The Nano Flower

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The Celestials' village gave Suzi the fucking creeps. A jungle village buried inside an asteroid, mega-primitive sophistication. It was a real sense tripper. Twenty billion tonnes of rock above, and a vacuum infinity below. Bad.

  She worked hard to block out the conflict.

  Melvyn was doing his job properly. Sending scouts into the surrounding catacombs, building a detailed picture of the zone. Major fault zone—why the fuck did Julia have to call it that? And just how many minor zones were there, exactly?

  She sidestepped her way along one of the cracks leading off from the village cave. At least that tit of an armourer back at Listoel had been right about her knee, the suit carried it well. The crack opened into a dry cave with a long fissure along its sharply sloping bottom. The rock glittered in the infrared beam her helmet lights gave off. Tiny flecks of metal frozen in silica. She couldn't see the base of the fissure, and it was too thin for anyone to climb. Not even the Celestials had used the cave.

  She used her rangefinder laser to map the cave accurately, and spliced the result in with her inertial guidance unit data. When she scuffled her way back into the village cave the package was added to the composite Melvyn was assembling. He updated her own 'ware in return.

  The catacomb map was superimposed over her photon-amp image. Cumulus clouds of solid light—reds, blues, and greens—caves, passages wide enough for a suit to traverse, dangerous cracks, the lake. Maybe fault zone was right after all. The surrounding area was rotten with cavities, as if the rock was mouldy.

  Then there was Dennis Naverro to cultivate, one of the crash team's remaining two sac psychics. Melvyn had wanted to widen some of the cracks leading off from the cave to give the team greater tactical positioning. She'd teamed up with Dennis, the two of them blasting away awkward chunks of rock with their Konica rip guns, kicking the debris out of the way. Turning the crack into a corridor an armour suit could run down. She would need Dennis later; he didn't know it yet but he was going to pinpoint Leol Reiger for her.

  The flatscreens in the middle of the village allowed her to monitor the spaceplane's progress. A squad of tekmercs had disembarked, penetrating the airlock sector.

  Victor and Lloyd McDonald squirted over the images from security cameras in the southern endcap docking complex. She watched the image with her right eye, leaving the left free to pick the rock pinnacles that needed clearing from the crack. The images interlaced, both ghostly, transparent, her attention wandering between the two. Concentration would give one a solidity, banishing the second.

  She saw Talbot Lombard standing in a corridor, hands raised above his head as the tekmercs boiled out of a space-plane reception room. Lockheed rip guns were levelled at him.

  "Hey, what is this?" A handsome tanned face registered genuine bafflement.

  He was flung against the wall, two tekmercs gripped his arms and pinned him there, feet twitching twenty centimetres above the ground. An armour-suited figure walked ponderously down the corridor, and stopped in front of him.

  Leol Reiger. Had to be. Going for pose, as always. Crap artist.

  "Listen, man," Talbot Lombard yelled frantically. "Where's Jepson? Which one of you is Jepson? I've got a deal, man!"

  "Congratulations, you just asked the right question," Leol Reiger said. "You get to live a few minutes more."

  "Did Jepson send you?"

  "That's right. Who are you?"

  "Tol, they call me Tol."

  "Well, they call me Tol, where can I find the nuclear force generator data?"

  "Down in the cave. He'll bring it, he said he would. I was supposed to take Jepson there tonight, after he'd put together a deal to manufacture atomic structuring technology."

  "You're the interface?"

  "Yes."

  "Between Jepson and who?"

  "I don't know, man. He runs a drone, real smart hard-wired. I couldn't backtrack its interface."

  "So you've never actually met this person?"

  "No, never."

  Leol Reiger stepped back, making room for another tekmerc. This one stood so close to Talbot Lombard the suit helmet virtually touched his nose. Talbot Lombard closed his eyes and began to whine, fingers scrabbling against the rock wall.

  Suzi felt her belly rumble. The guy in the suit must be a psychic. Not that she was squeamish when it came to using them. Had to be done most deals these days. But there was no way to fight something like that, nothing to get hold of, nothing to kick. Fucking spooky, rutting around in someone's mind.

