by Simon Morden
He glanced up as the car bumped and jogged his hand. There were bodies all over the road—in places, thick enough to resemble a carpet of torn cloth and broken flesh.
Outies, Oshicora conscripts, civilians, MEA militia: all mixed up. Vehicles embedded in shop fronts and sideways in doorways. Lamp-posts felled by collisions and burned-out wrecks.
They slowed to a crawl, and the thick rubber tires fought for grip on the uncertain surface. Petrovitch glanced behind him, and discovered that Valentina had already clamped her hand over Lucy’s eyes.
“She is too young.” A muscle in her face twitched. “And I am too old.”
Tabletop stared open-mouthed through the windscreen. When it looked like she was going to drop the sphere, Petrovitch reached across and put his hand under it, holding his work in the other and the tube of glue in his mouth.
It got worse the closer to Euston Station they got.
Eventually, Petrovitch was able to place the finished circuit on the dashboard and remove the glue from between his teeth.
“Angry yet?”
“What have we done?” murmured Tabletop.
“When the sun came up this morning, all these people were alive. Most of them would still have been alive by tonight if I hadn’t taken it on myself to fight back. So I take my part of the responsibility. Your masters can take the rest. I’ll make sure of that.”
“When this is over, what are you going to do with me? I thought I could help you build the future, but this, this…” Her voice trailed away and she scrubbed quickly at her cheek. “You’re going to put me against a wall with the others and shoot me.”
“Surprisingly enough, I’m not in charge. I don’t know how much say I get in this.”
Tabletop looked back at Sonja, who met her gaze with such unflinching hostility that she decided she’d rather look at the dead people they were about to run over.
“I would say, though, that if we get Maddy back now, and Pif later, there might be grounds for clemency.” Petrovitch handed her the sphere back. “Now hold this still.”
He concentrated on his work for the next few minutes, gluing and taping joints and wires, fixing the batteries together in a bundle, then chasing conducting glue across their terminals.
Slowly, the road became clearer, and the car’s wheels managed to steer around the obstacles. By the time they got out to the Caledonian Road, Valentina felt it safe to remove her hand.
Lucy blinked in the light. “I wouldn’t have looked,” she said.
“You cannot unsee what you have seen, little one,” said Valentina.
“Not true: I can’t remember what my parents look like,” said Tabletop. “Neither can I remember how the CIA made me forget; I just have to accept that they did, and that I agreed to it.”
In the wing mirror, one of the following cars pulled over against the curb, jerking to a halt. The driver fell from the door and was copiously sick on the road.
“Maybe,” said Petrovitch, “we should find out the answers to both those questions.” He carefully fitted the two black wires together, leaving the two red ones free. He deliberately taped over the bare ends to prevent their accidental contact.
“Is it done?” asked Lucy.
“I can’t test the continuity or how much juice is in the battery pack. But it’ll either work or it won’t.” He tucked the rest of the roll of tape inside his overalls.
“And what will it do?”
“He won’t tell you,” said Tabletop. “He didn’t tell me the first time.”
“Yeah, well. There is such a thing as being too full of your own govno.” He adjusted his camera so it faced backward. “It should tear a little hole in the fabric of space-time, just for a fraction of a second. Less than that, really: it should be instantaneous. The effect should be similar to a small explosion, except in reverse. Implosion. Gravity waves. Like I’ve created an infinitely heavy mass then made it vanish in the same moment.”
The women looked at each other. Tabletop looked at the mass of electrical tape in Petrovitch’s lap. “You want to make a singularity. With that.”
He equivocated for a second or two. “Pretty much.”
“How do you know you’re not going to level the entire Metrozone?”
“Because the instant it appears, the machine that made it is destroyed. I can show you my workings.” Petrovitch frowned and turned his camera back around. “Are you actually a physicist, because you always sounded like you knew what you were talking about?”
It was her turn to take a moment to think. “I must have been. The knowledge has to come from somewhere.”
“If I’ve got it wrong, I apologize in advance.” He glanced out the window. “Almost there.”
Valentina checked the magazine on her AK. It was as full of bullets as it was the last time she’d looked. “What is plan?”
“I’m going to try and get them to surrender.” Petrovitch scratched his hair. Scabs came away and caught under his fingernails. “Explain that their position is a whole world of pizdets, and they may as well give up.”
“Can I tell you it won’t work?” offered Tabletop. “Maccabee might have considered your offer, but Rhythm will refuse it out of hand. Just be glad it wasn’t Retread…”
Sonja said from the back seat. “We tasered her, then put her in a coma.”
“… because she would have shot your wife, the rest of her team, then herself, but not before setting the building on fire.”
“The other one. Slipper. Where is he? Epping Forest?”
“Yes. But he’s too far away to intervene.”
Petrovitch tutted. “I had attack helicopters not so long ago, but the EDF wanted them back. Shame.”
They were on the Seven Sisters Road, and the car glided to a halt. The three vehicles behind stopped too, blocking the street. Black-suited men with rifles started to emerge.
Petrovitch stepped out, device under his arm. He could see Chain’s front door in the distance. “Fiona, Tabletop, whatever I’m supposed to call you. I need to borrow you.”
