by Chris Ward
‘A regular sleeping beauty, isn’t she?’ Kurou muttered. ‘I guess there’s always the recycling. I could recommend a couple of good websites. We might even be able to hack up her price a little bit—’
‘Kurou, shut up,’ Lena said. ‘Mortin, has she spoken or opened her eyes?’
‘Not once. She was coherent until we broke her out of the machine, but apart from a few minor injuries there appears nothing wrong. The doctors have examined her and can’t find anything physically wrong, but as you can see, she’s wasting away.’
Kurou sighed. ‘As useless as the dumb bear you resemble. There’s a reason I told you to leave her in the machine until I had a way of freeing your precious baby figured out. Now look at her. If I were you I’d keep a watch on her and hope for a miracle.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Before anyone could stop him, Kurou gave Isabella a pat on the head. ‘Doth thine anger burn like thy father’s crown?’
‘You babbling fool.’
Kurou grinned. ‘You can keep my coxcomb. Now, I have work to do, sire. Good day to you.’
He hurried out before anyone could stop him, but Lena caught up with him in the corridor. ‘What’s happened to her?’ she said. ‘We have another three hundred of those things that we need to fight for us. Is this going to happen to everyone who rides one?’
Kurou stopped so quickly that Lena had to sidestep into the wall to avoid hitting him. ‘Yes,’ he said, his single eye fixing her with a piercing glare. ‘The riders of the War Horses, they don’t just assume physical control, but mental too. They make a connection with the machine. They’re symbionts. You can’t just separate them. That buffoon and his clown army might as well have taken off one of her pretty little legs.’
Lena’s gun was out of its holster and poking into Kurou’s face before he had seen her draw it. Must be getting slow, he thought, trying to ease his great curved nose to the side so the gun didn’t scratch it.
‘We’re relying on those machines for our survival,’ she said. ‘Are we going to have the same situation with each of them?’
‘If we remove the riders by force then yes.’
‘Is there any other way?’
Kurou shrugged. Lena lowered the gun but didn’t put it away. ‘One of the design flaws that I was asked to fix was the difficulty in disassociating a War Horse with its rider. When they were damaged during military exercises the riders inevitably died after being cut out. Some of them held on for a few weeks, but it happened one hundred percent of the time.’
Lena stared at Kurou until he looked away. ‘You knew about this, didn’t you?’
Kurou lifted an eyebrow. ‘I care nothing for these people I send to war,’ he said. ‘I care only about the victory.’
‘How can your heart be so cold?’
Kurou grinned. ‘Now, now, sweet Lena of the green pastures of grand Russia. If I compare thee to a summer’s day wouldst thou not compare me to every government in history? Since when have the lives of a few mattered to the survival of the many? You call me cold, but I am just a product of the humanity from whence I came, as are you, my dear. Would it not be time for a little redefining of the term “humanity”?’
Lena said nothing. ‘Are you trying to find a way to save them?’
‘Among other duties, yes. Their deaths, while of no direct consequence to myself, are a hindrance in our efforts to win the day.’
For a long time, Lena said nothing, she just stared down at the dusty tiles of the corridor floor. ‘So, the girl might die, and the others we use for those machines might die also.’
‘Yes. Are you okay with that?’
Lena took a deep breath. ‘Do what you must, Professor.’
‘With Godspeed, sweet princess.’
As the footsteps echoed away down the corridor, a side door opened. Victor waited until he was sure they had gone, then he lifted a hand and wiped away a sheen of sweat from his forehead.
His heart was thundering. He had overheard every word, but most of it had passed in a blur, overshadowed by the knowledge that Isabella would almost certainly die.
Only days before he had dragged her out of a burning train. Now she needed saving again.
Without a clue of what he was going to do, he headed off back to the control room and the hangars beyond, hoping to come up with some sort of plan before the love of his life wasted away before his eyes.
38
Secrets and revelations
Without fear of the drones spotting them from the air, the valley with its steep, forested sides was ideal for weapons practice. Kurou had selected ten men to enter the suits, while the rest of the chosen stood around in groups, watching as the ten lined up and discharged their weaponry into the forest.
‘Feel free to take notes,’ Kurou shouted through a megaphone as the boom from the first round of arsenal discharge died away into a dull ringing. ‘You’ll need these to take out anything bigger than a truck, but remember to aim a little in front of the target as they’ll be much faster than you. Got that, amigos?’
He doubted that the glum ranks and file of the volunteers got anything. He was already starting to regret his little hypnotism trick, as revising their hypnosis to follow orders was more trouble than it was worth, requiring man-to-man attention. All of the genuine volunteers had been assigned to more demanding tasks, such as laying mines or trip-explosives, setting up surveillance cameras or moving heavy artillery into position. Those in front of him assigned as riders for the War Horses were mere cannon fodder, and while Lena might have agonized over their inevitable sacrifice, Kurou’s only concern was that they would put up too little of a fight.
