The Nano Flower Part 31

There was blood trickling out of his mouth, the side of his face where the maid had struck was bright red. He was blinking in numb confusion, his arms struggling limply. One eye was already swelling, the smooth skin discolouring. She went down on the cus.h.i.+ons, scattering some, and gripped his wrist. Her other hand went on his forehead. 'Don't move,' she whispered. The guitar neck pressed awkwardly into her belly.

'I-' he coughed. More blood sprayed out between his lips.

Charlotte sucked in a breath at the sight. Utile specks of blood were staining her white cotton top. She stroked the side of his head anxiously, eyes watering. 'Don't...'

Fabian caught sight of the maid behind her. His face twisted into rage, and he surged up.

'No!' Charlotte flung herself on him, pinning him down on the cus.h.i.+ons. 'No, Fabian. She's cleardusted.' That was 262.

the memory, the squint, the dazed crazed look. She'd seen some of her patrons' hardline bodyguards take the stuff. Cleardust was a synthesized derivative of the old angel dust, giving the manic strength and immunity to pain without the hallucinogenic effect.

'Very good,' said the maid. 'You're bright for a wh.o.r.e.'

Charlotte was centimetres from Fabian's face. Seeing pain and reflections of pain in his eyes.

A hand that must have been made of metal closed around her upper arm, and she was yanked up, squealing at the sudden pain. She stumbled for her footing. 'Please, Fabian, please stay down. Please.' It was all she could think of. He wouldn't undentand. The maid would kill him.

He glared upwards, b.l.o.o.d.y lips parted.

'Please, for me,' she pleaded.

'Right,' his voice was distorted, as if he was chewing on something.

The pressure on Charlotte's arm increased, making her mouth part with the pain. She was turned to face the maid. The glazed eyes made her s.h.i.+ver inside. They didn't see anything in this universe.

'I will ask you some questions,' the maid said. 'You will answer them for me, or I will start to snap all that expensive bonework of yours. Understand, wh.o.r.e?'

'Let him go. I'll tell you anything you want. But don't hurt him.'

Charlotte heard a m.u.f.fled high-pitched crack from somewhere outside the den. She thought it sounded like some kind of weapon.

The maid gave a cyborg smile. 'You're a very popular girl all of a sudden. Lots of people want to talk to you. But I'm first. And last.'

The crack came again, then again.

'Who gave you the flower?' the maid asked.

It took Charlotte's wild thoughts a moment to work out what flower she was talking about. 'Let Fabian go.'

'The flower?'

'I don't know who he was, not his actual name. Please.'

'Uar.'

263.

Charlotte's hand was grabbed. She screamed as two fingers were bent back. There was a pistol-shot snap.

Strangely enough, there wasn't any pain, not at first. She couldn't feel anything below her wrist, then a red-hot ache spread up her fingers, biting hard into her knuckles. There was bile rising in her throat. Her head began to spin alarmingly; for a moment she thought she was going to faint.

In horror she saw Fabian on his feet, lurching towards her and the maid. She lashed out with her free arm, knocking him back. His face was a mask of desperation and agony.

'Oh G.o.d no,' she wailed, tears swelling up. He was regaining his balance, going to try again.

'ENOUGH OF THIS. FABIAN, STAY WHERE YOU.

ARE.' The voice was an inhuman roar, loud enough to be painful. It was coming out of the music deck speakers, she realized.

Fabian ducked his head down in reflex, hands halfway to his ears. Even the maid was frozen.

The flatscreens came on, each one showing the same picture of a woman's face. Charlotte let out a choked cry as she recognized her. 'Julia Evans,' she gasped. It was her. Really her. Just like at the Newfields ball. That same compelling oval face.

Julian Evans smiled thinly. 'h.e.l.lo, Charlotte. I think it's about time you and I had a talk.'

'Not a chance,' said the maid.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

J.

ulia's personality package was coded as a commercial intelligence summary, so the Colonel Malt/and's 'ware network-management program automatically a.s.signed it storage s.p.a.ce in the lightware cruncher Jason Whitehurst was using to a.n.a.lyse kombinate finances. Once it was loaded, the personality package immediately reformatted the command routines of the processing structure it was running in, isolating itself from the lightware's operating program and annviral guardians. After it had confirmed its autonomy it sent out a series of instructions to the internal databuses, arrogating their handling procedures, shutting down the data flow.

With the lightware cruncher's processing operations suspended, the personality package began to wipe all the programs and ifies it found stored in the unit's memory. Access codes were changed. A new sequence of operating routines were loaded. The package's highly compressed data planes expanded into the empty lightware. Julia's reconst.i.tuted mentality came on line.

She started to a.s.sess the airs.h.i.+p's 'ware architecture, spreading her presence through the datanet, burning into ancillary processor cores. The bridge's 'ware was her first priority, gaining complete command of her new damain. New channels were opened and safeguarded, data flowed back into the lightware cruncher.

