Chaos Cipher

by Den Harrington

  Max wasn’t shy for beating heads, but when it came to murder he always found an alternative approach. Can’t shoot this one, Max, not when you can pretend your gun jammed. Whoops, missed the target, must be tired today, right? Where he lifted his reputation, was in his high mission success in protecting the powerful. He had grown highly experienced in security and hand to hand combat. Years of Peace-keeper service for the Emperor states in Europa’s Atominii had already conditioned him to take on almost any physical force short of an Olympian soldier, but that had not been the focus of his training. The radioactivity training was mandatory, various cabin hazards were just some of the obstacles they were trained to avoid, isolating dangers and quarantining outbreak hazards.

  Max watched the dynamic line feed down into the darkness of the space shuttle before clipping his karabiner to it.

  ‘Lend me your ears, team,’ Max started, his voice deep and confident ‘gotta isolate that target ASAP. Keep one another updated via neurophase sensorium. We’ll only have semi-qualia peer to peer sharing so rely on your neural avatars. We won’t have Nexus access in here so we’ll need to stay close. Stay alert. I’m taking point. Tanya, I need you on back up and I want you dressed to kill.’

  ‘You sure about that, sir,’ said Tanya Medina, looking just about ready to do so.

  ‘I don’t want any blood spilled,’ her leader clarified, ‘I just want you to look as though you can.’ And Max turned to Rufus and said: ‘You prepare for psychological arrest. This bloke is most likely disoriented. I don’t want anybody unnecessarily putting their neck out if he’s psychotic.’

  ‘You’re the boss,’ Ed Rufus added.

  ‘Okay kids, no lemons. Let’s get in that hole and look for the survivor. Make this a clean job and the rest is duck soup.’

  Max lowered down the line and into the darkness, his one suit glowing with bands of light on his ankles, shoulders and wrists. Tanya Medina lowered in close behind and Rufus followed next, their boots landing heavily onto the solid alloy floor of the airlock reception gate.

  Inside, the Erebus was like a black sepulchre, minimal lights blinking from consoles and terminals, the smell of circuitry and plastic.

  ‘Scans reveal that the man roaming the ship is the navigation officer, Scott Barnes,’ Max whispered. ‘Use your neuro-ligature to convey all future communications.’

  Max suddenly saw Rufus and Tanya’s avatars spontaneously appear in the lower right area of his field of vision. Their neurophases were set to semi-qualia sharing. The avatar heads exactly captured each micro-expression, the merger even made them all share in the solidarity of mission determination. Max stalked ahead, magnetic solenoid boots attracted to the emergency walkways. Their feet sent ripples of piezoelectric light reacting ahead of them, glowing warmly throughout the hallways and spreading like a magnesium fuse. The hallways were quiet, absorbing their soft steps in its muted vapidity.

  ‘Total blackout,’ Rufus’ avatar neuromitted.

  ‘This starnavis has thirty million cubic feet to its overall capacity,’ Tanya informed, ‘that’s a lot of ground to cover.’

  ‘We won’t be covering that kind of ground,’ said Max, ‘the scanners did most of the work. Let’s just find this bugger and isolate him.’

  ‘He was last located in Engineering, sir.’

  ‘Thanks Rufus. Alright, elevators are inactive. We’ll use the personnel chutes.’

  Max led them further down the docking corridor and they passed into the main walkway, an elegantly designed tunnel expressing the length of the ship. It was littered with various items, half eaten packets of soup, ice crystals and balls of oil slithering around the place. Sweeping clouds of mist where the air was thicker, dust collecting in communes. The Erebus had been in micro-gravity before joining with the counterweight centrifuge of the Orandoré station, so things once floating around the place had now slumped into piles and splotched around. Max noticed that the walls were thatched with markings of what looked like chalked symbols.

  ‘Tanya, where’s engineering from here?’

  ‘The next level down sir.’

  ‘Which way to the bridge command?’

  ‘Two levels up.’

  ‘And our target?’

  ‘Still where he was, sir,’ said Rufus, ‘engineering.’

