Chaos Cipher

by Den Harrington

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘I’m the only one who can get you out of here. All flights are grounded, don’t know if you realised but you caused a lot of hell up there. If you wanna get out of here son, you’re gonna need me and I’m gonna need that ship. We both want the same thing, fella. We both want to get to Earth, right?’

  And Raven quickly consulted the Chronomancer child. She said nothing, but nodded gradually.

  ‘What assurances doth thy have?’ Raven went on, ‘that thou shalt not betray my trust?’

  ‘Trust is a matter of business my friend,’ Nitro winked. ‘Trust is right up my street. Whaduya say?’

  *

  Once the airlock shut, Caspian sealed up the umbilical bridge connection. The inner lights pulsed around the airlock hatch as the passed deeper into the ship. The loading bay had several sleeping quarters and Temporal-Inertial-Cycles on-board. Scuttle was hurriedly taking off his oxygen mask and breathing in the ship’s air. Caspian moved to the ladder conduit when Ethan stopped him.

  ‘Just got a neurophase from Pawel,’ he said. ‘Told me to say only Kelly and Nitro can enter the bridge command.’

  ‘Ah fuk thet.’ Caspian obstinately flared, stepping onto the ladder. Then nitro reached up and grabbed his belt, and Caspian glowered.

  ‘Don’t piss him off, fella,’ Nitro said.

  ‘Leesen!’ Caspian started, stepping back down. ‘Jost who de fuk ah yew anywai?’

  ‘Nitro Harbeck, Shield of Spheres special ops commander.’ He smiled his most charming smile. ‘I’ll explain when we get this situation under wraps. But if you go up there, you’re going to make a real mess of things.’

  ‘Why does he want me?’ Kelly asked.

  ‘You need to be on the bridge so the AI can recognise your authority and get us moving.’ Nitro reminded. ‘And I’m going to talk this guy down.’

  ‘I know that!’ She fired, ‘I mean my ship? Why fucking me? Why now? Why this?’

  ‘Why’s the sky blue, who cares?’ Nitro said angrily. ‘This is happening now.’

  ‘Eef yore special opps,’ said Caspian. ‘Then why ah yew on yer own?’

  ‘I’m not,’ he winked. ‘Present company included, consider this day one of your new job. Today’s all about learning from the master. Me!’

  ‘Wait, so I’m special opps now?’ asked Scuttle.

  ‘We’ll talk about you later,’ Nitro whispered, pointing to Kelly. ‘You’re with me. Hustle!’

  They ascended the ladder fast, right up to the bridge command’s top hatch. Nitro gave a dull knock on the thick metal, unsure if it was enough to be heard. Then the hatch slid open and he crawled onto the bridge, quickly assessing his situation. The command room was cylindrical, the lights were all the way down, and it was almost pitch-black save the glowing holographics in the centre. And he saw somebody in the navigation field, touching the holographic projection of local stars. It was a young girl, no older than twelve; her arms extended about the gloaming representations, scarcely visible in the light. Nitro turned around to help Kelly inside.

  ‘We’re here,’ Nitro said, switching his oculars to night vision. The clarity of the bridge command came into full monochrome green. At the far end of the command suite he saw Raven, holding the pilot Pawel in a cross-face chicken wing. The pilot was still, staring at the new arrivals, breathing calmly. Raven glared from the darkness, his eyes alight like the constellations of Draco, brawn shoulders taut with unyielding purpose.

  ‘I can’t see,’ said Kelly. And she felt Nitro take her wrist gently and stand her beside him. The hatch to the conduit shut and sealed.

  ‘Alright,’ Nitro said, realising that Raven could see perfectly well in the dark. ‘No tricks. As I promised, we’re all just getting the hell out of here.’

  ‘Not to beleaguer thy plans,’ said Raven. ‘We are dangerously close to the precipice of disaster. Unless we follow the path of the Chronomancer, we all are fated to perish.’

  ‘The Chronomancer?’ Nitro asked, as though disturbed by the word.

  ‘Avenoir,’ Raven’s voice sailed. The young girl in the hologram field lifted her head from whatever star charts she was analysing and she nervously raised her hand and waved. ‘She has memories of things yet to happen.’

  Suddenly the starnavis command suite started to sound with an alarm Raven didn’t recognise, and Pawel’s eyes widened, uncertain about what to do next.