  The two tekmercs holding Talbot Lombard let go, he dropped to the floor, legs collapsing. His breath was coming in huge judders.

  "The truth. Well done," said Leol Reiger. "Where are these caves of yours?" His boot nudged Talbot Lombard. "Where?"

  "Northern endcap, they're under the northern endcap. I swear."

  "Show us." A gauntlet grasped Talbot Lombard's upper arm and pulled him to his feet. He flopped about like a rag doll.

  "Now," said Reiger.

  The tekmerc squad marched off up the corridor, with Talbot Lombard scrambling to keep up. Twenty-five of the shits. Suzi wondered if she knew any of them. Most likely.

  "There are four coaches waiting for them in the docking complex's station," Victor said. His voice was wonderfully smooth, audio silk. Him and Leol, mirror men, the same on opposite sides.

  "Are the Celestial Apostles clear?" Melvyn asked.

  "Yes, we collected them from the Whitechapel station; they're being parcelled out around the hotels. The tekmercs are all yours. I don't want them loose in Hyde Cavern, Melvyn. Snuff them."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Suzi?" Victor asked.

  "Here."

  "This is Melvyn's show, OK? I know you want Reiger. So do I. But it's a collective kill. Dead is dead."

  "What is this? You been rapping with Greg?"

  "I know you, Suzi."

  She smiled unseen in her helmet. "Bollocks. I'm not gonna screw Melvyn's deal. Hell, I'm gonna make him an offer when this is over, plug him into my catalogue. Too flicking good to waste his time with Event Horizon."

  "Take care, Suzi."

  "Yeah. I was kinda planning on it."

  * * * *

  Give him this: Melvyn knew his tactics. She advised when he asked for her opinion, knowing how Leol ran his hardline deals, probing with expendables—the whole world was expendable to Leol. But figuring out the combat routine was down to Melvyn.

  Leol Reiger was heading for Moorgate station, using three of the coaches. It meant they'd be coming in through the lake cave. Two of the crash team were rigging sensors and setting charges to seal the lake off once the tekmercs were inside. There'd be no way out except through the village, and that was where Melvyn was concentrating his fire-power, the killing ground.

  The security captain stood on top of the staircase, directing the crash team into position. There were ledges up near the roof, in the cracks, behind the piles of rock rubble produced when the Celestials levelled the floor. Even a couple of them lying in a small cave above the ring of solaris spots. Climbed up there like a pair of spiders.

  Suzi and Dennis Naverro were in one of the cracks which led back to three deep caves.

  "Suzi, Dennis, back a metre," Melvyn said.

  She took two steps back.

  "OK, that's where your infrared signature cuts off."

  "Got it." She loaded the coordinate into the suit guidance 'ware, then pushed her thumb into the flinty rock and scratched a line. "Hey, Dennis, you got any intuition loaded in your skull?"

  "No, sorry about that, Suzi," Dennis said. "All I got is espersense, see? Handy enough for our kind of work."

  "Yeah, right." He had the most gentle Welsh lilt, almost purring. She couldn't visualise his face, must have seen it back at Listoel and on the Anastasia, though.

  Whoops and cheering came over her earpiece. When she looked back out into the cave there was a rust-coloured dog dashing round the huts, three armour suit
s in pursuit, their boots tearing long gashes in the thick carpet of moss. She would have just zapped the fucking thing.

  One of the team caught up with the dog. It howled as the gauntlet clamped round its hind leg.

  "Lock it in one of the huts," Melvyn said.

  Suzi called up the feed from the security centre. It was a roof camera in Moorgate station. The last two tekmercs were disappearing into the service tunnel. Quarter of an hour, maximum.

  She felt the hot calm of a combat high building inside. Checked round the cave. The two tech specialists rigging the lake cave charges had finished, walking down the staircase with Melvyn.

  Melvyn ordered the solaris spots to be turned down. They were reduced to a vague ginger glimmer, filling the cave with dusky shadows. Her photon amp cut in, washing away the murky outlines with opalescent blue and grey silhouettes.

  She could hear Melvyn's footsteps as he made a final inspection round, clumping on the rock, then the softer wet thuds as he walked over the moss.

