The Nano Flower Part 59

'Just one shot from a Strategic Defence platform,' she pleaded. 'That's all it needs. Pavel Kirilov is going to call me before his s.p.a.ceplane docks, we'll know when he's in range.'

'No, he's not going to call you,' Lloyd said. 'And we're not shooting anyone right now. We can't, thanks to you.'

She gave him a fearful glance.

'Screen six,' he said, and pointed through the gla.s.s.

The delta-wing s.p.a.ceplane was inside the lip of the southern hub crater, hanging below the docking spindle. Small blue flames stabbed out of the reaction-control nozzles, lining it up for a landing on the crater wall. Two sets of doors had 485.

hinged open on either side of the dorsal ridge. Black thermal-dump panels had concernnaed out, and folded back parallel with the wings, making way for silvered dishes and framework racks to rise out of their recesses. Charlotte peered forwards. There were squat cylinders nestling in the racks, their front ends were like insect eyes, a multisegment hemisphere of black chrome lenses, a large bell-shaped nozzle protruded from the rear. Now she knew what to look for, she could see the gold-foil covered boxes of lasers on telescopic arms rising above the dishes.

'That's Kirby?' she asked, her voice had become a croak.

'Oh no,' Victor said. 'Kirby is still on his approach phase. That's Leol Reiger. You remember him? The two of you ilmost met on the Colonel Maidand.'

She bit her lower lip, fighting the tears building behind her eyes. Nothing. Nothing she ever did turned out right.

The office's terminal bleeped. Lloyd picked up a handset and listened for a few seconds. 'It's Leol Reiger,' he said. 'He says he wants to talk to Julia.'

'Talk to him, Sean,' Victor said. 'Stall him if you can.'

Lloyd opened up the communication circuit. The flatscreen remained blank. Charlotte edged well out of the camera's pick up field.

'This is Governor Francis,' Sean said.

'Where's Julia Evans?' Leol Reiger asked.

'Unavailable. I'm all you're going to get.'

'OK, Mr Governor, you and I need to come to an arrangement.'

'You have no docking clearance, Mr Reiger, and I'm not authorized to make deals.'

'Never learn, you people, do you? Your SD platforms are flicked, otherwise you would have snuffed us ten minutes ago. We're coming in. Now how much damage we cause to that very delicate biosphere of yours in the process is down to you.'

'How so?'

'I want Charlotte Fielder.'

Charlotte let out a soft moan, the sound of her heart pounding was very loud, all the gla.s.s walls of the office were suddenly rus.h.i.+ng towards her. Hands clamped round her upper arms, guiding her into a chair as her legs buckled.

'Have her brought to the docking bay,' Leol Reiger said.

'Never heard of her,' Sean said.

'Wrong. She's been on a bit of a spending spree in your shops today. She's up here. Find her and bring her to me.'

'Otherwise?'

'We come hunting for her. And you know me, that will become very messy. Guaranteed.'

'What do you want her for?'

'She knows where to find something I'm looking for.'

'Don't,' Charlotte gulped. 'I don't.'

Lloyd knelt down beside her, 'Shush,' he said softly. 'It's all tight.' His arm went round her shoulder.

She hated herself for being so weak, especially in front of Fabian.

'She tells me where it is, and I pick it up,' said Leol Reiger, 'then I leave. n.o.body comes to any grief that way. Simple.'

Sean looked helplessly at Victor. The security chief threw his hands in the air.

'We don't hand people over to tekmercs,' Sean said. 'I suggest you refer back to Clifford Jepson if you want to know where the source of atomic structuring is located, yes?'

There was a brief pause.

'Gotta hand it to you people,' said Leo! Reiger. 'You're well plugged in. So you know what'll happen if I don't get that little f.u.c.k-dolly. Think about it. You've got five minutes.'

Victor's fist came down on the desk top. 'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. Why hasn't Clifford Jepson briefed Reiger on how to contact the alien?'

'Do you want me to recall the crash team back to the airlock complex?' Lloyd asked anxiously.

'Looks like we'll have to,' Victor said. 'Do we know if Reiger's s.p.a.ceplane has a datalink with any of the geosync communication platforms?'

'I'll get Bernie to run a check on their data traffic,' Lloyd said.

'Do that. If not, we'll offer to plug him in to Jepson direct.'

487.

'He'll want to know why you're making that kind of offer, yes?' Sean said.

'Yeah,' Victor growled. 'Maybe we can spin him something about not being able to find Charlotte. h.e.l.l, we've got to give him something.'

Lloyd picked up a handset, then frowned. 'Now what?'

Charlotte turned to look into the command post. There was a commotion round one of the consoles, its operator shouting into his headset mike. Two supervisors stood behind him, leaning over his shoulders.

Lloyd raised the handset to his face. 'Bernie, what's going on?'

Charlotte instinctively checked on the s.p.a.ceplarie. The undercarriage had unfolded. As she watched, it touched down on the crater wall. The wheels blurred with speed.

'There's someone in the docking complex,' Lloyd blurted.

'Not one of my people,' Sean said. 'They were all taken out.'

'I wonder,' Victor said thoughtfully. 'Lloyd, put the intruder on this screen.'

Lloyd muttered into the handset. The desk terminal's flat-screen lit up. It was another of the southern endcap's interminable stone-walled corridors. Someone was walking along it, dressed in a blue maintenance division jumpsuit.

'Run an ident check on him,' Victor said.

Lloyd typed hurriedly on the terminal keyboard.

The s.p.a.ceplane had finished its acceleration run. Its nose began to turn in towards the southern endcap.

