The Nano Flower

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Pegasus was spiralling down towards the Colonel Maitland. Greg watched the vast bulk of the airship appear on the bulkhead flatscreen, its contra-rotating fans dawdling in a doldrum calm. Their shallow approach angle showed it as a large black oval above the glistening deep-blue of the ocean. He found it disconcerting, the absorptive black surface, sharp edges, it didn't seem to belong here at the centre of nature's passive domain, an intrusive foreigner.

"So why the guilty smile?" Suzi asked.

Greg clamped his lips together, he hadn't realized he was smiling. "Nothing."

He and Eleanor had taken their honeymoon on one of the Lakehurst-class airships, that was back in the days when all long-distance flights were made by airships. Two weeks spent circling around Greenland and back down Canada's east coast. A first-class cabin to themselves, day trips to resort centres, the eager buzz of third-class passengers on their way to a new life on homesteads springing up behind the retreating permafrost. The black shape was evocative, tripping his mind's gates, delicious memories spilling out along his synapses.

Above all was the gentleness, time spent entwined, time spent floating above fresh landscapes, above sunsets and dawns, gourmet meals, idle chatter, laughter. It had been stately.

He rued the day of the airship's passing, replaced with hypersonic planes powered by Julia's all-pervasive gigaconductor. The last commercial trans-Atlantic airship flight had rated half a column in The Times one morning; he'd passed the cybofax over the breakfast table to Eleanor who quirked her lips in remorse. They had always said they would repeat the trip, but then there had been the kids, the groves to tend, responsibilities. Now all it ever could be was a sunny memory.

Greg had never really adapted to hypersonics, the second age of air travel; two-and-a-quarter hours to New Zealand from England; Japan a hundred-minute streak over the slushy remnants of the North Pole. Where could you escape in a world like that?

Jason Whitehurst had found the answer the hard way. The Pegasus had broken away from the Italian mainland over Genoa, hitting Mach eight above the Ligurian Sea. They were passing over the Straits of Gibraltar fifteen minutes later without slowing down, curving round north-west Africa to line up on the Cape Verde islands. Total elapsed time from Julia sending him the co-ordinates to arrival at the Colonel Maitland was forty-seven minutes.

"We've just been given landing clearance by the captain," Pearse called.

"Fine," Greg said. "Take her down." He stood up as Pearse spoke into the handset. Suzi got to her feet beside him. He noticed she used her arms to push herself up out of the deep chair. "You OK?"

She pulled a face. "Sod it, yeah, I'll do."

The leg of her shellsuit was torn, stained with a ribbon of blood, blue dermal seal visible through the open fabric. And what would Jason Whitehurst make of that?

Greg's face still stung, but he'd checked it in the toilet mirror. Appearance-wise it wasn't too bad. His leather jacket had deflected a lot of the glass splinters. Out of the three of them, he had come off best. Even his neurohormone hangover had run its course.

Two converging lines of bright strobe lights were flashing along the top of the Colonel Maitland, leading them in towards the recessed landing pad. At the front edge of the pad a large blister rose out of the fuselage, which he guessed was a hangar for Jason Whitehurst's own plane.

Greg walked forward as the Pegasus descended, compensating for the inclined deck. The chair at the front of the cabin had been straightened and tilted horizontal. Malcolm was lying on it; all he had on were jockey shorts, his brown skin mottled with big patches of dermal seal. Diagnostic probes were stuck to his torso and the nape of his neck, the medical unit's screen showing an écorché representation of his body, large sections coloured amber, two red pinpoints near his spine.

"Is he going to be all right?" Greg asked Rachel.

She looked up from the plasma bladder's LCD. "Yes. Nothing critical punctured or broken, just blood-loss trauma. But we got the plasma into him in time. He might need some skin replacement for his back, otherwise fine."

"Thank Christ for that."

"Never thought I'd be doing this again."

"Yeah, you and me both," he said.

The Pegasus touched down with a slight tremor.

Greg shrugged out of his jacket. "Pearse, give me a Tokarev and shoulder holster."

"Right." The hardliner went to one of the lockers. "Suzi, do you want a holster for your Browning?"

"Nah, I stowed it."

Greg glanced at her. The Puma bag had been lost in the Prezda's well. Her shellsuit wasn't all that baggy, though. He didn't ask.

Pearse handed him the holster. "You want me to come with you?"

