Chaos Cipher

by Den Harrington

  ‘Come here,’ He said reaching out his hand as they ascended the large tunnel. Their fingers touched and he pulled her into his arms protectively.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Raven assured.

  Raven stared at the enormous hollow of the spherical core at the end of the gate. Thousands of spiral frames, a fretwork of cross fencing and pliable monkey bars enforced the space. Strategically designed grab hoops coated the inner walls like spiralling ladders. The whole thing was comprised of a tough plastic, like a nest of thick optical cables bunched into the large room. Free-fall assistants swung around it like a team of cosmic Tarzans, and passengers sprawled to get to their designated elevator ports. This was the hollow core of Omicron’s axel sphere, the centre of the station and its main commercial space-port hub.

  Raven could see an equatorial belt running around the middle of the giant spherical room where the elevator entrance doors were aligned. There were eight elevator points encompassing the inner equatorial region of the capacious spheroid interior, each elevator room able to carry sixteen people at a time out to the centrifugal habitat now encompassing them somewhere outside the axel sphere like one of Saturn’s rings. People floated into cylindrical rooms, fastening themselves into seats and harnessing their free floating bodies down clumsily like oxygen starved astronauts fumbling with seatbelts as though they were trying to solve some metrical puzzle before a dangerous re-entry. Raven checked Avenoir’s mask, then made sure the filter was clear before analysing his own. They grabbed hold of the bars and climbed towards one of the elevator rooms, where a crowd of people amassed, all waiting their turn to enter the elevator.

  At the elevator hatch, four micro gravity free-fall experts were assisting passengers through the gate, lowering them into the large cylindrical room. The far wall inside the pit had a ring of sixteen seats, headrests meeting in the middle. An assistant was fastening people into place, locking the harnesses down with all the enthusiasm of roller coaster assistants smiling at their nervous and excited passengers. The free-fall experts were well geared for their environments, thermal suits, breathing filters, goggles. They resembled the sea-diving instructors he’d once seen advertised on the submarine holiday resorts from an Earth digital catalogue. Avenoir held his hand, and they approached the gate, bunching into the mass of people clipped or holding onto the support frame. The assistants made sure the first transport was secure. The one still inside the elevator, pushed up from the seats, leaping like a flying squirrel to ascend in slow motion back into the axel sphere’s climbing frame. He gripped tightly hold of the spiral frame, and clipped a karabiner to secure his drift. The elevator’s huge transparent door snapped closed behind him. They watched as the sixteen occupants fell into a vanishing point, plummeting down the long elevator shaft like a bowling ball in a gutter, heading out towards a dome in the arching centrifugal environment below. The echoes and strange languages and sickly coughs filled the docking core with an unpleasant vibe. Avenoir was staring at a rather rotund looking man. His face was dotted in perspiration that had nowhere to drip in micro gravity. His eyes were glaring forward and his mask was fogged with shallow breaths. The mask suddenly transformed into a milky, pasty colour as vomit filled the face mould. Drainage ducts quickly removed the fluids, filtering a circulation of fresh air back into his mask so he could breathe. He chocked and spluttered uncomfortably into the mask and new air circulated. One of the assistants floated over, keeping the mask pressed firmly against the man’s face and pulled his fingers away, preventing his urge to remove it. The free fall expert did well to mitigate the man’s anxieties and vertigo.

  ‘That’s it, breathe easy…there we go…’ He instructed.

  ‘Harbour thine eyes,’ Raven told young Avenoir, ‘this culture considers it a discourtesy to stare.’

  Obediently, Avenoir turned her eyes to the elevators across from them. Where the spiral climbing framework opened in the centre, free-fall experts dropped through the middle like parachute divers plummeting through an open sky. Some altered their trajectory using skilfully controlled arm motions, grabbing bars, eddying into a new direction. One of them whooped a cry of joy, as he dropped head first through the hollow station and it echoed in the capacious hollows.

  *

  ‘One zero one please step forward.’ The synthesised voice commanded. They’d left the elevator and stepped into the centrifugal zone after a quick descent from the axel docking sphere. Raven wiggled his toes in his boots, sensing something odd about his bodily mass. He’d been used to exoplanets in the Cygnus system, a standard Gee-force seemed a lot lighter than he’d remembered.

  A designated passport clerk had been looking at him since he’d come down from the elevators, praying that the large man didn’t end up at his clearance gate. Omicron occasionally required human clarification on certain customs, especially when it came to docking passports. There was little trust when it came to androids.

  ‘Shit,’ he muttered, as Raven led the little girl with a diamond freckled forehead.

  He just seemed to keep getting bigger with each step. The clerk made a mental note of where his weapon was just in case Raven turned violent. Raven’s pearl eyes glared steadily onward, reading the clerk’s apprehension.

