The Nano Flower

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Victor saw a lift opening, and ran for the doors.

  * * * *

  There was a press of people at the head of the corridor T-junction. Two drone stretchers slid past Victor as he arrived, black bodybags zipped up. A couple of meditechs in white jumpsuits followed them down the corridor.

  Lloyd McDonald watched them go with an expression of controlled fury. "Tekmercs, hardline flicking tekmercs active in New London," he said. "Hell, Victor, I'm sorry, this is one almighty great cock-up."

  "Damage assessment?" Victor asked. It was the only way to do it, job first, shout and mourn later.

  "They're inside," Lloyd shook his head disbelievingly. "They got into the Strategic Defence Ops Room. They loaded a top-grade virus into the screening 'ware, and shot their way in. Now they're holed up in there but tight. My people think they winged two of them, with one possible fatality. But there are still three confirmed actives left."

  The corridor was four metres wide, three high; walls, floor, ceiling were solid rock, a single biolum strip ran along the ceiling. A lead-coloured slab of titanium/carbon alloy had risen out of the floor ten metres past the T-junction, solid and irresistible. Lloyd's people were already working on it.

  The lock panel on the wall had been unscrewed, hanging on springs of coloured wire. A slim grey plastic case containing a terminal and several customized augmentation 'ware modules lay on the floor below it, fibre-optic cables plugging it into exposed circuit blocks. Suction-cup sensors were clinging to the edge of the door. Three security division technicians were standing round the case, talking in low, worried tones, ignoring the data displays filling the unit's small flatscreens.

  Victor walked right up to the giant slab; estimating the gravity in the corridor at two-thirds standard.

  "They glitched the entire lock system," one of the technicians said. "We think they've physically burnt out the 'ware. If we want in, the door will have to be broken down."

  "Can you use a rip gun on it?" Victor asked.

  "No, sir, this is over a metre thick. We're going to have to set up a cutting beam, and that's going to take time."

  "How long?"

  "Quite a while."

  "Be more specific," Victor said forcefully.

  "Ninety minutes, maybe two hours, before we can start. You see, we'll have to bring in environmental equipment to cope with the heat and the atmospheric contamination which the beam will generate. That will all have to be plumbed in to the colony life-support systems."

  "It gets worse," Lloyd said. "This is only the first of three doors. All identical."

  "How about blasting through?" Victor asked.

  "We'd have to use shaped charges to blow the rock round the doors," said the technician. "And they're all countersunk; that means three or four blasts per door. It would take virtually the same amount of time as cutting, plus the blowback would ruin this entire floor of the security centre, and the environmental damage couldn't be contained as easily."

  "Bloody hell." Victor rapped his knuckles on the alloy. "What exactly can they do in there? Can the platforms be retargeted to shoot out the solar panels and industrial modules?"

  "Not at all," Lloyd said. "They can't activate a single platform, not without the authority codes. And Sean Francis is the only person who's got them."

  Victor gave Lloyd a sharp look. "He's not in there, is he?"

  "No. First thing I checked, he was having a meal in the residence. Should be here any minute."

  Victor turned back to the obdurate door, trying to visualize what was going on behind it. "Have you got a psychic that can see inside?"

  "I'm afraid not. There's two hundred metres of solid rock between here and the Ops Room, and the corridor zigzags. It was deliberately designed that way to stop any psychics from seeing inside. Not even a super-grade like Mandel could perceive it."

  "So what the bloody hell are they in there for?" Even as he said it he knew the answer. "Shit. With the platforms inactive, there's nothing to stop the spaceplanes from docking now."

  Lloyd punched a fist into his palm. "Of course. But who are they? They've obviously been up here for a while."

  "Dolgoprudnensky," Victor said automatically. It fitted, they'd known about Charlotte coming down from New London right from the start. Greg had suggested that Kirilov would probably send agents up here to search for the alien. They must have attacked the Ops Room in order to allow their spaceplane to dock. But why? He couldn't think what could be on board that was so important it forced them into breaking cover and abandoning their search to make sure it got into the colony.

