by Simon Morden
The knife-hand turned, ready for the return strike. He was close enough now that Petrovitch could bury the pistol’s barrel in the man’s sparse flesh and not miss. Before either of them could take the next move, a blur of black and white flew through the air. It landed on the Outie’s back and caused him to stagger and fall flat amid the shifting mass of broken glass.
He kicked out, and Lucy went flying again, back against a seat. Her hair came loose even as she tried to scramble up again. The Outie turned to face her, and Petrovitch saw the handle of a kitchen knife protruding from under the man’s shoulder blade.
He reached up and drove it home with the flat of his hand. The Outie stopped quite suddenly and Petrovitch reached around his throat and pulled him backward, away from Lucy, toward the gaping hole in the windscreen. He flung him out the way he’d come in.
His legs caught on the lower broken edge for a moment before flicking up and out of sight. The coach rose and fell, the mildest of bumps amongst the storm of shaking.
Petrovitch looked at Lucy. He’d corrupted her and destroyed her innocence, and all he could do was reach in his pocket for the other knife. He slid it down the aisle toward her with a nod of satisfaction, and she picked it up, her chin lifted high, her expression defiant.
[Brace.]
Too late.
They hit something solid. The driver’s airbag blossomed with a white flash of explosive and an expanding halo of powder. Petrovitch, on his feet and with nothing to hold on to, started to move irresistibly toward the front of the coach.
There was nothing to prevent his ejection outside. Sky and ground tumbled together, and he bounced off the roof of a car half-buried in a drift of rubble. The underside of the coach reared into the air, fell. Petrovitch rolled off the car and the coach wheels banged down on it, the interior collapsing, paint and plastic crazing.
The coach settled further, and he could have reached up and touched the hot engine casing.
[Petrovitch?]
He breathed in and it was sweet agony. He was still alive. He was still connected.
“Chyort.”
[I am ordering an advance. One moment.]
The roaring in his ears was no figment of his imagination. There were actual voices raised in a war cry, a long, drawn-out bellow. Petrovitch found himself on the tarmac, lying on the loose fringes of the rubble field. Half-bricks and splinters of wood lay with him. He sat up, certain that he had burst all his stitches and racked up a fresh list of further injuries.
His gun had gone. His glasses had gone. He had blood coming from his hands, his face. He rose to meet his warriors. Gray-clad MEA, olive-green European soldiers, the blue of Oshicora workgroups, all running toward him from the end of the street.
But they were mute, grim in their task, guns and staves and swords held in front of their bodies. So he turned to see where the sound was coming from, and the Outies were charging from behind him, mouths wide for as long as their breath would last.
He drifted out into the middle of the street. In the confusion, perhaps the Outies mistook him for one of their own. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, and he wasn’t an obvious target. They ran by. He looked up at the coach, beached like a whale, sides pocked with holes, dented, scraped. A face pressed against the darkened glass, a pale pink palm either side. Lucy.
The two sides met a little way down the street, forming brief scuffles where bullet or blade swiftly decided the outcome. Once engaged, they were committed. They fought and fell. More Outies streamed by to replace those who had fallen, and Petrovitch, shadowed by the stranded coach, was ignored.
Until one dusty man carrying a long steel pole seemed to leap down in front of him, a boy at his side. He recognized them both: the boy he’d rescued, the man he’d seen kill twice from Lucy’s bedroom window.
The man leaned down to bark orders to the boy, a few words, no more, who was then off, back the way they’d come. He spotted Petrovitch. His head turned toward him even as he ran with his message.
Of course, he knew Petrovitch had had a gun, and of course he was going to shout a warning.
“Fox!”
So it was him. The one whose sole aim was to burn the city. Petrovitch stooped for a ragged brick and so by chance avoided the metal bar thrown like a spear. As he straightened up, he banged against the steel, embedded in the side of the coach behind him. And by the time he’d remembered that the man moved like lightning, he had the red arc of a knife flashing in front of him.
