The Nano Flower

  "That's a Messerschmitt CTV-663," Suzi said grimly. "Armed hypersonic military transport. Bollocks; Leol could be carrying up to twenty-five troops in that bastard."

  Greg watched it halt level with the gondola, then turn ponderously until its tail was pointing at him. The rear loading ramp lowered. Indistinct shapes moved inside. Something dropped off the end of the ramp, falling for a few metres then slowing, bobbing in midair. It began to rise. Human shaped, but bulky, dark. A second one fell from the ramp.

  "Holy shitfire," Suzi gasped. "They're wearing jetpacks. Jet-packs and muscle-armour suits. The fuckers are gonna storm us."

  "Greg, I can't see what's going on," Julia's image said. "You must squirt me into the Colonel Maitland's 'ware. I can help you from there."

  "Against them?" Suzi shouted.

  "Where's a key?" Greg demanded.

  Jason Whitehurst stared at him uncomprehendingly, shocked into stupefaction by the aerial assault.

  "A bloody interface key!"

  Five dark figures were hanging in the air between the Messerschmitt and the Colonel Maitland, wobbling slightly as they approached, picking up speed. Another two jumped from the plane's loading ramp.

  The two hardliners in the study were fingering their carbines nervously.

  "Don't shoot, for Christ's sake," Greg told them. "Lasers aren't going to puncture muscle-armour suits at this distance; all you'll do is pinpoint us for them." He ran round the settee to the desk, and held up his cybofax. "Try a squirt now," he told Julia. The tiny lenticular key on the top of the cybofax winked with ruby light. There was an answering pulse from the middle of the desk. When he looked at the wafer's screen her face had gone.

  Suzi had the tight-jawed expression he'd seen on squaddies in Turkey, the one put on just before combat, the one which said it wasn't going to be me, no way. Her nostrils flared.

  "The girl?"

  "Yeah. Find her and steer clear of the tekmercs. Twenty minutes, that's all, and this is a big ship." He took a deep breath, psychological more than anything, and ordered up a full secretion.

  The cold reptilian gland vibrated away, rattling his brain from the inside. His espersense swept outwards; a spectral silhouette of the airship filling his perception, a cobweb of struts enfolded by bottomless shadow. Minds glowed within, pure thought turning to light, fluctuating with emotion. He was bathed in an exodus of fear, and confusion, and hurt from the crew; their silent unbosoming. Soiling him; he hated people for their failings, he was always so careful to filter it out, pretend it didn't exist. The only way he could move through life.

  He examined each of them, and found the mind he knew must be hers. It had the brightness of youth, tight thought currents that spoke of strong self-control, an underlying theme of resentment and longing. The silver-white study rushed back in on him. "Got her."

  "Thank Christ for that," Suzi said.

  "Let's move."

  The two hardliners didn't try and stop them. He turned back when he reached the door, and saw ten armour-clad figures in the air. Jason Whitehurst's face was profiled against the window. "Keep her away from my son, Mandel. Please. None of this is his doing."

  "You got it."

  The door slid shut.

  "This way," he said, and began to jog towards the stern. "Fielder's up inside the fuselage, some sort of room near the tail. We need to be up. Look for some stairs, an inspection hatch, something."

  "Got it," Suzi barked.

  He nearly smiled. She was fighting off fear with action, needing orders, a goal. It wasn't such a bad idea. He began to scan the names printed on the doors.

  They ran into an espersense sweep. It registered like a curtain of cold air brushing against his body. Goose bumps rose on his arms.

  "Shit!"

  "What?" Suzi's Browning came up in reflex.

  "Chad." Greg pulled the old Mindstar-training memories from his brain, looking for something he could use. This time Chad would be ready, and he was strong; Greg couldn't afford a straight trial of strength. He let loose the neurohormones, and—

  —reality flickered—

  —and Chad felt two familiar minds impinge on his expanded sphere of consciousness. He recoiled in alarm. Then, furious with himself, opened up the sacs' extravasation rate.

  The neurohormone boost was almost a physical jolt, sacs acting like electrical terminals, hot and bright, charging his brain with energy, leaving his body buzzing inside the unyielding formfit grip of the muscle armour. His espersense pushed through the airship's hull like an eldritch radar, and closed around the two minds again. Contact made the skin in his palms itch.