  ‘That’s a call from Omicron,’ he informed, the back of his head pressed back against Raven’s shoulder. ‘The station is requesting to speak with us.’

  Nitro felt the Olympian glare at him intensely, a curious and suspicious glare.

  ‘That’s not me,’ he promised. ‘I thought we could come up with a plan together before requesting for a launch window.’

  ‘The woman shall communicate thy will,’ said Raven. ‘Audio only.’

  ‘Right,’ Nitro said, turning to Kelly. ‘You gotta take the call.’

  ‘This is Kelly Banner of the starnavis delivery shuttle The Griffin’s Claw, how can I-’

  ‘Sweeper team,’ said a stern and ready voice. ‘This is Major JD O’ Three, authorisation of the Solar System Alliance, here to perform a mandatory search of your starnavis for terrorists.’

  ‘Well,’ she smiled vaguely, forcing some humour into her tone. ‘I can assure you there’s nothing like that here…erm…’

  ‘I don’t want assurances, I want confirmation.’

  Nitro kept his eyes on the Olympian. He saw that Raven was looking right back at him, still firmly locking Pawel’s arm behind his back, still firmly with his large arm around the pilot’s neck and torso.

  ‘I – but I thought that Omicron’s anonymity laws are protected here.’

  ‘The situation has changed.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid I want to see a warrant.’ She expressed, ‘signed and approved by Omicron’s ruler.’

  There was a long pause. They waited in the gloom for a moment. Nitro knew then something was up. They knew. Even he had heard the tension in Kelly’s tone.

  ‘We’ll get you your warrant.’ The Major finally answered.

  ‘We are almost out of time,’ Raven quietly remarked in a sinister whisper, tightening his hold on Pawel.

  ‘Pilot, how far is the reach of the Griffin’s coms?’ Nitro asked calmly. ‘Can we get through to Earth from this distance?’

  ‘On general channels,’ said Pawel tightly, ‘there is a long delay. Through Omicron’s channels it’s instant. But we’re locked out.’

  ‘How about local range?’

  ‘Good communication field for about sixty kilometres on general, perfect coms for laser and x-ray.’

  ‘Scan the locality for a Solitaire fighter ship going under the alias Deathwind.’ Nitro said.

  ‘Alright,’ Pawel nodded, working in his head through the neural matrices of the ship as Raven kept him in his submission. ‘Okay…channel is open.’

  ‘Ace Ripley, come in Ace, this is Nitro, you reading?’

  ‘Loud and clear sir,’ Ace Ripley’s voice filtered back into the bridge command. ‘What’s the skinny?’

  ‘Ace, we’re in a tight spot, you on your intercept mission yet?’

  ‘Just finished briefing, sir.’ Said Ripley. ‘Leaving orbit now.’

  ‘Before you go can you do me a little favour?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I need to get this thing out of docking before our cover’s blown,’ said Nitro. ‘Got a sweeper team up my ass looking for a terrorist on our starnavis and I wanna keep them drills we loaded under the table. If you’ve any antimatter on your Solitaire, then now’s the time to use it.’

  ‘Clarify, sir.’

  ‘I need you to damage the Eastern Cosmo tower at Beta Gate.’

  ‘Beta Gate?’

  ‘Confirmed.’

  ‘Superficially or-?’

  ‘Blow a hole through the god damn thing,’ Nitro said. ‘Shake us loose and make it look like an accident.’
/>
  ‘An accident?’

  ‘Can you do that, how many Gee’s can you pull in that thing?’

  It sounded like a challenge. Ace Ripley was never one to back down from a challenge. He smiled in his cockpit, angling The Deathwind through the silence of space above Jupiter.

  ‘Damn right, I can.’ He said. ‘I could pull off a hop-scorch manoeuvre. But there’s no way it’ll look like an accident. Omicron will be all over my tail, if I hit the tower with my engine stream.’

  ‘Any suggestions, Commander?’ Nitro asked, looking ready to jump ship as he stared out the Olympian.

  ‘Well…’ Ace started. ‘Why not just find a way to overmass the black alloy and the station’s centrifuge should throw you loose.’

  ‘Ripley…you’re a genius.’ Nitro smirked.