"No," Greg said, velcroing the holster's straps. "The deal is for me and Suzi. We shouldn't be more than half an hour, forty minutes at the outside. Buy the girl and bring her back. After that we zip Malcolm here straight to a decent medical facility."

"Buy the girl," Pearse repeated. "That sounds so… God, I don't know. Medieval?"

"Something like that." Greg checked the Tokarev's charge before slotting it into the holster. "But it's preferable to the alternative, for her and us." He pulled his jacket back on, and pressed the belly hatch activation button.

There were two people waiting for them on the pad. Hard-liners, dressed in dark grey trousers and light jade V-neck sweaters, as if they were cabin stewards.

Greg ordered a small neurohormone secretion. The hardliners were cautious, but not hostile.

They took a lift down to the gondola, riding in silence. A long windowless corridor, lit by a bright biolum strip, blank doors in either wall, and nobody else in sight. He thought the hardliners were leading them towards the prow, but it was difficult to be certain. A cleaning drone rolled past them going in the opposite direction.

He sensed the background shimmer of the crew's minds, a continual whisper of emotions. Reassuring to know the Colonel Maitland wasn't actually the ghost ship it looked.

The hardliners stopped outside one of the doors near the end of the corridor. It opened into Jason Whitehurst's clinically plain study. He was sitting behind his glass desk, playing with an old-fashioned gold Parker biro. The hologram display inside the desk top was angled so that it could only be read by him. From where Greg stood inside the door the symbology array was just an Expressionist laser frieze. Pretty, but meaningless.

A grey rectangle on the floor in front of the desk began to bulge up, silently sculpting itself into a settee.

"Please," Jason Whitehurst opened his hand, gesturing at the newly formed settee.

Greg sat, sensing the two hardliners behind him withdrawing. Suzi plonked herself down beside him, her heels barely reached the floor.

"Do you require medical attention?" Jason Whitehurst asked Suzi. He was looking at her knee, the torn shellsuit leg. "I have a doctor on board. Someone my age, it is advisable…" He trailed off with a dismissive wave.

"I've already had it patched, thanks," Suzi said.

"Of course."

"A hazard on our way here," Greg said. He studied the mind before him. Jason Whitehurst put on a good front. Behind the bemused tolerance expression he was hiding a mix of fretfulness and expectancy. Greg recognized the mind set. Jason Whitehurst was a masterclass gambler, it was his out, his bang. He didn't merely play the game, he was part of the game.

"You see, we're not the only people looking for you," Greg said. He wanted a reaction, see how Jason Whitehurst bore up under some pressure.

"I am aware of this," Jason Whitehurst said. "After all, the delectable Charlotte is in some demand, a valuable commodity. I simply did what I always do in such a case, and trade on it."

"A pity you didn't think to warn Baronski."

"Is he in some sort of trouble?"

"You judge. Suzi and I managed to escape the tekmerc team that was going to interrogate him about Fielder's location. That's where we picked up our little scratches."

Jason Whitehurst pulled on his beard. Greg sensed the first traces of alarm rising into his mind, thought currents brightening.

"Baronski knew the risks," Jason Whitehurst said bluntly.

"Baronski was a cautious man. He didn't know what Fielder has got herself involved in; if he had, he would have stopped her."

"You have come all this way, by dint of considerable effort on the part of your employer, simply to remonstrate with me, Mr. Mandel?"

"No. All I came for was Fielder. Just telling you this deal isn't all cosy advantage trading, that's all. Maybe you don't know how valuable this Fielder girl is."

"I believe I have a fair idea of her financial status, or more precisely, the price of the information stored in that pretty little head of hers. Dear Charlotte is unique. And like all monopolies, she does not come cheap."

"How much?"

"One hundred million Eurofrancs."

"Bollocks," Suzi snorted.

Greg had seen it coming, watching Jason Whitehurst nerve himself up. There was determination, but he was also testing, interested to see how important Fielder really was. It fitted Greg's initial impression. Jason Whitehurst knew he had something, he just wasn't sure exactly what.

Greg increased his neurohormone secretion. "Did you know first contact has been made?" he asked.

Shadows of doubt flittered across Jason Whitehurst's mind. "Whatever are you talking about, Mr. Mandel?"

"First contact, with aliens."

Jason Whitehurst's face registered impatience. Suspicion rose, his thought currents racing, then a slow dawn of comprehension which brought cold fright. "That is the source of atomic structuring technology? Aliens?"