  He concentrated on the squirming thought currents, relating his espersense perception with his visual field. His view of the outside world was being relayed from the muscle armour's integral photon amp. The airship and its gondola had taken on a bluish-grey tint, overlaid with a tactical display—distance, speed, power reserves—the lower-deck target window was outlined in red. Numbers constantly changing.

  "Squad leader," he told the muscle armour 'ware. A green go-ahead dot appeared in the communication section of the tactical display. "Leol. Couple of our friends on board. Suzi, and that Mindstar bastard, Mandel." He was aware of Reiger's mental flare of excitement, the unclean glee.

  "Yeah? Well don't fuck up like last time, my boy, or I'll kick your arse into orbit," Reiger said.

  "Not a chance. He pulled a fast one back in the Prezda, that's all, won't work twice."

  "OK, well, get this straight, that bitch Suzi is mine."

  "Sure thing, Leol."

  "Where is she?"

  "Upper deck, twenty metres from the prow."

  "What about the Fielder girl?"

  "Cabin on the lower gondola deck, right at the stern." He heard Leol Reiger issuing a stream of instructions to the rest of the squad. There were none for him, Reiger was leaving him free to deal with Mandel.

  He saw the first two squad members were about twenty metres from the gondola, actually under the bulk of the airship's vast fuselage. The leader lifted his Lockheed rip gun, and fired at the target window. The shot was like a rigid bolt of lightning, two metres long. A section of the gondola hull around the oblong window simply blew apart, leaving a jagged gap three metres wide.

  The first squad member flew straight in, never even touching the sharp composite fangs round the edge of the gap. The rest of the squad were clustering round outside, passing through the gap one at a time, like black, hyped-up hornets sliding into their nest.

  Chad tilted his jockey-stick, veering off to one side. The jetpack nozzles behind his shoulders rotated slightly, realigning him. He brought his own rip gun up. The armour's muscle-band lining made the movement effortless. A targeting graphic traversed the side of the gondola. He halted the motion when it had centred on a window a couple of metres behind Mandel. He fired.

  The window vaporized instantly, enveloped in a blinding fireball. Chad's photon lamp blanked out for a second, protecting his eyes from the violent light burst. He jigged about in the blastwave.

  When his vision came back on line the window and its surround was a rough-edged crater. A jumble of broken struts and disfigured decking lay inside.

  He twisted the jockey-stick for full acceleration, heading straight for it. Another coherent lightning bolt from the rip gun tore out a chunk of the cabin's interior wall. A cloud of scorched fragments fluttered round him and he slammed in through the hole he'd made. He jerked the jockey-stick back savagely, killing speed. His feet landed on the decking, and he ran at the narrow rent in the cabin wall ahead.

  The wall seemed to be made out of kelpboard, his muscle armour punching through into the gondola's central corridor without even slowing him.

  His photon amp penetrated the gloom beyond. Frail biolum light illuminated the corridor, flat sheer planes of floor, walls, and ceiling extending into ambiguous distance.

  For one unnerving moment his eyes tricked him into believing it went on for ever.

&nb
sp; The beast was waiting. Snarling, Chad brought the rip gun up, target graphics zeroing its open jaw. The bolt overloaded his photon amp again.

  It was Suzi, lying on the corridor floor, her chest torn apart by the rip bolt. The violation had blackened her flesh and singed her ribs, flinging her slight body backwards to sprawl against a wall. Flames licked at her shellsuit.

  Mandel was standing behind her, yelling in torment at the sight. He looked at Chad, then turned and ran.

  "No good!" Chad cried jubilantly. His armour's external speaker boomed the words down the corridor after the fleeing man. "Nowhere you can hide from me, shithead!"

  Mandel's mind gibbered in terror. He disappeared through a door at the end of the corridor.

  Chad charged after him, rip gun blowing the door into splinters. There was another corridor behind; Mandel was halfway down it. "You're not going to die quick, Mandel. It's going to take a long time after I catch you. A real long time."

  "I know," Mandel said as he rushed through the door at the end of the corridor.

