Chaos Cipher (52 page)

Welcome to
the future, passenger one O’ one, a greeting indeed! I think their
sentiment ironic. What acrid proclamation to fish thee from darkest
slumber? A technician’s tongue in coltish parlance. Alack, time is
not but a crude ruler for those blind to cause, an invented purpose
to the unexplained.

He began to
count how long the inertial sleep was expected to last.
Three fetch thee double zeros and score the days
of extended sleep in the Temporal-Inertial-Cycles.
Raven Protos bethought those desultory fits of
asphyxiation, nightmares of drowning in slow motion, sustained on
machines. He regarded the blackest deluge, where electrons pass’ed
not and the starlight prevailed as reposed, latent in the
Gravmex-field somewhere beyond the mechanical walls of this
superluminal and oversized mass sarcophagus.

Welcome to
the future
, he wondered. Once a
romanticised aphorism shared amongst the Astro-Cavalcade with not
but brief recognition to the vast solitude one finds in space, now
a drab empty gesture on the lips of tired itinerants as he wakes.
While yet his has been a life inexorably frozen; an inter-galactic
itinerant himself, denied breath and sunlight. Denied his
dearest…
elixir!
Though as good as dead in the world of material, he affirmed
to his dearest kin in spiritual covenant that not once had the
child eluded his psychic rapports. He promised his brother again,
and again, she, Avenoir, was in good care. By the time Raven was
revived and suited, he found his way to the Vista Bar on the top
floor of
The Constella
Transit
. His skin flaky and etiolating,
head shaven to a nail width and not scaled a millimetre since
entering Temporal-Inertial-Cycles. Raven often had to bow below
doorways, which was never a problem when he was living on
the
Kyklos
. The
station was designed for mature Olympians of his size. He was sure
the human race was getting shorter and fatter these days. Not that
it troubled him, it simply was an interest that he had lived long
enough to see such physiological changes not brought about by diet,
but by adventure. The majority who spent their lives in space
looked dreary, dolorous and undernourished. Like all beautiful
things, from diamonds to nebula, it took misery to acquire, whose
misery was usually telling, for it was upon the backs of daredevils
who helped forge the first bridges anywhere, a red carpet for all
who followed.

When Raven
entered the Vista Bar, he gazed around. Several people were
attending high tables and others sat in large chairs looking out at
Jupiter’s eye, a swirling tempest of foam that seemed to return the
gaze.

He closed his
eyes and shut out the muttering voices and the shunting and
skimming of hydraulic machines serving nutrient soup for the tired
and weary travellers.

The little
girl was looking out at the alien world before her. Her glazed big
eyes, one green the other red, watered in extol of Jupiter’s
blustering storms. She had minute diamonds freckled upon her
forehead and nose; the carbon compressed remains of her ancestors
from generations gone, permanently set into her frontal skull, each
one a life taken in the
Kyklos
disaster. Shadows of dark skin naturally tainted
the lids, holding her curious and contrasting eyes in nests of
alluring darkness. To the gas giant, she dared to gaze back, and
lost herself in the tumultuous stirring of milky clouds
below.

Avenoir wore
the same jumpsuit her mother had had made for her in the Cygnus
colony. It would be her only outfit in space, as clothing and
fashion was not something of an issue when station hopping. It was
a lightly coloured jumpsuit lined with thermal optics and nano
smart wear, synergising with her body heat; her mother’s light
cream head garment covered her neck and forehead.

She turned to
her guardian, Raven, in the dark of his mind as he searched the bar
for her psychic eminence. Once he sensed where she was, Raven
opened his eyes and walked through the tired crowds to find her
standing behind a group of technicians. He lowered to his knee and
rested his hand on the child’s head lovingly. They shared in a
fleeting snap of emotion on recognising one another in the physical
world again.

He had seen
her visions during the long sleep from Cygnus. But he was unsure
what to make of it. Had she shown him the past…or things destined
to occur? He knew she remembered parts of her past, but much of it
was fleeting.

Since she’d
been in the care of Raven, no abdication befell dearest Avenoir. By
his life he pledged to Rynal gone, no harm to her could manifest,
he only wished he could have told him in person before he
sacrificed himself. She will continue to influence their direction
to the Galileo Coterie as she has all her life. He promised to
gather the forces he needed and beseech the mightiest opposition to
smite the Syridan and Atominii State from one archology to the
next, and the Atominii paradigm will fall asunder. They will know
mortal compensation for what they did to his dearest
kin.

All this will
he would redeem on SkyLord Kent Gallows’ echelon. He was the one to
order the destruction of the Suntau colony and the death of the
Suntau star. A bone to break and a tooth to pull for every cadaver
listed upon his barbarous résumé. Raven bethinks he hath not enough
bodily units to spare the debt. But he would ensure to his deepest
ambitions SkyLord Kent Gallows will die by the manner of his
agency. And he shalt know all definitions of pain. There will be
nothing left to beacon a man when thy vengeance closes the day. And
Raven sought to lead death to each Atominii state, upon which the
SkyLord’s duties were arrantly commanded.