"Yeah," said Greg.

"My God, of course, her holiday." Jason did his best to recover his composure, physically he managed it, mentally his mind surged with phobic dread. "Is Julia Evans really sure she knows what she is doing dabbling in this affair?"

"She's sure."

"Very well. Then as I said before, if you are unwilling to pay the reserve price, dear Charlotte will be placed on the open market, available to the highest bidder."

"Wrong," said Greg. "We will pay you sixty-five million for her."

"Greg!" Suzi protested.

"Julia has been most foolish sending you," Jason Whitehurst said. "All you have done is simply confirmed dear Charlotte's worth to me. The reserve price stands. I must say, it's most unlike Julia to make this sort of mistake."

"I told you about the aliens as a favour," Greg said. "That's the second one today. I'm trying to make you realize that you're in way over your head. This whole deal frightens me very badly, and I'm ex-Mindstar. Charlotte Fielder will be removed from the Colonel Maitland today; either by us paying for her, or by one of the tekmerc squads the kombinates have employed to hunt her down. And they're not far behind us, a few hours at most. if she comes with us, you will receive your sixty-five million. Wait until they arrive, and you can kiss goodbye to a lot more than money. That's the bottom line, Whitehurst. No third favour."

Sparkling blue eyes fixed on Greg. "The Mindstar Brigade?" Jason Whitehurst said it with reluctant admiration.

"Yeah. You want my advice, then leg it out of here as soon as we take Fielder. Head back to Monaco, where it's safe, and where you're visible, in a crowd. Tell the other bidders that Fielder's gone. Best I can offer."

"I was in the King's Own Hussars, myself."

"I know, I've read your profile. Good troops, the King's Own; they were in Turkey."

"After my day. Mexico was my last campaign." Jason Whitehurst sighed, dropping the Parker on the desk. "Didn't know you were a brother officer. Sorry if I sounded off."

"I really would like you to leave the Colonel Maitland after us."

"Yes, quite. Good idea. Sixty-five million, you say?"

"Yeah, sixty-five."

Suzi let out a disgusted hiss of breath, rolling her eyes.

"Very well, Mr. Mandel. We have a deal."

Greg fished around in his jacket pocket, and produced the ident card Julia had given him: pure white, except for the LCD display and a small triangle and flying-V logo filling the top right corner.

"You have the authority for the transfer itself?" Jason Whitehurst asked.

Greg scaled the card over the desk to him. "No messing. Julia and I go back a long way. I help her out now and then."

Jason Whitehurst picked up the card, glancing at it briefly. "Event Horizon's central account, no less. You sound like a chap it would be a good idea to know."

Greg stood up. "Charlotte Fielder, is she on board?"

"Indeed she is, yes." Jason Whitehurst's fingers sketched hieroglyphic symbols on the smooth surface of the desk.

Greg still couldn't make out the graphics, but they were changing below his hand.

"You really gonna?" Suzi asked. She had risen to stand beside him. Her mind appalled and fascinated. "Sixty-five million?"

Greg imagined his own thoughts must be similar. Sixty-five million. He knew there was a tingle of magic in his relationship with Julia, but this kind of money wasn't chicken feed, even for her. He wondered who he would trust with that much, not many. There were levels of trust; Suzi would be utterly dependable in a scrap, but hand her sixty-five million for safekeeping and it would be a goodbye that would last beyond the end of the world.

"I have set up the credit transfer order," Jason Whitehurst said.

The desk let out a piercing whistle. Greg saw a whole section of the incomprehensible graphics turn red and scurry into frantic motion. His cybofax bleeped, and he reached for it automatically.

There was the unmistakable crump of an explosion, distant and muted. The hazy blue world outside the study's broad windows remained unchanged.

Julia's face filled the cybofax screen, there was no background behind her, as if she was starless space. "Greg!" she called. "I'm registering an electronic warfare alert."

Suzi was sprinting to the nearest window. The distinctive double thunderclap of a sonic boom rocked the Colonel Maitland. Greg could feel the vibration through his feet.

"Nothing here," Suzi shouted. She was pressed up against the window, Browning in her hand. "Shit, it must be above us."

An alarm was shrilling in the corridor outside. The two hardliners burst into the study, weapons drawn.

"Put them down," Jason Whitehurst said sharply.

They lowered the handguns reluctantly. Racal IR laser carbines, Greg noted absently, restricted to military sales only.

