like
a baby. Here. Have one of these tablets.’

Alker popped
open a small cartridge and flicked the tablet spinning across the
room and it cruised as in slow motion. Mr Kintz made a feeble pop
with his jaws and missed, sending the tablet spinning out into the
cargo hold.

‘
I wouldn’t
tell the pilots about that, if I were you,’ said Alker, ‘they get
pissy about things floating around and clogging up
mechanisms.’

*

Anton
Regallio had the most spectacular view of Jupiter. The red storm
blustered and swirled in the gas giant’s eye, millions of
kilometres below him, visible through the vestibule’s transparent
floor. His sneakers were lined with gecko-tread nanotechnology,
keeping his firm hold on the ground and the view transparent and
untarnished. The planet passed below him every couple of hours
as
Omicron
rotated in orbit. Every few years, he’d get to see Calisto’s
dark spherical silhouette drift close by the station. He could even
program the optics to locate and expand the image of the Calisto
resource station Archimedes II shining in the Valhalla basin. The
light from Jupiter gave the otherwise gloomy room a deep vermilion
quality.

Anton
Regallio loved to watch the colours flow through the deadlight
floor, imbuing the room with interesting shades, almost mirroring
the clouds below him. His station was his home and Jupiter his
personal lava lamp. He was wearing his white jumpsuit today. Strict
station regulations demanded a shaven head no more than two
millimetres in length of hair for all
Omicron
personnel coming into the
station. Today’s guests were, however, an exception. As the solar
system’s main system harbour, tardigrades had been a large problem
in micro-gravity. Technical problems occurred frequently in the
axel docking sphere related to the contamination of delicate
communication hardware. Since the introduction of the
decontamination unit, the problem had been resolved, the haircut
was just a precautionary action. Long hair required a manual cut
before entering the decontamination chamber; the radiation particle
wash didn’t always catch everything. But he was supposed to be
making allowances for these political Earthers from the hardlands.
Apparently, humiliating customs like boarding and departure
on
Omicron
was
exclusive to such individuals of prestige.

At the far
side of the large vestibule was an elevator. Large silvery pillars
stood around it, decorous with small lights resembling the kindle
glow like candles stood in gilded, ornate holders. A giant mirror
held his reflection on the West Wing wall of the vestibule. Anton
stared at his broad shoulders with dignified attention,
straightening his posture to suppose his sanguine bravado. He
hitched his chest like a rooster as the elevator doors resonated
with a gentle, electronic note through the peace.

‘
Here we
go.’

Several feet
shuffled lightly over the floor. Anton Regallio turned from the
mirror, his thin lips breaking into a white, toothy
smile.

‘
Gentlemen,’
he greeted soberly. ‘Haf-la and welcome to
Omicron
.’

Their
uniforms draped down to their knees like long sepia togas, padded
with two different materials, shaded in burlywood patterns and
embroidered with gold. They were high in their roles. Anton hadn’t
had many dealings with governmental bodies, since most of Earth’s
governments were no longer of state but of a series of corporate
oligarchs competing for power, it was only natural that his station
was scarcely approached. The show of hardlander government was
usually for external regulations in space, however. The Atominii
boasted of its free, democratic society, a neurophased interface
governed by the invisible will of societies’ virtual consensus.
Naturally, Anton didn’t believe the myths that came out of the
appeals of the Atominii.

Omicron
had a respectable
Archivology in communication and postal services and particle
supplies. It was the solar system’s main source of intergalactic
imports and exports, as well as antimatter production, and so it
was conceived dangerous to challenge their services, not for fear
of threats or for fear of even competition: but for fear of them
going on strike and bringing the fragile harmony of the whole solar
network to a standstill. No company wanted to challenge
Omicron’s
leadership in
political matters such as holding asylum for dubious characters.
Its union protected the vested interests of
Omicron’s
workers in the Valhalla
Basin on Calisto’s surface, and the interests of its scientists
producing antimatter energy in the particle acceleration tunnels
winding the circumference of the habitat’s outer halo.
Omicron’s
major profits
came from antimatter production, its innovative antimatter
isolation techniques and sales from its antimatter fusion
capacitors. True Anton has never been a man in want for more power,
but he has also never desired to abuse a position to his advantage.
He was, as he saw it, perfect for the job.