by Chris Ward
‘She’s trapped,’ Lena said. ‘This thing, this machine … it’s like the ones I saw, but older, more basic. Those were far smaller and more compact. This is big and cumbersome, but it’s something. We can use it to fight.’
Mortin glared at her. ‘All I want right now is my daughter out of that thing.’
‘We don’t know how.’
‘Well who does?’
Patricia glanced at Lena. Without a word they started walking back towards the storage room where Victor was trapped, Robert Mortin hobbling after them.
Victor looked up as the door opened and a looming figure blocked out the sudden burst of light. Sticks poked out from its sides and his dark-adjusted eyes initially thought it was a robot. Then the glowering face of Robert Mortin loomed over him.
‘What did you do to my daughter?’
Victor was tempted to respond with the truth, that he had dragged her from a train wreck and brought her to safety, but Mortin didn’t look in the mood for sarcasm, and in any case, Victor had only just begun to recover from the electric shock. More than a few words felt unnecessary.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘She ran off.’
‘I’ll kill you, you worthless turd—’
Victor winced as a heavy wooden crutch rose into the air over his head. He wanted to lift his hands to protect himself, but they were still tingling and he knew it would make no difference.
‘No!’ Councillor Patrova had stepped in front of Mortin, her gun raised. ‘I’ll handle this,’ she said.
‘She ran off,’ Victor muttered again, waiting for her to turn the gun on him.
‘I need you to help me, Victor,’ Lena said. ‘How do we get the girl out of that machine?’
Victor shook his head, waiting for his still-tingling lips to get into position to form the words. ‘That machine is called a War Horse, Prototype Level One. I saw it listed on a computer inventory.’
‘Level One? My contact told me the ones coming towards us are level six. How can we get Isabella out of it?
‘I don’t know.’
‘You bastard!’ Mortin shouted, pushing Lena aside. ‘I never should have let you near my daughter!’
As he brought the stick up to strike, Victor screamed, ‘But I know who does!’
Mortin paused. ‘Who?’
Victor opened his mouth to speak, but it was Patricia who answered.
‘His name is Kurou,’ she said with a long sigh.
34
Kurou plays war games
Kurou found the mayor’s office much to his liking. With Lena Patrova gone off looking for Easter eggs up in the northern hills, he slipped in through a side door the guards waiting outside knew nothing of and calmly locked the main doors from the inside. Then, brewing himself a pot of expensive coffee that was most likely not available to the starving masses, he sat down at her desk to make some use out of her far more impressive computer.
Connecting to a satellite orbiting high above the Siberian Plateau, he used an online scanning system to locate any of the Grey Man’s drones in the area. There were two, a couple of hundred miles to the north, casually picking off civilian factories with laser guided missiles. One had just run out of ammunition, but the other still had a couple of payloads left.
Hello, Grey Man. Any chance you remember me?
Hacking into the drones’ communication systems and taking control of them was easier than unlocking a computer game. He reconfigured the command codes, blocking out any attempt by flight navigators on the ground to assume manual control, then set the drones back on a path that would take them home. The loaded drone would unload its two remaining missiles into its command centre, then both would make a last lovers’ dive, kamikaze style. Whatever atomic power source was keeping them up in the air would make a bit of a mess upon impact.
Kurou sat back and rubbed his hands with glee. Then he set about hunting for more drones.
Patricia felt rather resentful that Lena had allowed Victor a hot drink from the vending machine in the upstairs lobby, but as he sat holding it in two hands, she listened as Victor outlined his plan.
‘I know he’s dangerous. He’s a murderer. But he’s also a genius. We need him on our side.’
Her father, reluctant to move, had stayed down in the hangar with Isabella, but Patricia refused to let Victor out of her sight.
‘How do we find him?’
‘From what I know of Kurou, he’ll be watching. Some way or another, he’ll know where we are, and if we get out in the open long enough he’ll come to us. But, if he thinks we’re a threat, he’ll stay hidden.’
