The Nano Flower

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

There was more to Julia's cautious walk than the one-third gravity field. Victor knew her well enough to see how shaken she was by the two unidentified space-planes following them up to New London. By now every major player would know the alien was in the asteroid. Isolating New London bought Julia some time, but there was the question of what the opposition would do next.

The confined titanium airlock tube gave way to the VIP reception room; noise, light, smells, and people registered again. It was a sharp transition from the isolation of the Falcon's cabin. Sean Francis, Lloyd McDonald, and three hardline bodyguards were waiting for them.

"Are you all right, ma'am?" Sean Francis asked. He was even more hyper than usual, pale and anxious.

"Yes, thank you, Sean." Julia gave him a tired little smile.

"What are the spaceplanes doing now?" Victor asked Lloyd McDonald.

"The first one altered its trajectory as soon as our target acquisition radars burned through its ECM and locked on. It matched orbits with New London, and it's holding station five and a half thousand kilometres ahead of us. Outside the defence perimeter, you'll note. We identified the model as an Alenia COV-325; so with its capacity it could be carrying up to thirty hardliners. The second spaceplane is fifteen thousand kilometres out, and closing. And just to add to the situation: all five Strategic Defence networks placed their geostationary platforms on amber alert status as soon as we targeted the Alenia and powered up our weapons platforms."

"Have there been any transmissions from the spaceplanes yet?"

"None. We're monitoring continually, of course."

"Good. I need to know who's on board. If Reiger is in one of them he must be snuffed immediately."

"Difficult," Lloyd said. "We don't have any kinetic harpoons; our platforms are all equipped with energy weapons. It really is a defensive system."

"Politically expedient not to base offensive weapons here," Julia said with a hint of regret. "Sorry, Victor."

"Five hundred kilometres beyond the defence perimeter," Victor mused. "That's not much of a margin for them."

"We're geared to halt incoming hostiles," Lloyd said. "You start shooting outside the perimeter and you run slap bang into the inverse-square law. The nearest platform to the COV-325 is over a thousand kilometres away, the lasers wouldn't even melt plastic at that distance."

"So move one of the platforms in range," Victor said automatically.

Lloyd looked at Sean, who nodded thoughtfully. "Could do, yes?"

"OK," Lloyd said. "But the platforms aren't equipped with high-thrust engines. It'll take time."

"Time we have plenty of," Victor said.

"Just as long as they can't get in," Julia said.

"They won't," Sean said. "Our hardware is the best, yes?"

He gestured to a waiting lift. "Greg and his people are in the security centre. They've just got back."

"Did they find Charlotte's Celestial priest?" Julia asked.

"Absolutely, yes. He's a funny old bird, though. Don't know what you'll make of him."

Julia stepped into the lift. They all crowded in around her, Lloyd talking into his cybofax, organizing the platform realignment.

"How are you coping, Sean?" Julia asked as the lift began to move down.

"Pretty good, considering. I've declared an official biohazard alert, which I think added to the Strategic Defence commander's jitters. But it gives me the authority to quarantine the colony without any legal comeback. Shutting down the communication circuits is stretching the principle a little, mind."

"But our lawyers can fight it if anyone objects," she finished for him. "Good. Well done."

Victor reckoned that if he ever got lost in New London's southern endcap complex his processor implant would be the only thing to save him wandering through the labyrinth of corridors for the rest of his life. There was a kilometre and a half of rock between Hyde Cavern and the hub docking crater, a termite nest of housing, offices, tunnels, corridors, hydroponic farms, fish farms, light-industry factories, and chambers full of environmental support machinery. It wasn't that he was claustrophobic, but there was so much smooth featureless rock, and very few windows.

Sean Francis led them through the security centre without any hesitation. But then of course, everything he did was perfection. One of the reasons nobody felt quite at ease with him, not even Julia, and that was quite an accomplishment.

The briefing room had a window-wall looking out into Hyde Cavern. Heavy drops of rain trickled down the glass.

All Victor could see outside was a solid sheet of bleak mist, tinted by a slight orange-pink fluorescence.

There were active holograms on the walls, illuminated landscapes, all of them pre-Warming. A circular table of brown smoked glass stood in the centre of the room; most of New London's furniture was glass and metal. Tourist zones could afford to import wood, the security budget didn't stretch to that. Suzi and Melvyn stood in front of the window, silhouetted against the mist, talking quietly. Greg, Rick, and Charlotte were sitting in the aluminium-framed chairs around the table; a couple of the crash squad hardliners he didn't recognize were in the chairs lined up along the wall.

Julia pulled her shipsuit cap off, letting her hair fall loose. Greg gave her a quick peck on the cheek.

"You found him all right?" Julia asked.

"Charlotte's contact, yes; his name is Sinclair. Royan is proving a little more elusive." Greg sighed. "I had hoped he'd contact me. He must know I'm here, he'll have monitor programs loaded into every 'ware core in New London by now. I know Royan."

"He'll know I'm here too," Julia said. She turned and gave Charlotte a long stare.

Charlotte dropped her gaze, looking fixedly at the olive-green carpet squares. Victor almost felt sorry for the girl, a cool Julia Evans was a daunting prospect. And of course Charlotte wouldn't have known not to access any datanets, even at secondhand through the American Express office. The oversight was as much his fault as hers, she should have been fully briefed.

"Can we get on with the problem in hand?" Victor said.

He pulled a chair out for Julia.

