Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

Fire.

She landed on her side, momentum rolling her, knocking the breath out of her lungs. Then she was up and racing for the cave, suit boots kicking up sheets of foam. The airbuster’s energy cloud was flaring, fingers of vivid white light pouring out of the entrance. As it began to dim she fired the rip gun up the cave, hosing the bolts around at random until the magazine was drained.

Leol Reiger didn’t shoot back. She smacked a fresh power magazine into the rip gun, and walked forward. The cave walls were covered in bright infrared scars where the rip gun bolts had struck. Runnels of lava dripped into the water, sizzling loudly. Long twisters of steam rose up all around her, licking at the roof.

There were two ways she could do it; rip gun firing the whole time, chewing up the cave walls and triggering any anti-personnel mines he’d scattered; or the quiet way. But he knew she’d be coming, that gave him an advantage.

“Did Julia Evans get the nuclear force generator data, Suzi? Or is it still up for grabs?”

“Don’t tell me,” she said. “You and I can deal, snatch it for ourselves. Right?”

The cave ended ten metres in front of her, a narrow jagged opening into another cavern. All the photon-amp image gave her was blackness, as if the universe ended beyond the opening. Reiger was in there, waiting; and he knew she had airbusters. She tried analysing it from his position. Hide under the water? It was almost up to her knees, and getting deeper. A side cave that gave him a line of fire on the opening she’d come out of?

“You see anything wrong with that, Suzi? It’s worth billions. And you and I, we haven’t got a quarrel, not really. We just got hired by different people, that’s all. Did what we got paid for, shot the shit out of each other. We don’t have to do that no more, we can buy them with atomic structuring. Evans and Jepson, we can own them, Suzi.”

The roof? Was he clinging to the roof? A muscle-armour suit could hold him up there effortlessly.

Arm Loral Missiles. Target Image: Muscle-Armour Suit.

She smiled. The Lorals could just give her the edge; he’d be expecting another airbuster.

“Who said I was getting paid?” she asked.

“What? You do this for free? Like crap you do, Suzi.”

She fed a flight path into the Lorals’ ‘ware: into the cavern, then a loiter manoeuvre while the smart seeker heads performed their target acquisition, scanning with microwave radar and infrared. Once they locked on, Reiger would have to shoot them, revealing his position. If he didn’t, he’d be dead. Either way, she’d nail the shit.

“Fuck no, not free, Leol. Something you don’t know.”

“Oh yeah, like what?”

“Friendship.”

“Load of bullshit, Suzi. All tekmercs have is deals. You a real tekmerc, Suzi? You want to deal over atomic structuring? Or do you want to die?”

“Bollocks to you, Reiger.”

Launch Two Missiles.

A blast of compressed air pushed the missiles out of their tubes, small triangle fins unfolded, then the solid fuel motors ignited. Her infrared image was momentarily overwhelmed by the twin exhaust plumes.

“Shit, you bitch!” Reiger shouted.

Suzi was two seconds behind the missiles as she went through the opening into the cavern. The infrared radiance from the rocket motors lit up the interior like a pair of glare flares. She saw a roughly semicircular space, ten metres across. Above her, the roof was made up from giant cuboidal stone blocks, as if steps had been carved at some crazy inverted angle. Water came up to mid-thigh, slowing her movements.

She saw the missiles curving upwards. There was a red corona shining out from behind one of the rock cubes, Reiger’s infrared signature. Her photon amp caught the squat black cylinder tumbling down. Airbuster grenade. Stupid! her mind yelled. Bitterness and fury welled up. She flexed her knees, and started to fling herself flat, the water might shield her from the worst.

The airbuster detonated just as she hit the water. Her sight went from misty blues and reds to glaring white, then black.

There was no pain, no real feeling of anything. Her thoughts were sluggish, full of worries; about getting Reiger, and whether or not Greg had made it to the alien, and Andria who was far too innocent to be left to fend for herself alone. All of them mixed up, faces twisting together in a crazy kaleidoscope whirl until she wasn’t sure who was who any more. Shit but that airbuster must have fucked her brain good and hard.

Suzi?

She knew it was Greg. He was bringing pain back to her, suffering. Greg was crying in her mind.

I screwed up, she told him. Reiger got me with an airbuster.

Suzi, Suzi, I taught you better.

Sorry, Greg. She could see the weirdest egg, translucent, white and pale blue, dark shape at the centre. Julia’s face, frightened and angry. Is that the alien?

Yeah.

Don’t look much.

Julia’s getting it sorted, no messing.

Great. Then the image began to slip away.

Arm Loral Missiles.

That was strange, she certainly didn’t have the mental nrength left to load orders into the implant. But somehow her thoughts were being pushed up a very steep hill into her processor node.

Target Image: Muscle-Armour Suit.

Greg, was that you?

Sure thing, we’re going to get Reiger yet, you and I, no messing.

Launch Two Missiles.

She couldn’t tell if they had fired or not. Even the memory ghosts had fled. There was only blackness, without form.

Greg, don’t let my kid grow up like me.

Oh, Suzi.

Promise me, Greg.

Greg?

Bollocks.

The gothic-biology fabric of the chamber seemed an appropriate setting, Julia thought, as she listened to Royan. Neither one thing nor the other, rock or disseminator plant, both gone awry, stalled and incomplete.

Her anger had drained away, as it always did when she concentrated on assimilating the intricacies of a problem. But this time, that cool logical state of reasoning she exercised, the famed Evans rationality, was in danger of crumbling away. Her eyes couldn’t linger on Royan for more than a few seconds at a time. Royan, trapped inside this creature, this grotesque chimera. The deliberate physical ruining of his body. Once again. She knew exactly how much that would tyrannize his soul. And all her guilt from knowing it was because of the gulf between them that he had been driven here, to this ignominy, If they had never met, if she hadn’t tried to bind him to her, if…

Her mind was going through the routine at a virtually subconscious level, processor nodes analysing the data she was hearing, coding it, assigning it storage space in her memory nodes. All ready to be run through a logic matrix when the time came. Her decision. But all she really wanted to do was take Royan in her arms and hold him. To be free of all this punishing pressure, and live. Just for once, escape from what both of them were.

God, or fate, never seemed to give that option to an Evans.

Greg moaned, eyes widening in shock. His knees sagged, and Rick just caught him before he fell.

“What is it?” she demanded.

“Suzi,” he said, voice coming from the back of his throat. His features clenched in effort.

“What do we do?” Rick asked.

“Wait,” she said. “It’s all we can do.”

Greg moaned again.

She glanced at the Hexaëmeron, wondering whether to call the crash team hardliners in. But it didn’t seem to be doing anything; its surface was awash with shimmering refraction patterns. She’d been relying on Greg to provide any advance warning in case it turned hostile.

“Dead,” Greg said numbly. “Suzi’s dead.”

“How?” Julia asked.

“She went after Leol Reiger; they tangled in the caves somewhere.”