The Petrovitch Trilogy

by Simon Morden

“Step away from him,” said the major.

  She started to obey, then caught herself. “No,” she said.

  “He’s the New Machine Jihad.”

  Lucy shook her head. “No. He’s not. He’s a scientist. A famous one. His name’s Sam.” She was between Petrovitch and the barrel of a gun.

  “I don’t mind if you step to one side,” said Petrovitch. He took her shoulders and moved her gently.

  Even though she could see what he could see, that a number of Oshicora personnel were folding their phones back into their pockets and were walking silently up behind the major, she put herself in front of Petrovitch again.

  “You must mean Michael,” she said. “He explained all that. The New Machine Jihad was his evil twin. Michael just wants to help us.”

  [You are risking a lot on human nature here. Yours and his.]

  “You’ve been quiet.”

  [I am busy, but not so busy that I cannot intervene. Do you want him dead?]

  “No. We’ve got it covered.”

  [That is not the evidence before me.]

  “Grown men don’t normally kill schoolgirls.”

  [Some of them do.]

  “Good point, well made.” He turned his attention back to the street. “Lucy, why don’t you show me what else you’ve got in the bag?”

  The major found himself being ignored, despite his drawn weapon. Petrovitch peered inside Lucy’s carrier and saw a package he was interested in.

  “A hand-cranked power supply.”

  “I’m always letting my phone run down. I just thought, you know…”

  “Your education has not been wasted.” He checked the selection of leads the device came with, and found a compatible one. Raising his arm again, he felt for the socket, and again, Lucy had to do it for him.

  “What do we do about him?” She jerked her head behind to indicate the major.

  “I—we—could really use the tanks he commands. But I can’t force him to do anything. I could have him dragged away and shot.”

  “No!”

  “Well, then. I guess it’s up to him to decide what he does.” Petrovitch checked his internal clock. It wasn’t getting any earlier. He glanced at the cameras overlooking Blackfriars Bridge: it was about to be overrun. “You on that?” he asked.

  [It will be destroyed, the same as the others.]

  “Is everything in place?”

  [Your plan will either work or it will not. It should not, yet you believe it will. Faith is not a facet of my personality.]

  “Michael?” asked Lucy.

  “Yeah. The second Battle of Waterloo is about to start without us.”

  “Waterloo? Where Napoleon did surrender?” She started to hum the tune.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Stay with you,” she said, suddenly serious.

  “You’re fourteen.”

  “Yes. Today I’ve run for my life, helped save a dozen old people, stabbed a man in the back and stood in front of a loaded gun.”

  “And still are.”

  She whirled around and stamped up to the major. “He needs you. We need you. Does it matter to you so much who’s giving the orders?”

  He was a head taller than her, and he looked down at her. “Yes.”

  She bent down and picked up his discarded helmet. She thrust it in his chest, hard against his body armor. He had no choice but to hold his gun one-handed.

  “Enough that you’d rather see us all die?”

  “You don’t understand,” he started, and she cut him off.

  “I understand enough! You won’t help us. Fine. Go. If you can find somewhere to go to.”

  [It’s starting,] said the AI. The distant thunder of demolition charges detonating echoed off the high buildings. The roar of slowly falling masonry grumbled afterward.

  The major looked up at the sound, startled. He was in an unfamiliar landscape, and he had no map, no compass, no guide. Lucy stamped away, back toward Petrovitch. She winked at him and turned to cast one last accusation.

  “You’re supposed to protect us! People like me, from people like them!”

  The officer was utterly defeated. He hung his head, and wiped his face with the sleeve of his battlesmock.

  “I was going to be Juliet in the school play,” she said when she could whisper into Petrovitch’s ear, “but I guess school’s out for a while.”

  “I pity Romeo.” Petrovitch looked around for Fox’s slim-bladed knife. It was by the chair he’d been sitting on, and he picked it up, his fingers curling around the leather-strapped handle. “I can’t take you with me. You have to realize that.”

  “I’m not strong, and I’m not smart,” she protested, “but I can still do stuff.”

  “No. You are strong, and you are smart. But I’m not going to tell your parents I saved you from one war zone only to lead you into another.” He flashed her a smile. “All these other people: I don’t have to care about who they leave behind, just whether they’ve done what I needed them to do. They can die and my conscience is 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.

  “Hold!”

  One or two stopped. Another three or four slowed.