She obediently joined him, and they walked a little way from the others.
“I’ll go in there and kill them for you. They won’t suspect anything, and they won’t have time to hurt your wife.”
“Tempting,” said Petrovitch. “But it’s been pointed out to me that I can’t really trust you.”
“You want me to contact them?”
“No. There are code-words you could use that I’d have no idea about that could mean anything. I just want the frequencies, encryption method, stuff like that. I’ll take it from there.” He sighed. “If I let you do something that means Maddy dies, I’ll want to lay waste to your entire country. So, it’s probably better if I screw up on my own.”
Her bodysuit had a series of switches along the inside of her left wrist, and she powered up for him. He supposed that if she was going to kill him, now would be as good a time as any. She was so close to her colleagues she could shout for them.
But then again, with every concealed button pressed, he saw more and more of her suit come alive. She had an enhanced musculature; a medical kit that would numb pain, boost adrenaline, clot her blood; he knew about the hatnav, but not the night vision or the multiplicity of concealed weapons. It would keep her warm or cool, it would turn a blade, it would deliver fifty thousand volts through her fingertips.
He infiltrated her suit’s computer, hacking it through the diagnostics routine. He was now closer to her than her own skin, and he took what he needed. The aerial was up her spine, and the short-wave burst transmitter an insignificant patch over one kidney.
“Ready?”
“For what?”
“Sorry,” said Petrovitch, “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
[There are hints of something coming across the Irish Sea. It is in unpowered mode, but every so often there is a course correction. I will attack as soon as it becomes possible.]
“Thank you. Let’s see what Daniels has to say fo
r himself.”
Because he was using Tabletop’s callsign, the agent assumed it was her.
“What’s your mission status?” His voice was unrecognizable: digitized, spoken in a plain robotic monotone.
“Dobre vyecher, Captain Daniels. Kak pazhivayesh?”
The airwaves hissed for long enough to start making him nervous.
Then they cleared for a single word. “You.”
“Come,” said Petrovitch, “let us reason together.”
33
He stood in the road, wondering what to say next. The two men inside Chain’s apartment knew all the moves. They would counter any argument he might make, and he would do the same to them.
“Okay, it’s like this: I’ve won and you’ve lost. Whatever happens from now on, I want you to remember that all your plans are in ruins; your cell is broken, your mission in tatters, your government hopelessly compromised. Whatever you came here to do, you failed.”
“We have your wife…”
“Yeah, yeah. I know that. I know pretty much everything, so why don’t we cut the govno and get down to business. If you would like to go home, I can probably arrange it. If you would like to go out in a blaze of futility, I can arrange that too. I know exactly where you are, I have more than enough backup to make good my threat, and there is no way you’re going to escape: the extraction team currently crossing the coast of what used to be Wales will never reach you.” Petrovitch paused. “Take as much time as you need. Think about it. You know how to reach me.”
“What have you done with Tabletop?”
“I’m using her codes. You can guess the rest,” he said ambiguously. “I’ll be waiting.”
“You… haven’t asked after your wife, Petrovitch.”
“No. No, I haven’t. Are you familiar with Schrödinger’s Cat?”
“No.”
“And another metaphor dies whimpering on the altar of ignorance.” He stopped transmitting and refocused on the street in front of him.
Tabletop rose on her heels and then her toes, rocking slightly. “What did he say?”
“I didn’t give him much of a chance to say anything. I gave him the bald facts and time to stew over them.”
“It won’t make a difference,” she said. “Maccabee knows that Rhythm wouldn’t let him surrender.”
“And if Daniels kills Andersson? What then?”
“He might, I suppose. But then you’d have to keep him, because you could never send him back to the U.S.” She stopped her rocking and rolled her head in a circle, stretching her neck muscles. “He’s not going to kill Rhythm.”
“Can I work on Andersson? Anything else I can say that might make him give up? They’re surrounded, outgunned, and the extraction’s going to be forced down before it gets anywhere near here. The only reason why they’re not dead is because my wife might be alive.”
Tabletop froze mid-exercise. “The extraction is by submarine.”
“Then what the huy is coming from the west?” He looked up into the darkening sky. “Ah, chyort. And I told Daniels. Excuse me for a minute.”
[Submarine.]
“Apparently. Is it possible that the Americans have a stealthed drone that could glide across the Atlantic, dropping it from say, twenty, thirty k up?”
[That information is highly classified. While I attempt to access the information, we will suppose that it is likely.]
“And what might such a drone be used for?”
[It would simply be a weapons platform, designed to be barely detectable before it became active over its target.]
“Given that we’re looking at air-to-ground missiles, what’s the worst we can expect?”
[Multiple supersonic cruise missiles each with a kiloton-range nuclear payload. From its last plotted position, such a missile would reach here in under seven minutes.]
“Could you stop one? Could you stop them all?”
[They will have factored in my ability to interfere with computer systems. Targets will be set before they are launched, and they will leave deploying the missiles as late as possible. I could disable the GPS satellites, but such weapons have ground-tracking radar and on-board maps. My success depends on them having already done something stupid.]
