Nano

by Sam Fisher

  ‘Argh!’ War screamed and attacked the keyboard. Nothing changed except for the numbers plunging ever downward. In a heartbeat, War lost the equivalent of a good-sized lottery win.

  ‘WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?’ he shouted at the top of his voice. The Sri Lankan boys cowered, the topless girls vanished into the house.

  War closed his eyes, looked away, sweat streaming down his cheeks. Then he glared at the screen, his look murderous. The numbers tumbled ever downward . . . into the last 100 million, the final 10 million . . . He was ordinary! A million . . . He was positively poor! War’s mind reeled and the cascade stopped . . . at zero.

  There was a noise from behind. He jolted his head around, jowls wobbling and saw two men staring straight at him.

  91

  Floor 199, Cloud Tower, Dubai

  Steph explained what was going on to the 13 survivors. They took in the information with a mixture of reactions. Many of them simply nodded, some uncomprehending, others looking hopeful.

  Saeed had regained some of his former composure and offered a cynical smile. ‘Captain America to the rescue,’ he said without expression.

  ‘I’m Australian, actually,’ Steph retorted and gave the man a dark look. ‘Right,’ she turned back to the others, ‘we all need to move to the middle of the floor, fast. Everyone okay with that? Mohammed, Craig, Geoff? Can you help me with Chloe, please? The rest of you follow on close behind.’

  Steph and Mohammed took one end of the stretcher, Craig and Geoff the other, and between them they lifted the injured woman. Chloe groaned and opened her eyes. She was sedated and the painkillers were working on overdrive. Steph and Mohammed led the way, picking a path through the rubble and piles of debris. The other 10 sur- vivors formed a bedraggled collection following in pairs and small groups.

  In the centre of the level there was a raised triangular-shaped area. A fountain had once stood there but it had been knocked over. Water had shot into the air for half an hour after the missile had struck the tower until the main feed had fractured somewhere out of sight on a different floor. The area was saturated. In places, the rubble had become so sodden it formed a slurry the consistency of wet cement. It caked their shoes and splashed up their calves.

  All around the demolished fountain lay the usual collection of smashed-up furniture, sheets of metal and plastic, computers, piles of soaked paper and clothes. Dotted around this there was the depressing sight of human body parts washed clean of blood, pale lumps of pink flesh like uncooked chicken.

  They all pitched in to construct a makeshift barrier on three sides. This was made from desks, panels of wood, old doors and a couple of massive plants that had stood around the fountain.

  ‘Almost there,’ Steph said as the last of the pieces of barrier were pulled into place around the gathered survivors. They all stank, they were all filthy, streaked in dust and oil and blood.

  Steph crouched down beside Chloe and pulled the thermal blanket tight around her friend, tucking it under her chin. ‘How you bearing up?’ she whispered. Chloe opened her eyes; they swam a little from the effects of the sedative. ‘I . . . I feel amazing actually, Steph. You should try this sometime.’

  Steph smiled down at her and moved a few strands of auburn hair from Chloe’s face. She leaned into her comms.

  ‘Ready.’

  92

  ‘On my signal,’ Mark said into the Big Mac comms, his voice picked up by each of the three Silverback pilots. ‘Three . . . two . . . one . . . fire.’

  Dimitri, Ralph and Gina stabbed at their control panels within a millisecond of each other. The computer systems engaged immediately. Just 0.2 milliseconds later, three identical 3-metre-long, 20-centimetre diameter spiked maxinium poles shot across the 200 metres between the planes and the building, and slammed into the sides of the tower at precise, predetermined points immediately beneath Floor 199.

  Seventy per cent of each pole sank into the infrastructure of the building, fixing them fast. And as the three Silverbacks banked away in three different directions, each of the poles telescoped out. Within 4 seconds, each pole had thickened to half a metre and grown lengthways to 5 metres.

  ‘Okay,’ Mark stated. ‘So far, so good, guys. Begin net foundations.’

