Peter Hamilton - The Nano Flower

She watched her flesh-and-blood self quirk her lips in silent acknowledgement. Some of the tiredness seemed to have gone. She was glad, body and mind had been subjected to far too much pressure over the last three days. Almost maxed out.

"It worked, then," Greg said, his voice had the sluggishness she knew came from a neurohormone hangover.

"Yes," she said. "The Hexaëmeron won't be coming back."

"Bon voyage, the pair of you."

Julia began to send tendrils of herself out into the floor, breaking down and digesting the disseminator plant. Watched Rick, Greg, and her flesh-and-blood self scurry down the connecting passage as a circular bulge rippled out from her base.

The tendrils' inner core of protean cells absorbed the chemicals that the outer layer had dissolved and processed, fissioning rapidly. Individual tendrils met and merged into a single consumptive wavefront. It reached the chamber walls and rose up hungrily.

Once the last of the chamber's rubbery strings had been converted, Julia pulled the skirt of protean cells back, and began to alter her shape, becoming more pliable. She headed towards the passage, her movement a combination of rolling and slithering. When she reached the entrance she extended a ring of herself that melded with the translucent walls, and began to digest them. She sent a second ring of cells swelling fluidly over the top of the first, then a third. Her main bulk moved forwards, soaking up the engorged rings as she went. More rings were formed and sent on ahead. Specially formatted suckers fastened on to the rock beneath the disseminator plant, and began to leach out various minerals the cells needed.

By the time she squeezed out of the end of the passage she was a globe over seven metres in diameter, almost touching the hemispherical chamber's apex. Her weight crushed the composite cargo pods into blade-like splinters. She covered the whole chamber in a digestive layer, and moved on into the next passage, pushing a tube of cells ahead of herself as she followed the spiral down. The titanium nuggets in the tumours were ingested and pulverized, the motes held in suspension. She would need all the metal she could get later.

In the bottom chamber she waited for the new cells to catch up with her, at the same time sending fresh tendrils out into the four remaining passages to suck in still more organic matter.

She could perceive Greg and her flesh-and-blood self standing at the far end of the passage, consternation on their faces. The three crash team hardliners had taken their Konica rip guns from their armour suits' waist clips.

"Do we run?" Rick yelled.

"No," Greg said. "But it'd be a good idea to stand back against the wall when it comes, no messing."

"It's still her?"

"Yeah."

"Jesus."

"You wanted to come," her flesh-and-blood self said. There was a ripple of light laughter in her voice that had been missing for quite some time. "Insistent, you were."

Rick grunted in dismay. They flattened themselves against the passage walls.

Julia's alien body began to coalesce. The chamber wasn't going to be big enough to accommodate her; Royan's disseminator plant had been more extensive than she'd expected — another five of the hemispherical chambers, nearly a kilometre of connecting passageways. She shaped herself into a serpent form a couple of metres in diameter, hardened and roughened her external layer for traction, and surged down the passage.

"My Lord!" Sinclair shouted. "The Beast! The Beast is come." He fell to his knees, clasping his hands in prayer. "And when they shall have finished their testimony, the Beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them."

"Oh, shut up," Rick said.

The security hardliners' rip guns were aimed at her in fear as her questing tip slithered past.

"Down," her flesh-and-blood self ordered in an iron tone. "Put those guns down. It won't touch us."

Not that it mattered even if they did fire. She could absorb the bolts without any real damage, and take their guns away as any mother would from errant children. Yes, Royan had been right to fear the Hexaëmeron. She regarded the knot of cells that held her lover's slumbering consciousness tenderly. They would be together again one day, and truly free.

Her tip split into two as it emerged into the catacombs, then those tips branched again. She started to probe the fissures and passages of the fault zone. A tide of cohesive oil penetrating every cranny; some of her extremities were thinner than leaves, barely five cells thick.

Caves and passages were observed, oppressively miasmatic in the low infrared band. Rock formations revealed their composition and weaknesses; ores were assayed. She watched freshets coursing through the bleak ragged cavities, several thin waterfalls splattering down isolated clefts, their volume visibly decreasing; and guessed at the lake next to the Celestial Apostles' village being breached.

She started to siphon the water into herself, opening up a plexus of capillaries to distribute it evenly.

Bodies in muscle-armour suits were lying above the sinking water, jammed into tight rifts, or caught on jutting rock fangs. Little clumps of jetsam bobbed along. In one passage she discovered a dog, its fur badly singed, barbecued flesh peeling away. She sent out a pseudopod, and digested it.

Suzi was floating face down in a crescent-shaped cave where the water had pooled, long scorch gouges down the back and legs of her armour. Rip gun bolts had gouged molten scars in the rock, glassy beads dribbling down the walls like wax from a candle.

Julia ingested the water, then pushed a large lump of herself into the cave, inflating it like a bubble until every square centimetre of the rock's surface was covered with a thin skin of cells. Four missiles had detonated, she could taste the bitter chemicals of the warheads imprinted on the walls. Minute particles of metalloceramic were detectable, along with composite and plastic fragments. Leol Reiger had been hit.

She retracted her far-flung body from the more distant sections of the fault zone, and concentrated on examining the area around Suzi's cave.

Footsteps betrayed him, she could hear the crash team blundering about in and around the village cave, but discrimination procedures quickly eliminated them. She heard it then, a monotonous clumping, one foot moving slowly, coming down hard.

She infiltrated the passage behind him, sprouting exploratory tentacles into the wall cracks. They discovered a labyrinth of narrow chinks behind the surface, dislodged ore veins, rock and metal torn apart. Her body oozed in, filling every cranny. The leading edges passed round him in silence, slithering on ahead. Ten metres in front of him, she seeped back out into the passage, forming a solid clot like cold brimstone.

The armour suit was limping, left leg grating loudly at each movement. One infrared helmet beam shone weakly ahead, swaying from side to side. Two of the thermal dump panels on his back were dead, the third glowed strongly in the infrared. Her magnetic-sensitive cells picked up shivers of energy from the muscle bands. Air filter intakes on the helmet growled asthmatically.

Leol Reiger stopped, his rip gun raised to point at the smooth protoplasm barrier. Julia sculpted a relief of her own face, a metre high, and extended it out of the integument. A green laser fan from the suit's shoulder sensor pod swept over her.

Julia opened her mouth, and used the cells inside as a diaphragm. "I warned you before, Mr. Reiger, I would not forget you."

Leol Reiger's suit speaker clicked on. "Julia Evans. Gotta hand it to you, this is some stunt. You wanna deal?"

"No. I want you to know it was me."

"Yeah? Then you'd better be good, rich bitch, you'd better be flicking supreme. Because I told you once already, the only way out now is you and me."