Degrees of Freedom

by Simon Morden

  They pulled up outside Regent’s Park, and the blue haze of smoke from the tires hadn’t started to drift before she was out, AK loaded and the safety off.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” said Lucy.

  Petrovitch couldn’t find the seat belt release at first, despite repeatedly stabbing at where he thought it should be. Finally he hit it and fell out into the road, disorientated and not a little nauseous himself.

  “Chyort.” He looked up from his hands-and-knees position and saw a crowd of dirty-overalled workers on either side of the entrance to the site, taking cover behind wood panels, empty skips, flat-bed trucks and anything else that might provide shelter.

  Most of them seemed to have already escaped, though more came darting out between the remaining domiks, running from one container wall to the next until they could join their colleagues.

  Valentina dragged him up, and he staggered to the left. He kept going until he banged up against the chain-link fence that surrounded the park.

  “Will someone tell me what the huy is going on?”

  A man, crouched by the gate, pushed his hard hat up and said, “You bullet proof?”

  “Not the last time I looked.”

  “Then get down here with me.”

  There was an uneasy silence: no shots since he’d arrived, but maybe the sound of voices in the distance, shouting to each other. It was difficult to tell.

  “What happened?” Petrovitch lowered himself down to the man’s level.

  “We went to work, like you said.” The man sounded Spanish, like his old research student, or Portuguese. “I was over by the crusher—my job to drop the containers in—when I see Oshicora men. I know it means trouble straightaway, because we’re listening to your broadcast, all of us by then. They all got guns, and we got just our hands, but we take no shit from them. We tell them to vamos!, that they have no right to be here. We start to push them out: there are eight of them, but eighty of us.”

  “Don’t tell me, they started shooting you.”

  “Man, it was like… we ran. They killed a guy, right in front of me.” The man put his hand on the front of his shirt, and showed Petrovitch his palm. It was speckled with still-wet blood.

  “Yeah, I know what that’s like, too.” He straightened up. “Eight, right?”

  “Maybe nine.”

  “It’s kind of important.” He raised his voice. “Eight or nine, people? I need to know.”

  On a hurried show of hands, the consensus was eight. He wasn’t taking it as gospel. By now, Lucy was out of the car, leaning up against a dumper truck tire as tall as she was. Tabletop was staring into what was left of the domik pile, trying to remember the lay of the land.

  “We can do better than this,” said Petrovitch. “Michael? Interrupting again. I need an up-to-date aerial map of Regent’s Park, and I’d like to speak to the Oshicora squad inside.”

  [If you wait two minutes, a U.S. imint satellite will be in range. I can decrypt the feed for you in real-time. Also, there are nine blocked mobile phone transmitters within Regent’s Park, concentrated in one location.]

  Michael pushed the identities of the signals over to him, and Petrovitch called them all.

  “Hi. My name’s Samuil Petrovitch, and I now run this show. If someone wants to own up to being in charge, speak now, because what you say will have a dramatic effect on your life expectancy.”

  “Hello, Petrovitch-san.”

  “Iguro. Tell me you haven’t just killed several people.”

  “There was… an unfortunate event, Petrovitch-san. I have my orders.”

  “What the huy is that supposed to mean? Your orders come from me, and I’m telling you that you and your crew need to put down your guns and come out, hands on your head.”

  “I must respectfully decline. Surrender does not sit well with me, and I have a job to do. Since I have failed in all the tasks I have been given so far, I intend to see this one to completion.” Iguro sighed. “It has been a difficult time for us all.”

  “You do know I’m coming in, don’t you?”

  “I have anticipated that.”

  “Poshol nahuj.” He pulled his gun and pointed inside Regent’s Park. “There has to be another way.”

  Valentina and Tabletop sprang forward, covering each other as they scuttled from one point of cover to the next. Lucy stumbled out, and Petrovitch glared at her until she stopped.

  “You’re not coming. It’s too dangerous.”

