Chaos Cipher (67 page)

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.