  ‘Hold at the line,’ the clerk ordered solicitously. Raven stopped on the white line illustrated electronically across the holographic floor. ‘Please,’ the clerk added, slightly embarrassed by his own impertinence. The tall and broad passenger looked irascible, and Raven made no effort to alter his composure, so the clerk did his utmost to avoid any unpleasantness. Numerical digits animated on the floor across Raven’s toes. There were two extra letters, probably flight code allocation details, assigning him as a Constella Transit passenger. Raven wondered if anybody else felt like a package being shoved through a series of postal allotments. The scanners slid backwards, bringing the electronic gate over his head. Raven bowed down slightly as the gate passed over him and around his body. Several lights turned green and the second gate opened, allowing him through.

  ‘Just do as the Titan says,’ Raven instructed the child as he stepped forth. ‘The earthlings enjoy their bureaucracy, let them have their dignity.’

  She stared blankly back at him, then over at the clerk. Raven walked through the gate and turned to wait for her. The gate repeated its scan procedure and Avenoir was allowed to follow. When she stood beside Raven, she followed him close as they walked into a long hallway.

  -38-

  The Eastern Tower matched the design aspects of the other seven towers on the inner circumference of Omicron’s habitation ring. It allowed two tandem elevators down from the axel docking sphere, one ascending the other descending in turn, cycling between the tower’s passport customs based at its farthest point. Further down, was a travelling lodge, built directly into the towers for people who intended on long stays. Many of the people staying within the facility were waiting to rotate and replace another team working on Calisto’s resource station, Archimedes II. Mainly they were subterranean drillers and explosives experts testing antimatter weaponry. Harbeck and Co. were responsible for supplying a lot of the latest drilling devices used for mining out the toughest ores diggers have ever faced. The Valhalla basin was their toughest yet. Sheets of ice had hardened the properties of the rock they were up against, and ice crystals proved troublesome for their laser-chronic diggers. Explosives were the first step; controlled nitro-thermal blasts aimed at kick-starting a meltdown, and directed and controlled antimatter fusion bombs.

  As well as siphoning material, the science team were on a voyage of discovery, to certify the planet’s age and origins. But the scientists working on the Archimedes II were under a lot of pressure, as the commission on Calisto ran into the decades. It would certify a job on Earth anywhere for any scientist or technician with Calisto work experience, but it would strip years from one’s life and was not a job taken without careful contemplation. Raven saw the look on their faces, some of the smartly dressed scientists wearing
white, clean hemp gowns, others dressed in fibre optic clothes and smart-material writhe with symbols and changing advertisements or segmented into helical and hexagonal colours. But their faces told him every story of trepidation and dread he had ever seen. Some missed their families, others who had no family yearned for change and sunlight. It wasn’t enough that the UV showers were the only comfort to their skin. As Raven thought about the Sun-tau’s lustrous glow, he too could sympathise with that yearning in the absence of her photonic comforts.

  The hotel ran through the core of the tower like a rounded spinal cord. Its external shell was composed of Nano carbon, silicon and glass, very thin but tough, and providing a beautiful view of the extending habitation ring. Raven even stopped to appreciate it. They stared from the tower’s upper floors as the ground below them curved up, out and vanishing high above them somewhere behind the axel docking sphere, looming like a silver moon. Lights blinked along the elevator’s tunnel to its vanishing point in the axel sphere, like a silver ladder hanging down from a paltry planet. The sunlight at this distance was faint, but still strong enough to direct and amplify her rays into the gardens below. The gardens were designed in patchworks, with channels of water intersecting them. There was nothing in the base that reminded Raven of anything naturally constructed; natural aesthetics were sacrificed for efficiency. It was all mathematically plotted, a tightly regimented space, where science was their faith. It didn’t have the chaotic freedom of a planet, pushing up mountains and boasting endless oceans. Its rigid artificiality was not too different from life on the Kyklos, with its rectangular silver pools of water and weather machines mixing up mist and rain. The rain didn’t fall like on earth, on the Kyklos droplets of rain were like flakes of snow, so the machines sprayed the water, making a cold mist which faded out any discernible details of the gardens as they eventually amassed into denser spheres.

  He turned back to see the hotel entrance. There was a doorway like this to every sub level right down to the ground; big rectangular openings presenting tidy modern lounges. Auriferous chandeliers emitted a yellow hue, which glittered over mother of pearl floors. Raven led Avenoir into the reception and approached the automated desk. A holographic woman started to construct before them, a friendly face representing the Hotel’s custom standards, while behind her, a large robotic arm ordered room passes, lockers and keys, while authorising room services and cleaning.

  ‘Haf-lah, and Welcome to The Royal Twilight, would you like to make a booking?’ she chimed with a delightful young smile.

  ‘Doth thou provide spare abode to starlight itinerants?’ said Raven, ‘we seek a temporary stay.’