  "We'd better check on those spaceplanes," Lloyd said.

  * * * *

  They arrived at the command post at the same time as Sean Francis. Victor showed his card to the door and went in, with Lloyd bringing Sean up to date behind him.

  The security command post was at the bottom of the security centre, where the gravity was virtually normal; a circular cavern cut into the rock, twenty-five metres in diameter, with a domed ceiling. It had three concentric console rings of terminals and communication stations, plugged into every part of the colony. The shirtsleeved desk jockeys operating them behaved with unruffled competence, filling the chamber with a sustained grumble of restless chatter. He was pleased to see there was no panic, just a smooth coordinated response to the alert status. Specialist technical and hardline teams being readied, transport priorities re-allocated, police and security personnel preparing to perform joint civilian control duties, keeping tourists and residents out of the way in case of an escalation, emergency services being brought to full stand-by status. He could remember the long hours spent finalizing contingency plans for the asteroid, that would be just after he was appointed Event Horizon's security chief, everything from biohazard procedure enforcement to full-scale evacuation.

  Theatre-sized flatscreens were spaced round the walls, showing grainy green and blue images from photon amps dotted around Hyde Cavern.

  Victor gave them a fast sweep, receiving a collage of rolling parkland, secluded gravel paths, small scurrying creatures, black glassy lakes, couples arm in arm, glaringly bright walls of illuminated buildings. It was New London at its usual pace, designer nightlife, providing an artificial fulfilment. There was no sign of any more tekmerc activity.

  A large cube hung down from the centre of the ceiling like a boxy obsidian stalactite. New London floated at its centre, rotating slowly, shadowless, every crag in the rock beautifully detailed, with the flame-shaped silver stipple of the archipelago twisting upwards. A shoal of spacecraft glided round the outside, cool blue spheres, projecting green vector lines that wrapped the whole colony in an undulating net. The four englobing sentry layers of Strategic Defence platforms were flashing an urgent amber, as was the outer shell of passive sensor ELINT satellites.

  "Where are the spaceplanes?" Victor asked Lloyd.

  "Bernie Parkin will know," Lloyd said. "He's the duty commander tonight."

  He walked down to the outer ring of consoles, and patted one of the desk jockeys on his shoulder. The man glanced over his shoulder, giving Victor a glimpse of a fifty-year-old face with rough leathery skin and thick lips, crinkled frown lines spread out from the corners of his grey eyes.

  "What's the spaceplane situation?" Lloyd asked. "Any movement?"

  "Sure thing," Bernie Parkin said. He reached over to one of the three keyboards on his console and tapped in an instruction sequence one banded. The image in the big ceiling cube began to shrink. A red dot swam into view with a green vector line extending right up to the southern end of New London.

  "That COV-325 pilot knows his stuff," Bernie Parkin said. "As soon as our targeting radar shut down they loosed off two missiles, probing the defence perimeter. Of course, the platforms didn't respond, so the spaceplane performed a four-G burn. It's heading straight for us."

  "So it's definitely armed?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "When will it get here?" Victor asked.

  "As
suming a four-G deceleration burn, it'll rendezvous in another eight minutes. Give it time to manoeuvre, and it'll be putting down in the southern hub crater in quarter of an hour."

  "Is there anything in the crater we can use to intercept it?" Victor asked.

  "Not a damn thing," Lloyd said.

  "OK. Assume it puts down in the crater," Victor said. "The tekmercs will enter the colony, probably in search of the alien. That means they'll be armed, suited-up as well."

  "Well, Christ, Victor, we're not equipped to handle muscle-armour suits," Lloyd said. "I've got a total of five rip guns in the armoury. But the tekmercs would just shoot back at any snipers until they've been blown to pieces. You'll have to call the crash team back to the docking complex, let them ambush the tekmercs."

  "I wonder," Victor mused. "Clifford Jepson had to know where to get in contact with the alien. And it must be done tonight if he's to sign up his industrial partner tomorrow."

  "You mean let them in unopposed?" Lloyd's voice rose an octave.

