Peter Hamilton - The Nano Flower

"Yes, that you did."

Leol Reiger fired, walking forwards. Rip gun bolts tore into her outsize face, clawing it to cinders. Steam and carbon particles spewed back at him as cells died in their hundreds of billions.

Julia started to expand her cells, filling the cavities around the passage. Osmosis impelled the water through her, bloating every capillary. She felt it as a peristaltic contraction, muscles straining at their limit. The rock screeched in agony as hydrostatic pressure began to close the passage. A violent shudder threw Leol Reiger to his knees. The rip gun clattered away. He rolled on to his back, and stuck his arms up, pushing against the roof as it descended. The metalloceramic armour buckled.

Julia kept on squeezing long after it was necessary, wringing every wisp of air out of the compacted rock.

Greg pressed himself against the rough surface of the passage wall as the alien behemoth squirmed past. He could almost believe neurohormone abuse had sprained his synapses into hallucinosis, abandoning him in a universe of the mind's whimsy. In a way he wished it were true, that would mean the alien wasn't real.

Two metres in diameter, a skin like coarse leather, coloured sable-black, gruesomely supple, and possessing more inertia than a rampant dinosaur. Shadowform thought currents purled along its length, distorted human idiosyncrasies, anything but reassuring in their metamorphosis. Human without humanity.

"A serpent of the night," Sinclair cried. "Satan incarnate."

Strong eddies of air whipped past Greg's face, bringing a scent of corruption, of ripe fruit mouldering on branches. He coughed, eyelids blinking against the acridity.

"Hail Mary, for all me sins I beg your forgiveness," Sinclair said. His eyes were right shut.

"It won't hurt you," Julia said, her voice raised above the rasp of alien skin slithering over rock. Her thought currents had a self-assured tranquillity Greg envied.

"Not this," Sinclair cried. "I didn't want this. You've let loose the beast. I wanted an end to madness, the start of justice."

"It's harmless," Rick said. "Believe me. That's what we've done, neutered it. You'll never see it again."

Sinclair opened one eye, and shivered.

Greg wondered just how big the alien was now. There must have been a lot of disseminator plant to give it this much bulk.

"Is it an angel or a demon?" Sinclair asked.

"Neither," said Julia. "It's hope. A very noble sort of hope."

"For who?"

"Maybe a lot of people. The whole Earth is going to be given proof we're not alone in the galaxy, and never have been. They'll see it written in the sky tonight. And God knows this world deserves to be touched with wonder."

"You're a religious woman, Miss Julia?"

"Yes, I suppose I am."

The tail of the alien rushed by. Swallowed by the darkness in seconds. Greg hadn't really appreciated how fast the bloody thing was moving. Muscles unknotted, his legs were shaking.

Circles of light from the helmet spots on the hardliners' suits shone on the opposite wall. He stepped out into the middle of the passage. The alien presence was dwindling, a dawn-washed star at the back of his mind. Julia was staring into the gloom after it.

"Regrets?" he asked.

"Not one. It was all I could do."

He put his arm round her shoulder, and gave her a little hug. Doubts were still cluttering the peripheries of her mind.

"I said you were the best when it comes to decisions," he told her.

She grinned up at him. "Thanks, Greg. And you, too, Rick. I'm deep in your debt; I would never have thought of that by myself."

"No," Rick said. "There's nothing to thank, this was the zenith of my professional life, I've justified fifteen years' work and dreaming, and you made it possible." He was solemnly intent, nearly entreating. Julia's grin became a little laboured.

"Come on, I think we'd better get going," Greg said.

"Yes," Julia said. "I must get in touch with Victor and Sean, there will be the most awful panic if I don't inform them what's about to happen."

Greg had half expected to meet the alien again in the caves. Two or three times he thought he could hear something rumbling, a sound like boulders being slowly ground together. But the only sign of its presence was an oval tunnel which had been bored into the storage cave, saving them from wriggling along the narrow crack. The rock had been sheered clean, giving it a polished-marble finish.

"Is it ahead of us?" Greg asked Julia.

"No. I want to get back to Hyde Cavern quickly."

"So it made this opening for you?"

"Yes."

Shelves and cargo pods had been smashed against the rear wall of the storage cave where the wave had flung them, walls and ceiling were dripping wet. There was no sign of any of the fruit.

"The hardliners must have breached the lake," Greg said.

"So where did all the water go?" Rick asked. "We never saw any, and we were lower down than this."

"Used up," Julia said without hesitating.

"Are you in contact with that thing?" Greg asked.

"Not exactly, but there was some feedback when I squirted my memories over. I know what it can do, and I know how I'll use it. The water is only the start. It needs a lot of organic chemicals." She sighed. "I hope it leaves enough hydrocarbons to germinate the second chamber's biosphere."

The extent of the damage in the village cave surprised Greg. It must have been a brute of a fight. The crash team were splashing about through ankle-deep water. He counted seventeen armour suits laid out in a row. One of them was small, badly scored.

Suzi had been so young when they first met, barely a teenager, frightened and determined, emotionally scarred. One of the best Trinities he had ever trained, soaking up every word, bright and quick. She never had a childhood, not the kind his kids at Hambleton were getting. Instead he taught her how to kill, then threw her straight into the front line. She hadn't known anything else, her entire life moulded by a bunch of drunken Party militia, a random fling of the dice. If they had turned down another street, ransacked someone else's hotel, it would've been so different. Suzi was smart enough to have made it in any field. Never had the chance to try. That was what they'd fought for together, back in Peterborough, so that the next generation could live real lives again. And they'd been right, Julia and her achievements proved that.

He turned to Julia as she picked her way over dead fish, button nose wrinkled in dismay. She recoiled from the heat in his expression.

"Are you quite sure you and the alien dealt with Leol Reiger?" he asked.

She nodded hurriedly, eyes dark with emotion. He hadn't seen her that vulnerable-looking for seventeen years.

Greg's earpiece hissed with static, then Melvyn was talking in a breathless voice. "I was about to send out a scout party for you. I was worried the water might have trapped you."

Three of the suited figures were walking towards them. Julia fumbled round in her hood, and found the small mike. "Do you have a communication circuit with Victor?" she asked.

"Not a chance, our fibre optic went down in the combat." He paused. "Greg—"

"I know," Greg said.

"We're leaving now," Julia said. "Get your team together." She started for the staircase.

"But there's still five tekmercs unaccounted for," Melvyn protested.

"Are all your people here?"

"I detailed four to take our wounded out, but the rest are here, yes."

"Then get them out."

"Yes, ma'am. What about the tekmercs?"

"Leave them to the alien, they won't escape."

"You found it?" Melvyn asked. Greg heard a thousand questions in his voice.

"Yes," Julia said.

"Lordy, me boy, you should have seen the beastie," Sinclair said. "A kilometre long, it was, black as hell."