The Nano Flower

by Peter F. Hamilton

  "Sinclair always said that our souls would be liberated by a celestial angel; and that we would be safe up here while stars fell upon the Earth and smote it. And there would be locusts and plague, too. I was never really sure. Could your alien be the same thing as Sinclair's angel, do you think?"

  He gave the gently zany girl a sideways glance. "I've no idea, theology and xenobiology aren't my strong points. What are these flatscreens for?"

  "So we can watch for the dawn of change to emerge from the stars." The tone wasn't quite self-mocking, but close. "Perhaps your alien's star."

  "The images are real-time?"

  "Yes. Tol plugged the flatscreens into the colony's datanets."

  "Who's Tol?"

  "A brother."

  Greg stopped in front of a flatscreen showing a view of the southern hub crater, the docking spindle covered a third of the screen. "He must be a very technical lad."

  "Yes, he is. He knows everything there is to know about the asteroid's communication networks, he used to belong to one of the big channel companies." She giggled. "He's been with Sinclair almost since the beginning. I don't think he really believes in the Celestial Revelation, but he contributes as much as anyone. Five of the children are his, as well. Including Zena here." she bounced the softly cooing baby on her hip.

  "Busy man," Greg said. One star was brightening, edging across the screen. He stared at it, and knew.

  "Melvyn," he called.

  "Greg," Melvyn's voice was equally urgent. "Victor's on line. He reckons there's a tekmerc squad on the way."

  * * * *

  The Celestial Apostles didn't like it.

  "The time for running and hiding is over," Sinclair protested plaintively.

  "Nobody is asking you to run," Melvyn's voice clanged out of his suit speaker. "We just want you safely out of the way."

  "This is our home, now, Mr. Ambler. We live here. We built this place with the sweat of our brows."

  "You may live anywhere in New London you wish after this," Julia said. "That's what you told me you wanted."

  "That I did, yes. But why do you have to wait until these monster criminals come down here? Why not waylay them somewhere else?"

  Greg listened to the argument with half an ear. The collective mind tone of the Celestials was nervous. And a fair proportion were practical types. They'd go. What he and Julia wanted was for Sinclair to carry on and show them where the drone had been. He suspected Sinclair was angling for concessions.

  "They'd better get a move on," Suzi grumbled. She was standing beside him as he watched the spaceplane approach New London.

  "Yeah. You going to stay here with the ambush team?"

  "Fucking right I am."

  "Don't annoy Melvyn, OK? He doesn't need it."

  "Oh, thanks for the confidence. I'm fluid enough to take orders when I have to."

  "Sure you are; I can read minds, remember?"

  "Bollocks. All you know is that I'm pissed off with Leol fucking Reiger. Don't take no genius."

  "Reiger's squad are bound to be in muscle-armour suits. How are you going to know which one is him?"

  "'Cos the bastard walks with a swagger. Even in a suit, Greg, he walks with a swagger. I'll know him when I see him."

  The spaceplane's auxiliary reaction drive came on, a vivid white spear of plasma extending across half of the starfield.

  Sinclair started shouting orders, spurred by the sight. The Celestials were running round, collecting children, picking up flight bags stuffed with clothes.

  Sinclair grabbed one of the girls. "Where's Tol?" he demanded loudly.

  "I haven't seen him," she said.

  "Holy Mary, the lad's probably off in the caves with a girl. All he thinks about, you know," Sinclair told Julia. "Terrible it is, but his heart's in the right place."

  "You'll have to put someone else in charge," she said.

  "Right you are there. Marcus!" he bellowed. "For the love of Mary, Marcus, where are you?"

  One of the Celestials rushed over to Sinclair; Greg recognized him as a member of one of the afternoon's leaflet teams.

  "I'll send a couple of the crash team with them to make sure they get out all right," Julia said.

  "That's very kind of you," Sinclair said.

  Greg smiled. Even down here, Julia was automatically in charge.

  Eventually the Celestials were shepherded into a single agitated group. Some of the younger children were crying.

  Sinclair stood on the rock staircase to talk to them, Julia at his side. "You can't use the Moorgate station, take them out through the Whitechapel entrance," he told Marcus. "It's the quickest from here."

