Mindstar Rising

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.