  Dimitri made the first run. He brought around the nose of George, ran his fingers over the sheer plastic panel of his control module, altered a couple of minor parameters and shot towards the building. As he approached the northwest face of the Cloud Tower, a silver thread of pure nanocarbon fibre slipped from the underside of the plane. With incredible precision, he hooked the end of the cable around the metal spike and swung north, dragging the thread around the corner of the tower. Accelerating, he flew over the northeast wall. The thread passed under the spike on that face of the building. Dimitri ploughed through the clear air and did a 360-degree turn, hooking the cable over the spike. Banking tight around to port, the nanocarbon thread slithered around the southeast corner and he repeated the manoeuvre on the third spike.

  As Dimitri reached full circle and went on to the second run, Gina came in from behind him, spinning Keith into a precise flight path. With pinpoint accuracy, she mimicked the course Dimitri had followed but allowing her carbon thread to weave around the spikes a little further out than Dimitri’s first and second run.

  Ralph swooped down in Mick and tucked in behind Gina. He repeated the process so that, between them, they began to weave the infrastructure of a nanonet like a vast spider’s web, a hoop around the building made from one of the strongest materials known to man. And as the threads built up line upon line, hundreds of millions of nanobots set to work. Emerging from the threads like fleas from an infested animal, they began to form interconnections, building up a three-dimensional fabric as light as paper but 100 times stronger than reinforced titanium steel.

  93

  To the survivors on Floor 199, the sound of the three metal poles slamming simultaneously into the sides of the tower returned them to the moment over three hours earlier when the missile had struck the tower. This time though it was easy to believe the entire massive edifice of the Cloud Tower was going to crumble around them.

  The vibrations created by the impacts of the spikes made the entire level shudder. Flying masonry, metal bolts and pieces of furniture smashed into the barrier constructed in the centre of the floor and bits of ceiling tumbled down to shatter harmlessly on its makeshift roof.

  Steph started to remove the sheets of pressed steel and wood surfaces from above her head. ‘Give us a hand, will you?’ she called to a couple of the men from Charlotte’s party. Between them, they removed the rest of the material forming the canopy. She noticed a couple of people staring up and followed their line of sight.

  It was as though snow was falling all around. Thousands of pieces of white insulation material, a type of styrofoam, tumbled from the ceiling. Steph couldn’t help smiling. ‘Christmas has come early,’ she said to Abu standing beside her. He was gazing up to the roof, his face more alive than she had yet seen it. They put out their hands, palms upward and caught the flakes.

  But then came a new sound. It began as a distant squeal and grew rapidly louder. A couple of the party turned to the northeast face of the building, eyes widening in panic.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Steph called above the noise. ‘It’s an E-Force jet.’

  Dimitri’s Silverback was flying along the side of the building, beginning his first circumvention of the Tower. Steph turned to see Chloe staring at her, her large brown eyes not quite focused.

  ‘Frank, Mohammed, Craig? Can you help me with Chloe?’

  ‘What are we doing now, exactly?’ Saeed asked. He was standing just behind Mohammed, fixing Stephanie with his cold, black eyes. In spite of his aggression, he cut a rather pathetic figure. He was covered in dust, his face filthy and blood-streaked, his right arm in a sling, the bandage around the wound red with blood.

  ‘We’re going to get out of here,’ Steph snapped back.

 
94

  ‘We’re on the final run,’ Dimitri said into his comms.

  ‘Wilco, Dimitri. I’m just getting Tom to give us a diagnostic. Tom?’ Mark switched channels to Cyber Control on Tintara. ‘How we doing?’

  Tom was in Cyber Control, seated in the centre of the room with his laptop holoscreen floating above the keypad. The place was abuzz as technicians worked to stabilise the nanonet created by the planes and gather information on its condition.

  The wall screen was filled with an image from BigEye 17 showing the Cloud Tower glistening in the pure light of a Dubai winter afternoon. Tom could see the 4-metre-wide hoop of sparkling carbon nanofibres, a newly constructed platform around the building. From above, it looked for a moment like the rings of Saturn. At the edges of the image glinted the tiny specks of the three Silverbacks as they headed away from the tower, their work done.

  ‘Just getting data through now, Mark,’ Tom responded.

  On the screen, a set of brightly coloured lines and fluorescent bands appeared superimposed on the real-time video image of the Tower. These showed the structure of the nanonet as it grew. ‘We’re at close to 70 per cent integrity,’ Tom added.

