Chaos Cipher (82 page)

Avenoir
stepped away from the pod’s door and looked up at the organised
symbols and semiotics of the escape capsules. They were lettered
from A to D, and numbered with codes. Feet pattering lightly across
the panels, she meandered around the letter B hatches and carefully
analysed the numbers.
Zero,
zero, zero, one. Zero, zero, one, zero. Zero, one, zero
zero...

And Avenoir
entered the escape capsule, B’ one, zero, zero, zero. Inside, she
looked at the confusing array of switches and neat looking
air-valves built into the walls and electronic instruments that
seemed strangely archaic compared with the rest of the ship. She
rested her hand on the circular glass where the blackness of space
reached forever beyond and activated an image of the capsule’s
programmed destination. The escape capsule was directed to go to
Earth’s surface in the event of an emergency. But she could see too
that the couplings were only open in an emergency situation. To
launch, she would have to operate the capsule manually from inside
the station. Avenoir hurried back inside the operations room with
the busy personnel. She accessed the wall panel for the escape
capsule B’ One, zero, zero, zero and a computer requested a launch
code. Avenoir punched in the required key and the computer
signalled the green light. The moment it did, she closed the doors
to the escape capsule from the outside and stared at the wall panel
button now pulsing with a soft mantis green hue. It was never her
intention to use the escape capsule for her personal escape. This
one had a much bigger purpose, but the timing had to be
right.

LAUNCH?

The word
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 could feel the
movement of the station travelling in retrograde to the Earth’s
rotation. She felt the flow of the planets relative to them,
spiralling earthly bodies racing through space, she felt the
shifting spin and forward momentum of the solar system, the very
movement of the sun itself, 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...’ she
uttered.

…and pushed
the button.

Attendant
personnel of the docking control atrium jumped from their seats on
hearing the alarm sound and their eyes befell the girl at the
escape hatch, looking back at them impassively as the door sealed
shut beside her and the escape capsule fired into orbit.

‘Escape capsule B’ One, zero, zero, zero away.’
Someone shouted.

And she
smiled through the porthole, watching the capsule drift further and
further away from the station, on course with its final destination
somewhere on the planet below.

*

The Shield of
Spheres base was one of many private operations taking place on
the
Orandoré
Orbital Station. Most of the station’s departments were
housed by universities and other privately operated education
facilities, as well as The Solar Alliance, Aurora Weather Watch,
Virgo-Stars Communication Network and Epicurus labour legislation
offices. But the Shield of Spheres was the only private defence
contractor that had offices here. The Orbital Guard comprised
mainly the best of Atominii state pilots and occasionally hired the
Shield of Spheres as stand in.

Max Elba,
Tanya and Rufus had been assigned to escort Avenoir back to the
Shield of Spheres to the others. Nitro was waiting, a displeased
expression on his face.

The Shield of
Spheres reception was a large ovular field of light through which
they passed, its foyer an arrangement of seats and floor panels
decorated with the luminous glow of light strips forming more
ovular shapes. Walkways and stairwells zigzagged to service two
layers for their operations all manned by several Adamoss units,
both multi-formed and anthropomorphic as well as security
personnel.

This was
where they parted way with the soldiers assigned to assist them to
base. Nitro had politely requested them to leave after reaching the
main conference room. Avenoir and Raven had both been forced to
wear manacles, especially after the Chronomancer launched an
unmanned escape capsule. Nitro knelt down to her level and looked
into her eyes, one green the other red.

‘
What the
hell was all that about?’ he asked. ‘Hmm? Were you trying to get
down to the planet? Is that it?’

Avenoir
stared back at him indifferently, feeling increasingly
misunderstood.

‘
You can tell
me,’ he said with a smirk. ‘Tell me or I’ll arrange for your big
ass body guard here to be taken to the Atominii
incinerators.’

‘
Hey!’ Kelly
suddenly snapped, pulling Nitro aside. ‘Don’t.’ She warned. ‘She’s
still just a child. Chronomancer or not.’

‘
Let me do my
job,’ Nitro scowled, ‘first thing you’re going to learn about
working with Shield of Spheres is not to question your superior.’
And Nitro stared at her for a while and made sure his message was
setting into her thick skull before turning back to Avenoir. ‘Why
did you launch the escape capsule?’

Avenoir bit
her lip hard, squeezing her fists. She was dying to tell them,
holding it in was killing her. But she mustn’t. She opened her
mouth, smirking ironically at Nitro Harbeck.

‘
I can tell
you how you’re going to die,’ she threatened suddenly.

‘
Cute,’ Nitro
said dryly.

Ethan was
smiling, close to laughter.

‘
Something
funny?’ Nitro asked.

‘
That kid
don’t speak much but when she does,’ Ethan said, ‘she’s pretty
dark, right?’

‘
Right,’
Nitro agreed, kneeling to remove Avenoir’s shackles.

Raven looked
around as Nitro showed him the same courtesy, handing the handcuffs
to an Adamoss unit. There was a great horseshoe conference table
with mounted holographics in the centre and what must have been
three dozen levitation chairs, and above them the ceiling was
panelled with more gravmex devices. Several Adamoss avatars
strutted casually around, their skin a translucent and rubbery
silicon surface coating the complexity of glowing optics,
artificial muscle fibres and fluxing neon wires. He could tell by
the way they looked they were service droids, not designed for
combat. They were mostly composed of different variations of
plastic; it would be no problem for him to smash them apart if it
came to it. But, Adamoss, he knew, was an artificial intelligence
which governed several different avatars at once all varying in
size and shape like these. It wouldn’t be unfair to assume he
didn’t also have anatomical combat avatars somewhere on the
station.