  Max crouched by a personnel chute and pulled himself through, dropping slowly feet first along the tunnel to the next floor down. He used the ladder cages on the inside of the chute for extra support as he stepped down. Rufus wasn’t far behind, crouching into the conduit and reaching about for support, and then Tanya secured the upper level, giving the hallway one last check before they left.

  Engineering had a much more complicated network of pathways, forking and branching to various operational sections of the ship. Some paths weaved to sublevels, others to mid-levels around the ship’s aneutronic crossfire power-hub. The great machine was supported by various carbon composites, hexagonally positioned support beams. A gentle continuous humming vibrating from its centre where the fuels fed in pulses to keep basic life support systems operational. Max sauntered carefully around the fusion hub, his shadow quivering in moiré jitters as the aneutronic radiation danced like lightning chasing its own tail.

  ‘The fusion hub is spent,’ Rufus neuromitted. ‘This starnavis is parched.’

  ‘Why the hell are they using the fusion hub? Wasn’t this thing fitted with molecular diodes? I thought it ran on space energy?’

  ‘Zero-point-energy diodes were damaged,’ Tanya explained. ‘This place must have gone to hell and back. Even its saltus-carrousel is missing.’

  ‘Christ,’ Rufus said on an exasperated breath, ‘no wonder it took them centuries to get back.’

  There, in the darkness, by one of the consoles, Max saw motion. His oculars mapped out a man behind the integral structures. He was sneaking cautiously around the fusion hub, as curious about them as they were about him.

  ‘Can you see him?’ Max said, neuromitting his team and sharing his visual qualia.

  ‘Is that him?’

  ‘I think so,’ Max said, ‘Tanya, I’m going to speak with him, take the other side of the fusion hub and cut him off from making a run for it. Rufus, ready to apprehend. You may have to calm him down.’

  ‘Roger that.’

  ‘Scott Barnes?’ Max shouted, his voice filtering on a metallic echo as though trapped in a plastic tube running miles underground. ‘Scott Barnes is that you? We’re here to help. There’s no danger. You’re safe now. You’re home.’

  ‘Sir,’ Tanya neuromitted as Max followed the figure slowly around the fusion hub.

  ‘Can you see him now? I’m following him round...’

  Max’s oculars locked onto another figure and he paused, alert. There stood Tanya, confused and shrugging.

  ‘Sir I didn’t see anybody come this way.’ Tanya spoke.

  ‘What the hell? Impossible I didn’t lose him for a second.’

  ‘It must have been me sir...’

  ‘You were behind me the whole time I was watching him, Tanya, the whole time, until I told you to head him off. The signal just switched to yours somehow seamlessly.’

  ‘I don’t believe in ghosts, sir’ said Rufus. ‘But this shit is freaky.’

  ‘Did you find the signal Rufus? It wasn’t just me, right?’

  ‘There was something there for sure,’ he confirmed, ‘but the signal vanished. For me, it was very faint to start with.’

  Rufus traced out the signal and detected a life presence squatting twenty metres ahead of them, somewhere in the viscera of the ship’s mechanisms. Rufus led the way, holding his palm out, ready to stun his target if need be.

  ‘This way, sir,’ he said, returning to the private space of a neurophase communication.

  Tanya tightened her fists and stepped forward in her boxing stance, following close and ready to strike. Max watched their backs as they shifted through the dark tunnels. He pointed to the piezoelectric floor ahead of them. Twe
nty metres of the hall was in darkness, and then a soft strip of light was glowing in the distance ahead where the floor lights had been triggered by recent footsteps exclusive to their group.

  ‘Somebody is definitely down there,’ Rufus reported.

  ‘I see it,’ said Max, ‘hold it there Rufus, I’m taking point.’

  ‘Roger that, sir.’

  ‘Cover me, Tanya.’

  ‘Got your back, sir.’

  They followed walkways until they reached the activated floor panels, and then looked left and right where the floor was still glowing. Max noticed the medical centre was open; a small flicker of light was pulsing inside, as though trying to find the energy to stay alight.