  "Radio silence until after we blow the charges," Melvyn said. "You know the form once they enter the kill ground. Get to it."

  "Amen," Suzi mumbled. She plugged her suit's interface socket into an optical lead the tech specialists had laid out, careful not to tug the thin fibre with her gauntlets. The suit's 'ware meshed the image from the lake cave sensors into her photon-amp feed. It seemed to be working OK.

  The only noise left was a regular gurgling coming from a pump. It was directly opposite her, to one side of the staircase. Water from the lake was seeping through hairline splits in the rock, dribbling down the wall where it was collected in a rough pool that the Celestials had chopped into the floor. The pump fed their irrigation pipes, and supplied the communal washroom.

  She couldn't hear the dog any more, not even with the suit's external mike boosted up to full sensitivity.

  Dennis tapped her on the arm, and pointed back down the crack. She gave him a thumbs-up and retreated down past the scratch on the wall.

  The image from the lake cave wasn't particularly clear, the sensor was sitting behind one of the biolum panels, looking down on the entrance which Leol's squad would come through.

  Twelve minutes. The prick was taking his own good time.

  Weapons Check.

  Symbology zipped through her mind. Everything was on line, rip gun magazines charged, hardware functional, targeting sensors operative. Just like the previous eight times.

  Something moved in the lake cave. A reconnaissance disk, skipping erratically through the air like a clockwork bat. Sensors picked up its datalink emission, high-pitched chittering.

  The first tekmerc came through the entrance, rip gun tracking round the cave. There was a burst of coded radio pulses. The rest of the squad began to move in.

  Suzi crossed herself, and started counting the tekmercs. Talbot Lombard was hustled along by the eighth squad member. He looked terrible, white, sweating, little spasms running down his spine.

  More coded radio chatter was exchanged. The reconnaissance disk coasted along the passage towards the village cave.

  Fifteen, sixteen. . . Suzi realised she was mouthing the numbers silently as the tekmercs emerged, and jammed her teeth together.

  She switched inputs to the village cave sensors. The tekmerc's reconnaissance disk darted nervously out of the passage, hovering above the first stair. A couple of the squad followed it, spinning out of the entrance in a fast, well-practised motion, crouching down, rip guns swinging in wide arcs.

  The flatscreens in the middle of the village suddenly flared white, casting a wintry glow over the huts circling the podium. A star was erupting into a phosphorescent nebula with a dense arc-bright core.

  Looked like the Co-Defence League's kinetic missiles had snuffed the Dolgoprudnensky spaceplane. Clean and sweet.

  Eight tekmercs were in the village cave. Four of them descending the staircase. Talbot Lombard stood on the top of the stairs, looking round in trepidation.

  The first charges in the lake cave detonated. Suzi heard the explosion through her suit pick-up mike. The ground trembled.

  A tekmerc was punched out of the passage by the blast-wave, somersaulting through the air. The pair holding on to Talbot Lombard lost their footing and went tumbling. Lombard landed heavily, mouth wide, screeching unheard torment.

  "Go," Melvyn said.

  Suzi cancelled the optical sensor inputs, and headed forwards. The second set of charges in the lake cave went off. She wished they'd brought enough charges to bring the whole fucking roof down on the bastards. Would have made life a bloody sight easier.

  She reached the mouth of the crack as the first glare flares ignited. Small nova-bright spheres soaring out of shoulder launchers on the tekmercs' suits, swarming like a miniature galaxy above the village. Black overload spots ruptured right across her photon-amp image.

  Tekmercs were coming out of the lake cave passage so fast that for one moment she thought they were equipped with jetpacks again. They were diving for cover, behind troughs, into crannies. The crash team opened fire, rip gun bolts slamming out from the walls, furious dazzle streaks that boosted the light intensity to a near-universal glare sheet. Her photon-amp image dimmed alarmingly, greying out to protect her retinas. She saw the bone-dry huts catch fire as a sleet of glare flare embers rained down. A tekmerc was speared by two rip gun bolts, disintegrating into a jarred purple corona of ionized molecules. Her pick up mike had cut out, she could feel the suit vibrating from the sonic battering. The energy pouring into the cave had turned the air into a cloying orange haze, fast gusts were roaring past her down the crack as the pressure build up escaped into cooler areas. Temperature displays were flashing amber caution warnings. The suit's heat exchanger was already operating near its safety margins, and she was partially sheltered. It wouldn't take long before heat alone snuffed the tekmercs.