The Colonel Malt/and's flight control systems were plugged into a broad range of sensors and cameras distributed throughout the fuselage. Radar and the satellite uplinks were useless, swamped by the tekrnerc's jammer. She studied the optical circuits, pulling their codes out of memory cores, then started to look around.

External camera, portside fuselage. The Messerschmitt 265.

hovered level with the gondola. A laser rangefinder pulsed every second, helping it to maintain its stand-off position exactly. Eight armour-clad figures were left swung out between it and the Colonel Malt/and. Each of them identical, factory moulded; left hand controlling a jockey-stick, right hand holding a Lockheed rip gun. Two wavering columns of hot compressed air streamed out of the jetpack nozzles, behind and slightly below the shoulders. As she watched, one of them disappeared through a hole in the side of the gondola.

Internal camera, gondola lower-deck crew lounge. The lounge had been ravaged by the rip bolt, loose chairs hurled at the walls, composite walls cracked and buckled, carpet smouldering. Gla.s.s lay underfoot, the door twisted in its frame.

Two of the armoured figures were standing inside, Lockheed rip guns raised cautiously, covering the open doorway. Helmets blank bubbles of metal.

A third swept through the hole, jetpack efflux stirring up a mini-hurricane of wreckage as he settled on the uneven decking.

External camera, upper tail fin. The ruined landing pad, pitiful remains of the Pegasus spewing out thin plumes of smoke. Two of the Colonel Maitlancts crew, dressed in silvery fire-suits, were surveying the scene. They kept close to the edge of the pad, giving the Pegasus a wide birth as they shuffled along, testing the deck sheeting before each step.

Julia called up a structural schematic and systems status revieW from the bridge's flight control 'ware. The central gasbag, below the landing pad, had been badly lacerated.

Helium was escaping at a critical rate. The bridge crew had ordered a near-total ballast dump to compensate. Water from tanks and the swimming-pool was venting out of the gondola as fast as it could be pumped.

266.

The Colonel Malt/and's geodetic framework was drawn in fine blue lines, gasbag suspension rigging a jumble of green cobwebs. A large, roughly oval, area of fuselage struts around the landing pad and hangar had turned red, fringed in yellow. The landing pad itself was mostly black; a lot of the stress sensors' optical cables had been cut in the explosions, leaving gaps in the picture. Maintenance drones were inching along the longitudinal frames, inspecting individual struts for fractures, supplementing and refining the data from the sensors, filling in the true status of the black zones.

The damage a.s.sessment was rea.s.suring. The basic framework was bearing up under the redistributed loading. Power to the contra-rotating fans was being reduced, relieving as much pressure as possible until the upper fuselage frames could be repaired.

She accessed the bridge's memory cores and discovered that the maintenance drones communicated with the flight control 'ware via laser links; the entire geodetic framework was dotted with interface keys.

Internal camera, gondola stairwell. Greg and Suzi were moving to the upper deck. Suzi was brandis.h.i.+ng her Browning in one hand, pulling Greg along with the other. She looked as if she was walking directly into a hurricane blast, face furrowed with concentration, teeth bared, every step an effort. Greg was moving like an unplugged junkie. Julia recognized the thousand-metre stare; his gland was active, dissolving the real universe.

Structural schematic. A patch of the gondola's upper-deck hull changed to red, shooting out a ripple ring of yellow. The red centre snapped to black. Another rip-gun bolt. Electrical lines were cut, fibre-optic links severed. Compensator programs a.s.signed priorities and rerouted power and data.

267.

External camera, portside fuselage. One of the armoured tekmerc squad had broken away from his colleagues, charging towards the gondola much too fast. He cannoned into a cabin through the gap in the hull which the rip gun had made, arm just catching the edge.

Internal camera, gondola upper-deck cabin. The armoured figure spinning chaotically, bouncing off walls and ceiling. Legs and arms thras.h.i.+ng about, splintering the composite. He wound up jammed into a corner, jetpack still firing, boots a metre off the ground. The Lockheed rip gun fell from his gauntlet. His legs began a running motion in midair, toe caps hammering deeply into the bulkhead.

Julia brought additional processing power on line for that. Armour malfunction? Some sort of flying phobia? There was no rational explanation.

Internal camera, gondola lower-deck crew lounge. The remaining nine members of the squad were all a.s.sembled in the lounge. Their movements were sluggish, forced, the same as Suzi.

One of them pointed his rip gun at the mangled door. Fired. Fire alarms howled in protest throughout the gondola.

The squad clattered out into the lower-deck central corridor, heading for the prow. A couple of the Colonel Malt/and's cabin crew were in the central corridor, a steward and a maid. Both of them listless and drowsy. They gawped at the approaching tekmerc squad.

