Mindstar Rising

  Up again.

  Droplets of water came in with the air. Eleanor coughed, swallowing some. It tasted foul.

  "They've stopped," Suzi called out.

  "Now what?" Des asked.

  "Wait," said Teddy. "Eleanor, you and Victor come over to me, slow and easy. I wanna get that Rockwell sorted."

  Eleanor rolled over, letting herself float on her back with the water lapping round her chin. Waving her feet, creeping towards Teddy. Will they think grouping together is hostile?

  Eleanor was about five metres short of Teddy when a voice boomed out from the manor. "Who the hell are you people?" It sounded angry.

  Teddy began to flash the laser again. Eleanor stopped moving. Whatever morse code was, it seemed incredibly ponderous.

  "You want to come in and talk about Mandel? Who've you got as a guarantee?"

  "Do your thing, Victor," Teddy grunted.

  "Right." He submerged.

  Eleanor felt insufferably weary. Just wanted it all to be over. The infusion must be wearing off, she thought.

  Victor came up without his hood, hair plastered across his forehead.

  "Smile, man."

  "Victor," the voice blared, "Hell, it is you. Are these people genuine? We've got them covered if they try and force you. Nod for yes. Shake for no."

  "Jesus wept," said Teddy. "Paranoid or what."

  "All right," said the voice. "And just how do you reckon on getting across the lawn? We can't shut off the masers, and the ground floor's sealed tight."

  The message laser flashed out a long complicated story.

  "No way!" the voice called.

  "Screw you, arsehole," Suzi shouted.

  "Throttle down, gal," said Teddy, and even he sounded tired. The message laser flashed once more.

  "All right," said the voice. "Listen good. Only Victor may use the cannon. If one of those plasma shots lands anywhere but on a maser you are dead."

  "And up yours, too," said Teddy. "OK, let's get the Rockwell together."

  Eleanor started kicking again, her legs like lead. Teddy and Victor were moving forwards, towards the shore.

  "Touching ground," Teddy said. He was five metres short of the lawn.

  Eleanor came up beside him, toes prodding the viscous lake bed.

  "Let's have it, gal."

  Victor drifted up on the other side. He and Teddy started muttering at each other as they mated the Rockwell's cable to the power unit by touch alone.

  With the Rockwell gone, Eleanor thought she'd be able to fly. She weighed nothing at all.

  Victor stuck the Rockwell's targeting imager over his right eye, its cable coiling down below the water.

  "Ready," he said.

  Eleanor saw that Des, Suzi, and Nicole had swum up level with her. Unidentifiable, blind tumours of crêpe fabric. Behind them, on the shore where the trees bordered the lawn were two swift-moving red blobs. No, her mind cried. Enough, we've had enough. "Sentinels," she called out, voice rasping in her throat. "Sentinels, they're coming."

  Victor fired the first plasma bolt. A solar-bright fireball tearing through the night, overloading Eleanor's photon amp. A near-ultrasonic whine ending in a stentorian thunderclap. One of the manor's chimney stacks exploded.

  The sentinels were sprinting for the lake shore. Eleanor watched the two people closest to them churn about, trying to reach their weapons. Steam billowed up around one of them as the frantic motion lifted their shoulders out of the water. Eleanor started to swim breaststroke. Suzi had said the Braun was waterproof, although she had no idea if it would work in the water.

  Both sentinels leapt together.

  MASER ATTACK, Eleanor duckdived fast.

  Surfacing, just in time to hear the second concussion as more of the manor's masonry was vaporised. Three more to go. A locust-swarm of slate fragments tumbled through the air high above Wilholm.

  The sentinels were in the water, two whirlpools of surf. Des was screaming. Eleanor headed for the nearest conflagration. Couldn't even remember if she'd recharged the Braun.

  MASER ATTACK. Plunging.

  A sentinel shrieked in mortal terror, a keening that sliced right through Eleanor. The sound electrified, freezing her limbs. What in God's name could a sentinel possibly fear? She saw it disappear below the surface of the lake, sucked down backwards in a maelstrom of bubbles. Something was floating inertly where it'd vanished, undulating with the swell.

  The third plasma bolt speared a small ornate rotunda, its detonation shockwave flinging smoking chunks of stone halfway across the lawn.

