Nano

by Sam Fisher

  ‘Nice work!’ Chloe responded as she watched a small metal box descend on a cable dropping from an opening in the underside of the Big Mac. It stopped a metre from the roof. She opened the top of the box, gave Lucky a final pat on his velvety head and placed him inside. Closing the lid, she could hear the puppy whine.

  ‘You really are the lucky one, buddy,’ she said as the box started to ascend.

  She heard another, louder sound coming from the underside of the gigantic aircraft and as the little box rose, a Cage began to descend towards her. Chloe loved this machine and had once announced over coffee on Tintara that it was her favourite piece of E-Force equipment.

  ‘Really?’ Pete had responded, surprised. ‘I’ve used it, as you know, and it is a very cool piece of kit. But I wouldn’t say it’s my favourite.’

  ‘Ah, that’s because Sigourney Weaver isn’t your heroine, Pete.’

  He had looked at her, puzzled, then turned to Mai sitting next to him. ‘What’s she talking about?’

  ‘Aliens, the movie?’

  ‘Oh, right. Gotcha. What was it, again? “Get away from her, you bitch!” Yeah, I see the similarities.’

  ‘Not sure how to take that,’ Chloe had retorted.

  But it was true, she had identified with Ripley, the heroine of the Alien movies and in her early teens she had watched that scene in which Ms Weaver had seen off the mother alien at the end of Aliens perhaps 100 times. Even after all she had done – joining the French Foreign Legion, piloting jets and training other pilots – getting into the Cage still seemed surreal, just like something out of a science fiction film. And it wasn’t just the sci-fi connotations of the machine. She thought it was simply beautiful. Designed by CARPA scientists, the Cage would barely wobble if it were hit by a force of half a million newtons – equivalent to a Steinway piano landing onto it after falling five floors. Over 2.2 metres tall, it looked like a giant Meccano figure made from grey maxinium, one of the toughest materials known.

  The Cage settled onto the roof with a dull thud. Chloe decoupled the cable from each side and keyed in an alphanumeric on the wrist control of her cybersuit. A door to one side of the machine swung outwards and a set of three metal steps unfolded. Chloe climbed the steps, stabbed at a button on a sleek plastic control panel inside the Cage and the stairs sank back into the main structure. The door clicked shut.

  ‘I’m in,’ she said into her comms.

  ‘Great, Chloe. So the plan is . . . try to get down to –’ A shot rang out and on the Big Mac flight deck Mark heard a deep thud through the comms of the Cage. ‘What was that?’

  Chloe reacted with the reflexes of the trained pilot she was. ‘Sniper, eleven o’clock,’ she yelled.

  ‘Christ! Okay, you’re booted up and ready to roll, Chloe?’

  The crunch of machine-gun fire reverberated through the comms. Bullets smashed into the side of the Cage. Chloe saw a flash of orange close to the door into Floor 202. Then she looked up to see a cascade of shrapnel tumbling down from the underside of the Big Mac. Like all E-Force vehicles, the plane was made from maxinium, a lightweight alloy that could shrug off anything short of a missile attack.

  ‘This guy’s crazy!’ Chloe exclaimed and yanked on the controls of the Cage, swung it around as though it were a handbag and headed towards the shooter. She saw a flash of movement as a figure dressed in black and wearing a balaclava slipped behind a large chimney to one side of the doorway.

  ‘Chloe,’ Mark called through the comms. ‘We’re going up, just to be on the safe side.’

  She looked towards the sky and saw the Big Mac slowly ascending.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘What do you think, Mark?’ Chloe replied nonchalantly. And then she caught rapid movement in the far right side of her field of vision. The figure emerged from behind a raised parapet only a few metres away from the Cage. She turned and the gunman leapt onto the machine.

  She reacted instinctively, clutching the controls as though she were about to lose balance. The man was now sprawled on the top of the Cage. He pushed forwards and brought his face down to stare in through the front screen.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Chloe said out loud. She couldn’t make out his features except for black eyes and, in the mouth opening of the balaclava, gritted teeth.

  She jolted around the Cage, trying to shrug him off. But he was gripping the top canopy with strong hands and seemed to know exactly where he could get a hold.