  ‘Good luck Harbeck.’ Ripley finished.

  Nitro looked hard at Raven. ‘We’re going to need to get in those inertial cockpits,’ he informed. ‘Gee forces in here are going to be quite strong.’

  Raven nodded and spun Pawel out towards the middle of the room as he released him forcefully. Raven’s unshod feet were still planted in place, his veins flowing with opalescent blue light that showed now in the darkness. Carefully, Pawel moved backwards, his eyes steady on Raven.

  ‘Pilot thy starnavis,’ Raven ordered flashing his fangs.

  Pawel stood beside the child and Avenoir pointed to a star chart, indicating where to go once they were free. He nodded, confirming he understood. And together they manned their seats.

  ‘I wanna hear the plan, people,’ said Kelly.

  ‘We’ve got an extra potential ten mega tones of weight in the cargo hold,’ Nitro explained, ‘it’s just not active yet. We might not have enough speed but we could have some extra mass to throw in the mix. A heavier ship will pull us off the couplings, right? This whole station is spinning, and I think we can get another three mega tons out of the drills if we spend all our positronic fuel.’

  Pawel was already running the calculations and he displayed them into the ship. Nitro clapped his hands together and nodded in agreement as he analysed the data.

  ‘Perfect!’ He stated. ‘See that? We’ve enough potential mass to break away. At one point six mega tons The Griffin’s Claw will sling shot on a tangential trajectory away from the station.’

  ‘You want to use antimatter?’ Pawel asked.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Nitro.

  ‘Antimatter.’

  ‘I know, I heard you right.’ He smiled endearingly.

  ‘Isn’t that a little dangerous?’ Kelly asked.

  Nitro held his hand out to the ship’s main projectors and a holographic image appeared in the visualisation field. The image was of a large cargo orbs containing the Obsiduranium edge disks. He showed them a map of where the several cargo orbs were placed in the cargo hold and Nitro rubbed his chin.

  ‘You have an engineer?’ he asked.

  ‘Ethan,’ said Kelly. ‘Ethan’s our engineer.’

  ‘I want you to show him this problem.’ Nitro said pointing to the objects. ‘We need to get to those cargorbs,’ he explained. ‘Find a way to hook up a lead to the Obsiduranium drills and feed a torrent of antimatter into the drills giving us an added potential mass for as long as we can keep the energy going.’

  ‘That’s seriously dangerous,’ Kelly exclaimed.

  ‘Our mission is to solve this problem, getting that-’ and Nitro pointed to the fuel containment fields ‘to there,’ he continued, pointing to the cargo orb containers, ‘without blowing us all up.’

  *

  Ethan was in the cargo hold fast. He squinted as though struggling to summon the answer to this problem from the pits of his mind.

  ‘If we can get the fuel to these things, we will have only a temporary overmass,’ he broadcasted through the ship’s intra-networks as he worked. ‘But, I first need to open all the crates.’

  Ethan jumped up to one of the spheroid cargo crates and accessed the security panels and punched in a number to open the crate. Tense, Kelly watched the surveillance projection of Ethan working below them. The spherical crate opened like an orange peel and Ethan stared inside at the Obsiduranium edge boring drills. He ran his fingers over the smooth and black alloy, seeking out the diodes.

  ‘We must be faster,’ Raven whispered in the dark, his green eyes shining.

  ‘Ethan can you hear me?’ Kelly said from the bridge, watching the man working down in cargo from the ship’s surveillance projection.

  ‘Loud and clear,’ Ethan came back.

  ‘We don’t have a lot of time. Will you be able to fuel these drills?’

  ‘That will be easy,’ he said, ‘Obsiduranium has a high atomic number so positronic antimatter is drawn to it. The trouble is getting the stuff out of the fuel storage trap and into this room without it running into other particles.’

  ‘And?’ she asked. ‘Ideas? One false move and we’re star-dust.’

  ‘It has to be drawn manually,’ he explained. ‘There’s a Megawatt Gaus- velociter around here somewhere. It wasn’t good as a weapon, matter of fact it was busted. But I bet I could use what’s left of the coil to aim positrons into the spheroid crates and give those drills an overmass charge. We don’t want the fuel colliding with parts of the hull but if I expose it close to the Obsiduranium, it’ll go right for the drill edge. Only first, we’re going to have to vacuum the air. Then we’ll need to neutron sweep the cargo hold for organic material and activate the ship’s Casmium drives to draw out the vacuum energy. After that we cross our fingers.’ Ethan hovered over to the tool storage facility and beheld a huge cylindrical device. ‘I’m going to need a space suit. I can extract it from here but it could take some time.’

