Theories of Flight

28

In the ten minutes it took to navigate the car-choked streets between his starting point and the river, the plan Petrovitch had put in place had its beginning and middle. He arrived late, via Piccadilly and Trafalgar Square, onto the Strand.

From one end of the street, he couldn’t quite see the other using the camera on his head, so he looked down on the approaches to Waterloo Bridge using a satellite: it was wreathed in smoke. The Embankment was on fire: there were burning vehicles and the shells of waterfront buildings had been laid low.

The red markers on the map were winking out, by ones, two, threes, by the handful and the dozen. Where there had been a solid sheet of red, there were now gaps. A thin blue line rimmed the area, and pockets of blue showed where rooftop snipers poured fire on the people below.

“I can’t tell. Talk to me.”

[The situation is critical.] The AI showed him a series of views from the CCTV on Somerset House. [The attack helicopters have strafed the Embankment and are circling Farringdon Road. We will win there, but will lose Lancaster Place. The bridge will fall to the Outies.]

“No, it won’t.” He started to run again, moving the images of conflict to the corner of his attention in order to successfully navigate the street furniture.

[There is no logic behind your statement. Simply wishing for something to be so does not make it so.]

“Potselui mou zhopy. This is going to work. Where are the tanks?”

[High Holborn.]

“Kingsway, Chancery Lane and Holborn Circus. Do it. Get the helicopters to kill as many as they can.”

[This is already happening. It will be too late. There are too many of them. We should pull back.]

“We’re committed here.”

[Then we will fail.]

There was a barricade across the street, cars and two buses, stacked by a mobile crane to resemble a giant Tetris game. The interiors were occupied, a wall of men and women committed to keeping the Outies from climbing up and over. They had long since run out of ammunition, and were reduced to poles and sticks, clubs and bats.

There were no reserves behind them, no one to replace them if they fell, or broke and ran.

“There were supposed to be more people right here.” Petrovitch pulled his trophy knife and stood nonplussed for a moment. “Where are the reinforcements?”

[They have not had time to arrive. Two thousand are massed at the Oshicora Tower, receiving uniforms and basic equipment… ]

“Yeah. Pizdets.”

He saw the situation as the AI did. Sheer weight of numbers would overwhelm Lancaster Place. The approaches to the bridge would fall. All the defenders he’d so carefully placed along the Embankment and the Strand would be cut off. The tanks would come into play too late, the helicopters would do too little and, like those at the barricade, they’d run out of bullets soon enough.

So. It was time to turn the New Machine Jihad card face up on the table, and he didn’t know how anyone would react to that. His best guess would be he’d face a full-scale mutiny within the hour: the nikkeijin might follow Sonja’s orders, but the MEA militia, who’d witnessed the Long Night, and the EDF regulars, who’d watched it looped on the news for weeks, weren’t going to go along with it, not at all. He’d win the battle, and lose the war.

“How much do you want this?” he asked the AI. “Are you willing to risk everything? Your very existence in exchange for these fragile sacks of meat?”

[You said you would find me a home.]

“If the Outies break through, that dream is gone.”

[How much more will I end up with if I reveal myself now?]

“Could be nothing. Might be everything. It’s your call.” The first Outie made it to the top of the barricade. He was soon enough dragged down, but almost in an instant, another replaced him, and another. The defenders who remained alive heard the cry of triumph above them and, as fast as the sound traveled, they started to scramble out of their positions.

Everything slowed. Everything: even the processing power in Petrovitch’s rat was commandeered. The pain he had locked out using software blocks snapped back, and the camera strapped to the side of his head no longer fed its images into his brain. He was blind, in agony, suddenly alone. His life was laid bare with no illusions or delusions. This is what he had come to. At least with the Outies, who had to be swarming toward him, it was going to be mercifully short.

Unless they left him like that, curled up on the hard road, whimpering and crying. They could ignore him, and there would be nothing he could do about that.

Then, in the darkness, he heard the words. [We rise or fall together, Aleksandr Arkadev Milankovich: a true friend.]

No one had used that name for years. Sometimes he struggled to remember it himself. It was him, though. The same skinny street kid who had run wild through the prospekts of St. Petersburg lay on a Metrozone road, helpless and crippled, and he still had someone who would call him by his real name.

The world appeared sideways. At first, he was surprised that he could see at all, then by what he could see. The barricade was shaking itself apart, the highest vehicles falling either side, and carrying those who were clambering up them down.