‘Search every house in the town and drag him out,’ Patricia blurted.
Victor shook his head. ‘No. You don’t understand him. I barely do, but what I’ve learned is this: you can’t force him to do anything. You have to let him think he’s in control, that he’s doing it by free will.’
Lena, who had taken her gun from its holster and left it lying on the table in front of her as if worried Victor might make a dart for freedom, said, ‘How?’
‘He’s very childlike in a way,’ Victor said. ‘You have to let him think he’s going to the circus, that it’ll be fun for him. That he’s playing games.’ He smiled. ‘And I have an idea….’
Lena’s coffee had kept Kurou awake longer than usual, but finally he retired to an ante-chamber in part of the Head Councillor’s suite—after first setting up an alarm triggered by facial recognition using the camera outside the building’s main doors—and took a few hours rest.
He was feeling groggy when he woke, and the wound in his side was weeping a little again. Outside the window night had fallen and a light snow was building up on the window ledge. The room, centrally air-conditioned, was a pleasant temperature, so before getting back to work, Kurou spent a few minutes poking through the recently departed mayor’s cupboards and refreshing his attire, finally settling on a pinstripe suit—to wear beneath a fur coat if necessary—and a top hat that appeared to have come right out of a British period drama. He finished off his new look with a pair of white leather gloves and a fat Cuban cigar.
Feeling too dapper for words, he ambled back to the desk and sat down, one leg crossed over the other, then set about reviewing what had happened since the afternoon.
‘How delightful,’ he mused, noting that the two hijacked drones had found their mark, destroying a non-descript office building far away in St. Petersburg. The satellite map had no other drones in the immediate area, so Kurou went searching a little further west, picking up a small group of them moving in this direction. With a few musical taps of his white-gloved fingers, he hijacked them, breaking into a code that had been modified and strengthened since he had retired to bed, then for good measure adding in a calling card, an image of a crow that would appear on the screen of anyone trying to take control from the ground.
Then he sent them home.
Most likely the other command centre would learn from the mistakes of the first, and evacuate the building at the first sign of trouble, so therefore Kurou reconfigured the destination coordinates of the drones so that they would attack all of the major buildings within a five hundred metre radius of the exact source location.
Just to mess with their heads.
With that in place, Kurou spent a few minutes browsing wildlife websites and watching some aerial footage of Roman Bald Eagles on a video sharing website, before figuring he ought to check on how his absent friends were getting on.
Scanning the security cameras that scattered the town in the expectation of seeing Lena Patrova’s convoy returning, he was somewhat surprised to see a lone figure standing in the middle of St. Peter’s Place, snow falling all around him as he held a bundle in his hands.
Kurou ordered the camera to zoom in.
‘Victor…?’
His old friend was holding something the size of a baby. Kurou squinted at the screen, wishing the resolution was better, then, as if hoping to be seen, Victor turned around and was
caught in the glow of an overhead street light.
In his arms was a tiny, broken robot.
‘A gift for … me?’ Kurou cawed gently, under his breath.
The temperature had to be twenty below zero, and Victor was so cold he could barely keep hold of the thing in his hands, despite the heavy fur coat and thick woollen hat he wore. He had been walking the streets for the last hour, and was at the end of his strength. Ten more minutes, and if Kurou didn’t appear he would head back to Robert’s house, where Lena and Patricia were waiting.
He had found the robot in amongst Kurou’s things at the bottom of the chimney shaft. Guards had lowered him down with a couple of torches attached, but descending into the bowels of that great ruined building had brought back hideous memories, and it had taken all his willpower to resist crying out in horror every time he brushed against the walls.
Down in the basement apartment, the poverty of Kurou’s existence returned in the flickering lights like some acid trip horror movie. The rooms stank of sickness and death, litter lay strewn across the floor amidst a clutter of machine and computer parts, strips of clothing, pieces of old, near-decayed meat. Victor had wanted with every fibre of his being to be out of the place, but he needed Kurou to see his sincerity. He needed a token that would make the professor believe.