He threw the brick off target. It landed a glancing blow, and there was no real force behind it. Fox shrugged off the impact with a grunt and lunged forward, swinging the tip of his knife in Petrovitch’s face.
His body was sluggish, too drugged and damaged to respond quicker. The point sliced across his eyeline and against the bridge of his nose. The darkness was sudden and profound. Petrovitch felt himself twist and fall, all the sharpness of the debris on the road rising up to meet him.
He couldn’t see.
He wasted time trying to blink away the obstruction: it felt like his eyelids were closing around burning boulders.
[One moment.]
He concentrated on that voice, and the light came flooding back.
He was looking down on a blood-spattered body, more dead than alive. A figure was crouching over it, knife held high. There was a rock under the body’s left hand. He closed the fist over it and told it to lash out.
It connected. The figure staggered back, and he could see that the body on the ground was his. The coat, the remains of the coat, gave it away. His perception shifted, rotated, until he was looking at the scene from inside his own skull, through his own ruined eyes.
There was distortion, blank areas where the satellite couldn’t image, but it was good enough. Good enough to do what he needed to do. He dropped the rock, extended his middle finger on his left hand—the artificial one made of transplant-grade titanium—and locked it rigid. He waited for Fox to come at him again.
He was blind. His adversary knew that and knew there was nothing to stop him throwing himself down with his full weight behind the blade. An easy kill.
So the sightless Petrovitch rolled aside, more marionette than man, leaving Fox floundering. He continued to roll until he was clear, and then he was up. He could stand. He had control. His movements were robotic, precise, fast. As fast as Fox’s, who was swinging low at his calves. Jump, kick to the shoulder, recover. No, he was faster.
The first cast of doubt entered Fox’s face.
He kept on coming, though, still not quite believing that Petrovitch knew what it was he was doing, convinced that he was just lucky, not realizing that the cable snaking from his skull and down his back was the key.
Fox was still an unbeliever when Petrovitch crouched down and threw his arm up under the swinging knife. His punch drove his metal finger deep into Fox’s chest. He could feel his fingertip force through skin and muscle. He could feel the wet slickness spread over his hand and wrist. He jerked his arm hard, once, twice, then thrust Fox away with one last shove.
The man tried to keep his feet. He kept on stepping back to maintain balance, each footfall marked with a bloody stain. The front of his dusty clothing turned dark and glistening. He finally stopped and tried to raise his knife. It made it halfway, but it slowly sank back down. Then he fell, metal clattering by his side, and he didn’t get up again.
Petrovitch was surrounded by uniforms. They’d forced their way forward. The coach was secure, the battle-front now shifting back toward Regent’s Park.
[A medical team is on its way. Lie down on the ground. Elevate your feet. Slow your breathing to one breath every ten seconds and lower your heart rate to half.]
Petrovitch didn’t agree. He was managing to block the pain by disconnecting the feed. If he’d known he could do that, if he’d known he could have done half of what he’d just achieved, he would have plugged in the silver jack so much sooner. He felt such joy. He had transformed himself in the way that he wanted to transform the
world. He had so much energy, he felt so vital, that he almost picked up a fallen Outie spear and plunged back into battle.
Lucy ran from the emergency exit on the bus, screaming and weeping. She didn’t want to touch him out of fear, her own and that she would hurt him.
“Ohgodohgodohgod.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s more than okay.”
“How can you say that? Your face…” She held her hand over her mouth, though all Petrovitch could see was the impression of her nose and chin under her pixelated hair.
“Will you do something for me?”
She looked at him, looked away, then forced herself to look back. “I don’t think there’s much I can do. Not now.”
“There’s a computer shop at the far end of this road. If it’s shuttered, find someone who’ll break it open for you. I need a camera, one of the clip-on computer ones. Small as you can find. Bring me a choice.” He wiped his cheek with the back of his hand where the drying blood was tickling him as it dried. “Can you do that?”