  Eleanor was looking straight at a sentinel three metres away. Its jaws were open showing a double layer of shark-teeth, huge eyes staring at her. Powerful bands of muscle rippled along its back as it paddled towards her.

  Cats can't swim!

  Her feet sank into muck up to her ankles and she stood, MASER ATTACK. Counting off the seconds. One. A storm-cloud of steam raged around her. Two. THERMAL INPUT APPROACHING MAXIMUM SHUT CAPACITY. The sentinel was a metre and a half from her when its fur ignited. It yowled in pain, skin crisping, cracking, thick fluid oozing out. Three. Eleanor could feel her skin beginning to blister as a wave of searing heat poured through the jumpsuit insulation. The sentinel gave a convulsive shudder, its back was flayed down to its ribcage, skull exposed, eyes roasted. Blood gushed out of its mouth, splattering on her suit. Four. THERMAL SATURATION ALERT. Dead.

  Eleanor collapsed back into the lake, her own body on fire. Somewhere inside her belly she could feel dampness. The sentinel's corpse sank as she floated up.

  A plasma bolt flashed overhead. Part of a very distant universe.

  Something shot up out of the water nearby. "Got the bastard!" Nicole.

  The marine-adept woman swam clumsily over to the floating shape. "Eleanor, hey, Eleanor, give me a hand with Suzi. Think she's still alive."

  "Go on, gal," Teddy called. "Masers are out."

  Eleanor moved sluggishly. Between them they dragged Suzi on to the lawn. The girl's jumpsuit was in tatters, blood soaking the grass. Eleanor knelt beside her, and tugged her hood off, water flooded out. Suzi's tongue protruded.

  Victor appeared and bent to breathe air into her. Eleanor was thankful, she certainly didn't have the strength left to resuscitate her.

  "Lost the aid kit," Nicole said dully. Her forearms were lacerated, tatters of skin hung loosely.

  "They'll have something for her in the manor," said Teddy.

  Suzi spluttered weakly, liquids gurgling inside her.

  There was no sign of Des.

  "OK, let's move," Teddy urged. "Remember the ground traps."

  Eleanor slowly pulled her own hood off, sobbing softly. Proper colours deluged her eyes. The foam across her abdomen was flaking off, blood mingling with water in her lap.

  "Come on, gal," Teddy said. "You made it now. Jesus must really love you." He handed her his AK. "Safety's off. Cover us if any more sentinels show."

  Rabbits, she'd shot rabbits back at the kibbutz.

  Victor hoisted Suzi on to Teddy's back, and the big man set off towards the manor, message laser banging against his side. They followed in single file as he traced a path across the lawn, Wilholm's floodlights casting long spidery shadows as they wove round the traps.

  Flat metal slabs had slid out of the manor's stonework to seal the ground floor's doors and windows. Teddy set Suzi down against the wall and unslung a small pack.

  Eleanor and Victor watched the grounds, AKs held ready, as Teddy slapped a thermal-slice tape on the slab of metal covering a window. It was a thick flexible tube which hissed as it adhered to the slab.

  "OK, don't look."

  Startlingly bright blue-white light glared out, buzzing and sizzling. Eleanor saw sparks skipping along the paving slabs around her feet. She could feel its warmth on the back of her neck.

  "Here it comes." The light dimmed, and there was a loud resonant clang, smashing glass. A fan of milder biolum light spilled out across the grass.

&
nbsp; Eleanor kept looking over the lawn. Her nerves raw-edged. She expected to see a mass charge of sentinels coming at her. They'll never let us get in. Not those devils.

  There was grunting and shuffling from behind her. "Don't touch the edge," she heard Teddy warning, He was shoving Suzi through the hole. "Got her? OK, for Christ's sake go easy. You next, Nicole."

  Eleanor began to back towards the window, shivering uncontrollably.

  "You make it with that leg, Victor? OK, I'll boost you." Silence. Eleanor knew she was alone. Sweeping the AK in wild arcs. Nothing moved on the lawn.

  "Move it, Eleanor."

  The jagged hole was roughly square, one and a half metres high, its lower rim a metre off the ground. She put a leg through.

  "All right, lady, hands where we can see them, and moving real slow."

  The room inside was huge, its floor an intricate mosaic of olive-green and cream tiles; there were chandeliers hanging on gold chains, pastel frescoes of waterfowl on the walls, Regency furniture, a grand piano. Smoke layered the air, two people were using fire extinguishers on the window frame, glass crunched under her foot. A small army was pointing Uzi hand-lasers at her.