  "The crash team has got to fight the tekmercs somewhere, why not in the caves where there'll be minimal damage to the rest of the colony? And they'll have the advantage of surprise."

  "If it is carrying tekmercs, and if they go into the caves. That's a big assumption."

  "We'll wait and hope, because one of those spaceplanes is carrying Reiger. I know it. And allowing his squad into the caves is the only chance we'll have to fight them on our terms. If not, it'll be a running battle in Hyde Cavern. And that will be bad, Lloyd."

  "Yeah," Lloyd massaged the back of his neck with one hand, his face registering harrowing indecision. "Maybe, Victor. Christ, I don't have an alternative. But how do we find out which one is carrying Reiger?"

  "I don't know. I wonder if Greg could identify him for us?" Typical. He'd mistrusted Greg's intuition all along. But now he actually needed miracles performing. . . "Where's the second spaceplane?" he asked Bernie Parkin.

  "Just reaching the defence perimeter now, five thousand kilometres out. Still on a standard approach vector. ETA, twenty-five minutes. They're not in the same hurry as the COV-325. That timing is interesting."

  "Oh?"

  "The COV-325 was stuck out there for seventy-five minutes before the Dolgoprudnensky agents made their move on the Ops Room. And we initiated colony quarantine procedures four hours prior to that. The Dolgoprudnensky agents could have launched their assault at any time since the quarantine started. But they waited until the second spaceplane was nearing the defence perimeter. What I'm saying is: it looks like the platforms were shut down specifically to let that second spaceplane through."

  "And the Dolgoprudnensky agents in the Operations Room couldn't stop the first one from coming in either," Victor said.

  "Right."

  It had to be Reiger in the first spaceplane. But he still couldn't imagine what was in the Dolgoprudnensky spaceplane. "Get your people to evacuate the entire southern crater docking complex," he told Sean. "I don't want anyone in the way of those bastards when they come in."

  "Absolutely," Sean said.

  "Lloyd, your teams and the police are going to have to keep people clear of the tekmercs. We'll monitor their progress from here, and update as we go."

  "Right."

  What Victor actually wanted to do was concentrate on snuffing Reiger. He could almost justify the risk of exposing the snipers; kill the brain and the body becomes irrelevant. But he had the residents and tourists to consider. That was what security was about. And now, when it came down to it, he found he was just too dedicated to the ideal.

  The crash team would have to take out Reiger. Suzi would get her chance after all.

  "Sir." One of the desk jockeys at a communication station was waving for Victor's attention.

  "What is it?"

  "There's a call for you from Listoel, coming over the company secure link. Priority rating."

  "Put them through." Victor pulled his cybofax out of his pocket. The face that formed on the screen was familiar, one of the crash team hardliners.

  "What is it, Bailey? And be quick," Victor said. The man seemed very edgy.

  "Sorry, sir, but it's Fabian Whitehurst. The boy's just found out about New London being unplugged from the commercial communications circuits. Quite upset about it, he is; says he needs to talk to you or the boss. Says there's a spaceplane en route for New London you should know about."

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Greg could feel his skin cooling slowly. The energy-dissipater suit he wore was made from thermal-shunt fibres intended to absorb and deflect maser and laser energy, and they continually pumped out the heat his body generated. It was a one-way flow through the suit's inner insulation layer, making sure he didn't cook in his own juices. But it could get uncomfortably chilly when he wasn't moving.

  The hood, with its gas filters and integral photon amp, was slung over his shoulder. A cap with a throat mike and earpiece plugged him into the suit's 'ware and communication circuits.

  He watched the biolum strips on the subway tunnel wall slide by, throwing pulses of pink-tinged light through the coach's windows. Sinclair was always the first to get caught, sitting up in the front, his pale face suddenly printed with deep shadows, like an undertaker's doll.

  Julia was next, lines of exhaustion brought into unkind relief. She was also wearing one of the black form-fitting energy-dissipater suits, its hood hanging down her back. Her eyes were open, showing her adrift in her own thoughts.