  Chloe swivelled again, more violently. This time, the man’s legs flew out from the side of the Cage but he still held on. Then he shifted, wrapped his left arm around one of the support struts of the machine and with terrifying speed brought his free hand around, levelled a huge handgun, a S&W Magnum, held the barrel against the polycarbonate resin window as close as possible to Chloe’s head and pulled the trigger.

  50

  ‘Chloe? Chloe?’

  For several seconds she was too shocked to respond to Mark’s urgent calls. Of course, she had nothing to fear – the windows of the Cage were all but impregnable. She knew that. But even someone with nerves of pure steel like Chloe would be hard-pressed not to be a little shaken when a magnum, the world’s most powerful handgun, goes off inches from their head.

  She span around and screamed viciously, jolting the Cage as aggressively as she could. But it was a futile gesture – the man had vanished.

  ‘Chloe?’

  ‘Yeah Mark.’

  ‘You okay? We have it all on visual. The man has sprinted over to the parapet, dropped out of sight.’

  ‘Just a bit shaken. What in God’s name was all that about?’

  ‘Can’t answer that for sure, Chloe. We’ve sent the footage to Tintara. Tom’s getting onto it. Sybil might spot something from the film. In the meantime, I would switch on the electrostatic field.’

  ‘Will do. Everything’s fine here. I’m heading back into the building.’

  She touched the control panel and activated a low-powered electrostatic field around the Cage. Anyone touching the machine would get a shock, like the jolt from a cattle prod – enough to stop them but not enough to cause any permanent damage. Swinging around, she moved off to the doorway into the Tower.

  She was seething with rage and felt oddly violated, furious that someone would have the nerve to attack her in the Cage. But her assailant clearly knew a lot about the machine. He had known exactly how to get onto the outside of it. He had known precisely where to place his hands and feet. He would have had no delusions about causing the Cage any damage. He knew Chloe would be unharmed. So what was it all about?

  Shrugging off these thoughts, she turned her attention back to the job in hand. Slamming the Cage through the opening, she smashed her way into the corridor, letting the top scrape the ceiling, bringing down masonry and plaster as she went.

  At the top of the steps, Chloe made a few adjustments to the controls, then moved down the stairway. This took her to another stretch of corridor and from there a flight of stairs, the lower section strewn with rubble.

  She made mincemeat of the blockage, tossing great slabs of concrete and steel beams behind her as she surged through the rubble and smashed a 2-metre-wide opening in the barricade as though she were tossing aside firewood and kindling. Three minutes after plunging into the building from the roof, she was back on Floor 202 and setting the controls of the Cage to take her across the shattered mall towards the emergency exit in the southeast corner of the tower.

  51

  ‘Dimitri, did you get any images of the shooter?’ Mark asked.

  He was at the other end of the command console, his back to Mark, concentrating on a screen in front of him and didn’t reply for a few moments.

  ‘Dimitri?’

  The Ukrainian raised his left hand and tapped at a keyboard with his right. Then he span around. ‘Yes I did, actually.’ A big smile spread across his face.

  Mark got up and strode over to the console. ‘Fantastic,’ he said. ‘Get these over to Tom.
I’m going to contact the nearest NATO force.’ He walked back to his chair, leaned over the command console and tapped at the light keyboard in front of him. Twenty seconds later, he had punched in an encrypted number from the Big Mac database.

  A Home Counties voice spilled from the main speakers aboard the Big Mac. ‘This is HMS Suffolk. ID please, over.’

  ‘E-Force. 127899978XCD#1,’ Mark replied and waited a few moments.

  ‘Good morning, E-Force,’ a man responded, a note of awe in his voice. ‘This is Captain Nathan Fenwick. How may I help you?’

  ‘Commander Fenwick. We have a situation here and you are the nearest NATO vessel carrying operational SAS or Delta Force. We need your help.’

  52

  72 metres beneath the English Channel

  Pete picked his way towards the source of the sound. It was coming from one of the carriages in the middle of the train. Mai followed close behind. ‘This way,’ she called. Pete paused for a second and turned. Mai was pointing to their left. The sound came again. Weaker, quieter this time.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said and followed Mai. She was two paces ahead, weaving a careful route between piles of debris and twisted metal.

