The Curve of the Earth

32




Obviously, he was being watched. That was a given. But he knew he’d been spotted picking up the package as he approached the hangar: maybe it had taken them that long to review the images from outside the hotel, compile a sequence of events from multiple angles, and come to the conclusion that there’d been a drop.

They’d missed it as it happened, but they weren’t going to compound their error. Over at Ben and Jerry’s not-so-secret base of operations, the whole anthill of operatives spilled out and into their vehicles.

Petrovitch had no wish to be tasered again. He had his gun and his axe: he’d make a fight of it this time, but depending on what was in the envelope, they might actually not need him any more. They could just shoot him and take what they wanted without having to go through the rigmarole of asking.

“Newcomen?”

“I’m coming, okay? Just the other side of the runway to you.”

“Yeah. There’ve been some developments, not necessarily for the better.” He opened the hangar door and slipped inside. He had a minute. If that. “Even if you run, you’re not going to make it in time. Turn around, go back towards the hotel. Walk quickly.”

“I’m coming anyway. You need me with you.”

“No. Not now I don’t.”

Petrovitch looked around and assessed his assets. Even as his heart spun faster, he realised that he didn’t just have one plane. He might have an airforce.

“Yobany stos. Michael?”

[Sasha.]

“We need to get as many of these up in the air as possible.”

[The ARCO planes do not respond to my initial commands. They are not in a standby mode. They are completely shut down and require manual activation.]

“Chyort. Plan B.”

[Is it a good plan, Sasha?]

“No. No, it’s not,” he said, even as he fired up his own plane and ran towards it. “But frankly, it’s all I’ve got. Permission to go off the reservation?”

The plane’s door opened and the ladder extended, but he ignored them for the moment. There was the fuel bowser he’d left parked the night before. He opened his bag, and started to rummage.

[I have an ad-hoc on standby. You have thirty seconds until contact.]

“Enough of the stopwatch already.” His hand came up, clutching the appropriate munitions and a roll of tape.

Mittens, in bag. Bomb, on the tank. Tape, ripped between his clenched teeth. One piece and stick. Two pieces, because it absolutely mustn’t come off. A third piece of tape nipped off. He thumbed the cold, cold switch and pulled the handle to start the bowser moving, then quickly wrapped the tape around the handle so that it stayed on.

It lurched out into the hangar, and Petrovitch pointed it roughly in the direction of the doors.

[You have no guarantee that it will steer straight.]

“No shit, Sherlock. In the absence of a low-orbit ion cannon I can use, it’s what I’m left with.”

[No one has a low-orbit ion cannon.]

“Only because I don’t have time to do everything.” Even with the bowser rumbling towards the far end of the hangar, he made no attempt to board the plane. “How’s the ad-hoc doing?”

[It would help them if they knew what you were up to. Sasha? The plan?]

His beautiful executive jet rose into the air, and the turbines started to turn.

“Yeah. About that plan. It sucked anyway.” He picked up his bag and ran to the dangling ladder, latching on with his free hand. Theatre, nothing more. Dangerous theatre, a stunt that could get him killed. But he needed to be seen, just for one last moment.

The bowser had wandered: rather than going straight, it had curved gracefully to the left, but had managed to avoid the front skids of one of the ARCO planes. It banged up against the hangar door, and started to edge further leftwards.

“Tell me they’re right outside.” The plane rose further, and him with it.

[They are right outside. Sasha, I think you should reconsider…]

“I don’t. Go or no go?”

[Go.]

He triggered the bomb.

A white flash lit up the hangar. The pop of the explosive was lost beneath the hot roar of the plane’s turbines as they cranked up. The tank of fuel ripped apart, and the liquid inside vaporised as the shock wave hit it.

“Cameras. Now.”

The fireball lit with a dirty orange roar, and he let go of the ladder. Higher than he’d like, he fell to the concrete floor, and landed in a heap. The heat from the burning cloud of fuel washed over him, and he pressed himself against the ground.