He saw her chest heave as she struggled to draw breath. “Yes.”
“Go. I’ll be here.”
[Petrovitch. You must lie down.]
“Just tell me one thing: have we pushed them back?”
[Yes.]
“Then keep pushing. Lay down a series of ambushes on the route. When we’ve gone as far as we can go, pull back and suck them in. Then do it again somewhere else. Keep hitting them until they run.” Fox’s knife had fallen out of his grip, and lay close by Petrovitch’s booted foot. He bent low and picked it up. “This is where we build ourselves a new beginning.”
27
The Oshicora medic was just about done patching up Petrovitch’s body when a pair of heavy booted feet stepped up close to him and stopped. He could hear the scuffling of dirt and the man’s tired breathing. He stopped concentrating on the ongoing battles a few streets away and looked down at them from the sky, all the while rooted to the orange plastic chair he’d been made to sit in.
Olive-green uniform, combat helmet swinging from one hand, EU-issue carbine slung over his shoulder. He wore a star on each shoulder.
“Do svedanya, Major. What can I do for you?”
Petrovitch had a bandage over his eyes: there should have been no way he could have known what rank the soldier held. So the man reached out and waved his hand in the space between them.
Petrovitch caught his wrist, which brought a murmur of admonishment from the medic. “Still, Petrovitch-san.”
“Don’t do that,” said Petrovitch to the major, and let go. “I’m not a freak show.”
“You’re Doctor Petrovitch?”
“Is this supposed to be an example of military intelligence?” He raised both his arms while soft bandages unrolled around his cold, white, scarred torso. “My face was plastered over the global news networks for twenty-four hours.”
“Yes, but you had eyes then.”
“They never worked properly. I can always get new ones.” The wrapping went on. It must have been how the pharaohs had felt.
“But you.” The major leaned forward. “You can still see.”
“Well enough. You didn’t come over to discuss my supernatural vision, so what is it?”
“It’s like this: part way through the morning, my orders started to change. My tank squadron went from protecting the evacuation to shelling random parts of London, to forming a defensive position on Primrose Hill, to rescuing you, and now we’re attacking alongside all these Japanese refugees who appeared out of nowhere. And yet when I query this series of orders, what I get back from HQ is ‘do what you’re told.’ ”
“That is a little insensitive, considering it’s your zhopa on the line.” The blood had run from his fingers. They were starting to tingle.
“The only time this whole action has made any sense was just now. Everything suddenly converged on this street. We were here because of you.”
“Go on.” Petrovitch started to smile. He liked smart people.
“Let me put it another way,” said the major. “We’ve got all the old folk off your bus. We couldn’t find the driver who, judging from the damage, should be dead five times over. When I asked about the driver, all I got was silence.”
Petrovitch lowered one hand as the roll of bandage circled him once more, and he hooked his thumb in the cable that dangled from his skull. He let the wire slip through his grasp until he had hold of the rat’s battered silver case. He held it up as the bandage passed around again.
“There was no driver, was there?” said the major.
“Technically speaking, yes. If the Long Night showed us anything, it was that we’d loaded far too much processing power in our vehicles. All they were waiting for was for someone to use it.”
“You controlled the coach through that?” The major moved closer so he could see the point where the cable went in.
“Again, not exactly. It mostly drove itself, but toward the end it got a bit unpredictable. I was a bit busy, so I got some help.” Petrovitch felt the bandage being tied off, and he let his arms fall back to his sides, his hands in his lap. A spare set of Oshicora overalls were brought to him, still sealed inside their plastic wrap.
He tore the film away and shook them out, angling them to present them to the satellite. The average nikkeijin was about his size. They’d fit.
“Thanks,” he said to the medic, who started to pack up his kit into a big green box. “Could you leave me some tape?”
The major was still standing there, still poised. “What do you know about the New Machine Jihad?”