  She reached the rear entrance to the carriage and scanned the interior with the powerful light from her helmet. This part of the train was badly smashed up. The florescent ceiling light had crashed to the floor of the passageway running alongside the compartments, shattering the perspex cover. Not a single window remained intact in the carriage and there were shards of glass everywhere. Wires hung from the ceiling and protruded from the lower part of the wall and there was a strong smell of oil and burning plastic.

  The sound had stopped. Pete was at the entrance and was about to say something but Mai lifted a gloved finger to her lips. He paused and they each strained to hear anything that could lead them to the stricken woman.

  Then it came again. ‘Help! Please . . . help!’

  ‘It’s coming from the end of the corridor,’ Mai said, and walked quickly along the passageway. At the end there were doors to left and right, each leading to toilets. The one on the right was half open. Mai could just make out the head and shoulders of a dead man, his face a repugnant shade of blue, his eyes almost popping out of his head.

  Mai turned to the other door and grabbed the handle.

  ‘Hello?’ came a surprised voice.

  ‘Hello. Please stay where you are. I’m from E-Force, we’re here to help.’

  Silence.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello,’ the voice replied again. ‘Sorry, I . . . my baby.’

  ‘Your baby?’

  ‘He’s with me here. I dashed in. I’m a biochemist. I knew something. I . . . I soaked some of our clothes, put them under the door and around the window.’

  Mai was silent for a second. Pete came up and stared at her.

  ‘Excellent,’ Mai said.

  Pete checked his wrist for a toxicity level. Mai glanced at him and he shook his head.

  ‘Okay,’ Mai said loudly through the door. ‘What’s your name?’

  Pete and Mai heard a baby cry suddenly.

  ‘Mary. Dr Mary Veder. My son’s Billy, he’s nine months old.’

  ‘Okay, Mary. I’m Mai and my colleague here is Pete. We’ve checked the toxicity levels.’

  ‘Still pretty bad, I imagine,’ Mary replied, her voice shaky. Mai and Pete heard her shush the baby, who, after a moment, stopped crying.

  ‘Yes but we’ll get you out, don’t worry.’

  ‘How?’

  Pete glanced at Mai and then spoke for the first time. ‘Hi, Mary, this is Peter Sherringham. Listen carefully. We need to work together.’

  53

  Pete and Mai had plenty of experience with every piece of E-Force equipment. Between missions, when they weren’t in the gym attending Pilates classes or refining emergency medical skills, they spent several hours each day flying the Silverbacks, the Hummingbirds and the Big Mac, testing new versions of Sonic Drills, Cages and an increasingly large selection of specially designed smart materials such as Bioweb.

  However, using it in training exercises and applying it operationally were two very different things and it was never as easy in reality as it appeared to be on paper or under controlled conditions.

  ‘I’ll give this a go, lass,’ Pete said to Mai. Stepping back, he pulled the container from his utility belt and tapped at a tiny keypad on the side. Then he lifted the device and held it at arm’s length using his thumb to activate it.

  The container emitted a high-pitched whine and a jet of green liquid shot out from a nozzle at the front. As it flew through the air, it expanded, turning from a narrow stream to a transparent sheet, a tiny fraction of a millimetre thick. Pete shifted the container and touched the keypad as he moved his hand. The sheet, now 2 metres long and 2 metres high, flew, edge-on, making contact with the wall of the corridor just to the left of the toilet door. Pete then repeated the process, sending a sheet of material to the right side of the door. With a subtle twist of his hand and another gentle tap on the keypad, a third and fourth sheet shot across the passage, forming a front and a roof for the cuboid structure. In training they had dubbed this an ‘anteroom’.

  He pulled the device back a few centimetres, ran a hand over the control pad and the high-pitched whistle changed note. As he and Mai watched, several million nanobots set to work forming a perfect seal along all the edges of the cuboid. Thirty seconds after the last of the sheets was in position, the sound from the machine in Pete’s hand stopped abruptly. The all-pervading creaking of the tunnel and the crackling of flames suddenly seemed horribly amplified.