[Hangar cameras are offline. Sasha?]

“Yeah, yeah.” He looked up and the structure was ablaze. The external doors had blown out, with the remains of the steel shutters lying on several cars. Flames met falling snow in the dark pre-dawn, and inside, bright blue fire was running in rivers towards him. There was shouting and screaming, but none of that seemed to be coming from him.

Over his head, his plane was moving towards the newly exposed opening. Its white paintwork was black and bubbling at the nose, and both engines seemed to be labouring. Still, it didn’t have to fly that far. He launched it forward.

Inevitably, all eyes still capable of seeing watched it leave, bursting from the bank of churning flame and trailing smoke. Barely aloft, it skimmed the runway as it limped across the airfield.

Using the distraction, Petrovitch picked himself and his bag up, and ran for the back door. His ankle turned. He blinked away the pain and kept going.

The explosion had weakened the hangar’s structure. Fire had done the rest. It groaned and creaked, and started to fall. First the arch sagged, then the walls failed.

On the far side of the runway, Petrovitch’s plane ploughed into Ben and Jerry’s control centre. It tore through the building, breaking itself and whatever was inside the one-storey prefab. At some point before it came to rest, its fractured fuel tanks gave up their load, and a second fireball rose into the Arctic sky, red reflected against the underside of the clouds.

[They are completely blind.]

Hot metal was falling from above, peppering him and the other planes at the far end of the hangar. There was the door. He didn’t stop, just aimed a two-footed kick on the lock.

He fell outside, in the swirling snow. It was dark, and no one knew he was there.

The hangar was still collapsing, and as the ARCO planes underneath cooked, they added more fuel to the fire. Something went bang, and shrapnel sang by. It was a singularly unhealthy place to be, but his ankle was giving him all kinds of trouble. The pain he could deal with – it was making sure he kept his foot pointing in the right direction that was the problem.

He hunched over and hobbled towards the next hangar, putting his shoulder to the falling snow. The light from the burning fuel was a bright glow: explosions sent meteors arcing through the air to land hissing in the drifts.

Petrovitch put his back against the metal wall of the hangar, even as it reverberated with a dull clang. “Newcomen?”

“What have you done?” He sounded aghast.

“No more Mr Nice Guy, Newcomen. The gloves are off.” He looked down at his hands. “At least figuratively. Their surveillance network is down, and I’m a free agent. This is what I want you to do: grab a snowmobile and make sure it has enough fuel to get you to the research station.”

[Sasha?]

“I know what I’m doing,” said Petrovitch. “Watch and learn.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” Newcomen was saying. His breathing was ragged, panicked.

“Just take one. No one’s going to stop you. If you ever want to see some answers, you’ll do as I tell you.”

“You’ll die here. And that’ll kill me.”

“Look, I’m not holding your hand any longer. Do it now or get caught in the crossfire. Your call.” He was interrupted.

[The teletroopers awaken.]

Petrovitch swallowed hard. “Okay, Michael. Talk to me. Can we do this?”

[One moment.]

“Chyort, not again.”

[It is not like jihading a commercial car. These are highly sophisticated weapons of war with entirely different protocols and encryption. Different again to the model you encountered at the airport.]

“You’re just building your part up now, aren’t you?”

[Yes. It seems absurd that they have not learnt the lessons of a decade ago, but there is no accounting for the stupidity of humans. They have brought these machines here for some reason or other: I am not inclined to pursue that avenue at the moment.]

“Good. Let’s chase them off the streets, just like we did the Outies.”

[Very well,] said Michael.

Petrovitch watched him do it, brutally ripping control of the teletroopers away from their virtual masters and slaving them to his will. One moment the jocks in Nevada were popping the next stimulant in the blister pack and preparing to hunt his scrawny Russian hide down; the next, every rig had flatlined, limp and unresponsive as a fresh cadaver.

“You did this once before,” said Petrovitch. “You made monsters and marched them across the Metrozone.”

