Chaos Cipher (93 page)

‘
You must
learn of the value of personal privacy,’ Raven revealed. ‘You tell
too willingly about yourself and speak with pride, yet you see not
this characteristic in you as weakness. You above all, must know,
as an intelligence officer, that some things are sacred. Thou
reachest out to thine enemy for kinship. But, the divide is too
deep and too far now to ever heal over such a cloven abyss of
morals, and since you devote on calling me out on such stigmas like
big guy, I see no need to seal this divide. Be advised, my naive
Titan nemesis. What one can do with information so private and
vital to you, can be used to harm you, Nicholas Harbeck. Never
entrust that all people hold dear to altruism and
benevolence.’

‘
I knew it,’
Nitro smiled wide and proud. ‘You see, that’s good advice. You’re a
virtuous fellow, Raven.’

‘
It is here,’
Raven suddenly stated, leaning forth in his seat. ‘The object of
our expedition, ATLAS lies ahead.’

‘
How do you
know?’

Raven had
been looking at his palm where a series of small twinkling blue
lights were amassed.

‘
I just
know.’ He said lugubriously.

Nitro also
sat forth in disbelief as a series of unregistered archipelagos
appeared on the radars and runway strip clearances lit up across
the island airstrips, clearing them for landing.

‘
Jesus,’
Nitro exclaimed. ‘You’re right, and it looks like this place still
has auto-landing guides engaged. That, or somebody is expecting
us.’

‘
Commander
Harbeck,
’ Chief Claudia Noble neuromitted.
‘
SkyLord Kent Gallows has permitted you
access to ATLAS to retrieve artefacts from the Kyklos disaster.
There are conditions.
’

‘
Sure, name the
terms,
’ said Nitro.

‘
No matter what
you see in there you are entitled to only what is in the artefact
containment facility MS, four, zero, eight.
’

‘
Copy
that,
’ said Nitro.

‘
One more
thing,
’ said the Chief.
‘
Once the mission is over you’re due for a
memory screening.
’

‘
Is that really
necessary?
’ Nitro asked.

‘
It will
be.
’ She promised. ‘
It was part of the arrangement I negotiated for getting you
in this place. Nobody is to know what is in this
facility.
’

‘
Sure,
’ Nitro smiled,
‘
just out of curiosity, have I ever have
my memory screened before?
’

‘
Please take this
seriously, Nitro,
’ she reminded.
‘
Remain vigilant until the mission is
over.
’

‘
Not a problem,
Chief,
’ Nitro assured,
‘
I’ve got the ever so mirthful captain
kill-joy here to make sure of that.
’

The Nova
Storm hovered low, sliding its wheels across the wet asphalt
spraying a rooster-tail of water in its path as it cut along the
runway strip. The burning embers cooled in the duel engines,
vermilion flares bright enough still to reflect on the dark
surfaces of wet trees and greenery and shimmer through the dazzling
rain which pelted down across the island as the storm raged on. The
propulsion engines were capped and doused with coolant as the
passenger doors opened between them at the back of the cadonavis
and Raven stooped into the rain, followed by a much shorter Nitro.
They looked around for a control tower or facility entrance but
there was nothing obvious at first.

‘
Where’s the
welcoming committee?’ Nitro complained.

Raven slogged
through the rain and the faint and untraceable pulse of lightning
momentarily webbed everything in its transient light, and with a
twelve second delay a very distant and angry thunder peeled through
the sky.

Nitro stayed
close to the cadonavis as the large warrior made his way slowly
down the runway, and a few moments later they saw motion at the end
of the path. It was the gradual rise of something concrete emerging
from the earth, spilling dust and torrents of water from its edges
as it pushed beyond the surface, unsettling the plants that had
learned to grow on its head throughout the years it had remained
inactive. At around twenty feet it stopped with a loud crash; and
they beheld a short cylindrical tower, walls clawed from where it
had risen up. Light began to glow around its circumference, and the
cylindrical tower parted down the middle and opened to reveal an
iron cage, illuminated with spot lights that skimmed the silvery
gossamer of webs behind which an elevator awaited.

Nitro took
hold of the iron locking-bar and hauled it vertically up. It came
free, he angled it into a horizontal position and pushed the gate
sideways along the rails. Once past the gate, they walked through
an empty and dusty elevation space. Raven stepped into the middle
and waited for Nitro, who stood by his side and pulled the gate
closed again behind them.

There was an
electrical buzz as the gate met with the locks and the elevator
platform slowly began its descent into darkness. Nitro’s oculars
automatically shifted into night-vision, enhancing the squared
contours of the pallid elevator shaft against dark scratches and
vertical abrasions lining the walls. Motes of dust clawed from the
concrete surface as the elevator descended into the depths and they
felt the process vibrate through the platform, on which they
stood.

The elevator
fell deeper for another minute before clanging to a stop almost
sixty metres below the earth. And as the gates unlatched several
dim lights shone upon a bare and concrete wall, where in its centre
was a wooden door with a brass knob. The paint had started to peel
off, decaying and dry flakes curling around fissures throughout the
texture. Nitro unbolted the latch and hauled it into an upright
position, then slid the gate aside. He and Raven stepped out of the
elevator. Pensively, Nitro twisted the handle to a following gate
and pushed the stiff and creaking door open, and it swung into the
darkness and activated a sensor. They heard the droning buzz of
electricity from somewhere in the blackness, and dull amber bulbs
began to blush, caged in their dusty pendant fixtures, like saucers
hung from lines, spotting the dark hallways in dull segmented
apricot light. Motes of dust pollenated the air, and they saw
door-less rooms along the hallway, and in them the endless crates
and dusty boxes of emptied provisions, or dunes of salt and the
bones of meat preserves once stored there. They stalked deeper
inside, their shadows veering throughout the hall as they passed
under each warming bulb, inactive for a time neither could
guess.