  “But…”

  “I’m terrified of losing you. Do you understand?”

  “I need to do my bit.” She found her pistol and showed Petrovitch she remembered how to use it. “You let them do dangerous.”

  “They’re soldiers, Lucy.”

  “And what are you?” She was next to him, holding him with her steady gaze. She may have even grown over the last day or so, because she looked him straight in the eye.

  “Damaged. That’s what I am. And I don’t want you to turn out the same way.”

  “You can’t go in there and stop me from following you at the same time.”

  “Stay behind me, then. Don’t do anything stupid.” He swallowed hard and ran to where Tabletop was, scanning a pathway between domiks with her gun held rigid in front of her.

  “We’re clear so far.”

  “It’s fine: we’re getting a map. I’ll overlay the target information and send it to your arm. My best guess is that they’re going to try and destroy Container Zero. I think we need to keep it intact.”

  Michael forwarded the satellite imagery, and Petrovitch could see himself as a glowing white dot against the darkness of the container. He tagged the others, and then moved his point-of-view to Container Zero.

  Nine sources, and he knew which one was Iguro. They’d set up a crude perimeter, concentrating on the only way in by vehicle. Two were in the container: he couldn’t see them, but he could sense their transmissions.

  Tabletop studied the screen on her forearm. “One to pin them down, the others to take them from behind.”

  “We need to take the container before they rig it. I don’t fancy fighting over another bomb. How about me, Tina and Lucy go straight down the middle, and you go wide?”

  “There’s someone coming.”

  Petrovitch automatically looked toward the next corner further in. But the map showed a figure coming from the entrance. He turned back.

  Madeleine was striding out. She’d ditched her iconic leathers, the ones she’d lived in for the best part of a year, and traded them for a slightly too small suit of impact armor, and a Joan-issue ceramic helmet. She had her Vatican special in one hand, and a rucksack in the other.

  “Thinking of starting without me?” She dumped the rucksack on the ground and unzipped it. Inside were spare clips of ammunition and half a dozen stun grenades. “We have an armory. I thought I ought to raid it.”

  Petrovitch took a grenade and threw it underarm to Valentina, then another one. He put one in each of his own pockets. When he looked up, Lucy had her eyebrows raised.

  “Screw up with one of these and you lose your hand.”

  “You’ve never thrown a grenade in your life,” she countered.

  “I don’t mind losing a hand. Or my good looks.” He rummaged around, looking for the right caliber of bullets. “You do not get to play with explosives.”

  “Who said anything about playing?”

  He found a clip and flicked the bullets into his pocket, on top of the grenade. “No.”

  “Why is she here anyway?” asked Madeleine. She took the last of the grenades and was able to hold both in one hand.

  “Misplaced loyalty.”

  She gave a tight smile. “There seems to be a lot of it about. I take it you have a plan.”

  “Nine of them at Container Zero. Sonja’s right-hand man Iguro is there. We’ll hit them from the front. Tabletop is flanking.”

  “Can’t you call her by her name?”

  “It is her name.” He c
hecked his map and started forward. “Michael’s providing a satellite feed. We know exactly where they are.”

  “But do we know what they’re doing?”

  “Getting rid of the evidence.” He turned to Tabletop. “Okay?”

  She nodded, and slipped down the narrow passage between two rusting containers. Even though she vanished from view, Petrovitch had her tagged. He watched her sweep around in an arc, using the same information he was receiving to stay out of sight.

  Until she needed to strike. She positioned herself close to one guard and waited for a diversion. Petrovitch was happy to supply it. He hooked his finger in the pin of his first grenade, and judged the distance he needed to throw it. He could reconstruct the ground ahead of him so that the containers turned into wire frames, and he could see through them. The track curved gently around, and stopped in front of Container Zero.

  Easy, then. He squeezed the lever, yanked the pin free and lobbed the grenade. It bounced once with a hollow boom against a steel roof, then fell neatly into the open ground in front of the open container.