  ‘Barnes!’ Max shouted. ‘My name’s Colonel Max Elba, we’re an away team from Earth. No horsing around here mate, alright? Stay calm. We’re here to help.’

  ‘Tell him we have medication,’ Rufus suggested.

  ‘Don’t tell him that, sir, he may think we’re going to sedate him...’

  ‘But if he’s hurt...hell we don’t know what condition he’s in...’

  ‘Quiet!’ Max vocally ordered, ‘Goddamn it, we’ll see when we find him.’

  The medical facility was a long and narrow room, equipped with recovery pods and two operating tables. Max looked around curiously and saw more markings of white and yellow chalk marks hatching large X’s onto the inner walls of the ship.

  ‘Man this is weird,’ he said.

  He’d only ever seen medical facilities in old reports, the fact that the Erebus had one, only demonstrated its age.

  ‘What are these markings?’ asked Max.

  ‘It’s chalk,’ said Rufus brushing his palm over one of the marked X’s and smudging it over the surface with his hand then smelling his hand.

  ‘Pay attention!’ Tanya admonished. ‘I thought I saw something.’

  ‘Where’s our target, Rufus?’

  ‘Right there!’

  Ed Rufus’ avatar shared a visual and positioned the target a few metres ahead of them, hiding behind the operating table. Sonic feedback detected a rapid heart-rate, quick target analyses reported the subject’s condition to be in a state of aggressive agitation.

  ‘Jesus...he’s got a heart rate of two, two, and one here. Keep your distance.’

  ‘Scott.’ Max said softly. ‘Professor Barnes, it’s alright. We’re here to help.’

  Max stepped in something, it looked like a long rubber pipe and it was soaked with fresh blood. He moved around it and saw more symbols marked on the interior of the room, marked in black stains of blood that looked like ampersands.

  Suddenly the lights began to flicker again, shorting out slightly. The room was quickly filled with the tearing sound of static, and Tanya covered her ears and shrieked. Six screens based around the medical centre hosted a red figure, a Chrononaut hung in the blackness encompassed by a bright arching halo, a faceless helmet donning the middle of his head like the plucked eye socket of some flayed Cyclopes. Max stared at the red figure, wincing in wonder and confinement. The screens vanished along with the red Chrononaut and the static sounds faded, dropping them into the vacuous dark, their glowing suits the only emission of light.

  Then an ear piercing scream.

  Hysterical, wild as a banshee, Scott Barnes leapt up from behind the operating table, the dim light catching the surface of some sharp bloody instrument in his hand, glistening in crimson syrup. His face was scarred, black laces of dried blood clung to the skin from the freshly self-inflicted wounds. Max darted out of the way, his vicinity too close to react, his terroriser too fast. Tanya was also fast. She slipped her palm under Barnes’ jaw and the nerve-pulsars in her gloves delivered a numbing blow. Stunned, Barnes toppled backwards, and then Tanya finished the attacker by touching her index finger to his forehead, directing a flow of incapacitating energy through the man’s skull. Rufus quickly darted behind the man vying to apprehend him and clasped his head in his hands vice wise, palms over his lateral temples, and he spoke into Scott Barnes’ ear smoothly.

  ‘Everything’s alright, Professor. Your muscles are relaxing because of the afferent nerve harmonics. Don’t fight it, just relax. Ease down, sir. We’re here to help.’

  The cutting instrument trilled as it dropped like pewter to the floor.

  ‘Wh-wh-who are you?’ Barnes stammered, eyes darting around worriedly.

  ‘We’re Orandoré security personnel.’

  ‘Canaries for unpredictable situations like this,’ said Max, brushing himself off as he stood. ‘There’s supposed to be a team of eight people on this starnavis and our scanners only detected three, you being one of them. The other two are in freeze. Naturally we assumed you could have space dementia.’

  ‘You might be right,’ Barnes chortled slightly, desperately seeking humour in his circumstance. He drew very serious suddenly. ‘Will you let me go?’

  ‘Eventually,’ said Max. ‘But for now, I want my team buddy here to keep you sedated. You’re free to talk, however. Start by telling me what happened to the Erebus?’