"What's happening?" he asked.

"Someone's thrown a jamming field around the airship," Julia's image said. "It's fluctuating, as if the source is moving. I can't get a message out."

The desk stopped whistling. "The plane that flew over," Jason Whitehurst said; both his hands were pressed against the glass surface, almost as though he was communing with it. "It attacked your Pegasus." One of the homolographic maps on a wall-mounted flatscreen flicked off, replaced by a view from a camera on the Colonel Maitland's tail fin, looking down the fuselage towards the prow.

Greg stared in horror at the ruined landing pad. The Pegasus had been ripped almost in two along the length of its cabin. It had collapsed on to the landing pad, spewing black oily smoke from its rear quarter. Intense flares of blue-white light writhed continually inside the buckled fuselage, the giga-conductor cells shorting out. As he watched, flames began to lick out of the gashes.

No one could have survived that blast. Through the shock, all he could think of was that he never even knew the pilot's name.

"The plane is returning," Jason Whitehurst said with deliberate calm. "Subsonic, and slowing."

"Can the Colonel Maitland hold it oft?" Greg asked.

"We have some ECM systems naturally," Jason Whitehurst said. "But this is not a warship. I consider my staff more than adequate to deter any normal kidnapping attempt."

Greg was still gaping at the ruined Pegasus when a thin column of air above the landing pad seemed to sparkle for an instant. The hangar blister and whatever plane was inside disintegrated into a vivid plume of white fire. A shock wave thumped the wreckage of the Pegasus into the rim around the pad, flinging out a flurry of debris. The incandescent tumour of light swelling out of the ruptured hangar had turned the flatscreen image black and white. Large strips of the solar cell envelope all around the landing pad were curling up like autumn leaves, edges crisping, exposing the thin monolattice struts of the fuselage.

The sound of the blast rolled around the airship's flanks and hammered against the study's windows a couple of seconds later.

This time the Colonel Maitland shuddered perceptibly. There was a long drawn out series of agonizing creaks and groans reverberating through the geodetic framework.

"Leol flicking Reiger," Suzi said. She flinched at a loud metallic twang. "Gotta be."

"I think you might be right," Greg said. He turned from the flatscreen to see Jason Whitehurst slumped nervelessly in his chair, a vein throbbing on his temple. "Apart from the landing pad, how do you get on board?" he asked.

"There are access hatches on the top of the fuselage," Jason Whitehurst said. "I suppose they could break in there. The plane would have to hover, though. It would be difficult."

"Not to tekmercs," Greg said. He thought fast, no question that they were here for Charlotte Fielder, so there would be no indiscriminate shooting. Not until after they snatched her, anyway. "What about escape systems? Lifeboats? Parachutes? Something to bail out in?"

"There's an emergency survival pod in every lower deck cabin."

"It shouldn't come to that," Julia's image said. "My security crash team will be on the way."

"You sure?" Greg asked.

"The Pegasus was in constant contact with Event Horizon's security division. As soon as that jammer cut the satellite link the crash team launched. I promised I'd back you up."

"How long till they get here?"

"Twenty minutes, maybe a little less."

"You hear that, Suzi? Twenty minutes' evasion and decoy."

"Yeah. If these security people of Victor's are any use. So what do you wanna do about the girl, meantime?"

"Where is she?" Greg asked Jason Whitehurst.

"On board somewhere, with Fabian. Probably in his cabin. Get her away from him, Mr. Mandel, get her well away."

"Are you coming with us?"

Jason Whitehurst glanced round the study, blinking leadenly. His thought currents had slowed drastically; the attack had shaken him badly, fissures of insecurity were opening in his mind, allowing subconscious fears to rise and clog his thoughts. "Go where?"

"Shit. OK, order your crew into the emergency pods. That plane might try to puncture the gasbags, force everyone out so they can pick up Fielder."

Jason Whitehurst debated with himself for a moment, then acquiesced. "Yes, all right." He stretched a hand out over his desk, stirring the light patterns. "Fabian must get into a pod by himself; he'll be safe then. That's all that matters now."

"Greg!" Suzi yelled frantically. She was pointing out of the window.

The plane was descending into view about two hundred metres away, a delta planform with a long bullet nose. Not easy to see, an elusive light-grey stealth coating seemed to slither when he tried to focus on it, pulling the uniform blueness of sea and sky around the flat fuselage like a cloak.

"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.

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.