Petrovitch leaned forward and started unlacing his boots. “Pretty much everything. Why do you ask?”
“Because I don’t think I’ve been following EDF orders for hours.”
“And you’d be absolutely right.” He shucked one boot and stood it next to him. “You’ve been following mine.”
The major dropped his helmet and snatched at his gun. Petrovitch carried on heaving at his other boot.
“You’re the Jihad.” The gun cocked, the safety clicked off.
“That’s one logical step too far, though I can see why you took it. No, I’m not the New Machine Jihad. But I am the Jihad’s employer. It’s more complicated than that, in that it’s not really the New Machine Jihad and I’m not paying it, but any analogy breaks when you stretch it far enough.”
Petrovitch put a foot each into the legs of the overalls and dragged them up to his thighs.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t shoot you dead right now.”
Rising slightly to get the clothing up to his waist, Petrovitch thought of several, all of them excellent. But only one in particular would appeal to this man.
“Because without me and the Jihad, you’re going to lose this battle and the Metrozone. With us, you’ll be part of the most epic victory since the defense of Stalingrad, and you’ll be a hero. Brussels has done nothing but plan for failure from the start. Mining the bridges told me they’d given up before they fired a shot, whereas I intend to win.” He shrugged the overall sleeves on and pressed the Velcro tabs together. He paused when he got level with the knife wound over his heart. “All the EDF have told you to do is retreat. I’m the only person who’s told you to advance.”
The major adjusted his grip on the carbine. “What are you?”
“I am the future, Major, and I am not destined to fail. I know you have misgivings—but you can’t communicate them to HQ because you’ve been cut off from them since about eleven o’clock. All the other EDF soldiers will think you’re mad. I’ve taken over the MEA, and Sonja Oshicora has lent me the nikkeijin for the duration. Sure, you can kill me, but then what?”
Petrovitch stood, slipping the rat into his top pocket. He reached up to push his glasses up his nose. No glasses, no eyes. It was going to take some getting used to.
Lucy was running up the street toward him, a plastic carrier bag swinging in her hand. He deliberately turned his back on the m
ajor and his gun to greet her.
“Hey. What did you get me?”
Flushed with success, too absorbed with explaining her finds to Petrovitch, she completely missed the angry, scared, confused tank commander. She opened the bag and rummaged inside.
“This. It comes with its own head mount—says you can use it for extreme sports, shock proof, waterproof. If this isn’t extreme, I don’t know what is.” She tore at the packaging and squinted at the wide-angled lens. “Doesn’t need its own power supply or software. Just plug it in and go.”
“Sounds perfect.”
“I’ve got a couple of others if you don’t think…”
“Put it on me.” When she hesitated, he added, “Don’t worry. You can’t hurt me.”
She reached up and slid the harness over Petrovitch’s blood-stained pale hair. The slim tube of the camera poked forward alongside his left temple. “I should have brought some of those cable-tidy things. They had baskets of them.”
“I’ve thought of that.” The roll of tape he’d commandeered was small and hard to spot. He patted his hands around until he found it on the chair. “In fact, I’ve an even better idea.”
He ripped open the Velcro again and held the rat against his bandaged left flank, just about where his kidney ought to be. That would work. He found the snaking end of the camera cable and tried to plug it in by touch.
Lucy’s fingers brushed his away and slotted it in.
“Tape it up. It mustn’t come out. Then stick the whole thing to me.”
The pair had rotated as they’d worked. The major was now over Lucy’s shoulder, and Petrovitch had a perfect view of him. There were beads of sweat running down his forehead and into his eyes. He was blinking them away.
“So,” said Petrovitch, “what’s it going to be?”
Lucy looked up, a long piece of tape stuck to her bottom lip. “Um?”
He nodded in the major’s direction, and she glanced around. She went, briefly, back to her task, then spun on her heel.
“What’s going on? I thought—I thought we were all on the same side?”