Theories of Flight

entirely untroubled. You, I care about, so I’m going to make you sit this one out.”

The major was right behind him. Petrovitch tilted his head so he could see the man’s face.

The major saluted him. “Sir.” He sounded as bewildered as a lost child.

“Don’t worry,” said Petrovitch. “It does get easier. How many tanks have you got?”

“Seven. Lost one to mechanical failure.”

“I need to borrow them. Is that okay?”

“Yes sir.”

“And stop calling me sir. Get back to your men. Your orders will come from Brussels, and you’ll believe that completely.”

“But what about me?” Lucy twisted her hands together. “What am I supposed to do now?”

Petrovitch stopped a nikkeijin, and found enough words in an online dictionary to communicate with the man: “keitaidenwa, nanitozo.”

The phone was duly passed over, and after Petrovitch had scanned its number for later use, he pressed it on Lucy.

“Take this. It has a map and instructions.” Time was tight. He had to go. “I will see you later.”

He laid his hand lightly on her head: a blessing, a dismissal, a solemn charge. She went without argument, running off in one direction as he started in another.

The huge diesel engines that powered the tanks rumbled to life in a side street, and groups of nikkeijin crossed his path, heading east, each led by an Oshicora employee.

“Valentina?”

He could barely make out her reply. He filtered out the extraneous noise and heard: “If you want me to hold bridge, you must do something extraordinary.”

“Then I will,” he said to her, and to the AI, one more word. “Now.”

28

In the ten minutes it took to navigate the car-choked streets between his starting point and the river, the plan Petrovitch had put in place had its beginning and middle. He arrived late, via Piccadilly and Trafalgar Square, onto the Strand.

From one end of the street, he couldn’t quite see the other using the camera on his head, so he looked down on the approaches to Waterloo Bridge using a satellite: it was wreathed in smoke. The Embankment was on fire: there were burning vehicles and the shells of waterfront buildings had been laid low.

The red markers on the map were winking out, by ones, two, threes, by the handful and the dozen. Where there had been a solid sheet of red, there were now gaps. A thin blue line rimmed the area, and pockets of blue showed where rooftop snipers poured fire on the people below.

“I can’t tell. Talk to me.”

[The situation is critical.] The AI showed him a series of views from the CCTV on Somerset House. [The attack helicopters have strafed the Embankment and are circling Farringdon Road. We will win there, but will lose Lancaster Place. The bridge will fall to the Outies.]

“No, it won’t.” He started to run again, moving the images of conflict to the corner of his attention in order to successfully navigate the street furniture.

[There is no logic behind your statement. Simply wishing for something to be so does not make it so.]

“Potselui mou zhopy. This is going to work. Where are the tanks?”

[High Holborn.]

“Kingsway, Chancery Lane and Holborn Circus. Do it. Get the helicopters to kill as many as they can.”

[This is already happening. It will be too late. There are too many of them. We should pull back.]

“We’re committed here.”

[Then we will fail.]

There was a barricade across the street, cars and two buses, stacked by a mobile crane to resemble a giant Tetris game. The interiors were occupied, a wall of men and women committed to keeping the Outies from climbing up and over. They had long since run out of ammunition, and were reduced to poles and sticks, clubs and bats.

There were no reserves behind them, no one to replace them if they fell, or broke and ran.

“There were supposed to be more people right here.” Petrovitch pulled his trophy knife and stood nonplussed for a moment. “Where are the reinforcements?”

[They have not had time to arrive. Two thousand are massed at the Oshicora Tower, receiving uniforms and basic equipment… ]

“Yeah. Pizdets.”

He saw the situation as the AI did. Sheer weight of numbers would overwhelm Lancaster Place. The approaches to the bridge would fall. All the defenders he’d so carefully placed along the Embankment and the Strand would be cut off. The tanks would come into play too late, the helicopters would do too little and, like those at the barricade, they’d run out of bullets soon enough.

So. It was time to turn the New Machine Jihad card face up on the table, and he didn’t know how anyone would react to that. His best guess would be he’d face a full-scale mutiny within the hour: the nikkeijin might follow Sonja’s orders, but the MEA militia, who’d witnessed the Long Night, and the EDF regulars, who’d watched it looped on the news for weeks, weren’t going to go along with it, not at all. He’d win the battle, and lose the war.

“How much do you want this?” he asked the AI. “Are you willing to risk everything? Your very existence in exchange for these fragile sacks of meat?”

[You said you would find me a home.]

“If the Outies break through, that dream is gone.”

[How much more will I end up with if I reveal myself now?]

“Could be nothing. Might be everything. It’s your call.” The first Outie made it to the top of the barricade. He was soon enough dragged down, but almost in an instant, another replaced him, and another. The defenders who remained alive heard the cry of triumph above them and, as fast as the sound traveled, they started to scramble out of their positions.

Everything slowed. Everything: even the processing power in Petrovitch’s rat was commandeered. The pain he had locked out using software blocks snapped back, and the camera strapped to the side of his head no longer fed its images into his brain. He was blind, in agony, suddenly alone. His life was laid bare with no illusions or delusions. This is what he had come to. At least with the Outies, who had to be swarming toward him, it was going to be mercifully short.

Unless they left him like that, curled up on the hard road, whimpering and crying. They could ignore him, and there would be nothing he could do about that.

Then, in the darkness, he heard the words. [We rise or fall together, Aleksandr Arkadev Milankovich: a true friend.]

No one had used that name for years. Sometimes he struggled to remember it himself. It was him, though. The same skinny street kid who had run wild through the prospekts of St. Petersburg lay on a Metrozone road, helpless and crippled, and he still had someone who would call him by his real name.

The world appeared sideways. At first, he was surprised that he could see at all, then by what he could see. The barricade was shaking itself apart, the highest vehicles falling either side, and carrying those who were clambering up them down.

The noise: the growling of engines that consumed every last drop of dead air and splashed it back out as vibrant, vibrating sound. Someone stooped to drag him up because their uniforms matched, but when Petrovitch turned his sightless eyes to face his would-be rescuer, he was dropped with a shout and shrinking revulsion.

His pain was receding again, leaving his skin prickling with the impression of a thousand sharp needles. He could stand on his own, as well as fill his voice with his own words.