Chaos Cipher (5 page)

Rynal poised
over the personnel chute, arms volant, wide in balance. He looked
down the long dark pit to where the cargo bay access was. He could
find a quick exit from the airlock port from there. Rynal offered
Osmond a readied nod, then descended into the cargo bay.

*

John Ripley
wasted no time. He launched another warhead crashing into
The Cereno
minutes ahead
of his arrival, detonating on impact and shattering what was left
of
The Cereno’s
external shielding. When suddenly, his strike-ship’s AI
sounded, drawing attention to an apparent danger in the
area.

Ripley
, said the AI,
we’ve got a problem.

‘
What is it
D.W?’

There’s a
great concentration of dormant condensed Obsiduranium just been
detached from
The
Cereno
. If that substance can be
catalysed, then we could have a quanti-magnus on our
hands.

‘
Hold back!’ Ripley said on the
audio network. ‘That’s exposed Obsiduranium.’

‘
Jesus Christ
Ripley,’ one of the pilots flared, ‘nobody mentioned anything about
Obsiduranium being on this mission.’

‘
That’s
because there isn’t supposed to be any,’ the mission commander
declared. ‘This culture hasn’t the means or resources to
manufacture such material, it has been stolen. Analyse the
Obsiduranium Ripley, we’re on the way.’

‘
Roger,’ said
Ripley, giving his AI a few seconds to report. ‘Analysis
complete.’

‘
What state
is it in?’ she asked.

‘
It’s dormant
ma’am.’

‘
So make the
attack and keep it that way. I don’t want them activating that
catalyst with a power source. We could have a micro singularity if
we’re not careful.’

‘
Orders
ma’am...?’

‘
Engage the
target, Ripley.’ The commander said obstinately, ‘you have back up.
Confirm. Our Jackal has her in range. Don’t let them wire up a
power source to that catalyst.’

‘
Copy,’ he
grunted incongruously. ‘Resume the assault. We’re going
in.’

Ace
Ripley.
said the AI, pensively.
If that thing has a timer…it’ll only take a
minute for ZPE conversion rates to…

‘
I know,’ he
growled, ‘but, we are near an Amorian Lagrange point,
confirmed?’

Correct.

‘
Stay on
course. We’ll be fine.’ Ace decided. ‘They won’t be able to harvest
vacuum energy in this locality, not unless they hook up a power
source.’

As you
wish
,
the AI
responded.

*

The nanomes
had managed to shift
The Cereno’s
power flow, charging up the actuators once more.
No sooner had the systems come online did
The Cereno
take another battering
explosive missile to the shields. Rynal gasped in his suit as the
whole ship vibrated. He opened the airlock and faced the glistening
vastness of the engulfing nebula. Below him floated the
Obsiduranium core, a large black elongated diamond roughly thirty
meters in diameter. As the neon flames emerged from the thrusters,
he made his leap away from the starnavis, down towards the ejected
catalyst.

Sixteen
metres
, his suit informed.

Rynal saw
washes and snaps of garish lightning reach from the far vacuum of
space. Although he couldn’t see them he knew the masers from the
approaching Arrowheads had trained their targets on him. But
considering the distances, he was still a small and difficult
target for now.

Ten
metres.

His own
shallow breaths rasped through the helmet as he kept his arms
outreached for the catalyst. Rynal spun into a slow forward roll,
catching a glimpse of
The Cereno
as he did. It was covering a good distance now,
leaving a long exhaust stream of radium dust particles in its
wake.

Three
metres.

Rynal planted
his feet onto the catalyst’s work-path platform, solenoid boots
pulled in towards the device’s walkways. His motions were gradual,
each step a desperate effort as he moved as quickly as possible to
the device’s power nodes on the other side; a man in slow motion,
fighting the static pressures of space.

New target,
power nodes are six metres,
his suit
updated, the visor now projecting a logical path for him to follow.
He saw his own shadow stretch across the surface of the catalyst as
a salvo of missiles raced after
The
Cereno
, passing silently overhead until
their expanding vapour streams carried dull vibrations raining over
Rynal’s suit. He ran across the black spherical device, chasing the
walkways, gasping breaths isolated within the dense helmet, the
only audibility in the silence of the glistening nebula.

‘
Rynal...I can’t
take too many more of these. We’re spent on stern
chasers.
’

‘
Don’t worry
Osmond. It’s almost over.
’

‘
Our enemy is
expeditious. There’s a Jackal making a very quick advance. They’re
arming long range Rail-Velociter.
’

‘
Calibrate your
magnetosphere; break up the concentrated photons of maser-fire.
Once the Catalyst is active those Rail-Velociter won’t be able to
hit you.
’

Rynal reached
the power node, opening the device’s delicate circuits. Finally he
found what he was looking for and stared wistfully at the voltage
warning.

Untwisting
the glove on his left arm first, he removed it and two jets of air
sprayed into the blackness of space from his sleeves as his suit
deflated. The pressure leak detection activated an emergency seal,
constricting the intelligent fibres around Rynal’s forearms and
locking in the air pressure. Rynal removed the other glove, leaving
it to spin aimlessly into space, and the suit tightened around his
arms to seal off the leak.

Exposed in
the vacuum the veins on his pale hands fattened. They were fitted
into specialised conversion gloves he’d picked up from the cargo
hold, covering his finger tips and parts of his palms. The
gauntlets were specific for most nanome to energy conversions, a
crucial tool for nanome engineers and, especially now, for
him.