  Activate Weapons Suite.

  Target graphics materialized over the burning huts, graded scarlet circles. She brought the rip gun round. Dark, humanoid figure running with inhuman speed, spitting starpoints of intolerable light. Framed by red circles. Her rip gun discharged short beams of solid sunlight, the muscle armour thrumming as it compensated for the jackhammer recoil. She wiped the segmented line across the fleeing figure, watching the suit outline crumble.

  Then her reflexes were automatically flattening her back against the rock. "Shoot and shift," Greg had told her, down in Peterborough and a long time ago. "Stasis is death."

  A fusillade of tekmerc rip gun bolts chewed the mouth of the crack. Molten rock sprayed out.

  "Dennis, where's Reiger?"

  He was crouched down, firing up at the staircase. "I can't. . ." His voice dissolved into a roar of static as the tekmercs cranked up their ECM. He jumped back fast as lava pebbles splattered his suit.

  "Shit!" she screamed.

  There was a lull in the firing. The air in the cave was choked with glare flares. All they had to do was wait until the tekmercs ran out of chaff.

  One of the crash team up above the solaris spots opened fire with his plasma carbine, pulses jabbing down and splashing open against the floor, violet ripples expanding on the edge of visibility. Two pulses hit an armour suit, flinging it into the air, spinning madly; its legs were missing. Tekmercs answered with a deluge of rip gun bolts from around the cave.

  It was a knock-on effect. Every bolt revealed someone's location. The crash team fired on exposed tekmercs who shot back.

  Melvyn ordered a round of airbuster grenades into the cave. They exploded five metres above the ground in a blaze of ragged plasma, lightning tendrils lashing down, grounding out through tekmerc armour suits.

  Suzi squeezed off a couple more bolts. One of them catching a tekmerc head on. Total detonation. This time there was no return fire.

  The ECM jamming blanket ended abruptly.

  "Suzi? You OK, girl?" Dennis asked.

  "Yeah. No problem. Snuffed two. Can you spot Reiger for me?"

 
"I'll try."

  "Did any of them get out?" Melvyn demanded.

  "Isaac here, chief. Thought I saw two of them make it to Dean's cave."

  "Dean? Dean, respond please."

  "One was heading for Neil's cave, chief."

  "Snuffed him," Neil called.

  "Dean, respond."

  The glare flares were definitely thinning out. She saw explosions away on the other side of the cave, orange fireballs splattering against the rock.

  "Robbie, Lilian, get a reconnaissance disk down Dean's cave fast," Melvyn ordered.

  Another bout of rip gun bolts ricocheted round the cave. More explosions smothered the rock opposite her. This time she caught the black darts flicking through the air before the blasts.

  "Hey, the pricks are using missiles," she cried.

  The pump casing was torn open, glowing metal fragments whirling away. A narrow jet of water fountained horizontally out of the rock wall above the pool; chunks of rock flaked away from the gash that had opened, skittering along the blackened smouldering moss. New cracks multiplied across the wall with frightening speed.

  "Take out those flicking missile launchers," Melvyn shouted.

  Tekmerc rip gun bolts mauled the wall, splintering the rock, concussion clawing the cracks apart. Two more spouts of water gushed out. A third formation of missiles impacted.

  Suzi knew the rock wall was going to collapse under that kind of onslaught. "Dennis, where is that fucker?" She had to fight against crushing the rip gun butt she was wired so hot.

  "Left of the stairs, behind a trough."

  She swivelled like something mechanical. Five possible troughs. Infrared was no use, the whole cave still crawled with energy. The rip gun smashed the first trough apart.

  There was nobody behind it.

  Then the rock wall shattered.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The first cave was a small one, with a single red-tinged biolum globe jammed up between the saw-teeth rock snags of the roof. Rosy light made it seem warmer than it was. Someone had hacked a circular depression in the floor, four metres across; it was full of some transparent gel with a tough flexible plastic sheet stretched across the top.