Theories of Flight

“Sounds fair. After you.” He pointed to the open hatch, and watched her clamber down. She passed him her rifle as she descended, then stuck her hand back out for it when she was ready.

Petrovitch took a moment to follow. Here he was, on top of a tank, commanding an army of tens of thousands, with an almost limitless supply of robotic vehicles to do his bidding. The whole edifice of what he’d created from nothing could come crashing down around him in a matter of seconds, leaving everything in utter ruin. But for now, he’d managed to elbow his way onto the top table. Not bad for a street kid from St. Petersburg.

He felt his way down the ladder and into the turret. It wasn’t designed for passengers, and he and Valentina had to crush in together next to the fire control panel. The noise was staggering, enough to render normal speech impossible. The crew all wore ear defenders and microphones. He was left with turning his hearing down, and trying to protect his nerve-endings with his fingers.

Valentina wadded torn and chewed pieces of paper tissue into her ears. She offered him some, pre- moistened, then looked at the palm of her hand before closing her fingers around the wet twists of paper. She dug deep into her pockets to find some more tissue, dry this time, and handed it over.

Petrovitch shrugged. He wouldn’t have minded that much, because his own efforts left him jamming bloody cones of cellulose and spit into his head. It still sort of worked and, against every law of reason, huddled in the dull booming of the tank’s interior, he fell asleep.

30

He woke up, not knowing where or when he was. He had been on a green hill, leaning on a staff, feeling the smooth, knotted wood under his fingers. Below him was a cluster of domes. One of them was large enough to hold a town. Empty now, everyone gone, and he would not follow.

Not with this old body.

He looked up, up, up, past the clouds and the blue sky, past the glare of the bright yellow sun. There were points of light moving, blinking out, one by one. The game was over. He had won.

He laid himself down, smelling the damp grasses as they surrounded him, sensing the cold, dark soil beneath. He was on the earth, on the Earth, and he knew without a momentary flicker of doubt that this was not the end, that he would transcend both life and death.

He closed his eyes, and opened them again.

The co-axial machine gun was chattering, the gunner crouched in front of a video screen with a joystick in his hand, directing fire at the targets he could see pixelated before him.

The major was using another screen, and the driver a third. They all seemed to be talking simultaneously into their microphones: short, clipped phrases, laden with information, all but unintelligible to one not trained in the art.

The tank lurched forward. Petrovitch put his hand out, still dazed by his dreaming, and connected with Valentina’s thigh.

“Sorry,” he mouthed.

It didn’t seem to bother her. She mouthed something back. Petrovitch ran a lip-reading program over the images.

“We are here,” she had said.

He called for the satellite image, and remembered that, at some point, they’d lose the high-definition infrared camera over the horizon.

“The eye-in-the-sky thing: when is that?”

[In forty-eight minutes’ time, for twenty minutes. We cannot gain complete victory before then, though the inner zones will be clear. With the Outies in retreat, it will be impossible to reacquire the complete data set. Targeting will become non-trivial, and will inevitably lead to both delayed response and increased casualties.]

“When we have satellites of our own, this won’t be a problem. I don’t suppose we can use the Hubble?”

[Wrong orbit.]

Petrovitch tutted, and peered down on them from above. Six of the tanks had spread out over what looked like a golf course, advancing under the shadow of the road which arched above them on thick concrete supports. The headstones of the extensive cemetery adjacent were being used for cover, although respect for the dead crossed neither side’s mind.

Their tank was rolling up the flyover, slapping down its tracks, heading toward a barricade of overturned cars on the very brow of the bridge, and the gunner was using their height to his advantage.

The figures within the narrow space between the cars seemed too exhausted to raise a cheer or a wave. And even though he could have looked before and hadn’t for fear of what he might find, he looked now. He zoomed in and searched each battered helmet, each bare head, for someone who might look like Madeleine.

He couldn’t find her.

He felt himself react: his heart spun faster, his skin prickled, his stomach tightened, his breathing quickened. He forced his primal instincts back down. He needed to think clearly.

The tank was still firing, but wasn’t being fired on. Safe to disembark. He levered himself upright and pulled down the ladder. Valentina picked up her AK and stood behind him, swaying against the motion of the vehicle.

“You don’t have to come,” he shouted to her.

She shook her head and reamed one of her ears free of wadding. “What?”

“You don’t have to come,” he repeated.

“Do not be stupid,” she said, and waited for him to climb out onto the hull.

Petrovitch reached above him and undogged the hatch, pushing it with his palm as he ascended until it fell back against the armor with a clang. Cool air swapped with the fetid fug inside, and he put both hands either side of the opening to swing his body up and out.

They were almost at the barricade. The machine gun ceased fire, and the turret swung back to face the front. Petrovitch took Valentina’s rifle almost absently. He was busy searching the faces that were now peering over the top of the toppled cars’ sides.

The tank clattered to a halt, and he jumped off, clutching the gun. He walked up to the barricade, and still the defenders said nothing, eyeing him and Valentina warily.

“Who are you with?” called a voice indistinctly.

Petrovitch pulled the dried papier mache from his ears and threw the hardened lumps behind him.

“Who are we with?” Petrovitch glanced behind him at the massive tank. “Yobany stos, do you think we rent these things by the hour? Who do you think we’re with?”

“It’s got EDF markings, but neither of you two are EDF.”

Petrovitch glanced down at his chest. Laser markers were spidering trails across his Oshicora-issue worksuit. Perhaps if the militia still had ammunition, he’d have been more worried.

“I’m looking for Sergeant Madeleine Petrovitch. I thought she was here.”

“And who are you? And what the hell have you done to yourself?”

“I’m her husband.” He waited, declining to answer the second question.

The voices behind the barricade muttered to each other.

“What are they doing?” whispered Valentina.

“I don’t know. I kind of assumed they’d want to be rescued. And where the huy is Maddy?” He’d had enough, and raised his voice. “Maddy? Maddy?”

“She’s gone.”

Petrovitch thrust the AK at Valentina and was up and over the turned-over cars. Someone had the misfortune to get in his way: Petrovitch took him one-handed by his throat and threw his back against a car roof.

As he held him there, he had the opportunity to see who it was he was slowly choking. A kid, not so much