In a corner of the main room, buried among a heap of wires and computer components, he found it.
A child’s robot, handmade from pieces of junk. One leg was loose, one arm missing, but when Victor pressed a switch on the back the twin LED eyes briefly flashed before going dark.
He found a clean strip of cloth, carefully wrapped the robot, and tucked it into a pocket in his coat.
The fresh, winter air that wrapped around him when he emerged from the shaft had never been more welcome.
Despite the cold, the man standing across the plaza seemed unaffected. Victor knew immediately that it was Kurou, because the figure was skeletally thin, a black silhouette against a grey background, a tiny glowing light announcing his presence like a miniature signal fire.
Kurou was wearing a black suit and a top hat. On his feet, heavy snow boots were farcically out of place. The glow came from a cigar poking from the side of his mouth beneath the looming, crow-like beak. As Victor approached he removed the hat and gave a flourishing bow.
‘Well met, squire. I see the years have been kind. Did you bring my coxcomb?’
Victor didn’t even bother to ask what Kurou was talking about. Instead, he just held out the robot so that Kurou could see it in the glow of a nearby street light. Fat flakes of snow landed on its casing, one in its eye.
‘I recovered it for you. It’s a gift.’
Kurou stared at it for a long time, and Victor sensed the shedding of his performance piece. The real Kurou looked up at him.
‘It’s a replica,’ he said. ‘Of the first robot I ever built. He broke it when he came to see me. He broke it.’
‘Who?’
‘Rutherford Forbes. The Englishman. The man who bought me from my mother.’
Victor sniffed. A rapidly freezing tear popped from his eye. ‘Do you miss her?’
Kurou looked up at him, his head cocked, only one beady eye visible. ‘That old whore sold me down the Yangtze River for a washerwoman’s dime. No, I don’t miss her. But there are days when I miss him.’
‘Forbes?’
‘I never had a father otherwise. He gave me everything, except this.’ Kurou lifted the little robot out of Victor’s hands, put it into the top hat and replaced the hat on his head.
‘I need your help,’ Victor said. ‘The whole town needs your help. You can come out of the dark, Professor. You’re not the villain anymore. We need a hero.’
Something in Kurou’s eyes changed. The sensitivity was gone again, hidden away back in its shell. The showman, the circus master, had returned.
‘I am but a poor artist,’ Kurou said, spreading his hands wide. ‘I have no colours to paint with except those I find around me, and the surrounding world is so sickly grey, isn’t it? You ask a great deal, young sire. If you ask, I will answer, but do not ask lightly. A request once received can never be withdrawn.’
For a moment Victor considered getting down on his knees, but he was so tired he doubted he could stand again. Instead, he put a hand over his heart. ‘I have lived my whole life in Brevik,’ he said. ‘My parents were from this town, and their parents. The girl I love is from this town. It’s nothing but a Communist throwback with too much cold, too much snow, and not enough love. Most trains don’t even stop here because no one gets on or off. The people, for the most part, are assholes. But despite all that, I don’t want to see it destroyed.’ He took a deep breath. ‘In that base there are rooms and rooms of musty old military vehicles and robots. Half of them look broken, the rest don’t look capable of fighting their way out of a paper bag. Yet they’re there. They’re all we’ve got. With someone at the controls who knows what he’s doing, perhaps we can put up a decent fight and not just lie down and roll over against the enemy that’s coming for us. If I could do it myself, I would, but I can’t. I don’t have the skills. But you do. We need you, Professor. Everyone in this town needs you.’
Kurou took a long tug on his cigar and puffed a wide ring of smoke up into the night. It floated among the falling snow like a cancerous halo. Kurou gave a small cough, and when he spoke his voice was low and gravelly like the crunch of caterpillar treads on an icy street.