  ‘Damn it! I was hoping we were further along,’ Mark replied and flicked a glance at the chronometer.

  ‘Seventy-two per cent,’ Tom said. ‘It’s moving fast.’

  ‘Yeah, but not fast enough.’ Mark turned from the screen showing a split image: on the left, Tom on Tintara; on the right, the Tower rearing up from the ocean of sand and steel beneath it. A message was coming in. He depressed a contact on the control panel and a man’s voice burst into the cabin over the main speaker.

  ‘Big Mac? Come in Big Mac. This is Squadron Leader Mike Grosvenor aboard Oman 1. May I speak to Mark Harrison, please?’ The voice was barely audible over the roar of an engine.

  ‘Hang on a sec, Tom,’ Mark said. ‘The chopper is here.’

  The left side of his screen changed to show an image of the inside of a Chinook HC2, a close-up of the pilot and copilot, helmeted with curved stick-mics hanging down the sides of their helmets, resting close to their mouths. It had taken them just 16 minutes to reach Dubai from the closest military base – an RAF station just inside the Oman border. ‘Squadron Leader, welcome. This is Mark Harrison. Great to see you.’

  ‘We weren’t told much, sir,’ the pilot was shouting back over the noise of the blades. ‘You want us to touch down on the roof? Pick up survivors?’

  ‘Almost,’ Mark responded. ‘Can you see the tower?’

  ‘Just coming into visual.’ There was a brief silence, then. ‘What . . . is . . . that?’

  ‘We call it a nanonet.’

  ‘But how . . .?’

  ‘No time now, Mike. We have 13 survivors and two E-Force crew trapped on Floor 199. The nanonet is a platform from which you can pick up the survivors. One of my team, Stephanie Jacobs, is in charge. The other E-Force operative is badly injured.’

  ‘What about the other survivors?’

  ‘Broken bones, walking wounded.’

  ‘And how long do we . . .?’

  ‘Less than 7 minutes.’

  ‘Leave it with us,’ Grosvenor replied, and Mark saw the twin-rotor workhorse, camouflaged with orange-brown paint turn with surprising elegance towards the tower. It descended 300 metres, swept to starboard and headed straight for the nanonet platform.

  Mark turned back to Tom and switched the screen again. He could see the bustle of technicians in Cyber Control; Tom, close up to the camera. ‘Where are we now, Tom?’

  ‘Integrity: 74 per cent.’

  ‘What’s the minimum we go for?’

  ‘How long is a piece of string, Mark? This has never been done before.’

  Mark stared down at the shiny flat plastic of the control panel and took a deep breath.

  ‘Put it this way,’ Tom was saying. ‘The earliest the tower will go is in 6 minutes 52 seconds. It’s going to take –’

  ‘Yeah, Tom. I can do the math.’

  Tom fell silent.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mark said softly and looked up. Tom’s face was expressionless. ‘We’re going in . . . now.’

  95

  Floor 199, Cloud Tower

  The route back to the rim of the tower was a nightmare. The floor was strewn with more debris than ever – material shaken from the roof by the shockwaves produced when the spikes smacked into the building. In places, the floor had simply given way, leaving wide, ragged holes through which could be seen the shattered mess of the floors below. To make it worse, new fires had started and many of these were produced by noxious chemicals bursting from their containers and combusting in the air, the flames whipped up by the gusting wind off the desert.

  The party headed towards the southern face of the triangular tower. This was considered the safest bet because the wind was blowing in from the southeast. Either of the other two faces would have meant the force of the wind could propel anyone on the nanonet over the edge. On this side, the gusts pushed them back towards the building.

  Running onto the main walkway that stretched between the central area where they had been sheltered and the shops of the periphery of the tower, they could see out to the desert through blasted walls and shattered windows. Steph, Mai, Frank and Craig stumbled in front of the others, carrying Chloe on the makeshift stretcher and fighting the wind blowing straight into them.

  ‘Through there.’ Stephanie gesticulated and nodded towards a jeans shop.