The noise: the growling of engines that consumed every last drop of dead air and splashed it back out as vibrant, vibrating sound. Someone stooped to drag him up because their uniforms matched, but when Petrovitch turned his sightless eyes to face his would-be rescuer, he was dropped with a shout and shrinking revulsion.

His pain was receding again, leaving his skin prickling with the impression of a thousand sharp needles. He could stand on his own, as well as fill his voice with his own words.

“Hold!”

One or two stopped. Another three or four slowed.

“I said hold!”

So they waited, poised on their heels and ready to flee. There were half a dozen of them, a rag-bag of nikkeijin, Oshicora employees and a MEA militiaman.

“We’re done running.” He looked around at the disintegrating barricade. A dozen Outies were his side of it, picking themselves up. Injured, yes. Stunned, but not for long. He turned and aimed the point of his knife at the lead Outie. “There’ll be no more of that today. If anyone’s going to run, it’s them.”

“But the cars…”

“Are on our side. The New Machine Jihad is on our side. We have a chance now.” He readied himself for the charge. “Don’t screw up.”

Petrovitch ran at the enemy without worrying who was following him. He held the knife out by his side and dodged the end of a spear. He cut once, twice, and kept on going.

Someone else was in his path. He feinted low, high, then struck in the middle. The moves he used were fast and uncompromising. He was aiming to incapacitate, taking knowledge from somewhere out there and applying it ruthlessly.

If there had been anyone backing him up, they would have stopped the Outies. He discovered that he was entirely on his own.

His shoulders sagged. “Ah, chyort.”

[One moment.]

“You keep saying that.” He was surrounded. He looked for somewhere to go, a route through. To the east, the Strand was a shifting chaos, a mess of cars moving forward and backward with helicopters clattering overhead, firing the last of their missiles. The cacophony almost drowned out the screaming.

To the west, more cars were edging forward. They couldn’t attack because of him. South lay the bridge, but he’d never make it.

[Look up.]

The crane hoist. Dangling from it were the loose strips of a webbing cradle. As it dipped toward him, he leaped up, throwing the knife at the face of his closest attacker. His fingers closed on rough material and he pulled his legs up out of the way.

He was rising into the air, but no matter how hard he told his hand to grip, he didn’t have enough muscle to support his weight for very long. He gritted his teeth and squeezed.

Below him, the first phalanx of cars leaped forward, carrying all before them. Glass shattered and metal bent. Bodies crumpled and bones snapped. The crane arm started to swing him around, and as the movement transmitted itself down the straps, he felt the strap slide across his palm. He tried to get his other hand up, and even that slight change in his position made him slip further.

He was almost at the end of the tether. There was blood seeping down his wrist. The crane swung him face-first against a first-floor window: the glass didn’t break, but the impact dislodged him. He fell, and something solid stopped him.

He had landed in a heap on a narrow balcony overlooking the junction, no more than a ledge with railings. He had limbs sticking through the bars and he brought them in quickly, lying on his belly with his bandaged face against the guano-encrusted stone.

[Sasha?]

“It hurts deep inside when you call me that.” He used his bloody, blistered hand to reposition his camera.

[Petrovitch, then. What do we do now? We have no plan for this. The EDF in Brussels know I have hijacked their comms, and the news that the Jihad have risen again is breaking in North America.]

“Have we lost control of the EDF?”

[Yes. I can reinstall the intercept, but they will simply ignore all orders from now on. MEA units are trying to engage with Jihadi vehicles.]

“Thought this would happen.”

[NORAD has just moved to Defcon three. The White House have declared a Defense Emergency.]

“This has nothing to with the raspizdyay kolhoznii! It never was anything to do with them.” Petrovitch slapped his hand against the wall, leaving an imperfect print in his own blood. “Sonja.”

She picked up in an instant.

“What have you done?” she shouted.

“I’m still trying to save the Metrozone. Tell me you’re still on board.”

She tucked her hair behind her ears. “Where’s Miyamoto?”

“And the next time you send someone to be my bodyguard, make sure they’re not going to try and kill me. Now, we had a deal: I’d hand you your own country, you’d lend me half a million nikkeijin. I’m good for my end of the bargain. How about you?”

She bristled. “They are dying in their hundreds.”