Alert. Air
pressure loss detected. Radiation breach
imminent
.

His veins
began to glow with a faint opalescence as the molecular nanomes
racing through his blood worked to fight against the radiation. He
reached through space, and seized the diodes, a positive in the
left gauntlet, and a negative in the right. A snap of lightning
shot along his arms, his veins transforming into rivers of light,
his skin glowing like the skirts of luminous jellyfish, the two
gauntlets flashing with emissions of dangerous gamma photons as his
energy became converted into flows of antimatter. The Catalyst
began to move, rotating gradually in space. Rynal’s screams were
locked in the helmet for his ears alone. Snaps of fire raced from
his body and delivered his geobacter over to the catalyst and with
one yelping cry it was done. Rynal was now poised on what would
soon become a black hole. Just a milligram of antimatter was all it
took to power it, and almost Rynal’s entire geobacter life force to
produce. He looked to his numb hands and saw the damage. He could
hardly believe his eyes. Blackened flesh and bones were exposed. It
had not been the pain he was expecting, but sure enough the shock
had sent him into a near euphoria.

Rynal gasped
and stepped away from the diodes, leaving them to glow like molten
rods. He dropped to his knees, brought down by the building
macro-gravity of the device’s Gravmex-field. Once the Obsiduranium
fuel was excited there was no way to pacify or reverse the effects.
As the macro-gravity increased, Rynal was on a one way ticket down.
Pulled onto his back, his arms dropped under their own weight. But
despite his demise he remembered the seed he’d planted on Amora and
found time to think of his daughter and smile.

*

Osmond sealed
his eyes shut contritely as Rynal’s gasping screams tore
through
The Cereno’s
bridge.

‘
I’m with you
Rynal!
’ he promised, sharing his agony
through the transqualia neurophase, sharing in the pains of his
aching ribs and bones.

‘
Just fly the
starnavis!
’ Rynal gasped his order as
every bodily fibre was under strenuous gravitational
pressure.

‘
Focus on getting
away Osmond! Go!
’

‘
I can share your
transqualia.
’

‘
No!
’ Rynal shouted, blocking him
out. ‘
I will go through this alone. You
have to focus Osmond. Get them out of here.
’

Rynal’s
pelvis fractured, hot webs of pain threading through the bone, and
Osmond retreated fully from the transqualia and screamed in the
memory of Rynal’s agony. With deep panting breaths the old man
focussed on their flight. After sharing in Rynal’s physical
experience he knew now the pains of his own broken ankle were but a
fraction of what his friend was enduring.

*

John Ripley
could barely believe his eyes. A sudden gravitational shift
emanated from the catalyst and his gravest fears were
realised.

‘
Break
formation, the Catalyst is live, repeat, the Catalyst is
live!’

Ripley saw
the great energy and mass readings through the neurosphere, gazing
with the prowess of his eyeless mind as though feeling its ethereal
dimensions from
The Deathwind’s
sensors. He gasped incredulously. He’d never seen
a manufactured black hole before.

‘
Quanti-magnus!’

The
Deathwind
broached suddenly, firing
reverse thrusters and looping into a great arch. The Arrowheads,
although sleek and smart in design, lacked the dynamic engine
efficiency of
The
Deathwind
, and were unable to escape the
inevitable pull of the Obsiduranium locus. Ripley saw the man down
there, spread out across the surface of the machine, disintegrating
in the growing radiation. And as Arrowheads smashed into the
catalyst’s flanks he lay there still, trapped in a world of agony
as the gravity pressed what was left of him against the solidity of
the Catalyst surface.

Upon the
solid black surface of the alloy, Rynal reached his arm forth with
all his might. It felt as though his arm weighed a ton. It pulled
back to the black surface as though his skin was
magnetic.

‘
Osmond!’ he
breathed, gasping through the thinning air of his helmet. ‘Tell
them I’m with them Osmond. Don’t forget me.’

Osmond had
heard the transmission and opened a channel to reply from
The Cereno’s
bridge. It
crackled over audio as radiation continued to gather over the
catalyst.

‘
We’re with
you Rynal!’ He shouted.

The
transmission was breaking up, a scattering plea breeching
The Cereno’s
bridge,
segmented by the increasing gravity.

‘
Don’t forget
me Osmond…!’

And as the
Catalyst generated its climactic reaction, the surface burst into
blinding light. And all at once Rynal’s pain was over. Although
small, the concentrated radiance beaconed ten times brighter than
the system’s local Suntau star. The light shifted and coiled,
creating loop prominences of fire which descended gradually into a
pitch black horizon. All the catalyst’s solidity had now been
either swallowed in the event or atomised. And a disk of
devastating radiation began to gather around the glowing
quanti-magnus.

The Jackal
had been hunting
The Cereno
when it realised the danger ahead all too late,
and started to turn. But their collision now was unavoidable. Mass
distortions rippled through space, alerting the crew of the
meteoric danger drawing them into orbital eminence at super-fast
speed.

To the
surprise and horror of the Jackal’s crew, the micro black hole
smashed into the shielding like a hot needle through wax. A great
fissure opened along the Jackal, unzipping the hull and shattering
the armoured shell, sucking all the fragments into its tiny spore.
Blinding radiation flared where metal and iron rushed to the centre
of the singularity, compressed into an atomic space beyond the
black spherical face of the event horizon.