“Targets: the Oshicora Tower…”
[The CIA site in Epping Forest.]
“… Chain’s office…”
[Your domik, your laboratory.]
“… Chain’s house.” He stopped. “They’re taking out their own agents as well as us. Can you migrate from the quantum computer in time?”
[No.]
“Then concentrate on the missile aimed at you.”
[But your wife?]
“Exactly: my wife. Good luck.” He spun around and shouted as loud as he could. “Sonja, tell the Union president we have incoming American missiles, take Lucy and get the huy away. The tower is a target too. Everyone else, with me.”
He held the singularity device under one arm and pulled his automatic out. He threw it to Tabletop. “If those missiles are nuclear-tipped, this won’t count for anything.”
“How long?” She pulled the slider with practiced efficiency.
“Five minutes.”
They ran down the road, Petrovitch and Tabletop in the vanguard, Valentina leading the Oshicora guards. She stormed up the steps to the front door behind them, and put a couple of rounds through the door lock.
Petrovitch kicked out at what was left, and Tabletop was first through, scanning the shadows for threats.
“Clear.”
She was heading for the stairs until Petrovitch caught her shoulder. “No. This way.”
He pointed to the door leading to the flat underneath Chain’s, and again Valentina dealt with the lock in her preferred method. Tabletop stalked the room, peering into each semi-dark corner. When she was done, she looked up at the bare light fitting.
“The sentry is just about here.”
“We don’t have time for that now.” Petrovitch hefted the sphere. “We have to take risks.”
He took the next few seconds in working out the floor-plan of the flat upstairs: living room, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom. The bedroom was at the back of the house, but the door to it led from the living room, where the sentry gun was situated. The bathroom was also at the back of the house, separated from the kitchen by a narrow corridor.
There: close to the ceiling, midpoint between the two walls. That’s where it needed to go. He pulled out the roll of tape and stared at it.
“That’s never going to hold. Chyort.” But there were empty bookcases in the first room. They looked tall enough. “Grab one of those. Put it here.”
It was fixed to the wall, though not for long. The Oshicora men dragged it into position, and Petrovitch kicked the bottom out so that it lay angled against one side of the corridor.
“Out, out, out.”
Tabletop took the device from him, and Petrovitch stripped the ends of the red wires with his teeth. Valentina put her hand on his collar, ready to drag him away.
“It doesn’t need all three of us. Put it on the top shelf and go.”
When Tabletop did so, it was almost too high for him to reach. Valentina, one-handed, boosted him up.
“Three seconds.” He held the wires parallel to each other. “Two.” He pinched them between his fingers, the bare copper trapped ever so slightly apart. “One.” He took a breath, maybe his last, and twisted the wires together.
Valentina grabbed him around the waist and ran with him. He was halfway to the foyer before his feet ever touched the ground. She threw him through the doorway, and crouched down, rifle ready.
Nothing. More nothing. He started to pick himself off the floor. It felt like an age had gone by.
“Yoban—”
It was the opposite of a flashbulb. Floor, ceiling, walls, the air, even light itself: everything was suddenly jerked by an unseen hand and tried for that briefest of instants to fall into a hole in reality. Then it was gone, but it didn’t
mean that things were going to stop moving.
The ceiling kept on coming, meeting the rising floor two meters up, while the supporting walls clapped together in the middle. Inevitably, the contents of Chain’s flat came too, slowly at first, then in a rush of dust and debris. The inside of the room turned opaque.
Tabletop calmly pulled her hood over her head and stepped over Petrovitch. She looked down on him through her wide, glassy visor, then extended her gun arm before disappearing into the yellow cloud.
Valentina coughed and spat and couldn’t see anything, despite being desperate to do so. The Oshicora guards crowded around the door frame, jostling for position. Petrovitch pushed past them all.
He was enveloped in dust. He crouched down, boosting the contrast on his camera and slapping down a heavy noise filter. There were blocky shapes falling from above to join the shapes below. He remembered not to breathe.
Tabletop was ahead, poised, weapon tracking across the ruin of the floor. Rubble shifted to her left. She spun and leaped. The dust cloud flashed bright as she fired at her target, just as he fired at her. But she was no longer where he thought she would be, and he was still mostly pinned under brick and wood and plaster. Daniels died, and she did not.
Petrovitch moved forward. The dust was settling, and the room behind him was slowly filling with men, edging forward, almost blind, feeling their way. Valentina was moving too, back pressed to the reassuring solidity of the wall.
Chain’s bath ripped free from its mountings. Water from severed pipes sprayed out in an arc as it rolled over the ragged lip of the floor and dropped. A long shape was flung free before the heavy cast-iron tub shattered into flying fragments. It tumbled against Tabletop, the weight of it knocking her flat against the sharp rubble, trapping her legs.
As she braced herself to push the object away, something else rose from the floor. Debris spilled off it as it straightened, and it seemed to stand there for a moment while it resolved into Andersson’s outline.
“Target, dead ahead,” called Petrovitch, and enough of his side got the idea. He threw himself down, trying to burrow under the rubble, as bullets sang over his head close enough that he could feel the heat of their passing.