  Rick was twitching continually, unused to the cloying grip of the dissipater suit's fabric. Tension pulled his expression down into doubt, a big contrast to the anticipation shining in his eyes.

  After that, the fans of light swept along the row of motionless muscle-armour suits standing in the aisle. There were nine of them, dull black metalloceramic humanoids. The background hum of their internal systems sounded bleakly oppressive in the small coach, an ominous reminder of how much power each of them contained.

  The only one Greg could recognize for sure was Suzi. The smallest, standing at the head of the line, with a Honeywell carbine and a Konica rip gun clipped to the waist of the suit, four Loral missiles in slim launch tubes attached behind her shoulders.

  The other twelve members of the crash team were riding in a second coach, directly behind them.

  Sinclair hadn't liked that. "I'll not be having these demon heathens in the caves, Captain Greg. They'll be frightening the children for sure," he'd complained when the muscle-armour suits had marched into the security centre train station.

  "Tough," Greg had said. "We need them. Besides, you might wind up being glad of them. We've no idea how the alien is going to respond to our contact."

  "Oh, come on now, Captain Greg, all I said was I'd show you where I was given the flower. You never said nothing about this invading army."

  "They won't lay a finger on any of your followers," Julia had said. "You have my word on that."

  Sinclair had gaped, features twisting into delighted astonishment. "By all that's holy. 'Tis really you."

  "Yes, it's me."

  "Well now, me darling, I can hardly doubt your word, now can I?" He had bowed as far as his portly frame allowed him.

  The train drew into Moorgate station, just behind the foot of the northern endcap. Greg stepped out of the coach, finding himself in a large oblong rock chamber, with six platforms laid out in parallel. It was obviously a staging area for the crews digging the second chamber. Rails disappeared up four smaller tunnels in the north wall. Beyond the last platform there was a collection of heavy machinery laid out like a small town; lorry-sized electrical transformers, big spherical tanks, and the ribbed cylinders of turbo-pump casings. A crisscross grid of two-metre pipes, heavy-duty plastic tubes, and thick power cables led away from them into eight service tunnels.

  Moorgate station was deserted except for Bernard Kemp and a youngish WPC who were standing waiting on the platform.

  Bernard Kemp's mood hadn't improved, Gre
g observed. The sergeant gave Sinclair a look of undisguised contempt, then started when Julia emerged from the coach. The WPC came to attention.

  Julia lifted her hand in an airy gesture. "There's no need for that," she told the woman.

  "We've secured the station, sir," Bernard Kemp told Greg as the crash team piled out of the coach. "And the transport controller has shut down this line's traffic: there'll be no more coaches in. All the construction and mining crews in the second chamber will use the Lancaster Gate station when they come off shift." He watched the coach carrying the remainder of the crash team glide to a halt. "Exactly what is going on, sir, ma'am?"

  "Just like the Governor says, a biohazard alert," Greg said.

  "A biohazard?"

  "Yeah. But not a biology we know much about. OK?" Greg didn't even want to tell him that, God alone knew what kind of rumours it would start, but he felt he owed the sergeant something for all the inconvenience.

  "Yes, sir," Bernard Kemp said reluctantly. His eyes kept wandering back to Julia.

  "Right, now you two take one of our coaches, and report back to your headquarters," Greg told the sergeant. He waited until the door slid shut behind them, then turned to Sinclair. "OK. Where now?"

  Sinclair looked at the crash team and sighed. "The Celestial Apostles, we had something. . . good. Nothing grand, I do declare, no utopia, but we got along fine. The only quarrels were the quarrels that people should have, little things by the by. We all believed together, you see; that was enough to bind us."

  "But that was all due to change tomorrow anyway, right?" Greg asked.

  "Ah, now, Captain Greg, there you go again. Spoiling me rhythm, just when I was working up a fine head of indignation. You're a hard man, you are. No respect." He gave Julia a mocking smile. "I'm surprised at you, a lady with a vision past mine. You shouldn't be associating with the likes of him. Terribly bad for you, it is."