There was not enough fuel or ammunition for proper weapons training. Unlike the War Horses that were coming en masse from all sides—which ran on bio-fuel taken cannibalistically from their fallen enemies, a quirk which Kurou himself had introduced in the new designs—these old ones ran on regular gasoline. On Kurou’s command, Victor had led a team back into the city tasked with siphoning off the petroleum left in domestic cars and running lines into the town’s few refuelling stations to drain them. Their defence was only likely to last a couple of days anyway, but in the event that they managed to hold out longer they would be beaten by their own lack of fuel.
At least the fusing had gone well. The men already saddled up—as Kurou wryly referred to it—had become more autonomous than their peers, with the machine’s controls influencing them. With all of them controlled remotely by computer, the only downside would be their lack of human-influenced reactions in the heat of battle.
Lena came up behind him. ‘How are they?’
‘Heavy and cumbersome, slow and easy to hit, but raw food is a hearty meal to a starving man, is it not?
Lena sighed and nodded. ‘Is there still no way we could evacuate?’
‘I would share no concerns were you all cut down running west while I sneaked away east through the battle lines themselves,’ Kurou said. ‘In terms of survival though … you have no chance. Not enough transportation vehicles or fuel, and the roads have now been left unploughed for several weeks. Where, of course, they’ve not been bombed.’ He turned and patted her on the shoulder, making her flinch. ‘Good luck.’
‘How much time do we have?’
‘To the west about four days. To the north, east, and south, perhaps five, giving them a little more time to circle around. We will assume battle formations the day after tomorrow.’
Lena nodded and made excuses to leave. Kurou watched the gun testing for a few more minutes, then headed inside, leaving the machines in the charge of one of the volunteers.
Down in the room he had taken for his control centre, he logged back into the communications satellite he was using to track the progress of the incoming War Horses. As expected, they were beginning to converge from the north and south, moving in a pincer-motion towards the town.
‘You know we’re here, don’t you?’ Kurou muttered. ‘You’re coming for t
he party.’
It should have been a relatively simple procedure to hack into the communications systems for the Grey Man’s War Horses and take control of them, even taking into consideration the level of autonomy that each rider had. Sure, it would mean searching through reams of code and hours of programming, but it should have been possible. Yet, nothing was working so far.
It was as though there was some other form of communication that Kurou couldn’t breach.
The technology was far in advance of what he had to work with, but compared with some of his own creations it was primitive. Yet still … nothing would give. He was at the end of his patience, and starting to believe the way the Grey Man was controlling his War Horses was something darker, unexplainable.
Something that would render his efforts worthless.
He picked up a computer monitor and hurled it across the room in frustration, then headed back outside. High above, a cold sun was leaning towards the end of another day. Most of the War Horses had been moved back inside, but Kurou waded out through the snow and up a path to a clearing where one of the War Horses lay face down in the snow. Three volunteers, one former radiologist and two who had been pharmaceutical assistants, stood around watching it, taking measurements with a variety of electronic equipment that Kurou had painstakingly—and at times angrily—taught them to use. They flinched at his approach, but despite their guarded looks they stood to attention.
‘Success?’
The nearest man nodded. ‘Eighteen hours and the rider still lives. The machine is creating an artificial heat source to protect them both.’
‘And the upper surface temperature?’
‘Base levels. The additional heat generation is only on the rider cavity, so that if the machine is lying face down the heat source is undetectable from above.’
Kurou clapped his hands together. ‘Perfect. Then we begin deployment tomorrow. Good work, gentlemen.’
He left them standing around the face-down machine and went back to the base, hoping they had made no mistakes. The ability of the War Horses to protect their riders in times of extreme cold was essential to their success. The cumbersome machines were an easy target out in the open, so he needed to employ the old trick of surprise to give them the best chance of success.
Victor was in the control room when Kurou returned, looking at something on the computer.
‘Success, my young apprentice?’ Kurou asked.
Victor’s nod was a little too enthusiastic. We filled three tankers,’ he said. ‘One of the fueling stations had been keeping a secret stock to sell at inflated prices later in the war.’
Kurou grinned. ‘A businessman after my own heart.’ He pulled off his top hat, gave the robot who had been riding in it continuously for the last three days a little shake, and put it down on the desktop.
‘I have another task for you,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘I need three size seven screwdrivers from hangar bay four. There are some in the little workroom by the entrance.’
Victor stood up, giving a quick glance back at his computer screen. ‘Um, sure.’
‘Hurry along now, sire. On the double.’
With a nod, Victor plodded out, closing the door with a soft click that was almost nervous. Kurou sat stock still for a few seconds, his acute hearing picking up Victor’s footsteps as they receded down the corridor towards the stairs at the end. Satisfied that the young inventor was out of the way, Kurou went over to the workstation Victor had been using and quickly restored the browsing history that Victor had been so quick to delete.
Kurou frowned, cocking his head. A computer model of a War Horse from the hangars below appeared on the screen. A central area was flashing red, and Kurou zoomed in to take a closer look.
The highlighted area belonged to the life support systems.
So, it seemed young Victor was lovesick, still clinging to the hope that his girlfriend could be saved.
Kurou almost wished it could be true, but not quite. He had far more pressing matters than a young man’s grief, like how to get one over on the Grey Man.