  Valentina watched the trajectory of his throw and followed it with one of her own.

  The first thunderclap sound was bad enough, and the second came a moment later. Two blinding flashes of lightning burned sharp shadows against the walls. Tabletop stepped out of her hiding place and put a single round in the back of a man’s head.

  “One,” she said, and moved fast toward the next.

  Iguro’s men were shooting wildly. Ricochets rattled container walls, and Valentina was happy to let them know she had something bigger than a side arm. She raked the outside curve of the turn, sending bullets howling. Tabletop had reached her second target, and he wasn’t even looking out toward the rest of the domiks anymore, but back to the rest of his group, terrified of being the last one alive.

  He needn’t have worried.

  “Two,” said Tabletop.

  Petrovitch readied his second grenade. Madeleine holstered her gun and dragged out both her pins.

  “We need to finish this.” She ran the inside of the curve, and threw both grenades high back over her head. Without waiting for them to land, she took her gun again and turned the corner.

  “Chyort.”

  Valentina took one down that had chosen to run toward her; Tabletop, a third. The grenades landed, bounced, and exploded, sharp cracks that stiffened the already smoky air. The light was searing, and only those with their eyes tightly closed could see afterward.

  In the next five seconds, before Petrovitch could tumble to the ground behind his wife, before Tabletop could step into plain sight and pick her next victim, Madeleine had aimed and fired three times.

  They were dead before they knew they’d been shot. She ignored the falling bodies and walked forward toward the open doors of Container Zero. One man was still trying to press a detonator into a block of gray marzipan. Then he wasn’t, the two items he was trying to marry falling from his opening hands.

  The last was pressing himself up against the far wall, and had every reason to believe Madeleine was going to kill him too.

  She didn’t break her stride. She advanced on him, reached down, picked him up by the throat and threw him against the side of the container. Then she went for him again, taking a handful of uniform between his shoulder blades and launching him against the opposite wall.

  She stood there, breathing hard, for a moment, while she watched for any movement. She didn’t see any, and turned away, back into the light.

  Lucy peeked out from behind a container, and stared wide-eyed at the scene.

  “Fuck.”

  Petrovitch was content to lie on the cold packed earth. “Yeah. Pretty much sums it up.”

  Tabletop went around, nudging the corpses with her foot, but Madeleine hadn’t been aiming to wound. She kicked at Iguro, who rolled slightly one way, then back.

  “What was I thinking?” Lucy said. “What did I think I was going to do?”

  Petrovitch made his gun safe, then levered himself up. Valentina had gone to inspect the explosives inside the container, and he watched as she and Madeleine faced each other across the threshold.

  Something resembling grudging respect passed between them, and they went on their way. Madeleine purposefully stepped over the bodies and pulled Petrovitch up the rest of the way to standing.

  She paused to inspect the two holes in her armor where gel was leaking out. “We’re going to have to stop Sonja.”

  “You’re right.”

  “And that girl—our daughter—is not coming.”

  “I don’t think she wants to anymore.”

  “Good. The other two: they can come with us.”

  “I thought you hated them?”

  She pushed her automatic back into her holster. “They seem to think a lot of you, so I’m going to have to live with that.”

  27

  When Petrovitch got back to the main gates, the workers were waiting. They’d heard the shots, and the subsequent silence, and hadn’t known what to think.

  “Did you…?” someone called.

  “They’re all dead, save one.” He stopped, and they started to gather round. Very soon, he’d lost sight of any but the first couple of rows, so he climbed up the back of a flat-bed truck and sat on the edge. “Sorry about your friends. I hadn’t expected Sonja to be so yebani stupid. You’ve lost people you know, and it’s now on my watch. I’m responsible.”

  “What are you—we—going to do now?” shouted a woman from the back. When those around her turned to face her, she flushed scarlet and mumbled.