  "There will be some of my company security people waiting for you," Julia said. "Not the police, all right? They'll put you up in a hotel for tonight. After that, we'll sort out where you're going to live permanently."

  The spaceplane's plasma drive cut off, revealing a small grey triangle floating beyond the end of the docking spindle. Pinpoint twinkles of blue light flickered around its nose, and it began to turn in towards the crater.

  "Come an' get it," Suzi said.

  Greg's intuition seemed to have dried up. He watched the spaceplane manoeuvring round the spindle, free of any presentiment.

  Rick joined the two of them on the pedestal, giving the spaceplane a sober glance.

  "You joining us?" Greg asked.

  "Yes. It's what I came for. And I haven't been much use so far."

  "Nobody expects you to hardline, Rick. Your job starts after we make contact."

  * * * *

  The crack was slanted over at a good twenty degrees, one of several around the village cave. Sinclair had to clamber a metre off the arabic moss floor before he could squeeze into it.

  "Down here?" Greg asked.

  And Sinclair actually seemed embarrassed about it. "That's right, Captain Greg. The, er, younger folk use it quite a lot, if you take me meaning. The walls on the huts there, they aren't very thick."

  "Got you," Greg said.

  "It opens up a bit further down," Sinclair said encouragingly. "Your tin men'll be all right after that."

  "Right." Three of the crash team were coming with them, Teresa Farrow, Jim Sharman, and Carlos Monetti. He took another look at the narrow crack. If they did meet anything hazardous in there, then targeting it would be a brute. "Hold it, Sinclair; Carlos, you go first. I want fire-power available if push comes to shove."

  "Yes, sir," Carlos said gladly. He clamped his gauntlets on the side of the crack and walked himself up. Little splinters of rock spilled down.

  Someone had found the controls for the solaris spots. They flared white, throwing everything into sharply defined contours.

  Melvyn was busy organizing his crash team, sending them ranging into the village, and exploring the other cracks and fissures leading out of the cave.

  "Hey, Greg," Suzi said. "Give Royan's arse a kick from me, OK?"

  "No messing."

  Sinclair wriggled into the crack after Carlos. Greg levered himself up. The aliens' presence was a cold burning star ahead of him, exerting a gravity which acted on his thoughts alone, pulling him on. He sucked in his belly, and slipped into the crack.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The empty corridors were faintly unnerving. Before the alarms had gone off the security centre had been a bustling, lively place. Now the moving walkway rattled hollowly in the deserted main corridor as the hardliner escorted Charlotte to the security centre's command post.

  They stepped off the end of the walkway in front of a bank of seven lifts, the two at the far end were big service shafts. Security personnel were struggling with large flat-bed drones loaded with bulky machinery, trying to fit them through a service lift's doors. They were the first people Charlotte had seen since leaving Lloyd McDonald's office.

  "What's all that for?" she asked the hardliner as they waited for their lift.

  "Cutting gear by the look of it," he replied.

  He'd been po
lite the whole time. Naturally. His eyes switching between her legs and her face. But he didn't know what was going on any more than she did. Nothing good, she knew, not with those alarms going off.

  The lift arrived, and they descended.

  There were three guards outside the command centre's door, all of them armed. He had to show his card to a cybofax one of them carried before they were allowed through the door.

  Inside was a big circular room with rings of consoles, large flatscreens round the wall, a giant cube at the centre of the vaulting rock ceiling. She picked up on the current of worry infecting all the people sitting behind the consoles, their serious faces, strained voices.

  "Over here." Her hardliner gestured at a glass-walled office. She could see Victor, Sean, and Lloyd inside.

  Just as she got to the door she saw Fabian's face on a phone flatscreen, her legs almost faltered. Then Victor's expression registered. She wanted to turn and run.

  "Fabian here has just told us that the pair of you managed to convince Pavel Kirilov to come up to New London," Victor said.

  "Yes," she whispered.

  "I don't bloody well believe this. You let him know you survived the Colonel Maitland, and then invited him up here? He will do anything to obtain the generator data, including ripping it out of you. And I do mean rip."