The on board
auto pilot opened an announcement into the Vista Bar.

‘
All
passengers of the Starnavis runner Constella Transit, thank you for
your participation in this deep space journey back to the solar
system. We are now docking with the Jovian station,
Omicron
. We hope you
have a pleasant stay. And remember, the cultural greeting here is,
Haf-lah. It means have love and hello...’

*

JUPITER

Omicron
hovered like an argent ring
at an altitude of two million kilometres from Jupiter, close to
Calisto’s orbital path. The halo station was composed of a resin
shell, grown specifically to frame the construction’s skeletal
foundations, with geodesic glass bulbs housed by nanomes into its
inner circumference, allowing sunlight to filter in on the
artificial agriculture and hydroponic orchards. For the most part,
it carried about as much aesthetic vibe as an industrial chemical
plant, nothing like the illustrious beauty of the
Kyklos
station. Here it
was like a conglomeration of pressure pipes flushing liquids and
gasses through and around the huge station, towering canisters and
observation decks, a myriad limpid walkways and platforms designed
to view the gargantuan gas giant and the distant sun, or opaque on
command to shut out the faint wink of the stars. Four Cosmo towers,
reaching from the ringular horizon, jutted out into space for
hundreds of metres, like stalactites of metal growing out at each
quarter of the way around the ring station.
Omicron
wheeled in a clockwise
motion creating a centrifuge for the inhabitants, which simulated
an earthly Gee-force in the gardens around its centripetal levels.
Its mass in space allowed it to keep its angular velocity spinning
for days without an acceleration boost. The station had a
circumference of over twenty five kilometres, completing a full
rotation almost every five minutes.

Omicron’s
central docking ports were
located in the wheel-habitat’s centre. A perfectly rounded axel
sphere, with a capacity of a cubic kilometre, marked the nucleus of
the station. Its surface was freckled with the aft engines of
docked deep space runner Starnavis, which poked out like thorns on
a rosebush. With hundreds of ships like this docked with the axel
sphere, it started to resemble a Datura seed pod blooming in the
night.

*

The Constella
Transit
found the allocated recess
cratered into
Omicron’s
axel sphere. For safety reasons the gravmex
panels reduced their influence on approach and aft burners took
over, a procedure to which all three hundred personnel had to be
seated. As the influence of the gravitational turbulence
diminished, the passengers within dwindled to micro
gravity.

The teardrop
shaped space craft sedulously adjusted its motion, Vernier thruster
jets blasting short bursts of gas to align its dense head with the
docking cradle. Aft burners at the tail forced the ovular head down
into the crater and the starnavis locked lightly into the port,
security clamps snapping in to certify the bond, a sound which
vibrated through the vessel.

At the port
side an octagonal shaped platform raised from the tower, and from
one of its faces an umbilical bridge extended to meet
The Constella Transit’s
eastern airlock face, ready to unload.

*

The spindles
merging the ring habitat with the axel docking Sphere ports were
long elevator shafts, carrying down users into high towers within
the centrifuge zone.

When Raven
and Avenoir followed the crowd from the huge airlock hatch
in
The Constella Transit’s
side, several technicians coupled them by
karabiner and line to a slow moving track. Their suits magnetically
locked to small electro-magnetic connections and carried them away
through the low gravity environment like organised luggage moving
to the appropriate customs terminal. Raven’s breath fogged up his
breathing mask. Everybody was fitted with one, mainly to safely
store an unexpected surge of vomit in the event of space sickness.
Avenoir looked anxiously around, stuck firmly and helplessly to the
moving track as it towed them through corridors. She could see
hundreds of people in the hallway, moving at the same pace, dragged
from the airlocks and organised into custom ports. Robotic runner
cables zipped along lines, towing people to the required areas.
Yells and squalls echoed, voices heckling and laughing and
screaming alike. Raven knew it would trouble the child, she wasn’t
used to this strange environment. He was too far away from Avenoir
to hold her hand, but she could feel his parental presence. He knew
that micro-gravity was a big problem for her; she didn’t bode well
at all.

‘
Almost
there,’ he said gently.

Avenoir’s
eyes were wide in wonder, one green and the other red, her pupils
pulling in every object with complete recognition, and fascinated
rediscovery. They were pulled to the end of the track, dragged into
more narrow tunnels where the moving belt pulled Raven onto a
glowing round pad. The magnets deactivated and his back slid over
the pad, which sonically pumped him along a tunnel. Humming
oscillatory vibrations assisted his ascent along the tube. Avenoir
followed close.

‘
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.