Nano (15 page)

46

Floor 202, Cloud Tower, Dubai

Chloe and Steph made their way back to the centre of the floor, where water and mud sloshed almost up to their ankles and the wind blew in stronger than ever through the shattered windows of the south-facing side. Chloe had the puppy, Lucky, in the crook of her right arm. He was still whimpering.

Steph ran a gloved finger under his chin and the dog looked up at her with mournful eyes. ‘Don't worry, little chap,' she said. ‘You'll soon be out of here.'

‘I'll see you back on 199,' Chloe said and turned towards the opening she and Steph had made earlier with the Sonic Drill.

Steph paced over to the nearest shop, its rear window facing out towards the sand and beyond that a distant, featureless horizon. The store had once been a designer clothes outlet, top-end. Plain, minimalist suits now lay in scrappy piles on the floor. Steph saw a mound of dresses and shirts and noticed a few labels. Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake, Armani, and the incongruous thought struck her that she was staring at perhaps 100,000 euros worth of mess.

The shop was all concrete and steel but the racks that had supported a few choice items had collapsed, the concrete chewed up. A large stone block that had served as a post-modern counter had snapped in two. A flat-screen monitor lay face up, the glass shattered. An alarm was blaring and the back of the store was bathed in a pulsating red glow from a utilitarian security light among some piping high up in the ceiling.

Steph walked slowly over to the window. The wind was very strong here and she had to brace herself against it using the frame of the window to anchor herself. She checked her wrist monitor, measuring the wind force, then tapped the screen, her suit linked up with the mainframe on Tintara to calculate the parameters she need to set up the Hopjet. The figures came back in under a second and she began to prep the device.

This was the first time she had used the machine in the field and she couldn't help thinking back to the hours of practice she had endured at Base One. It was a remarkable piece of equipment – yet another wonder from CARPA – a short-range jetpack that could transport a trained user a distance of up to 1 kilometre. It weighed in at under 10 kilograms and fitted into a specially designed unit that rested against the backpack of a cybersuit. But she had always struggled with it, just as she had struggled with the Silverbacks and other aircraft. She was a doctor by training and, she knew, a damn fine one. She could offer E-Force a great deal but her Achilles heel was her piloting skills. She was definitely not a natural born aviator, not like Chloe, the ex-French Air Force pilot, or Mai, the former NASA astronaut.

This weakness made her the brunt of many a joke among the team as they each learned how to use the Hopjet. She had turned out to be the runt of the litter when it came to mastering it and had garnered the nickname Buzz Lightyear. Ironic then, that here she was the first to try it out in the field.

A nozzle flipped out from the rear of the Hopjet – the exhaust of a tiny but extremely powerful retro rocket propulsion system. Its energy came from a solar-powered motor the size of a mobile phone that could provide in excess of 500 horsepower, equivalent to a Ferrari.

Steph keyed in her comms to Tom at Base One. ‘Hey, Tom,' she said.

‘Steph, Mark tells me you're going to use the Hopjet.'

‘Yeah okay, get the jokes out of the way, cyberboy.' She could hear Tom snigger down the line and imagined him raising his hands in defence.

‘No Steph. Really, no. I'm sure you'll be just –'

‘All right,' Steph interrupted. ‘I need some data. It's particularly tricky because the wind coming off the desert is . . . well . . . significant. I think I've worked out the thrust settings but could you confirm, please?'

‘Sure.'

Steph tightened her utility belt and cleared her wrist monitor, then Tom's voice came over the line. ‘Okay, Steph. Set thrust to Level 6.3, Direction 123.77 degrees.'

‘Thanks Tom. Wish me luck!'

‘God! Don't worry, I do!'

She clicked off the comms and set the parameters. Taking a step towards the window, she tapped her wrist computer and the control for the Hopjet appeared. With her forefinger she stabbed the ‘go' symbol.

47

Steph shot through the window directly into the head wind. But the powerful retro rocket propelled her through the air almost effortlessly. She glanced down and a kilometre beneath her lay the streets of Dubai.

It was an exhilarating feeling but Steph would have been the first to admit it was also terrifying. The only thing that kept her calm was the absolute confidence she had in the equipment and she knew she could pilot this thing even if she was not the team's star aviator.

She flew horizontally a little over 100 metres, watching the concrete and tarmac of the city flash before her eyes. From here she could see far out across the desert. Turning her head slightly, she took in most of the sprawling city. Banking around, she hovered in the air and faced the building. The glass and steel of the Cloud Tower shimmered in the hot, late-morning sun. She could smell the fires and see the black smoke billowing still from the great hole in the building – the smashed-up levels they had dubbed the Chasm. Beyond the tower, peaceful and quiet, stretched the ocean, the Arabian Gulf and the world famous man-made complex of islands: the Palm Deira, the World Islands and the Palm Jumeirah.

