The Nano Flower

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Standing and fighting would have made a fucking site more sense than this. They could have shot the walkway out from under the tekmerc, no need to penetrate the muscle armour, just flush him out of the airship. Too late now. And what the hell did some warped 'ware package know about tactics anyway?

  A thunderclap penetrated the closed universe of the doughnut gasbag. The sound rumbled around her, a drawn out tortured roar. Explosion. Then came the multiple sonic booms, the grating sound of the airship's fuselage bending and flexing. Definitely some snaps of breaking frames. Christ!

  Something flicked up her back. She began to spin. Then she was skittering and sliding down the curving plastic wall of the gasbag, totally out of control. Her injured knee twisted viciously as she reeled round, nearly making her cry out loud. It was all she could do to keep her mouth clamped shut.

  There was an electric flare of deep vermilion light ahead of her. The scene it uncovered was weird, two-tone, red and black. A huge curved cylindrical cavern, slick walls printed with a black hexagonal web pattern, palpitating softly. Jonah must have seen something like this, she thought. She'd always liked that story back in the Trinities; their preacher, Goldfinch, could make it sound real somehow when he was delivering his sermons.

  Fabian Whitehurst was visible ten metres in front of her, sliding down the bottom of the doughnut's curve, jouncing about madly. She stretched her arms out, trying to slow her speed. The light went out.

  She could still hear the fuselage protesting loudly.

  The angle of the gasbag's slope began to shallow out, reducing her speed. There was a stark slice of hoary light shining out of the floor fifteen metres away. She saw Fabian on all fours, scrabbling towards it. He vanished abruptly, as though he'd been sucked down.

  Suzi came to a halt about three metres from the cut, and started crawling towards it. She could hear her heart pumping fast, the need to take a breath rising. Her knee was alive with stabs of pain as it pressed into the plastic.

  She reached the cut, and grasped the melted edge with her hands, pulling her body through and down. A half-somersault and she was standing on the walkway.

  Fabian was on his knees, coughing roughly. Charlotte Fielder stood behind him, arm around his shoulder, looking anxious. Suzi let some beautifully clean air flood into her lungs.

  Five metres down the walkway, three drones were working on the composite panels that made up the roof of the gondola. Greg stood over them, watching keenly.

  "Cutting us a way into the cabins," he said when Suzi went over to him.

  "My security crash team has arrived," Julia announced from the cybofax peeping out of his jacket pocket. "They'll be inside any minute now."

  There was another groan from the fuselage framework. Suzi thought she saw a ripple run along the walkway. The drones lifted up a strut they had disconnected, and began to use their lasers on the composite.

  "There are two tekmercs left in the gondola, both on the lower deck searching the cabins, and three more in the fuselage," Julia said. "They're operating on shoot-to-kill instructions now."

  "Where's Leol Reiger?" Suzi asked.

  "He's in the gondola."

  "Forget it," Greg said curtly.

  She wanted to tell him where to shove it. But her knee was throbbing alarmingly now, and the fuselage was frightening the shit out of her the way it kept creaking and moving—though she wasn't going to admit that to anybody. Leol Reiger was toting a Lockhead rip gun, and fully armoured. Besides, she'd been running around in this creepy half-gloom with its clammy cold air for what seemed like hours. "Yeah," she said. But it was an expensive concession.

  The circle of composite which the drones had been working on fell away with a clatter. A surprisingly bright shaft of light shone up from the cabin below.

  Suzi heard a rip gun being fired, answered with the fast zip of a plasma-pulse rifle. A lot of plasma-pulse rifles.

  "You go first," Greg told her. "Fabian, you're next."

  She slithered through the hole and dropped to the floor. Her leg nearly gave way altogether. This time she couldn't help the yelp as red hot skewers of pain pierced her knee.

  It was a bedroom suite; dustsheets over all the furniture. Fabian's jeans and trainers appeared above her. She caught sight of armoured shapes racing through the air outside the window. The silhouette of a Titan transport in the distance.