'Where is Charlotte Fielder?' one of the squad asked. His amplified voice was loud in the confined s.p.a.ce of the corridor, menacing.

The steward looked about, his face white. 'She might be with Fabian Whitehurst, in his cabin, or hers. I'm not sure.'

There was a momentary pause.

'Where is Jason Whitehurst?'

'In his study.' The steward pointed a wavering hand down the corridor towards the prow. 'That way.'

PETER F~ HAMILTON.

Four squad members stepped forward.

'You will show these four where Fabian Whitehurst's cabin is.'

The steward jerked his head in terror.

One of the squad reached out and grabbed the maid. She screamed.

'Be quiet. You come with us to the study.'

She began to snivel. The armoured figure jerked her along, nearly lifting her off the floor.

Julia accessed the Colonel Malt/and's radio gear, letting the raw signals flow directly into the lightware cruncher. The white-noise howl of the Messerschmitt's jammer dominated every frequency. She began to slot in filter programs. The tekmerc squad had to have some way of communicating.

She found a string of digital pulses in the UHF band, and refined the filter programs to kill the last of the jammer interference. A decryption program was loaded into the circuit.

Tekinerc squad inter-suit radio communication.

Tekmerc one: '...know what the f.u.c.k's happened to Chad. Those psychic freakos are beating the h.e.l.l out of each other somehow. You know how it is with them.'

Tekmerc two: 'G.o.d, it's like my head's on fire. There are corridors everywhere, like a b.l.o.o.d.y maze.'

Tekmerc one: 'No, there aren't. Fight it, turn up your photon-amp brightness. There's only one corridor.'

Tekmerc two: 'Sure thing, Leo!.'

Julia identified Tekmerc one as Leo! Reiger. Her own abridged memories contained a concise security file on him.

She a.s.signed the cause of the lone tekmerc's spasming run as due to Greg's psi effusion.

Tekmerc three: 'Shouldn't we try to find Mandel and Suzi?'

Leol Reiger: 'Suppose you tell me where the h.e.l.l to look now Chad's weirded out.'

Tekmerc three: 'So how about helping Chad?'

Leol Reiger: 'How, you dips.h.i.+t cretin?'

Tekmerc three: 'Sorry, Leo!. Can't think with this psychic s.h.i.+t s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g my mind.'

Leol Reiger: 'Concentrate on finding the Fielder girl. And forget about the psychics, this corridor c.r.a.p won't last much longer. They'll burn their brains out at this rate.'

Internal camera, study. Jason Whitehurst was sitting behind his desk cradling his head in his hands, rocking slowly back and forth, moaning, saliva bubbling from his lips. The two hardline bodyguards were covering the door with their Racal laser carbines, faces hard.

Gondola internal camera review. s.n.a.t.c.hed images flicked into the lightware cruncher as Julia shuffled through the inputs searching for Charlotte Fielder. The bridge with its crew, faces strained, hunched over their consoles, shouting hoa.r.s.ely at each other. Lower-deck corridor with the two groups of tekmercs walking away from each other, frightened blank faces of the steward and maid. Lower-deck cabins, lounges, gym, a sauna; all deserted. One cabin provisionally a.s.signed to Fabian: a mishmash of toys and clothes sprayed about. Crew quarters at the prow, their small double cabins decorated with hologram pin-ups, a big mess room with a flatscreen showing mushy static, communal washroom, laundry. The crew members were curled up in their chairs or lying on bunks, woozy, afflicted by Greg's psi effusion. Greg and Suzi in the upper-deck corridor, directly above the crew quarters. Upper-deck cabins, beautifully furnished staterooms, a dining-room right at the stern, a swimming-pool, the water nearly gone, a terrific whirlpool in the centre.

Fuselage internal camera review. The cameras fixed to the geodetic framework were all black and white, providing her with pictures of the narrow dimly lit longitudinal walkways, 270.

the gasbags looming oppressively. Next came pictures of ladders and stairs pinned to the transverse frames. Cylindrical maintenance drones sliding along their rails, folded waldos at both ends, like cybernetic mandibles.

Someone was climbing up a ladder near the stern. A woman in a maid's dress, totally unaffected by the psi effusion. At three hundred metres she was too far away from Greg, the effect was localized, centring round the gondola.

Julia accessed the crew records, matching the face with a file image. The maid's name was Nia Korovilla, she had been a crew member for eight years. A Russian national, with good references from three hotels, a clean employment record.

There was no reason for her to be where she was. Julia a.s.signed a subroutine to keep watching her.

Internal camera, gondola lower deck, Fabian's cabin. The tekmercs with the steward broke in. They didn't bother with the lock, simply punching out the door. It swung inwards, buckled by the first tekmerc's kick. The four of them entered, rip guns held ready.

Tekmerc squad inter-suit radio communication.