Steph tapped at her wrist and guided the Hopjet back to the tower. She descended three floors to bring her directly level with the shattered windows leading onto 199. An almost imperceptible nudge on the thrust control took her forwards slowly and a moment later she was at the window of another devastated shop, three storeys below the ruin she had left on 202. From outside the window she could see the floor of the shop was strewn with debris. A dead woman lay spreadeagled on her back. She was covered with dust, making her look like a petrified two-thousand-year-old corpse from Pompeii. Steph could see nothing moving, nothing alive.

Ascending a metre, she nudged forwards and then flew slowly through the window, feet first, landing on the ravaged floor. Once she had steadied herself, she cut the power to the retro rocket and deactivated the Hopjet. Feeling quite proud of her efforts, she stepped forwards into the expanse of the shop.

‘Tom, I'm on 199,' she announced into her comms.

‘Well done, girl!'

She checked her monitor. ‘By my reckoning, we have under 57 minutes to get survivors out. Is that right?'

Tom was silent for a second. ‘Sybil's latest estimate is 56 minutes 16 seconds.'

‘Right. Where's Chloe? Has she reached the roof yet?'

‘Nothing yet from Mark . . . Hang on.' A short silence. ‘Just picked her up with the BigEye. She's making her way to the roof and the Big Mac is coming down readying the Cage.'

‘Great. I'll be in touch soon.'

She turned back to the wrist monitor and altered the settings so she could run a thermal scan across Floor 199. This would be the best way to find survivors. She began with the far corner and did a slow sweep clockwise, from the furthest point of the tower close to where she was standing just inside the south-facing wall.

Halfway across the sweep she had still found nothing and felt a wave of disappointment. She knew there had been survivors on 199 but that was maybe 30 minutes earlier. Some nasty things could have happened in that time. She pushed the dread thought aside and pressed on, slowly, carefully searching for signs of life.

Three-quarters of the way across the sweep all she had were the thermal signatures of almost 100 dead bodies. She took a deep breath and kept the scanner steady. Then it started to bleep. Six red dots appeared on the screen, one of them some way from the other five. She was just lowering her wrist and had turned in the direction of the signals when her comms crackled to life and a voice broke in.

‘Help us. Please help us. We're trapped in the Cloud Tower, Floor 199.'

48

Steph dashed out of the shop and into the main body of the mall, speaking urgently into her comms as she went. ‘Hello?' she was saying. ‘Who is this? Where are you on Floor 199?'

Only silence at the end of the line.

‘Repeat. Where are you exactly? This is Stephanie Buchanan, E-Force. I'm on Floor 199.'

For several more seconds, nothing. Then a crackle and a small voice. ‘Hi . . . er, hello.'

Steph stopped for a second, surveying the open space, the devastation and the piles of wreckage. ‘Who am I speaking to?'

Nothing again. A loud rasp of static. The filters cut in to stop Steph's ears from being damaged. Then the small voice began again. ‘My name is Abu. Abu Al-Rashid. I'm outside
Cloud Electrics
.'

‘Where is that?'

‘Er . . . not far from the north corner, about, um . . . six, seven shops back towards the southeast emergency stairs.'

‘I'll be there in a few minutes. Please stay where you are.'

‘Er . . . okay.'

Steph turned to her right. A large steel beam had collapsed and lay across the centre of the walkway, crumbled marble all around it. She passed around the end of the beam and could see the north corner of the building directly ahead. She counted six mangled bodies on the ground and another draped grotesquely over the top of a door leading into a shop. Blood had pooled in the white dust under the person's smashed head. Passing around a huge mound of masonry, scattered furniture and twisted clothes-rails, Steph emerged onto the walkway running from the southeast corner to the north corner of the building. And there, 20 metres ahead, stood a small boy waving his arms, a grave look on his face.

49

Chloe struggled through the hole she had punched out earlier with the Sonic Drill. Some of the material around it had shifted, partially blocking the opening and she had to grapple with some hefty chunks of concrete one-handed while she held Lucky with the other. But from then on it was clear-going, up half a dozen steps to the first landing, then the flight of stairs leading to the long corridor that took her onto the roof. She stepped out into the smoke-filled air, the morning sun obscured by grey haze.

Looking up as she heard the Big Mac descending to a position about 50 metres above the top of the Cloud Tower, she saw a tiny burst of orange emerge from the engines on the underside of the enormous craft.