  ‘Well,’ Mai said. ‘Looks pretty good. Let’s check.’

  Pete ran his wrist sensor over all the seals on the left and the top. Mai did the same on the other side. ‘What you got?’ she asked.

  ‘Hundred per cent integrity,’ Pete replied, a note of pride in his voice.

  ‘Me too. Well done!’

  ‘It’s just what I do,’ Pete joked. Then he was suddenly serious. ‘One more job, we have to decontaminate the air inside.’

  Mai approached the front of the anteroom. Lifting her hand, an electrostatic charge passed from her cybersuit into the Bioweb. This switched instantly the polarity of billions of molecules in the material, allowing her to pass through, but at the same time it kept out the air in the carriage, along with its deadly contaminants. She placed a small box, about 2 centimetres a side, on the floor.

  ‘Extraction set,’ she said and pushed a button on the side of the box. It emitted a barely audible hum. Sixty seconds later, the pitch changed to a high-register signal. Mai knelt beside it and checked a digital display on the side. Picking it up, she placed it in a pocket of her cybersuit that she then sealed. Crouching again, she placed an almost identical box where the first had been. ‘Re-aerating,’ she announced into the comms and touched a pad on the top. This immediately began sending fresh air into the ante-room.

  Pete pulled off his backpack, took out a pair of biohazard suits and handed them through to Mai. Pete watched her from outside. The light from her helmet had come on automatically. It looked a little fragmented through the shimmering translucent Bioweb material but he could see her perfectly clearly.

  ‘Okay,’ Pete heard Mai call to Mary through the toilet door. ‘Dr Veder, can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We have an isolation chamber constructed outside the door.’

  ‘How on earth?’

  ‘Don’t worry . . . No sorry, doctor. We’ve used a specially designed fabric that uses a negative electrostatic barrier to prevent anything other than suitably charged entities in or out.’

  ‘Wow!’ Mary exclaimed and Billy started crying again.

  ‘Okay, so Mary, can you open the door?’

  ‘Open the . . .?’ She sounded terrified.

  ‘I understand your anxiety but please, believe me. We tested the anteroom. It’s 100 per cent sealed.’<
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  ‘Yes but –’

  ‘Dr Veder, Mary, this is the only way we can –’

  ‘Yes, yes, okay. Right. I’m just . . .’

  ‘Sure. I understand.’

  Mai could hear rustling from beyond the door, then the sound of sodden fabric being slid across a hard surface.

  ‘I’m removing the towels and wet clothes,’ Mary said. Her voice was trembling. ‘Oh my God! This is . . .’

  ‘Yes Mary. I know. I know. It’s terrifying. But believe me, you’ll be perfectly safe.’

  Mai heard the latch move to one side, the door ease inwards.

  Dr Mary Veder was a tall, slender woman, with big black eyes and shoulder-length mousy hair. She was dressed casually in tight jeans, sweatshirt and trainers, her hair pulled back in a bun. Streaks of eyeliner had run down her cheeks and her face was badly bruised. Billy was wrapped in a blanket. Mai could see his bald head and watery blue eyes. He started to cry again.

  ‘Oh my Lord!’ Mary exclaimed, taking a step into the anteroom. ‘You guys are amazing.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Mai said. ‘But we’re not out of the woods just yet, Mary. You’ll recognise this.’ She held up a biohazard suit.

  ‘What about . . .?’ She looked down at her baby son.

  ‘We only have one size, so Billy’s going to have to go in an adult suit.’

  Mary laughed suddenly, a release of pent-up emotion. Then she burst into tears. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Mai replied giving the woman an encouraging smile.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll forgive us the fashion faux pas,’ Dr Veder said, wiping her eyes. ‘Could you hold him, please?’

  Mai took Billy. She hadn’t held a baby since her own daughter Greta was this age, a long, long time ago.

  Mary clambered into the biohazard suit and tried to find the usual clasps but they weren’t here.

  Mai stepped forwards. Holding Billy tight with one arm, she pointed to the almost invisible seal along two edges where the usual Velcro strips would have been. ‘Just run a finger along there,’ she said.