  ‘How much time do you need?’

  ‘Maybe ten or fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘One last thing,’ he said, opening the thick titanium doors of the storage unit and reaching for a space-suit.

  ‘You have to seal off this part of the ship, while I’m working. Nothing can get in here, not a nanogram of matter.’

  ‘Right.’ She said.

  ‘So, if we’re hit,’ he went on, ‘and the hull is punctured… we’re star-dust.’

  Ethan slipped his legs into the suit and then his arms and the material auto-adjusted to his body, and he reached back for a helmet plate. Ethan activated the helmet plate and the slates began constructing the solid dodecaplex helmet around him. He gave her a thumbs-up to the surveillance camera and they saw him on the bridge.

  ‘Be careful!’ Kelly said, ‘please, take care.’ Then locked down the cargo-hold’s air-hatches and started the decompression. Pawel updated them with each process, starting with magnetic fields drawing out the last of the particles, then running sweep diagnostics on maser sterilisation, killing most organic matter. Lastly, was the neutron sweep.

  ‘Cargo bay clear,’ Pawel said.

  ‘Confirmed,’ Ethan agreed, moving in his bloated suit in awkward small motions.

  ‘Let’s hope this works,’ said Nitro, securing himself down into an inertial seat in the floor. It hadn’t jumped his mind that this was his ass on the line too. Shield of Spheres or not, the Atominii would send him to hell in a casket if he’s involved in assisting an Olympian terrorist while illicitly merchandising Obsiduranium. And all that assuming this engineer didn’t screw up in the cargo hold and blow them all to hell.

  Outside, smoothly cruising into a launch point, kilometres from the Omicron’s orbital space, The Deathwind moved into position for a hop-scorch. Two Stymphalion fighters flanked his left and right, each piloted by Mortel and Estella. They watched the scarlet exhaust tails blustering through the cosmos as the two Stymphalion strike-ships raced ahead for the intercept mission, vectoring into a vanishing beyond. Ace Ripley opened a channel back to The Griffin’s Claw.

  ‘When you get back to Earth,’ he said. ‘Look me up, alright Harbeck.’

  ‘Ace,’ Nitro called. ‘You
be careful out there.’

  ‘I got this,’ he promised, bracing himself.

  ‘Ready for launch,’ D.W stated. ‘Antimatter fusion engines on in three…two…one…’

  The spark that shone through the locality from The Deathwind’s main engines lit the Jovian clouds. Effulgent streams of ion particles issued from the aft-burners, and a powerful steady beam of light cut through space for over thirty kilometres as the milligrams of antimatter reacted. The Deathwind burst up to an immense speed as it left orbit, unzipping the blackness of space on a long and radiant incandescent wire. The view had been spectacular, and then Ethan neuromitted to the bridge command.

  ‘I’m loading the first cylinder now.’

  ‘Okay,’ Pawel said nervously, ‘the fuel traps are exposed.’

  ‘Station security to The Griffin’s Claw,’ said the voice from earlier. ‘We are coming aboard. Do not attempt to move. Remain in your positions.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Pawel said, leaning forward exasperatedly.

  ‘What the hell?’ Kelly gasped, watching the augmented projection pads display military dressed security floating quickly along the umbilical to The Griffin’s Claw’s airlock hatch armed with laser cutters.

  ‘Nice and steady, Ethan,’ Kelly said as they all watched their potential doom live on the surveillance holofield.

  Ethan followed the magnetic walkways, his solenoid boots firmly attached, making his way for another run to the fuel storage trap. The main storage unit was a large hundred foot tower ringed with metallic dishes that ran the length like gills. The exposed viscera illuminated with amber caution lights, and within it yet another storage trap. He reached inside, frost crystals glittering from his gloves like sugar. His suit’s automated arm extended further into the opening and locked gently onto the storage ring. Ethan gently and slowly pulled it lose, praying there was nothing in the air that could react with the sensitive material.