‘I will build your war machines,’ he said.
Part III
The Battle for Brevik
35
Kurou leads a war council
As the door opened and Victor entered, brushing snow off his coat as he was followed in by Kurou, dressed bizarrely like a 18th Century British politician, Patricia made sure Lena Patrova stood between her and the new arrivals. Her father had stayed up at the base with Isabella, who was becoming less and less coherent, rambling on about strange dream sequences and feelings of being transformed into a machine. Victor promised that Kurou might be able to help her, but she would rather see him dead, and if her sister had to be sacrificed, then so be it.
Victor and Lena exchanged a curt nod. Kurou stuck a tongue out at Patricia then removed his top hat—the robot inside rattling around—and gave Lena a short curtsy.
‘Charmed,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe we’ve met, although I’ve enjoyed the pleasure of your offices these last few hours. Not a fan of the décor—a leftover from your unfortunate predecessor, was it not?’
From the look on Lena’s face it was clear she found Kurou difficult to look at. She didn’t offer him a hand but instead pointed to a chair on the far side of the room. Victor sat down beside him. Patricia stayed where she was while Lena took her father’s favourite armchair.
‘We need your help,’ Lena said.
Kurou nodded. ‘Dear Master Victor here has already informed me of the direness of your situation. Such a travesty. Human against human … when will it ever end?’
‘So you’ll help us?’
‘My young friend brought me a gift. What kind of monster would I be to ignore such kindness?’
Patricia wrinkled her nose. Her fingers clenched around an imaginary gun and she pumped the trigger once, twice, three times. She bit her lip to keep her mouth shut.
‘If we don’t fight, the enemy will overrun us within weeks.’
Kurou raised an eyebrow. ‘They’re nine days west of us. I’ve already offered their overlord a few minor distractions, but they’ll be coming on regardless.’
Lena leaned forward. ‘You know about them?’
Kurou shrugged. ‘I have ways of wading through the mess that used to be the internet that most people don’t. More often than not it’s a case of what it doesn’t say that’s most important.’
‘Professor,’ Victor said, ‘who are we fighting against? Who’s behind this?’
Kurou started to laugh. Patricia gripped the armrest of her chair as a s
hiver went down her spine. She remembered his face close to hers, his spindly fingers touching her. She would gladly die in a hail of machine gun fire to see him die first.
‘Our greatest enemy is our own misinformation,’ Kurou said. ‘Teams of hackers have broken down the communication systems all across Europe. They’re your teams of hackers, working for the Russian government, but they’ve been infiltrated. They have no idea that what they’ve been primed to do is turn your own army in on itself.’
‘Are you saying that we’re fighting a civil war?’ Lena asked. ‘What are you talking about? That’s not possible.’
The whole of Eastern Europe and Russia has been ravaged by a war where no one knows who’s on who’s side. To one such as myself, with no great love for humanity, it’s rather hilarious.’
Patricia started to stand, but Lena put a hand out to stop her. ‘Sit,’ she barked, as if reprimanding a schoolchild. As she lowered herself back into the chair, Patricia shot an angry glare at the back of the councillor’s head.
‘Those things I saw,’ Lena said. ‘They weren’t part of any Russian army.’
Kurou grinned again. Sitting at his shoulder, Victor looked increasingly nervous, as if all he wanted to do was go home and watch television. Picking the first one of the pair to die would be difficult, Patricia thought.
‘Let me see if I can describe what you saw,’ Kurou said. ‘Four legged robots seemingly with humans carried in the undercarriages, like a joey in a kangaroo’s pouch? Between seven and nine feet high? Feeding off the remains of the dead like pigs snacking at a trough?’ He leaned forward. ‘Bristling with weaponry like a porcupine’s spines?’
Lena glared at him. ‘One might consider that you’ve seen one before.’
Kurou matched her stare. ‘Only on paper,’ he said. ‘Signed by yours truly.’