  Chad shouted an unintelligible curse of rage. Fucking typical smartarse answer. He sent a rip bolt spearing into the door. "I can see your mind, Mandel. You're scared shitless, and it hasn't even begun yet."

  There was another corridor waiting for him. He fired off a barrage of rip gun bolts, slamming them into walls and doors. Revelling in the unstoppable vandalism, the keening of terror in Mandel's mind at each shot. His tireless armoured feet pounded on the decking, leaving sharp indentations.

  Mandel was disappearing through a door ahead of him. Just how long was this airship? The tactical display was wavering, out of focus, colours smearing together into an oil rainbow film over his vision.

  Crashing through the door. Another corridor. Shorter this time, the door at the far end still closing. A blink of Mandel, face red, wheezing, stumbling on, energized by adrenalin alone.

  "Going to catch you, Mandel. Real soon. And when I do it's going to be worse than you could believe."

  "I'm relying on it, Chad."

  The voice was sensed rather than heard, desperately weary.

  "Shithead!" Chad used the armour's speaker like a sonic cannon. He hit the door full on, composite crumpling under the impact. The corridor was barely fifteen metres long.

  Mandel was shutting the door at the other end.

  Chad sprinted for him, the armour's muscle bands whining softly. He was closer now, much closer, and Mandel was tiring. Past the door, so flimsy it was virtually unnoticeable. The next corridor, ten metres long. Five quick steps. Mandel's mind so near he could feel sweaty skin, labouring heart, burning lungs.

  "Nowhere in this universe you can hide from me," Chad crowed.

  "I'm not hiding from you, Chad, I'm inside you. You've been running through your own mind, an eidolonic reality."

  Chad opened the door. There was a five-metre corridor in front of him. An armoured figure opening the door at the far end. What the fuck. . .? Mandel trying to fool him. "Not good enough any more, shithead!"

  "It's powered by your own anger, Chad. This is what you yearn for. I grant it to you, I surrender to you."

  The door behind Chad swung shut in tandem with the one he was looking at. He was alone in the corridor; walls shrinking, biolums dimming. "Think I'm falling for that? Your last mistake, Mandel."

  "Stop hating me and you're free. Can you do that, Chad?"

  Chad flung himself at the door ahead. Triumphant. "Die, shithead!"

  "I'm right behind you."

  The door shattered. It was like being caught between two mirrors. Infinite multiples of a muscle armour suit jumping through the door, arms outstretched, legs bent, long composite splinters spraying out all around. The same ahead, the same behind. Slowing. Freezing—

  —reality flickered—

  —Greg staggered against a wall. A groan escaping from his mouth.

  "Bollocks, hey, you OK now?" Suzi asked. Her taut anxious face peering at him through blood-coloured mist.

  "Yeah," he croaked.

  "Sure, you look it."

  He swung his head about, focusing. A neurohormone hangover was burning like napalm inside his skull. They were at the end of a gondola corridor. The sign on the door ahead read DINING-ROOM. "Where are we?"

  "Upper deck, at the stern. I think. Jesus, Greg, I reckon I got corridor-phobia after that. Couldn't hardly tell if what I was seeing was real or not. What happened?"

  "I suckered Chad into an eidoloscape, looped him in his own power fantasy. Think of it as cephalic judo."

  "Yeah, right. So where is he now?"

  "No more hazard. You bring me up here?"

  "Yeah. Like steering a sleepwalker. Been some shots below. Loud."

  "Rip guns, they've got bloody rip guns; Lockheeds, I think."

  "Good old Leol, just what you need to snatch a major hazard like an unarmed whore." She grasped the handle of a door marked FUSELAGE.

  Greg noticed the hesitancy in her hand as she turned the handle, afraid of what might be behind—a doorway into eternity. It was a narrow staircase leading up. A braid of thick ribbed hoses ran up the bare composite wall, a single biolum strip ran along the ceiling. The darkness above seemed to suck sound away. A gust of dry cool air blew down at them.

  Sun pointed her Browning up the stairs. "This it?" she asked without any enthusiasm. "Fielder's up here?"

  "Guess so. At least Reiger doesn't know she's up here." He paused. "Make that was up here."