‘Hey Chloe.' Mark Harrison's voice came through her comms. ‘We're sending down a makeshift pickup for the puppy.'

‘Nice work!' Chloe responded as she watched a small metal box descend on a cable dropping from an opening in the underside of the Big Mac. It stopped a metre from the roof. She opened the top of the box, gave Lucky a final pat on his velvety head and placed him inside. Closing the lid, she could hear the puppy whine.

‘You really are the lucky one, buddy,' she said as the box started to ascend.

She heard another, louder sound coming from the underside of the gigantic aircraft and as the little box rose, a Cage began to descend towards her. Chloe loved this machine and had once announced over coffee on Tintara that it was her favourite piece of E-Force equipment.

‘Really?' Pete had responded, surprised. ‘I've used it, as you know, and it is a very cool piece of kit. But I wouldn't say it's my favourite.'

‘Ah, that's because Sigourney Weaver isn't your heroine, Pete.'

He had looked at her, puzzled, then turned to Mai sitting next to him. ‘What's she talking about?'

‘
Aliens
, the movie?'

‘Oh, right. Gotcha. What was it, again? “Get away from her, you bitch!” Yeah, I see the similarities.'

‘Not sure how to take that,' Chloe had retorted.

But it was true, she had identified with Ripley, the heroine of the
Alien
movies and in her early teens she had watched that scene in which Ms Weaver had seen off the mother alien at the end of
Aliens
perhaps 100 times. Even after all she had done – joining the French Foreign Legion, piloting jets and training other pilots – getting into the Cage still seemed surreal, just like something out of a science fiction film. And it wasn't just the sci-fi connotations of the machine. She thought it was simply beautiful. Designed by CARPA scientists, the Cage would barely wobble if it were hit by a force of half a million newtons – equivalent to a Steinway piano landing onto it after falling five floors. Over 2.2 metres tall, it looked like a giant Meccano figure made from grey maxinium, one of the toughest materials known.

The Cage settled onto the roof with a dull thud. Chloe decoupled the cable from each side and keyed in an alphanumeric on the wrist control of her cybersuit. A door to one side of the machine swung outwards and a set of three metal steps unfolded. Chloe climbed the steps, stabbed at a button on a sleek plastic control panel inside the Cage and the stairs sank back into the main structure. The door clicked shut.

‘I'm in,' she said into her comms.

‘Great, Chloe. So the plan is . . . try to get down to –' A shot rang out and on the Big Mac flight deck Mark heard a deep thud through the comms of the Cage. ‘What was that?'

Chloe reacted with the reflexes of the trained pilot she was. ‘Sniper, eleven o'clock,' she yelled.

‘Christ! Okay, you're booted up and ready to roll, Chloe?'

The crunch of machine-gun fire reverberated through the comms. Bullets smashed into the side of the Cage. Chloe saw a flash of orange close to the door into Floor 202. Then she looked up to see a cascade of shrapnel tumbling down from the underside of the Big Mac. Like all E-Force vehicles, the plane was made from maxinium, a lightweight alloy that could shrug off anything short of a missile attack.

‘This guy's crazy!' Chloe exclaimed and yanked on the controls of the Cage, swung it around as though it were a handbag and headed towards the shooter. She saw a flash of movement as a figure dressed in black and wearing a balaclava slipped behind a large chimney to one side of the doorway.

‘Chloe,' Mark called through the comms. ‘We're going up, just to be on the safe side.'

She looked towards the sky and saw the Big Mac slowly ascending.

‘You okay?'

‘What do you think, Mark?' Chloe replied nonchalantly. And then she caught rapid movement in the far right side of her field of vision. The figure emerged from behind a raised parapet only a few metres away from the Cage. She turned and the gunman leapt onto the machine.

She reacted instinctively, clutching the controls as though she were about to lose balance. The man was now sprawled on the top of the Cage. He pushed forwards and brought his face down to stare in through the front screen.

‘What the fuck?' Chloe said out loud. She couldn't make out his features except for black eyes and, in the mouth opening of the balaclava, gritted teeth.

She jolted around the Cage, trying to shrug him off. But he was gripping the top canopy with strong hands and seemed to know exactly where he could get a hold.

Chloe swivelled again, more violently. This time, the man's legs flew out from the side of the Cage but he still held on. Then he shifted, wrapped his left arm around one of the support struts of the machine and with terrifying speed brought his free hand around, levelled a huge handgun, a S&W Magnum, held the barrel against the polycarbonate resin window as close as possible to Chloe's head and pulled the trigger.