'Got him,' Lloyd said.

Victor bent over to scan the data flowing down the flatscreen.

'His name is Talbot Lombard,' Lloyd read. 'Aged fortyone, got his communications technology degree from Hamburg University. Came up to New London eight years ago, employed by Globecast, worked setting up their franchise in the southern endcap. Fired seven years ago for pirating programmes. His return ticket was never used, no record of further employment in New London.'

'A Celestial Apostle,' Victor said. 'One who'd know all 488.

about Clifford Jepson's arms trading. And how to get in contact.

'You think he's the interface?'

'Has to be,' Victor said. 'And he'll take L.eol Reiger straight down into the caves.'

'If Reiger doesn't shoot him first, yes?' Sean said.

'So cynical,' Victor muttered with a grin. He straightened up, pointing two fingers at the big flatscreen outside, and shooting. 'Got you, Reiger.'

'What about the Dolgoprudnensky s.p.a.ceplane?' Sean asked. 'They're due to reach us in another ten minutes.'

'I'll call Pavel Kirby,' Charlotte said. 'If you want. Explain that I haven't really got the generator data.' She thought of facing that cold clinical expression again, and s.h.i.+vered; but she desperately wanted to do something right, try and repair a little bit of the damage.

'I think it's a bit late for that,' Victor said.

'That's not the answer, anyway,' Fabian said. She heard the old sneer in his voice.

'No?' Victor asked.

'Course not. It's simple, stupid. This is your story: The second s.p.a.ceplane is a.s.saulting New London, it's already knocked out your defences; and the Governor officially requires a.s.sistance in dealing with it. So call Greg's Russian general friend, the one that's authorized to use the CoDefence League's Strategic Defence platforms, and explain exactly who's inside that s.p.a.ceplane.'

Charlotte watched Victor and Lloyd exchange a non *plussed glance, then gasped. On the big flatscreen behind them, black armour-suited figures were emerging from the s.p.a.ceplane and bouncing in long steps across the crater wall towards the docking complex.

L.

T.

he Celestials' village gave Suzi the f.u.c.king creeps. A jungle village buried inside an asteroid, mega-primitive sophistication. It was a real sense tripper. Twenty billion tonnes of rock above, and a vacuum infinity below. Bad.

She worked hard to block out the conflict.

Melvyn was doing his job properly. Sending scouts into the surrounding catacombs, building a detailed picture of the zone. Major fault zone - why the f.u.c.k did Julia have to call 'it that? And just how many minor zones were there, exactly?

She sidestepped her way along one of the cracks leading off from the village cave. At least that t.i.t of an armourer back at Listoel had been right about her knee, the suit carried it well. The crack opened into a dry cave with a long fissure along its sharply sloping bottom. The rock glittered in the infrared beam her helmet lights gave off. Tiny flecks of metal frozen in silica. She couldn't see the base of the fissure, and it was too thin for anyone to climb. Not even the Celestials had used the cave.

She used her rangefinder laser to map the cave accurately, and spliced the result in with her inertial guidance unit data. When she scuffled her way back into the village cave the package was added to the composite Melvyn was a.s.sembling. He updated her own 'ware in return.

The catacomb map was superimposed over her photon-amp image. c.u.mulus clouds of solid light - reds, blues, and greens - caves, pa.s.sages wide enough for a suit to traverse, dangerous cracks, the lake. Maybe fault zone was right after all. The surrounding area was rotten with cavities, as if the rock was mouldy.

Then there was Dennis Naverro to cultivate, one of the crash team's remaining two sac psychics. Melvyn had wanted to widen some of the cracks leading off from the cave to give the team greater tactical positioning. She'd teamed up with

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN.

Dennis, the two of them blasting away awkward chunks of rock with their Konica rip guns, kicking the debris out of the way. Turning the crack into a corridor an armour suit could run down. She would need Dennis later; he didn't know it yet but he was going to pinpoint Leo! Reiger for her.

The flatscreens in the middle of the village allowed her to monitor the s.p.a.ceplane's progress. A squad of tekmercs had disembarked, penetrating the airlock sector.

Victor and Lloyd McDonald squirted over the images from security cameras in the southern endcap docking complex. She watched the image with her right eye, leaving the left free to pick the rock pinnacles that needed clearing from the crack. The images interlaced, both ghostly, transparent, her attention wandering between the two. Concentration would give one a solidity, banis.h.i.+ng the second.

She saw Talbot Lombard standing in a corridor, hands rais~d above his head as the tekmercs boiled out of a s.p.a.ce-plane reception room. Lockheed rip guns were levelled at him.

'Hey, what is this?' A handsome tanned face registered genuine bafflement.

He was flung against the wall, two tekmercs gripped his arms and pinned him there, feet twitching twenty centimetres above the ground. An armour-suited figure walked ponderously down the corridor, and stopped in front of him.

Leo! Reiger. Had to be. Going for pose, as always. c.r.a.p artist.

'Listen, man,' Talbot Lombard yelled frantically. 'Where's Jepson? Which one of you is Jepson? I've got a deal, man!'

'Congratulations, you just asked the right question,' Leol Reiger said. 'You get to live a few minutes more.'

'Did Jepson send you?'

'That's right. Who are you?'

'Tol, they call me Tol.'

'Well, they call me Tol, where can I find the nuclear force generator data?'

'Down in the cave. He'll bring it, he said he would. I was supposed to take Jepson there tonight, after he'd put together a deal to manufacture atomic structuring technology.'

'You're the interface?' 'Yes.'

'Between Jepson and who?'