Patricia slipped the fist-sized incendiary device into a pocket of her thick winter jacket. She looked around to see if anyone was watching, but none of the other volunteers on trap-laying detail were paying her any attention. She nodded to herself, then squatted down and pulled another of the timed bombs out of the box and fitted it into a crevasse in the collapsed wall of the old bank, covering it over with a thin layer of gravel.
She had four others already secreted away in a tree stump not far from the entrance to the base. While her choice of hiding place made her feel a little like a psychopathic squirrel, she didn’t dare keep them near her sleeping quarters, or get caught with them on her. Kurou had eyes everywhere, and where he didn’t have eyes, he had cameras. Her father might be able to call him off publically, but Robert was still restricted to crutches, and there was only so far his influence could reach.
Each device had an individual code, which was keyed into a triggering controller about the size of a pocket calculator. From there, various detonation options were available.
She had also stolen a controller.
When the time came, part of her didn’t want Kurou to die instantly. She wanted him to watch her as she put a boot on his neck and ended his sorry excuse for a life.
39
Kurou meets the lost princess
Victor had to wait until midnight to be sure that Robert Mortin would be sleeping. He had come armed with some fake orders in case he was denied admittance, but the guard outside Isabella’s door was also snoring quietly in a plastic chair, his head lolling against the wall.
Inside, Mortin was sleeping on an adjacent bed, his face turned to the wall. Victor tiptoed across the room, wincing at every creak and groan of the floor as he went. Robert Mortin was fearsome even on crutches, but Victor just wanted a few quiet minutes with Isabella. Maybe she couldn’t hear him, but he needed to say the words anyway.
On a low table beside her a single dim lamp lit the room. Victor crossed to the side of Isabella’s bed opposite Mortin, ready to duck out of sight if the man woke. Isabella was lying on her back, her pale, gaunt face looking up at the ceiling. Wires connected her to a ventilation machine, and a tube in her arm led to a fluid drip. The room stank of formaldehyde, even though someone had put a bunch of dusty, plastic flowers in a vase on a corner table and sprayed it with dryly pungent air freshener.
Victor reached up and took her hand, wincing at the chill of her skin. ‘Can you hear me, Isabella? It’s Victor.’
She made no response. Victor stared at her face, hoping only for the flicker of eyelids to indicate she could hear, but nothing came.
‘I wanted you to know that I haven’t given up. I’m trying to find a way to heal you, but I’m not quite there yet. I just need more time. Stay strong for me.’
No response.
‘Some people might have given up on you, but I haven’t. I’m nearly there. I’ve nearly got it figured out. I just need a little more time, then we can get out of this place forever.’ He paused. ‘I love you, Isabella Mortin. Please don’t die.’
Over on the adjacent bed, Robert snorted and rolled over, for a moment his head lifting off the pillow, one hand reaching up to wipe his nose, then he relaxed and began to snore again. Victor sat motionless in the gloom, listening to the beat of his thundering heart.
Sensing Robert would soon wake, Victor gave Isabella’s hand a last squeeze. The flesh beneath the cold skin felt hard, almost metallic.
‘Wait for me,’ he said. ‘I’ll come again soon.’
As he crept out of the room, past Isabella’s snoring father and the guard sleeping in the chair outside, Victor prayed that he could keep his word.
As Kurou moved through the deserted streets, the cane he had found to go with his gloves and top hat swishing through the fresh snow, he tried to ignore the blistering air temperature, chilling even for him as it dropped to the
region of minus thirty centigrade. He had considered discarding his costume or replacing it with a thick Russian jacket, but it helped him stay in character, and right now his character was the only thing that might get him answers.
While his own army’s preparations for war were going better than he had could have hoped, considering the age of the resources available and the limited fuel sources, not to mention the technical infallibility of his workforce, he had failed to make further progress in his attempts to stop the Grey Man’s approaching horde.
With the right resources, Kurou felt capable of controlling anything. His were skills learned through myriad hours of intricate practice, his knowledge of electronics, computer systems and genetic manipulation technology advancing until they were without peer, but this was something different.
Controlling the drones had been like stealing a kid’s toy and taking over the controller. Once you knew where the controller was, it was a case of plucking it out of whatever hand—real or digital—was holding it.
But taking control of the War Horses—the very same machines that he had helped to design—was different.
He could feel their systems. He could tap into their memory banks and read through their data, count the kills, the remaining fuel, even view the emotive charts which displayed the current status of the human-machine link, but he couldn’t take control of them in the way that he, Kurou, had designed them so that he should be able to.
Something else was blocking them, a form of technology of which he had no knowledge, and the implications of that were terrifying.
He couldn’t beat an enemy he couldn’t see.
The Lenin District was deserted and almost pitch dark, the electricity having been diverted to add power to the underground base. A handful of emergency street lights were too dim to even cast him a shadow, an irony that did not go unnoticed. Even in the gloom his keen eye picked out the tracks of his volunteers, and he was careful to keep away from the streets he had allocated for booby traps and other little welcome parties for the Grey Man’s troops.