The Olympian
warrior opened his palm, and signatures of opalescent light were
coordinating into circular patterns, a clear sign that they were
drawing close to the hidden artefacts of Kyklos. The bulbs ahead
flickered irritably as electrical contacts failed on their
supports, a place clearly unmaintained for centuries. Raven stared
into the blackened rooms to descry the motion of rodents scurrying
under dusty desks in a conference room. Their feet crunched as they
moved across shattered glass, once an observation window that
positioned as an entire wall for a general meeting room. Raven’s
boots crushed the glass deeper under his weight as he approached a
new door at the end of the corridor, he coiled his long ossein
fingers around the handle and shoved it open.

Here, the
space was much larger. A vast open grave of secrets, iron freight
containers stored on high stacks and marked with radioactive hazard
symbols, stacks for steel drums and bulk fluid containers,
half-filled with unknowable contents marked in symbols of a
language long ago forgotten. And a huge gantry construction was
built into the roof with a crane that looked like some stock
operation, once used for loading and unloading equipment. They
moved quietly through the massive space, between towering stacks of
wooden cargo boxes and freight containers that stood almost sixty
meters, hovering just below the tapering stalactites of the dark,
cave ceiling. Nitro pointed ahead of them to a huge ocean liner
floating in a section of the subterranean building. It rested
hauntingly, massive, in a great black lake. A long, poorly lit
harbour ran around it, filled with armaments that hung from higher
defence purpose gantries. It was an enormous space, surrounded by
towers, loading davits, cranes and all kinds of machinery for
loading and unloading. Nitro imagined that the large pool must lead
out to sea level by a series of enormous locks, beyond the
unknowably dense walls of rock. It was surrounded by cranes and
loading davits and all kinds of machinery.

‘
Big fucking
tomb.’ Nitro whispered with syllables amplifying through the
capacious storage hull. ‘That thing must be hundreds of years old,
look at the size of it!’

They started
into the open space with Nitro eagerly leading the way, staring
around with inquisitive regard at the many items littered on the
floor, of cables and the bones of shattered boxes and uniformed
clothing.

‘
What do you
think this place was?’ Nitro asked loquaciously. ‘Looks like people
lived here once. Powerful people, judging by the shit they left.
Why hadn’t I heard of ATLAS before now?’

‘
Thou should
ask thy venerable directors.’ Raven whispered.

‘
My
neuro-ligature isn’t picking up a signal down here,’ Nitro replied.
‘What do you think?’

‘
I do not
know,’ said Raven. ‘Nor do I care enough about the trivialities,
secrets and plunderous histories of this ruined world.’

Then, Raven
stopped walking, his palm burning with a red indicative light. He’d
not seen this particular hue of light in his nanology since the
Kyklos. Raven turned his head, his pale green eyes, spying through
strands of his grey hair, a large steel freight container suspended
upon one of the stacks. He started towards it; ears tuned to
Nitro’s activities as he kicked an empty steel drum in the distance
and listened to the echo of his own claps.

The crimson
light pulsed brighter in his palm now, arranging a symbol that in
his language meant an emergency of great immersion.

‘
Hey!’ Nitro
barked suddenly, reaching into his holster to retrieve a
Chaos-Eagle. And he pointed the electro-magnetic handgun at Raven
and asked him where he was going.

‘
Steady thy
nerves,’ Raven said calmly.

Nitro lowered
his aim and approached.

‘
What’s the
plan, big guy?’ he asked. ‘Did you find your things?’

‘
Tis not the
artefacts,’ Raven explained morosely, looking up at the dark steel
container coated in dust.

‘
No?’ Nitro
asked. ‘So what’s in there?’

Raven stared
at the glowing red mark on his palm, signals that resembled death
and pain.

‘
I fear to
know,’ he confessed.

‘
That thing
on your hand, what does that mean?’

‘
Tis the mark
of Olympian Genetics,’ said Raven with utmost contrition, ‘those of
us who lived on Kyklos; when we near we know our own by the
nanologic signatures emitted. This means that some of my people
are...here.’

Nitro grew
despondent and set his sights on the freight container and had
thought about what horrors lay within.

‘
Some things
are best left unknown, buddy,’ Nitro sighed.

‘
Some things
are,’ Raven sneered.

‘
Get the
artefacts from MS, four, zero, eight,’ Nitro instructed, ‘get the
fuck out of here. That’s the mission. We’re to touch nothing else.
SkyLord Gallows has permitted this on these terms. You, I think,
are under very close watch. You’re an asset to helping us stop this
Serat guy.’

‘
The
SkyLord!’ Raven chortled, ‘the very man responsible for authorising
an attack on the Kyklos in the first place. Gallows! I’ll see that
he fits his moniker. I’ll tailor the noose myself!’

And with an
indignant turn Raven marched away from the steel container, within
which only sadness and pain could dwell.

*

They’d
wondered the labyrinths of cargo containers and steel freights for
a further twenty minutes before Raven could get a good fix on where
the artefacts lay. He held out his palm, feeling out the
concentration of things ahead, like needles they prickled his skin
until the hot sharp sense of focus came upon him and he snatched
back his palm and stared solemnly in the direction from where it
came.

‘
This way,’
he stated. He led them through security doors long ago left open
and exposed, through laboratories abandoned for at least a decade.
And finally, they’d gone beyond the structure’s storage facilities
and into the heart of ATLAS, a newer and although inactive, much
less messy place. Here, industrial fluorescent light strips blinked
to luminosity and walls came to life with initiation start-up
protocols demanding access keys and input codes to begin the
laboratory initialisations.