Avenoir
approached Raven as the others shifted into the conference room and
took their places in seats. Ethan bit the end of his vapour-pipe
and twisted the cap to start the toxins, and took his place
standing discreetly at the back with his hands on his hips,
smoking. Pawel was beside Caspian who stood and leaned both
knuckles on the table, while Kelly stayed close. Raven skulked at
the top end of the table, shoulders big and unyielding. Centre
place, an effervescent light pulsed up from the quantum photon
layer to construct a holographic representation of the Ambassador
Felix.

‘
Is the
subject secured?’ he asked, ‘my god, you have him in the conference
room?’

‘
It’s fine,’
Nitro assured, hands casually held behind his back, ‘he’s
cooperative.’

‘
You better
know what you’re doing,’ he said, fiercely ‘one slip up with this
guy and I will seal up your department and purge you all in a
heart-beat. I heard what this guy did to
Omicron
.’

‘
T’was the
foolhardy and temerarious actions of a Syridan RIG who executed the
damage to
Omicron
, not I. Whence thou confer with the devil, thou should
knowest the consequences.’

‘
I’m
serious,’ the Ambassador reiterated to Nitro, ‘one false move and
you’re all blown out the hatch. It’s in all your interest to keep
the Gene-freak in check.’

‘
Goodbye
Ambassador Felix,’ said Nitro, severing the communications. After
that, the room lights dimmed slightly and the doors automatically
locked, slightly surprising Max who hadn’t seen them shut until he
heard the gentle thump.

One of the
Adamoss avatars approached Ethan, palm up and indicating toward his
vapour pipe. Ethan swatted the android’s hands away and indignantly
stepped away from the android. He continued to suck on his
vapour-pipe and warned the android to ‘step off,
robot-man.’

Nitro hitched
his boot up high and stepped on the table, leaning over his knee as
he ran through a selection menu on the pale surface. Touching the
screenless projection options, he started a new call and once more
the holographic constructions began to build up an image. This time
it was Chief Claudia Noble. Her thick red hair was bunched into a
large styled curl on her head, short, grey flanks at the sides. She
had green eyes and her lips were glossed pale, breaking into a
slight smile as she beheld them all for the first time.

‘
Well then,’
she said, ‘we meet at last. Under very inappropriate circumstances,
I should say.’

‘
Watchye mean
abowt circumstints?’ Caspian asked with his arms wide. ‘Toymin
couldn’t be bettah.’

‘
Your candid
disconsolation is duly noted captain Mowser,’ she nodded, ‘thank
you for your opinion, please sit down.’

Caspian
folded his arms and remained standing.

‘
Where is the
Chronomancer child?’

‘
She is with
I,’ Raven allowed.

‘
May I see
her?’

Raven looked
down to Avenoir and she seemed to decide for herself, stepping up
onto the table and into the light.

‘
It’s true
what they say about the eyes,’ Claudia realised. ‘So...a
Chronomancer. Hard to find. Dangerous to see one.’

‘
Dangerous
how?’ Nitro asked.

Avenoir stood
and listened to their discussion, her gaze switching from person to
person, feeling angered by their malapert disregard to address her
directly.

‘
Dangerous
because,’ Claudia started, ‘you can never know what they’re
planning. They are unpredictable, chaotic. They see the impossible
and the improbable. We were tracking a Chronomancer on Kepler. He
was much older than this one. He’d assembled a very dangerous group
of people, killed tens of thousands. Planned to take over the
colonies for his own ends. We had to eliminate him. Sadly. And he
seemed so cooperative at first. She’s controlling our destiny,’
said Claudia, ‘each and every one of us are merely her figures to
play with...’

‘
I might be a
child in your eyes,’ Avenoir said defensively, ‘but I’ve had to
mature very quickly. My home was destroyed before I ever knew it.
All my life I have been running just to survive. My gifts cause
people to die when I mean only to save them.’ Avenoir came close to
tears, angry at the insult. ‘You don’t know what it is like.’ She
said. ‘Can you remember what you did yesterday? How about last
week? How about last month? Well, that’s what it is like. You’re
aware of the future vaguely like a memory. Each moment comes a
little brighter. Each moment a little clearer. I have an idea of
what is coming but it’s not exactly clear until it is almost upon
me. Sometimes, I know things that make no sense.’ She looked to her
guardian, Raven who stood shocked. He’d never heard her say so
much. He hadn’t heard her speak since she was only an infant. ‘I’m
sorry.’ She declared, her eyes running now with tears, spilling
onto the floor by her feet. ‘I’m so sorry uncle but I must disclose
this now. We’re not here to seek revenge. You won’t make it to the
Galileo Coterie if you try to get there. They’ll be wiped out
before we reach them.’

‘
But I hath
seen thy dreams,’ he uttered.

‘
I dream like
everyone else.’ She smiled faintly. ‘I can’t stop myself projecting
them. I’m sorry. Sometimes they make sense. Sometimes…they’re just
dreams. Other times…they’re your dreams.’

‘
No.’ Raven
shook his head. ‘NO! You tell me this now? Why now? Why when I
stand so close to reaching my destination?’

‘
Because,’
she started. ‘There is a man down there who is about to come into
great power. He’s going to use it to bring all life to its knees
because he believes blindly in an ideology that is based on chaos.
In a small way…if we do what must be done from here, we can stop
him.’

‘
Who?’ asked
Raven. ‘Who is he?’

‘
He’s the one
who will destroy the Galileo Coterie.’ She told Raven. ‘You can
only save the Galileo Coterie by stopping him. They call him the
Mekhos. But his human name is Malik. Malik Serat.’