  Fabian dropped into the cabin, landing awkwardly. Suzi limped over to help him up. Someone in the gondola was firing a rip gun almost continuously. It was getting louder.

  Charlotte's long shapely legs came through the hole; she landed easily, rolling as she hit. Suzi wondered where she'd learnt that. The girl's white top and shorts were streaked with dirt. Fabian caught her hand as she got up, and she smiled gratefully at him.

  Two of Event Horizon's security crash team rose to hover outside the cabin's window; their jetpack efflux a steady thrum. One of them pressed a power blade to the glass. It sliced through cleanly, and the armoured figure tilted his jockey-stick, heading towards the stern, sliding the blade along as he went.

  Greg landed in the cabin with a hefty thump, sprawling gracelessly on to his side.

  "Ah, the old paratroop training, always useful." Suzi grinned at him. The weary tension in her muscles was slackening off. Her knee was a solid knot of pain.

  Greg stood up, shaking his head like a dog coming out of the water. "Bloody hell."

  "Yeah," she agreed. She was surprised by how glad she was that he'd come through OK. Every byte out of the combat manual thrown at him, and he was still upright. She should never have doubted, not Greg.

  A big rectangle of glass fell outwards, letting in the full howl of the jetpack noise. The crash team began to fly into the cabin.

  Suzi started to laugh, lost in a burn of elation as dustsheets took flight and her short hair whipped about, shellsuit trousers flapping wildly round her legs. It was always the same, relief at being alive at the end of the day boosting her higher than syntho ever could. Dangerously addictive.

  Fabian and Charlotte were taken out first. She felt armoured arms close around her, and the security hardliner lifted her with a precision she could only envy. Then there were just the blues of water and sky, the giddiness which accompanied height.

  * * * *

  Leol Reiger was very good. Julia hadn't expected that. Rip-gun bolts tore into cameras and fibre optic cable channels. Her coverage of the gondola's lower deck was being systematically broken down. Fire was spreading from the cabin her crash team had shot at. Halogen extinguishers in the ceiling came on, squirting out thick columns of white mist into the central corridor, degrading the camera images still further.

  She relayed Leol Reiger's exact co-ordinates to the crash team.

  * * * *

  Internal camera, gondola lower-deck central corridor. Dark smoke oozed along the ceiling, smothering the biolum strips. Flames fluoresced the halogen a lurid amber. She watched one of the crash team step out of Jason Whitehurst's study into the inflamed miasmatic cyclone, plasma rifle held ready.

  Leol Reiger turned with a speed she couldn't believe. The rip-gun bolt was aimed with incredible accuracy, lancing straight into the security hardliner's chest.

  If she had a stomach, she would have been sick at that point.

  Leol Reiger stood still and amid the churning halogen smog, legs slightly apart, and pointed his rip gun up at the ceiling. He blew a wide hole in the composite, and kept on firing. His suit's jockey-stick deployed, swinging into place below his left arm. The jetpack compressor wound up.

  He launched himself like an old-style space rocket, straight up.

  * * * *

  Internal camera, gondola upper-deck central corridor. Leol Reiger came through the floor, and vanished through a hole in the ceiling.

  * * * *

  Internal camera, fuselage keel. Rip-gun bolts had vaporized a three-metre section of the walkway, leaving the smoking ends drooping on to the gondola roof. There was a gaping rent
in the spherical gasbag overhead. Leol Reiger flashed past.

  * * * *

  That was where Julia's coverage ended. The only sensors she had inside the gasbag were the ones to detect temperature, contamination, and pressure levels.

  The Colonel Maitland's flight control systems reported a heavy helium vent from the gasbag Leol Reiger had taken refuge in. External cameras showed her rip-gun bolts flying out of the upper fuselage, leaving long breaches in the solar cell envelope.

  * * * *

  Tekmerc squad inter-suit radio communication.

  Leol Reiger: "Scuttle it. Shred this flicker."

  Tekmerc five: "You're crazy, Leol."