  Standing in the middle of the room was a dignified grey-haired man whose face was stiff with tension and suspicion. Had to be Walshaw.

  Suzi was lying on the floor, chest a mass of gore, blood pooling on the shiny tiles. There was a woman kneeling beside her, working frantically. Medical gear modules were scattered round, red and amber LEDs flashing, their needle sensors jabbing through the remnants of the jumpsuit. The woman slapped a bioware mask over Suzi's face, a rubbery sac concertinaed out of it and began palpitating.

  Nicole was slumped motionless against a wall. Two of the security people were covering her with Uzis while a third wrapped fluffy aquamarine towels around her shredded arms, blood staining them brown.

  Victor was standing, hands on head, eyes red with pain. A grim-faced woman was frisking him with expert thoroughness.

  Three security people surrounded Teddy. He was facedown on the floor, spread-eagled, his hood thrown back, an Uzi pressed against the back of his bare neck.

  Right at the back of the room Eleanor saw a tall teenage girl with a pretty oval face, and long straight chestnut hair, wearing an expensive black dress. Julia Evans; shouldering her way past a big man and an imposing woman, arm rising to point a rigid accusing forefinger straight at Eleanor.

  "SIT!" Julia barked in a voice so commanding that Eleanor's nerves went dead.

  She heard a quiet sighing sound at her back, and turned to see a sentinel folding on to its haunches not a metre behind her. It licked its muzzle with a long pink tongue.

  "Good girl," Julia enthused warmly. "Who's a good girl, then?"

  Eleanor's legs gave out.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  "Greg!"

  "Huh, yeah?"

  Monastic silence had enveloped the tower, the light diffusing into their makeshift prison reduced to the minutest candle glimmer from above. The basement was inky black.

  Gabriel's strained face was ghostly pale. "Greg, we're going to die."

  "Come on, Gabriel. Don't give the bastards the satisfaction."

  "Screw you, Mandel," she hissed. "I'm not cracking up. I've got it back again, thank Christ. The future. It's all fuzzy. But I can see it, and it all comes to an end in about forty minutes."

  Greg's cuffs clanged loudly against the rail as her words penetrated. He squirmed round to look at her, trepidation and hope heating his blood. Psi meant crushing Armstrong's mind inside his skull, raping every thought with obscene distortions, drowning him in his own agonising insanity. Making him love his own death.

  Greg hadn't known he could hate someone that much. But he could do it. For Armstrong, he could do it. No messing.

  The gland: quavering like a cardiac victim. He waited in a funk of anticipation for the tower to fade from sight, for his thoughts to levitate, liberating him from the confines of his own skull. But there was nothing, only the bitter sense of frustration.

  "Are you sure?" he hissed back testily. "I still can't sense your mind."

  "Sure? Course I'm fucking sure," Gabriel raged. The old Gabriel. Fabulous. But why hadn't his own ability returned?

  "Can you see a Tau line which has us escaping?" Greg demanded.

  "It's not like that. Not my usual ability. No Tau lines. There's only the one vision. Christ, Greg, the whole tower's just going to blow. Like an atom bomb, or something."

  "A nuke?" he asked incredulously. He was picking up on the rising panic pulling at her thorax. He believed without the espersense. An event so powerful it'd burst through the twins' nullifying blockade. Which meant it was all too real.

  There was the weirdest tickle at the back of Greg's throat. He knew if he opened his mouth it would burst out as a giddy laugh.

  "I don't know," Gabriel protested. "There's no details, just a bloody great bang."

  "Electron compression," Greg said, half to himself. "Has to be." Doubt rotted the upspring of bold conviction. Philip Evans had been given a warhead once. For one specific task. The American government wouldn't hand them out like sweets. And yet . . . the original warhead had been intended for Armstrong. Could Julia or Walshaw have got hold of another one from Horace Jepson? They would have to prove Armstrong was still alive, first. Concrete proof.

  "Ellis," Greg said excitedly. "Lord bless that skinny little fart. He came through." But uncertainty still nagged malevolently. Even if Ellis had left details about Armstrong in the Crays, someone had moved bloody fast to mount a strike by tonight. Perhaps it was just a colossal conventional bomb. Julia had Prowlers, maybe she'd got a B5 stashed away somewhere, too. Or a Hades. Or a Tochka. Now that was an interesting way to spend your last half-hour, he mocked himself. See how many tactical weapon systems you can name which could blow you out of existence.