[And now someone else builds the monsters. I merely make them march.]

The crackle of flames and the billows of smoke had started to die down. The creaks and groans of the collapsed hangar had calmed to the occasional settling moan. It was quiet enough to hear shouted instructions and the revving of engines. Quiet enough to hear the pressurised hiss of pistons as the first of the teletroopers unfolded from its resting position and straightened up to its full height.

Its cameras scanned the darkness. Through Petrovitch, Michael knew where the manual door mechanism was. The teletrooper stamped over and a retractable blade extended from the back of its hand, thin enough to be able to spear the on switch.

The chain started to rattle, and the snow flurried in through the widening gap. Petrovitch watched, piggybacking the images Michael was receiving, as the other thirty-one robots pulled themselves upright and levelled their weapons.

“Yobany stos. No wonder they win wars.”

[Sasha? What of mercy?]

“What of it?”

[Do we show mercy?]

“Did they show us mercy? Did they tell us the truth? Did they help us?” He pulled on his mittens. “Did they look after Lucy for us, or did they try and feed us all to the wolves?”

[Is that your answer then? I should kill them all?]

Petrovitch tested his ankle on the ground. Weak. Unstable. He’d torn something. It didn’t matter for now. “They would have killed us. They still will if they get the chance.”

[Then permit me to deny them the opportunity.]

He started to limp away, further from the pyre. “All yours. I need to see what’s so important about this envelope.”

He dug it out of its hiding place, and gave it a shake. There was definitely something inside, but it was small, flat. He guessed at a data card, and for that, he needed the reader in his bag, and somewhere safe to use it, inside and out of the driving snow that was blinding him every time he looked up.

He trudged on, dragging his foot with every step. There was another hangar coming up: he’d try in there, even if it meant just sitting in a cockpit with the heater turned on.

The teletroopers lined up outside. Even though he’d destroyed their comms centre, Petrovitch assumed that Nevada had some other way of telling Ben or Jerry, or anyone else still on the ground, they’d lost control. It didn’t look like it, though. No one was running for cover, breaking out the heavy weapons or calling for air support.

Michael was right. They’d learned nothing from their first encounter with the New Machine Jihad. Relying on remotely operated weapons? What were they thinking? Didn’t they know who they were up against?

“For old times’ sake, then.” He patched himself through to the lead teletrooper, and activated the speakers. There was a spook not ten metres away, trying to peer through the dark and the snow, his eyes shielded with one hand while he lazily held an automatic in his other.

“Prepare,” said the teletrooper.

The man turned sharply. “Not reading you.” He tapped his hooded ear.

“Prepare.”

“Did you just say… Oh. Shit.”

“Yeah. Pretty much.” The teletrooper took three quick strides forward, eating up the distance between them, and backhanded the spook with his cannon arm. The snow sprayed red, and he aimed a missile at the nearest car: hot target, engine running white under the red of the bonnet.

[You have more important tasks, Sasha. I have command.]

Petrovitch was eased off the virtual levers gently but firmly, and he was back outside the hangar, frost accumulating in his hood’s fur.

The gunfire was abruptly intense. Michael picked off their vehicles first, then started to divide his forces: some walked off in the direction of town, while others chased the living away, into the blizzard, with no clear idea of where they were heading. A third group, numbering five, went back down the runway towards the control tower, spreading out into a line across the tarmac, illuminated by the bright lights meant for aircraft.

Petrovitch picked up his axe and hacked at the door. The lock gave, and he pushed the door in. The images were dark, confusing, but there seemed to be no one there. The lights were off, and there were no telltale splashes of body heat. He pushed the door back closed, and wedged it shut with a half-filled barrel of waste oil.

Parts. He was surrounded by parts. A repair shed, then. Where there were mechanics, there’d be a kettle, and something to put in a mug.

Aware of the incongruity, he weaved his way around the darkened benches and half-assembled skidoos in search of coffee, while outside, thirty-two robotic killers hunted for prey.