  Leol Reiger: Laughter. "No way. They've blown it. The mayday beacons on board are shrieking so loud every emergency service on the planet will be picking them up. There's no jammer now. Air-sea rescue is going to be here in minutes."

  Tekmerc eight, female: "Christ, he's right."

  Leol Reiger: "Damn betcha, I'm right. Use your Lockheeds, blow your way into the gasbags, and deflate them. We'll ride it down to the sea."

  Tekmerc two: "I'm with you, Leol."

  * * * *

  Julia watched the tekmercs in the fuselage burn their way into the gasbags. More rip-gun bolts began to tear through the solar cell envelope. They left behind a growing static charge which snapped and sizzled across the geodetic framework. It jumped the power systems' circuit breakers and fused 'ware processors. Julia began to lose peripheral circuits.

  Are you going to order the crash team into the fuselage after them? she asked her living self.

  No. Reiger was right about the coast guard, the NN cores say three search and rescue hypersonics are already on their way from Nigeria. He's a dreadful annoyance, and he's certainly going to have to be dealt with at some stage. But our first priority is Charlotte Fielder. I'll let Victor Tyo sort him out later.

  * * * *

  Charlotte knew she was dreaming. Her life wasn't like this—pain, horror, darkness, fear. Death. That tough little hardliner woman had killed the maid. Didn't say anything, didn't ask what was going on, just walked in to the den and shot her.

  Was that part of the dream? It was all so vivid.

  She rested numbly in the hard metal embrace of the machine-man, whizzing through bright blue space. The cold gnawed at her bare skin. There were lightning flashes and thunder grumbles behind her.

  She was walking down long, deserted London streets again, cold from the rain, scared of the lightning forks that danced above the grey rooftops. Small, and hungry, and lost. Perhaps all of her life had been a dream? The finery, the wine, the laughter and bright, bright colours. Just figments spinning through her mind.

  She wanted it back, that life.

  The big plane hissed venomously at her as she swooped into the open end, above the ramp. She was coming to a halt inside a fat metalloceramic tube with yellow nylon webbing seats along the walls. Two biolum strips ran the length of the bare ceiling. Thick wires and composite reinforced tubes snaked over the floor, ending in bulky sockets clipped on to the wall by each seat.

  A group of people in white jumpsuits were standing just inside the ramp, their arms waving like traffic policemen. The metal arms let go of her, and she was dumped into waiting hands. These hands were soft, made of skin and bone.

  Hot urgent voices raged around her, firing off rapid questions. All she could do was stare back blankly. A silver shawl was wrapped round her shoulders, and she was eased into one of the webbing seats.

  Plastic boxes were pressed against her arms and neck and belly, tiny coloured lights winking. A small cube that gave her a bee sting on her neck, swiftly turning to an ice spot, then evaporating altogether. The world really did lose all cohesion then, receding to a distant spot of silent frosty light.

  She hung back from it for some time, letting her thoughts slowly come together. Then the light expanded again, bringing with it sounds and feeling, mainly of icy skin. She was light headed, which she knew came from the trank.

  Jetpacks whined savagely as the crash team landed on the plane's ramp two at a time. There were liquid rumbles coming from the dark bulk of the Colonel Maitland a kilometre away.

  "You OK now?" an earnest young woman in a white jumpsuit shouted over the bedlam. Her face was pressed up close. A red cross on each arm.

  Charlotte nodded. "I'm cold," she said.

  The woman smiled. "I'll get you a thermal suit. But we'll be closing and pressurizing in a minute. You'll soon feel the difference."

  "Thank you."

  The man called Greg was sitting in a webbing seat opposite her, doing yoga breathing. He gave her a rueful grin.

  Charlotte saw the motion long before the sound arrived. The Colonel Maitland was crumpling, prow and stern rising up, midsection splitting open. Long flames writhed out of the gondola windows.

  "Father!" Fabian cried hoarsely. He was sitting next to her, she hadn't even noticed.