  ‘We have rooms with a spectacular view of the station’s panorama in the Venster suite, or we can offer you something a little more modest…’

  Avenoir pulled on his sleeve, she was pointing now to the main entrance. Raven held his finger up to the holographic lady displayed in the glass panel, indicating silence he turned to Avenoir and crouched to her level.

  ‘Where?’ he asked.

  She stared to the doorway as voices began to mutter and chirp from outside. There was laughter and there was some aggression and excitement in their tone. Raven stood to look at the receptionist again.

  ‘The Venster suite is an acceptable domicile.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said.

  Raven’s personal identification number illuminated on the floor at his feet and turned green. ‘You’re covered for the room,’ she said gladly, ‘you’re also covered to three daily meals of breakfast, lunch and an evening meal. We’re pressing everything from test-tube burgers to worm patty, quite an unusual one for this station and a rarity for astro-culinary…’

  ‘Where art thy abode?’ Raven interrupted as the voices from outside grew louder.

  ‘I’ll just program your guide now, sir.’

  Behind her, the robotic arm assigned a digital chit to Raven which he could use for his door. The arm passed over the chit and Raven quickly took the small transparent card with the hologram chit spinning on its display. Then, another hologram at his feet illuminated a yellow trail along the mother of pearl floor which led to his room. ‘Just follow the bread-crumb and you’ll find your room.’

  Raven turned to see several people enter the hallway. The one at the front was a middle aged man, well-built and still rubbing his head, irritated by the decontamination which had burned away his hair. To his right was a woman laughing hysterically at him, and occasionally, even her own bald reflection when she saw it in the glass or marble.

  ‘Jesus Caspian it will grow back, dude!’ Said the third member of the party, a juvenile with a cheeky smile and black goggles over his eyes.

  ‘I dun care, ownes!’ The deeply tanned captain bulled, making his irritation known.

  ‘It’s just hair, it will grow back.’

  ‘Did you keep it?’ asked the woman with a sublimely rich accent regular to areas around the Megalo-Britai.

  Caspian reached into his pocket and fished out a large ball of entwined hair, once individual dread locks, which rested like a dead pike slouching in his hand. The woman broke into laughter again and pointed at it. Caspian wanted to stay disgruntled but couldn’t stop himself from smirking.

  ‘Sha, I’m flat cuz I’ve been growing these locks fir yiers,’ Caspian complained, ‘and the A-holes shave me nut and burn eet bowld!’

  ‘They did all of us, you realise,’ said Kelly shoving his shoulder with a playful punch. ‘Look at me. This makes a real change from my style. But screw it. It’s a necessary sacrifice.’

  ‘I preferred your silky long hair!’ The young man, Scuttle said unctuously, finally removing his goggles. ‘But your head is much…much smaller than I thought it would be…’

  ‘Cheeky bastard,’ Kelly cordially derided.

  ‘Well I’m glad we ken blast at how dwas we look,’ said Caspian, stuffing his shaven hair into his pocket. ‘But we’ve ghowt ah graze n’ graft naw, ek-se.’

  ‘Graze and graft?’ Scuttle asked, dropping his goggles to the floor as he tried to work the band tightly around his bald head.

  ‘It’s eat and work,’ Kelly explained to Scuttle at her side. ‘Get your slang right. Honestly Scuttle, you Cymorgs are supposed to be the most sophisticated linguists in the solar system.’

  As they entered the reception, Caspian caught sight of Raven and the little girl following the electronic bread crumb.

  ‘Chroist, ee’s towl, aah?’ said Caspian with an astonished glare.

  ‘Shitterbugs!’ Scuttle exclaimed in surprise.

  Kelly and Scuttle watched the big man and the girl stroll quickly down the corridor. Avenoir looked back over her shoulder and her eyes met with Kelly’s before she followed Raven out of sight. Caspian saw the sparkle of those diamond freckles on her face, and her remarkably strange eyes, one green and the other red.

  ‘Dhid yew see the diamonds on thet kid wif the hud, aah?’

  ‘Colony trash,’ said Scuttle smugly, ‘they’re drifters, Casp. Do you think those diamonds are worth anything?’

  ‘You aren’t surely thinking of picking those off her skull are you?’ Said Kelly, ‘do you know why they do that, by the way? They compress the bodies of their ancestors. Each diamond is a family member. They were probably surgically attached to her skull by nanoctors.’

  ‘Do you think it hurts?’ Scuttle asked.

  ‘How the bloody hell should I know?’ she shrugged.

  ‘Wish I’d have known about that when my Grandparents were still alive, that’d be an interesting contract for them to sign.’

  ‘Scuttle yew really ahh-ae heartless lil’ sheit,’ Caspian said casually, ‘anyway…let’s ghit our digs.’

  *

  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, R
aven 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.