  ‘I’m insane,’ said Scott, ‘I’ve seen things and...Mad things too I can tell you. I don’t remember...it’s all so...so crazy. I’ve seen you before. It feels so long ago now. But I remember seeing you...please take me home. Please, god! Please take me home. Where’s my chalk? I wanna go home.’

  ‘Where are the other members of the crew?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ Max echoed superciliously, ‘how?’

  ‘Technical complications. Unexpected events. Who knows-?’

  ‘We were hoping you know.’

  ‘No...No, no...I-I can’t tell you what happened here. I can’t tell you where it started, how it began. I just know we’re all in it. We are all inside it...you understand?’

  ‘Not really,’ Max offhandedly reported, ‘perhaps your black-box recordings will...’

  ‘Oh no, no, no, you won’t find anything in there.’ Said Barnes.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We purged it. We tore it out and sent it spinning into the Charybdis black hole.’

  ‘And why in hell’s fiery bowels would you do that?’

  ‘Seemed like the right thing to do...at the time.’

  Max squinted, stood, and then rubbed his forehead.

  ‘This guy’s clearly insane,’ he neuromitted to the others, ‘and by his own admission. Rufus, take him to Yerma Holts for a cognoputic analysis; Tanya!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You’re with me.’

  ‘Where we headed?’

  ‘The bridge,’ said Max. ‘With our target now isolated, think we should search around and find out what happened to this place.’

  *

  Max stalked onto the bridge with Tanya following close. They saw it was a capacious area of operations, an elongated dome scooping above them, arching with sinuous, lithe design and smooth ceilings that were now opaque but could be thrown into limpidity by a simple command. It was like the Chancel stage of some neo-utopian Cathedral, only rather than vertical stain glass windows the Erebus had tall rectangular screens inundated with lustres of neon-blue data-streams and geometrical patterns awaiting the instruction of a pilot’s touch. The digital information of esoteric patterns and nodes shifted in texture and luminescence.

  The bridge’s observation window for the Captain was reminiscent of an axial chapel, with two apsidal wing compartments to the left and right waiting to be manned by whichever specialists they were designed to house. There was evidence of meddling to be seen hanging from the open circuit conduits and manhandled wall terminals and compulsively uprooted floor panels abandoned during makeshift efforts, much like the obligations the crew had forgotten to their abrogated mission itself. From console to console lay the tangles of a myriad optical cable. Everywhere signs of some desperate alteration to the ship’s facade, exposing the viscera of its complicated circuitry.

  In the far corner of the room a grim discovery was made. A crewmember, Da
llas Rogers, could be seen wedged into a conduit, as though pulled backwards into the pipe by his belt, boots and festering head and hands bunched at the mouth of the opening, tangled in the coiling appendages of optical cables, dry pale eyes bulging wildly in their sockets, tongue degraded to a black worm that shrivelled and ossified like a sundried tomato. Tanya covered her nose as she walked around the bridge and whimpered on making the next fatal discovery.

  ‘Oh Jesus!’ Max uttered, pulling her away from the mess.

  They beheld the rigid ossature of what was once a man, skin flensed away by veering waves of heat which had risen out of the exposed radiation shield plates even still in its danger colour shift on the caution coating, even still radiating marginal degrees of dangerous unseen particles. His skull had melted to the panel like a jellyfish left to dry like brittle paper there and offal had boiled and solidified in their boned cage long ago, like the fossil remains of some unwrapped ancient pharaoh.

  ‘Shit...we’ve got a dangerous radiation leak in here,’ said Max stepping backwards. ‘Leave the bridge...’

  ‘Who did this?’

  ‘Whoever he was he’s toast now,’ Max observed. ‘I have to isolate this section and make a report. This requires specialists.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  ‘We can’t be in here. Too much exposure and our cells will decay.’

  ‘Colonel Elba!’ Tanya said at the main door. ‘The ship’s data logs will still have basic records. We’ll be able to trace the positions of the crew members on the ship throughout its voyage. It won’t be detailed, no dialogues, but it may give us a blue-print of who was where on the ship and at what time. They’re called ambulation patterns, or foot-finders.’