  The Colonel Maitland began to sink out of sight. Not falling, but a slow idle descent down to the water so far below. People were standing on the plane's ramp, watching it go. She saw the little hardline woman among them, her fist punching the air. Smirking.

  "Father!"

  She put her arms round him as two of the white-clad medic team closed in. One of them was holding an infuser tube ready.

  "Get away from him!" she shouted.

  Fabian buried his head in her chest, sobbing uncontrollably.

  "Just get away from him." She rocked him gently, tears filling her own eyes.

  The ramp hinged up.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The SETI office was livening up. Rick Parnell's original staff of twelve had been complemented with twenty people from the Astronautics Institute's astronomy department. The two teams were working together to realign Event Horizon's radio and optical telescopes on Jupiter. The SETI people were elated at the prospect of practical hardware-orientated work at long last, the astronomers coldly angry at having their observations disrupted. Tempers were getting frayed. It didn't help that Victor had called in Eddie Coghlan's security programmers to prevent any possible data leakage from the new linkages being established between the observatories and the SETI office.

  Victor stood in the doorway to Rick Parnell's office, next to his bodyguard, and watched the shirtsleeved crew knuckle down. The tense hustle of activity was beginning to resemble a bank's trading floor. It was always the same routine: one of the terminal operators would sit up straight and wave a hand in some unknown sign language, then a knot of technicians and managers would form around them, arguing hotly. Tiger teams, loaded with authority and practical knowledge—in theory. There would be data requests fired into the terminal, thick folders broken open and consulted, cybofaxes performing simple calculations. When the decision was finally made the knot would break up, and another would form around a different terminal.

  Victor was irksomely familiar with the scene, crisis management, or more often damage assessment and limitation. It was going to be a long afternoon for the SETI office, and an even longer night.

  It said a lot for Julia's management that when something as outré as a search of Jupiter did spring up out of the blue, she could simply plug the appropriate division into the top of the company's command structure and get results. He was even mildly surprised at the way Rick had coped with the unexpected burden. Give the man his due, he hadn't started swaggering round like a mini-Napoleon.

  Rick was sitting at his desk, jacket draped over the back of his chair, its collar getting more crumpled every time he leaned back. Both his terminal cubes were alive with whirling graphics. Every now and then he would nod encouragingly at them.

  "What happens to the radio telescope data after you receive it?" Victor asked.

  Rick looked up. "It's squirted direct into one of the Institute's lightware crunchers. We've been sponsoring university groups to write signal analysis programs in preparation for Steropes. All we have to do is pull them from our
memory core, load them into the cruncher, and run the raw signal data through them. Of course, establishing their integrity in the lightware cruncher is going to take time; but my people are on top of it. We should be ready to start in a couple of hours."

  "And the optical data?"

  "Standard image comparison technique. Take two pictures of the same patch of sky a week apart, and see what's changed, if there's anything new appeared. We're in luck there. Aldrin did its last Jupiter survey five years ago, and it's all on file in the Institute's library. Galileo mission control is going to repeat that survey for me, starting in three and a half hours. So if your alien has arrived in the last five years, we should be able to spot it—providing it's larger than a hundred metres in diameter."

  "How long is the comparison going to take?"

  "Virtually instantaneous, given the processing power we've got available these days." He held up a hand, palm outward. "But the survey itself will take a couple of days."

  Victor didn't say anything. He'd been expecting the whole process to take at least a week. Astronomy had always seemed a glacial science to him; impressive incomprehensible machinery focusing on remote segments of the sky, providing building blocks for abstruse papers on cosmology. Arguments about how the universe was put together invariably went way over his head, but Julia thought it was important enough to finance to the tune of fifty million New Sterling each year.

  "They were none too happy about that," Rick said.

  Victor roused himself. "Who?"

  "Galileo mission control. I've screwed up their observation schedule good and proper. There are items that were requested five years ago on that schedule."

  "Tough. We all work for the same lady, pure science departments are no different to anyone else. It's her telescope, it looks at whatever she wants."