  At least anything powerful enough to take out the entire tower promised to be quick. Not for Gabriel, though. She had half an hour of mental torment left. Better than being beaten to a pulp for his heroism, or thrashing about in the mud's embrace.

  "This attack must mean Armstrong and Kendric aren't having it all their own way," he said with a barely suppressed excitement. "Maybe Julia survived. Yeah. And Walshaw interrogated the mole. They're hitting back, Gabriel."

  Gabriel's breathing was coming in ragged gasps. "But what do we do?" she whined.

  Greg took an iron grip on his nerves. "Say nothing. At least this way we'll take Armstrong and Kendric with us."

  "Is that all you can think of?"

  "Well, what the hell else is there?" Greg snapped back, suddenly furious. Despising his own fear, because it would be so easy to let it win.

  "You want to shout a warning?" he asked, "Is that what you want to do? Is it? Wake them up, tell them what you can see, let them get clear? Silence is all we've got left, Gabriel, our vengeance weapon. This way we get our revenge. It doesn't matter that we don't get to see it, we're dead anyway."

  Gabriel bit her lower lip, trembling. He caught a glimpse of moisture glinting in her eyes as she hugged the railings hard.

  Chapter Forty

  Eleanor sat on a hard wooden chair in Wilholm's study. Someone had put a bone china breakfast cup of tea in front of her. She hadn't drunk any. The air was warm and stuffy from too many people breathing it. Six Event Horizon security hardliners were standing watching her and Teddy, four on the other side of the table, two behind them.

  Stupid. Farcical. But Eleanor hadn't complained. Didn't have the energy. Her belly was cold now, colder than ice.

  A harassed Dr. Taylor had broken off attending to Suzi long enough to give Eleanor an infusion that'd taken her down to a state where peripheries, like injuries and the manor's fabulous wall-to-wall glitter, didn't register much. Then some kind of bioware dressing had been stuck over the claw wounds, and a salve was sprayed over skin that was red-raw where the maser had leaked through the dissipater jumpsuit. Dr. Taylor wanted h
er to lie down for a more elaborate treatment. She refused point-blank.

  Eleanor had to know about Greg, persuade the Evans girl and Morgan Walshaw to help find him. Except they didn't seem to be getting anywhere. She was wrapped in a jade towelling-robe, sitting beside Teddy who was also in a robe, one which was too small for him. Julia Evans and Morgan Walshaw sat opposite them. Matched contrasts.

  Julia was quiet, sticking to Walshaw wherever he went. Mouse-timid. Nothing like the way Greg had described her.

  Further up the table a man called Piers Ryder had opened up the squat cylindrical message laser, much to Teddy's impotent fury. Ryder had plugged a cybofax into the laser's hardware with optical cable, looking for bugs on Walshaw's orders.

  There was no trust in the study. And after all the horror they'd endured; Eleanor could've wept, except it wouldn't have changed anything.

  Teddy and Walshaw were doing all the talking. Arguing, actually. All down to Walshaw's totally unbelievable statement that Greg had gone somewhere with Kendric di Girolamo.

  "You think Greg's sold out, you outta your ballsed-up mind," Teddy said; loud but not shouting, his anger a dangerous undercurrent.

  "Even I find it difficult to believe," Walshaw said. "But none the less, he did leave with di Girolamo on the Mirriam."

  "Going where?"

  "Does it matter? The complicity exists."

  "Fucking right it matters. He ain't with that arsehole di Girolamo outta free will. Once we find him my troops gonna snatch him back."

  "You can't," said Julia. It was the first time she'd spoken.

  "Why not, gal?" Teddy asked. He wasn't quite so abusive to her.

  "I'm not quite sure of his exact position any more."

  "Way they was headed will do. We'll pick 'em up soon as they put into port."

  Julia consulted Walshaw silently. The security chief shrugged.

  "Last time I checked, Greg was in Wisbech," Julia said.

  "Wisbech?" Teddy asked.

  "Yah."

  "What, Wisbech in the basin? How the fuck did he get there?"

  "I'm not sure. It wasn't fast enough to be a plane, we thought perhaps a hovercraft."