  The floor was strewn with sodden clothing, bits of crumbled ceiling and an oily slurry. Clothes racks lay in tangled piles, the counter had collapsed at one end, sending a computer into a furrow in the stone floor. A freestanding mirror had tumbled on top of it, the glass smashed into thousands of pieces, shards everywhere. They heard a sound starting to build. It was instantly recognisable – the whoosh and rumble of a big helicopter heading towards them.

  Steph and the three men edged their way across the floor, trying to keep Chloe horizontal as they stumbled over the shattered marble. Five metres from the devastated wall, they had their first clear view of the nanonet. It stretched out of sight to their left and right and lay like a silver carpet, reaching about 4 metres out from the side of the tower.

  The outer wall of the shop had been smashed up, leaving little more than a pair of pillars and a few daggers of glass around the window frame. A low parapet lay on the inside of the wall. It had crumbled. Just a few teetering columns of bricks and concrete remained.

  Craig slipped on the wet floor and stumbled. ‘Argh!’ he exclaimed and cursed, but he just managed to stop himself going down.

  Chloe slid to one side of the stretcher and groaned. The other three compensated, bringing it level. Two more steps and they lowered Chloe to the floor. Steph crouched down to check her vitals using her wrist computer, then straightened and walked carefully over to the wall of the tower. The others held back. Looking out anxiously towards the distant horizon, it felt as though a universe of empty space lay just beyond the wall. As they watched, the chopper descended into view a few metres beyond the edge of the nanonet.

  ‘This is Oman 1. Squadron Leader Mike Grosvenor.’ The pilot’s voice boomed through Steph’s headset and she set the comms to speaker so everyone could hear the instructions. She looked up and could see the two pilots in the cockpit of the Chinook.

  ‘Good to see you,’ Steph said.

  Then there came another sound, a higher-pitched noise. From the east of the opening in the wall, the nose of Silverback edged forwards into view. It was just a few metres from the chopper.

  ‘Steph? It’s Dimitri,’ Godska’s voice came through the speaker. ‘The RAF chopper will take everyone off the nanonet, including you. I’m going to hover here and lower a carrier for Chloe. Gina’s copiloting.’ Steph caught a glimpse of a second person just behind Dimitri. ‘She’ll come down with the cable,’ Dimitri added. ‘You concentrate on the survivors.’

  ‘Copy that,’ Steph responded and
she saw a panel open in the underside of the Silverback. Gina disappeared from the copilot’s cockpit and a few moments later a narrow metal platform at the end of a Maxinium cable began to descend towards the nanonet. Gina, dressed in a cybersuit, gripped the cable tightly with both hands.

  ‘Okay, come on, everyone,’ Steph hollered over the cacophony. They all looked petrified. One of the women from Charlotte’s party started to move forwards.

  The shop shook violently. The tremor went on for several seconds. The remaining slithers of glass inside the window frame that opened out onto the desert came loose and dropped to the floor. One of the women screamed, but the sound was swallowed up in the tremor’s roar.

  Steph ran forwards and gripped Frank by the arm, pulling him towards the nanonet. Carmen was jolted out of her terror and dashed to join them. Steph stepped over the parapet and onto the nanocarbon mesh. With a little encouragement, Frank went with her, Carmen close behind, holding her husband’s free hand.

  ‘Don’t look down,’ Steph instructed.

  Carmen and Frank kept eyes forwards as the chopper descended to within half a metre of the nanonet. As it came in towards the tower, Steph grabbed Frank and Carmen.

  ‘Go!’ she yelled, giving them a gentle nudge. The couple stepped forwards and more or less fell into the mid-section of the chopper. Two RAF personnel were there ready for them.

  Steph span around. The rest of the survivors were clustered close to the wall. Another explosion rocked the building. Its epicentre was some way off on a lower floor the other side of the tower, but the entire structure shuddered. Steph swayed but managed to keep her balance. Glancing over to the east, she could see that Gina and the stretcher were touching down on the nanonet platform.

  ‘Come on!’ Steph screamed towards the remaining survivors.

  Abu, Craig Bannister and his father Geoff eased themselves onto the platform. Steph took Abu’s hand and guided him out. ‘Look at the chopper, Abu. Nowhere else.’