She turned from Charlotte and sat down, giving him a private sly grin. "Male hearts and fallen angels," she murmured in a tiny voice.

Victor could feel the warmth creeping up his face.

"Royan used a drone to hand the flower over to Sinclair," Greg said. "If we want him, he'll be somewhere in the tunnels and caves the Celestial Apostles use."

"Intuition?" Victor asked.

"Not really. Royan spent a couple of days with the Celestials, that means he'll have learnt all about their set-up, what they know about the caves, the ones they use. Once he cross-referenced that with security and police procedures he would have found himself a totally secure location for his trials, safe from anybody interrupting, just in case anything did go wrong. Presumably that's where the alien is as well."

"So what do we do?" Lloyd asked. "Conduct a mass search? I'd hate for any of my people to stumble on this alien. If you say it exists, ma'am, then I'll believe you. But you're not going to convince everybody."

"Tell you, there's no need for a search," Greg said. "Sinclair will take us into the caves and show us where the drone gave him the flower. We'll see what we can find there. Another personality package maybe. Royan has to have left some method of guiding Julia to him."

"Sinclair!" Suzi grunted. "You're going to rely on that overmicrowaved fruitcake? Jesus, Greg, he's totally brainwarped."

Amusement and annoyance chased across Greg's face.

"Sinclair's not exactly rational," he said slowly. "But neither is he insane, no way. I think he might be slightly timeloose."

"Trust you to stick up for him then," Suzi said.

"Sinclair is a precog?" Julia asked.

"He has some ability along those lines, certainly. Although the talent seems somewhat erratic. He's very aware that there's a big concentration of events and interests focusing on New London right now. It's what he's been predicting all along. Quite a formidable prescient vision, really. Given that he's been up here for seven years."

"All right," said Julia. "If you think Sinclair is reliable enough, then we'll try it."

Victor groaned inwardly. He'd known this was coming. One whiff of Royan and she'd charge off without thinking. She was so methodical and prudent about everything else in life; the man was a dangerous blind spot. "Julia." The quiet, purposeful way it came out made everyone look at him.

Julia's eyes narrowed challengingly. "Yes?"

"If you go into the caves then you wear proper protective gear, and the crash team goes with you. You don't go in otherwise."

Suzi chuckled in the dead silence that followed.

"Will Sinclair buy that?" Julia asked Greg.

"It's not up to him," Victor said.

"Victor's right, I'm afraid," Greg said apologetically. "That flower was a warning, after all. And I know the alien's here even if nobody else quite believes."

Julia raised her hands in good-humoured capitulation. "OK. The crash team it is."

Charlotte stayed with him. It made sense, her part was over, and Greg didn't want her with him in the caves where she'd be a liability. She said she didn't fancy spending the night sitting in the Governor's Residence with a hardliner. He certainly wasn't going to let her go out into the cavern again. So the security centre it was.

Besides, Victor thought, she was so bloody easy to look at.

They were in Lloyd McDonald's office, an impersonal standardized cube with two glass walls and two of rock. One of the glass walls gave him a view across the Cavern, the other showed a secretary's office on the other side. The hardline bodyguard Lloyd had assigned to him was lounging in one of the reception area chairs outside.

Charlotte had curled up on a low black leather settee, chin on her hands, looking dolefully out into Hyde Cavern. She still seemed nervous, always glancing at her watch. It had stopped raining now, allowing the mist to clear away. The lighting tube had dimmed to a sylvan glimmer, a lone moonbeam threaded between the endcap hubs. Buildings across the parkland were picked out by floodlights, a weird mix of architectural styles, the best classical representation of each era, scattered about without thought.

New London always put him in a contemplative mood.

The eye-twisting geometry and the determination with which the residents pursued life insisting on introspection.

He was sitting in front of Lloyd's desk terminal, watching the intricate jockeying of the Strategic Defence platform as it inched towards the Alenia COV-325. New London's electronic warfare satellites were blocking the spaceplane's sensors, preventing it from observing the manoeuvre. It would be within laser range in another ninety minutes.

The spaceplane pilot must know. It was the obvious tactic. They would have to pull back.

COV-325 performance perimeters streamed through Victor's processor node. He reckoned the spaceplane had another thirty-two hours' life-support capacity left before they would have to de-orbit and head back to Earth.

The Typhoons from Listoel would catch it. A spaceplane lumbering down through the atmosphere would be no match for front-line fighters.

Charlotte shifted round on the settee. It was distracting. Her legs belonged to someone at least three metres tall.

He started to enter the code for Listoel into the terminal, then the alarm went off.

"What's that?" Charlotte demanded.

"Status one security alert," he said.

Access Security Centre Command Circuit. Query Alarm. New London Strategic Defence Operations Room Violation. Five Possible Penetration Agents. Sector Isolation Procedures Activated.

"Bloody hell," Victor blurted. He made for the door, Charlotte scrambled to her feet behind him.

"Stay here," he ordered. "And you," he told the bodyguard, "stay with her."

Charlotte looked like she wanted to protest, but the strength in his voice stopped her. Her shoulders slumped.

Display Security Centre Floor Map. As the outline squirted into his mind he drew the Tokarev pistol from his shoulder holster and flipped the safety off. A rush of adrenalin buzzed in his veins when he came out into the broad central corridor. Security personnel were ignoring the moving walkways, half-running past him, grim faced. They all seemed to know what to do, where they should be going. The alarm was still blaring away.

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.

"Assuming 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."