  "Kirilov started all this!" Fabian shouted from the phone's speaker. "My father is dead because of him."

  "And Julia Evans told you quite plainly that he would be dealt with," Victor said.

  "Oh, sure. Sometime," Fabian said petulantly.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "We did it so we could be certain," Charlotte said.

  "What do you mean, certain?"

  "You didn't seem interested. I thought. . . well, I wanted to be absolutely sure Pavel Kirilov was dealt with. Dmitri Baronski was killed too," she added lamely.

  "Didn't you listen to a word said at Listoel?" Victor demanded. "We have got other, more urgent, problems right now. Third-rate crime lords have to wait their turn. But we would have got round to Kirilov, nobody screws Event Horizon about like he's done and gets away with it. You were given Julia Evans's word on it. What more do you want, a thumbprinted contract?"

  Charlotte rubbed her bare arms, suddenly chilly in the air-conditioned office. The disgust and contempt in Victor's voice was almost unbearable.

  "Just one shot from a Strategic Defence platform," she pleaded. "That's all it needs. Pavel Kirilov is going to call me before his spaceplane docks, we'll know when he's in range."

  "No, he's not going to call you," Lloyd said. "And we're not shooting anyone right now. We can't, thanks to you."

  She gave him a fearful glance.

  "Screen six," he said, and pointed through the glass.

  The delta-wing spaceplane was inside the lip of the southern hub crater, hanging below the docking spindle. Small blue flames stabbed out of the reaction-control nozzles, lining it up for a landing on the crater wall. Two sets of doors had hinged open on either side of the dorsal ridge. Black thermal-dump panels had concertinaed out, and folded back parallel with the wings, making way for silvered dishes and framework racks to rise out of their recesses. Charlotte peered forwards. There were squat cylinders nestling in the racks, their front ends were like insect eyes, a multisegment hemisphere of black chrome lenses, a large bell-shaped nozzle protruded from the rear. Now she knew what to look for, she could see the gold-foil covered boxes of lasers on telescopic arms rising above the dishes.

  "That's Kirilov?" she asked, her voice had become a croak.

  "Oh no," Victor said. "Kirilov is still on his approach phase. That's Leol Reiger. You remember him? The two of you almost met on the Colonel Maitland."

  She bit her lower lip, fighting the tears building behind her eyes. Nothing. Nothing she ever did turned out right.

  The office's terminal bleeped. Lloyd picked up a handset and listened for a few seconds. "It's Leol Reiger," he said. "He says he wants to talk to Julia."

  "Talk to him, Sean," Victor said. "Stall him if you can."

  Lloyd opened up the communication circuit. The flatscreen remained blank. Charlotte edged well out of the camera's pick up field.

  "This is Governor Francis," Sean said.

  "Where's Julia Evans?" Leol Reiger asked.

  "Unavailable. I'm all you're going to get."

  "OK, Mr. Governor, you and I need to come to an arrangement."

  "You have no docking clearance, Mr. Reiger, and I'm not authorized to make deals."

  "Never learn, you people, do you? Your SD platforms are flicked, otherwise you would have snuffed us ten minutes ago. We're coming in. Now how much damage we cause to that very delicate biosphere of yours in the process is down to you."

  "How so?"

  "I want Charlotte Fielder."

  Charlotte let out a soft moan, the sound of her heart pounding was very loud, all the glass walls of the office were suddenly rushing towards her. Hands clamped round her upper arms, guiding her into a chair as her legs buckled.

  "Have her brought to the docking bay," Leol Reiger said.

  "Never heard of her," Sean said.

  "Wrong. She's been on a bit of a spending spree in your shops today. She's up here. Find her and bring her to me."

  "Otherwise?"

  "We come hunting for her. And you know me, that will become very messy. Guaranteed."

  "What do you want her for?"

  "She knows where to find something I'm looking for."

  "Don't," Charlotte gulped. "I don't."

  Lloyd knelt down beside her, "Shush," he said softly. "It's all right." His arm went round her shoulder.

  She hated herself for being so weak, especially in front of Fabian.

  "She tells me where it is, and I pick it up," said Leol Reiger, "then I leave. Nobody comes to any grief that way. Simple."

