The Nano Flower

"No, sorry about that, Suzi," De

"Yeah, right." He had the most gentle Welsh lilt, almost purring. She couldn't visualise his face, must have seen it back at Listoel and on the Anastasia, though.

Whoops and cheering came over her earpiece. When she looked back out into the cave there was a rust-coloured dog dashing round the huts, three armour suits in pursuit, their boots tearing long gashes in the thick carpet of moss. She would have just zapped the fucking thing.

One of the team caught up with the dog. It howled as the gauntlet clamped round its hind leg.

"Lock it in one of the huts," Melvyn said.

Suzi called up the feed from the security centre. It was a roof camera in Moorgate station. The last two tekmercs were disappearing into the service tu

She felt the hot calm of a combat high building inside. Checked round the cave. The two tech specialists rigging the lake cave charges had finished, walking down the staircase with Melvyn.

Melvyn ordered the solaris spots to be turned down. They were reduced to a vague ginger glimmer, filling the cave with dusky shadows. Her photon amp cut in, washing away the murky outlines with opalescent blue and grey silhouettes.

She could hear Melvyn's footsteps as he made a final inspection round, clumping on the rock, then the softer wet thuds as he walked over the moss.

"Radio silence until after we blow the charges," Melvyn said. "You know the form once they enter the kill ground. Get to it."

"Amen," Suzi mumbled. She plugged her suit's interface socket into an optical lead the tech specialists had laid out, careful not to tug the thin fibre with her gauntlets. The suit's 'ware meshed the image from the lake cave sensors into her photon-amp feed. It seemed to be working OK.

The only noise left was a regular gurgling coming from a pump. It was directly opposite her, to one side of the staircase. Water from the lake was seeping through hairline splits in the rock, dribbling down the wall where it was collected in a rough pool that the Celestials had chopped into the floor. The pump fed their irrigation pipes, and supplied the communal washroom.

She couldn't hear the dog any more, not even with the suit's external mike boosted up to full sensitivity.

De

The image from the lake cave wasn't particularly clear, the sensor was sitting behind one of the biolum panels, looking down on the entrance which Leol's squad would come through.

Twelve minutes. The prick was taking his own good time.

Weapons Check.

Symbology zipped through her mind. Everything was on line, rip gun magazines charged, hardware functional, targeting sensors operative. Just like the previous eight times.

Something moved in the lake cave. A reco

The first tekmerc came through the entrance, rip gun tracking round the cave. There was a burst of coded radio pulses. The rest of the squad began to move in.

Suzi crossed herself, and started counting the tekmercs. Talbot Lombard was hustled along by the eighth squad member. He looked terrible, white, sweating, little spasms ru

More coded radio chatter was exchanged. The reco

Fifteen, sixteen… Suzi realised she was mouthing the numbers silently as the tekmercs emerged, and jammed her teeth together.

She switched inputs to the village cave sensors. The tekmerc's reco

The flatscreens in the middle of the village suddenly flared white, casting a wintry glow over the huts circling the podium. A star was erupting into a phosphorescent nebula with a dense arc-bright core.

Looked like the Co-Defence League's kinetic missiles had snuffed the Dolgoprudnensky spaceplane. Clean and sweet.

Eight tekmercs were in the village cave. Four of them descending the staircase. Talbot Lombard stood on the top of the stairs, looking round in trepidation.

The first charges in the lake cave detonated. Suzi heard the explosion through her suit pick-up mike. The ground trembled.

A tekmerc was punched out of the passage by the blast-wave, somersaulting through the air. The pair holding on to Talbot Lombard lost their footing and went tumbling. Lombard landed heavily, mouth wide, screeching unheard torment.

"Go," Melvyn said.

Suzi cancelled the optical sensor inputs, and headed forwards. The second set of charges in the lake cave went off. She wished they'd brought enough charges to bring the whole fucking roof down on the bastards. Would have made life a bloody sight easier.

She reached the mouth of the crack as the first glare flares ignited. Small nova-bright spheres soaring out of shoulder launchers on the tekmercs' suits, swarming like a miniature galaxy above the village. Black overload spots ruptured right across her photon-amp image.

Tekmercs were coming out of the lake cave passage so fast that for one moment she thought they were equipped with jetpacks again. They were diving for cover, behind troughs, into cra

Activate Weapons Suite.

Target graphics materialized over the burning huts, graded scarlet circles. She brought the rip gun round. Dark, humanoid figure ru

Then her reflexes were automatically flattening her back against the rock. "Shoot and shift," Greg had told her, down in Peterborough and a long time ago. "Stasis is death."

A fusillade of tekmerc rip gun bolts chewed the mouth of the crack. Molten rock sprayed out.

"De

He was crouched down, firing up at the staircase. "I can't…" His voice dissolved into a roar of static as the tekmercs cranked up their ECM. He jumped back fast as lava pebbles splattered his suit.

"Shit!" she screamed.

There was a lull in the firing. The air in the cave was choked with glare flares. All they had to do was wait until the tekmercs ran out of chaff.

One of the crash team up above the solaris spots opened fire with his plasma carbine, pulses jabbing down and splashing open against the floor, violet ripples expanding on the edge of visibility. Two pulses hit an armour suit, flinging it into the air, spi