  "Can't you check?"

  "Give me five minutes, Suzi, OK?"

  "Sure." She started up the stairs.

  Greg drew his Tokarev, snicked the safety off, and went up after her.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Fabian could actually play the guitar quite well. Discoveries like that didn't surprise Charlotte any more.

  Whatever held Fabian's attention long enough for him to develop an interest normally wound up being practised with a high degree of proficiency. The trick was getting him to notice something in the first place.

  After lunch, he'd put on jeans and a studded leather jacket, white silk headband with scarlet Japanese ideograms. Grinning slightly self-consciously. The den's music deck was programmed to provide him with a support group, bass, rhythm, and drums. Unsurprisingly. Fabian favoured hard rock, one or two glam tracks. Thank heavens he didn't sing too.

  She listened to him playing a couple of numbers, then walked over to the Yamaha piano.

  "I didn't know you played," Fabian said.

  She gave him a disdainful smile, running through the intro to the Sonic Energy Authority's 'Last Elvis Song.' "Doesn't everybody?" One of her first patrons had shelled out a small fortune on lessons for her. He liked what he called traditional evenings, no channels, no VR games, no nightclubs, just music recitals and poetry readings, sometimes a play or the ballet. She had enjoyed the piano lessons, one talent Baronski couldn't implant or graft on in the Prezda's little clinic.

  Although her knuckles had been reconfigured to give her fingers a greater dexterity, which was useful.

  Charlotte gave Fabian the opening bars of Bil Yi Somanzer's classic 'Dream Day Hi.' She had fond memories of Bil Yi; his albums were the first music she'd ever really heard after being taken into care. He was in decline then, but still the greatest, no matter what anyone said.

  Fabian picked up the rhythm, strumming along in some private paradise. They cranked the deck up, and started jamming some Beatles and Stones, more Bil Yi, the two of them shouting the lyrics at each other over riffs that shook the den's heavy thermal insulation panels and rattled her gullet.

  The fish were going berserk in their tanks. She hadn't let her hair down like this for an age.

  They were thrashing the hell out of 'Bloody Honey' when Charlotte heard the bang, thinking they'd blown a speaker. It took Fabian a minute to realize she'd stopped playing.

  "What?" he asked. His face was flushed and sweaty. She didn't think she'd ever seen him smiling so brightly before, a natural hi
gh. It was nice to see.

  "We've bust a speaker," she told him, laughing. Her cotton top was damp and hot, contracting about her. There wasn't much air conditioning in the den. Somehow she didn't care.

  "Aww." Fabian pulled a face. He bounced over to the music deck, the guitar hanging round him. LEDs winked green and orange as he flicked switches. "No, we haven't."

  "I heard something go pop."

  "Not us, not guilty," Fabian's voice had a ragged euphoric edge.

  "Oh well, I needed the rest."

  "Crikey, you were fantastic, Charlotte!" His eyes shone.

  "I've never played with anyone before, only the deck."

  The breath was coming out of her in short puffs. "Never?"

  "No."

  "Pretty damn good, you were."

  "Really? Honest to God?"

  "Yep. You've got a definite talent there, Fabian."

  His expression went all distant. "Know what I dream? That I get a slot on MTV's garage access 'cast."

  Charlotte grinned. She'd seen that herself sometimes.

  Thrice a week MTV turned over about ninety minutes of the death hours between two and four in the morning to unsigned bands. Any bunch of kids with an amp stack and a camera could plug into the channel. Wishful rumour said music biz suits sat glued to it, searching for new talent. Charlotte thought that was a load of crap.

  Suddenly she had a vision of Baronski watching her and Fabian decimating 'Your Coolin' Heart." She started giggling as Baronski's jaw dropped in stupefaction, every one of his precious sensibilities overloaded and fused.

  "What?" Fabian asked.

  She waved her hands helplessly. "One of my friends seeing me on that 'cast."

  Fabian's nose twitched. "Father seeing us on that!"

  Charlotte whooped ecstatically, banging out a nonsense blast on the keyboard, aware of Fabian hooting wildly.

  The door opened. Charlotte saw the maid framed in the gloomy light of the fuselage biolums.