“What about the couple of thousand you’re keeping up by the tower? What are they doing?” He saw her heart skip a beat. “If I’d had them here, we wouldn’t have had to go public on the AI. You holding out on me has backfired spectacularly: it’s going to lose access to most of what needs to function. Take the physical seals off the quantum computer and put it online. The AI needs it now.”

She nodded, pale, and he continued.

“I’m taking over everything about how this war is run, because you’re going to be up to your eyes in politics. You’re getting a direct line to the presidents of the EU and the U.S.A. You’re going to tell them that you can hand over a safe, stable, functioning Metrozone within a calendar year. You’re going to tell them the price is that they get their zhopi out of our faces. And you can tell them that if they even think about pressing the big red button, you will ruin their economies for the next hundred years. Got that?”

Sonja bit at her lip, and Petrovitch waited. “I thought,” she said, “we were going to take the north Metrozone for our own.”

“And we are. We’re just going to trade up after twelve months. Trust me.” He made the image she saw on her screen smile. “Have I ever let you down?”

“Not yet,” she conceded.

“I’m not interested in power. I don’t want to run anything. But no more little oversights. I need to repair the damage already done and I’m wasting time I don’t have.” He cut her off. “Still there?”

[Always.]

“Seize the satellites we need. Without them, we’re lost, and they’re going to try and take them offline anyway. Anything else you want, you take it. No subtlety. Sonja is throwing open the VirtualJapan computer for your sole use.”

[How will this end?]

“That’s not something either of us can calculate.”

[The EDF have ordered the destruction of the remaining bridges. We will be isolated from any additional assets. We are on our own.]

“We always were.”

Explosives cracked, and the central span of Waterloo Bridge lifted up, before falling in massive pieces into the black water below. Spray roared up against the river banks. Hungerford followed, then Westminster, Lambeth, Vauxhall, one after another.

Petrovitch watched the smoke and steam rise over the tops of the buildings. There was dust settling on his camera lens, and he unhooked it to blow it away. He saw his own face, not as in a mirror, but as another would see him.

“We always were,” he repeated.

[Your orders, war leader?]

“If the EDF and MEA units want to keep fighting the Outies, they can consider themselves mercenaries under my command. If they don’t, they can surrender their weapons to the nikkeijin and retreat. If they want to take us on too, I’ll leave them at the mercy of the Outies. No help from the Jihad. Otherwise, force the Outies back, break their will, send in the infantry to clear out the remaining pockets. Work out from the center a district at a time. Concentrate our forces. Use tank desant tactics to get our troops where they need to be quickly.” He took a breath. “If you can handle all that.”

[By your command.]

“Hah.” He reattached the camera and judged the distance back down to the street. A tank, huge and low and green, was chewing up the tarmac toward the junction from the north.

Petrovitch skipped over the railings and slid down them so that his feet dangled over the road. Two, two and a half meters to drop. He sprang his hands and bent his knees, and when he felt the first shock, he rolled.

He dusted himself down, and the tank commander ordered his beast of a machine to a halt. Unburned diesel drifted by in a blue cloud.

“Doctor Petrovitch.”

“Major?”

“I am supposed to disengage and withdraw to the airport,” he shouted down.

“I know.”

They both looked down the Strand. The helicopters had broken off and were heading east, but they left behind them a seething, shifting mass of semi-working cars and burning wrecks. Figures, dressed in blue, moved amongst them, and the occasional shot rang out.

Valentina, an AK in her hand, stepped out onto the street from Somerset House on the opposite corner. She strode across the road, stepping over the twisted bodies punctuating her walk, and stood in front of Petrovitch.

She took his chin in her hand and moved his head this way, then that.

“Is not improvement,” she said, and let go. “We won, yes?”

“After a fashion.”

“When cars started to move, I assumed it was you. We kept our nerve.” She was the very picture of a Soviet-era poster.

“Thank you. I would’ve warned you, but I pretty much made it up as I went along.” He looked up at the major. “Shouldn’t you be running along?”

“I stand by my commanding officer. My men stand by me.”

“Don’t you go saluting me again.” He inspected the tank’s vast metal side, and started to climb up the armor near the rear of the tracks.

“Where are we going?” asked Valentina.

“Finally, we’re going to find my wife.”

She slung the rifle over her shoulder and stuck out her hand; Petrovitch helped her up the same way. They hunkered down on top of the turret, behind the commander’s hatch.

“You never did say what happened to Marchenkho.”

Valentina looked back toward the shattered bridge and pursed her lips. “I shot him.”