  “No, you’re right. I wanted to just ignore Sonja, but it looks like she has other ideas. And Mother has told me, in words of one syllable, that we can’t just pretend she’s not there.” His left arm was almost out of power again. He’d had nowhere near enough time to recharge the batteries. He dragged it across his lap and growled at it, before addressing the crowd again. “The Oshicora Corporation has a couple of thousand people working for it. A lot of those are paper-pushers doing Freezone admin, but you’ve got her personal security detail that numbers a couple of hundred, and about twenty thousand nikkeijin, spread throughout the city.”

  “Do you think they’re all going to fight us?”

  “Good question. If they do, we’re going to end up burning down a large part of what we’ve spent a year building up.”

  “I did ten years in the EDF,” said a man, and the woman behind him said, “I was in the Metrozone police for five.”

  “Yeah, we’re probably going to need people like you. But I don’t want to have to build another army. They aren’t Outies: they’re our neighbors. We don’t do that to them.”

  “Why are our mates dead, then?”

  “Because Sonja Oshicora ordered Container Zero to be destroyed, and Takashi Iguro took those orders very seriously. Seriously enough to kill. Okay: so who have we got a complaint against?”

  “It’s Oshicora.”

  “And her alone. I’d like to try and keep the number of people who have to die over this to those who’ve already lost their lives. I can’t do anything for them; I’m not a miracle worker. But neither am I going to start a war in which hundreds, maybe thousands, of people die. Been there, done that. I still see it when I close my eyes.”

  He drew his legs under him and stood up on the truck, gazing down at the solemn faces waiting on his next words. It was unavoidable—he’d actively sought a reputation when he’d fought the Outies, deliberately creating myths that would inspire and encourage.

  They were very difficult to dispel, no matter how hard he tried.

  “Everyone with military or police training wait here. The rest of you: we need stretchers, we need body bags, we need identities from the work roster and I’ll call the next of kin myself. There’s stuff to be done. Let’s be professional about it.” He jerked his head. “Go on. You’ve got things to do, and so have I.”

  He was left with half a dozen, and Madeleine moved them
away for an unhurried conversation.

  Tabletop looked at them. “Unless you’re prepared to blow the tower up with Sonja in it, you’re going to need more.”

  “Or I could get all Jihad on her zhopu, get enough flying things in the air to bring it down. That would work.”

  “But you won’t do it, will you?”

  “No. Two reasons. First, it’s going to make a hell of a mess and I’m not clearing it up. Second, I want to know why. I’m missing something here, something so enormous I can’t see it because I’m in it. So yeah, I want to walk into her office and demand some answers.” He looked in the direction of where Sonja was. He knew her phones. He could pinpoint her exactly. “She’s not going to tell me until she’s lost so completely she has nothing left to lose.”

  “In that case we need personnel, guns, vehicles, explosives and a plan.”

  “We’ve got enough earth-movers and construction equipment for an armored brigade. We have more cee-four than we can carry. Madeleine has the keys to the warehouse where all the firearms we’ve collected over the last eleven months are. The Freezone database tells me I have a couple of thousand ex-servicemen and women on the payroll.” Petrovitch shrugged. “It’s a start.”

  Tabletop held up her hand, and he used it to steady himself while he jumped down. “All you need now is a plan that’ll mean you don’t have to use any of it.”

  “Better give me a minute, then.” He started to walk away, and swerved back. “Find Tina, tell her to take Lucy back to the arts college and pick up Lucy’s stash. I feel some shock and awe coming on.”

  “Lucy’s ‘stash’?” She didn’t question the request though, and used her suit comms to talk to Valentina, striding back toward the main gate.

  He was alone, in what had been a semi-circle of formal park before the great entrance to the Regent’s Park domik pile had landed on it. The gardens had been concreted over, but the slab had cracked along the original lines of the paths and flower beds. Like everything in Armageddon, it had been done quickly, and not well.