  Sean looked helplessly at Victor. The security chief threw his hands in the air.

  "We don't hand people over to tekmercs," Sean said. "I suggest you refer back to Clifford Jepson if you want to know where the source of atomic structuring is located, yes?"

  There was a brief pause.

  "Gotta hand it to you people," said Leol Reiger. "You're well plugged in. So you know what'll happen if I don't get that little fuck-dolly. Think about it. You've got five minutes."

  Victor's fist came down on the desk top. "Bloody hell. Why hasn't Clifford Jepson briefed Reiger on how to contact the alien?"

  "Do you want me to recall the crash team back to the airlock complex?" Lloyd asked anxiously.

  "Looks like we'll have to," Victor said. "Do we know if Reiger's spaceplane has a datalink with any of the geosync communication platforms?"

  "I'll get Bernie to run a check on their data traffic," Lloyd said.

  "Do that. If not, we'll offer to plug him in to Jepson direct."

  "He'll want to know why you're making that kind of offer, yes?" Sean said.

  "Yeah," Victor growled. "Maybe we can spin him something about not being able to find Charlotte. Hell, we've got to give him something."

  Lloyd picked up a handset, then frowned. "Now what?"

  Charlotte turned to look into the command post. There was a commotion round one of the consoles, its operator shouting into his headset mike. Two supervisors stood behind him, leaning over his shoulders.

  Lloyd raised the handset to his face. "Bernie, what's going on?"

  Charlotte instinctively checked on the spaceplane. The undercarriage had unfolded. As she watched, it touched down on the crater wall. The wheels blurred with speed.

  "There's someone in the docking complex," Lloyd blurted.

  "Not one of my people," Sean said. "They were all taken out."

  "I wonder," Victor said thoughtfully. "Lloyd, put the intruder on this screen."

  Lloyd muttered into the handset. The desk terminal's flat-screen lit up. It was another of the southern endcap's interminable stone-walled corridors. Someone was walking al
ong it, dressed in a blue maintenance division jumpsuit.

  "Run an ident check on him," Victor said.

  Lloyd typed hurriedly on the terminal keyboard.

  The spaceplane had finished its acceleration run. Its nose began to turn in towards the southern endcap.

  "Got him," Lloyd said.

  Victor bent over to scan the data flowing down the flatscreen.

  "His name is Talbot Lombard," Lloyd read. "Aged forty-one, got his communications technology degree from Hamburg University. Came up to New London eight years ago, employed by Globecast, worked setting up their franchise in the southern endcap. Fired seven years ago for pirating programmes. His return ticket was never used, no record of further employment in New London."

  "A Celestial Apostle," Victor said. "One who'd know all about Clifford Jepson's arms trading. And how to get in contact."

  "You think he's the interface?"

  "Has to be," Victor said. "And he'll take Leol Reiger straight down into the caves."

  "If Reiger doesn't shoot him first, yes?" Sean said.

  "So cynical," Victor muttered with a grin. He straightened up, pointing two fingers at the big flatscreen outside, and shooting. "Got you, Reiger."

  "What about the Dolgoprudnensky spaceplane?" Sean asked. "They're due to reach us in another ten minutes."

  "I'll call Pavel Kirilov," Charlotte said. "If you want. Explain that I haven't really got the generator data." She thought of facing that cold clinical expression again, and shivered; but she desperately wanted to do something right, try and repair a little bit of the damage.

  "I think it's a bit late for that," Victor said.

  "That's not the answer, anyway," Fabian said. She heard the old sneer in his voice.

  "No?" Victor asked.

  "Course not. It's simple, stupid. This is your story: The second spaceplane is assaulting New London, it's already knocked out your defences; and the Governor officially requires assistance in dealing with it. So call Greg's Russian general friend, the one that's authorized to use the CoDefence League's Strategic Defence platforms, and explain exactly who's inside that spaceplane."

  Charlotte watched Victor and Lloyd exchange a nonplussed glance, then gasped. On the big flatscreen behind them, black armour-suited figures were emerging from the spaceplane and bouncing in long steps across the crater wall towards the docking complex.