  “I said hold!”

  So they waited, poised on their heels and ready to flee. There were half a dozen of them, a rag-bag of nikkeijin, Oshicora employees and a MEA militiaman.

  “We’re done running.” He looked around at the disintegrating barricade. A dozen Outies were his side of it, picking themselves up. Injured, yes. Stunned, but not for long. He turned and aimed the point of his knife at the lead Outie. “There’ll be no more of that today. If anyone’s going to run, it’s them.”

  “But the cars…”

  “Are on our side. The New Machine Jihad is on our side. We have a chance now.” He readied himself for the charge. “Don’t screw up.”

  Petrovitch ran at the enemy without worrying who was following him. He held the knife out by his side and dodged the end of a spear. He cut once, twice, and kept on going.

  Someone else was in his path. He feinted low, high, then struck in the middle. The moves he used were fast and uncompromising. He was aiming to incapacitate, taking knowledge from somewhere out there and applying it ruthlessly.

  If there had been anyone backing him up, they would have stopped the Outies. He discovered that he was entirely on his own.

  His shoulders sagged. “Ah, chyort.”

  [One moment.]

  “You keep saying that.” He was surrounded. He looked for somewhere to go, a route through. To the east, the Strand was a shifting chaos, a mess of cars moving forward and backward with helicopters clattering overhead, firing the last of their missiles. The cacophony almost drowned out the screaming.

  To the west, more cars were edging forward. They couldn’t attack because of him. South lay the bridge, but he’d never make it.

  [Look up.]

  The crane hoist. Dangling from it were the loose strips of a webbing cradle. As it dipped toward him, he leaped up, throwing the knife at the face of his closest attacker. His fingers closed on rough material and he pulled his legs up out of the way.

  He was rising into the air, but no matter how hard he told his hand to grip, he didn’t have enough muscle to support his weight for very long. He gritted his teeth and squeezed.

  Below him, the first phalanx of cars leaped forward, carrying all before them. Glass shattered and metal bent. Bodies crumpled and bones snapped. The crane arm started to swing him around, and as the movement transmitted itself down the straps, he felt the strap slide across his palm. He tried to get his other hand up, and even that slight change in his position made him slip further.

  He was almost at the end of the tether. There was blood seeping down his wrist. The crane swung him face-first against a first-floor window: the glass didn’t break, but the impact dislodged him. He fell, and something solid stopped him.

  He had landed in a heap on a narrow balcony overlooking the junction, no more than a ledge with railings. He had limbs sticking through the bars and he brought them in quickly, lying on his belly with his bandaged face against the guano-encrusted stone.

  [Sasha?]

  “It hurts deep inside when you call me that.” He used his bloody, blistered hand to reposition his camera.

  [Petrovitch, then. What do we do now? We have no plan for this. The EDF in Brussels know I have hijacked their comms, and the news that the Jihad have risen again is breaking in North America.]

  “Have we lost control of the EDF?”

  [Yes. I can reinstall the intercept, but they will simply ignore all orders from now on. MEA units are trying to enga
ge with Jihadi vehicles.]

  “Thought this would happen.”

  [NORAD has just moved to Defcon three. The White House have declared a Defense Emergency.]

  “This has nothing to with the raspizdyay kolhoznii! It never was anything to do with them.” Petrovitch slapped his hand against the wall, leaving an imperfect print in his own blood. “Sonja.”

  She picked up in an instant.

  “What have you done?” she shouted.

  “I’m still trying to save the Metrozone. Tell me you’re still on board.”

  She tucked her hair behind her ears. “Where’s Miyamoto?”

  “And the next time you send someone to be my bodyguard, make sure they’re not going to try and kill me. Now, we had a deal: I’d hand you your own country, you’d lend me half a million nikkeijin. I’m good for my end of the bargain. How about you?”

  She bristled. “They are dying in their hundreds.”

  “What about the couple of thousand you’re keeping up by the tower? What are they doing?” He saw her heart skip a beat. “If I’d had them here, we wouldn’t have had to go public on the AI. You holding out on me has backfired spectacularly: it’s going to lose access to most of what needs to function. Take the physical seals off the quantum computer and put it online. The AI needs it now.”

  She nodded, pale, and he continued.

  “I’m taking over everything about how this war is run, because you’re going to be up to your eyes in politics. You’re getting a direct line to the presidents of the EU and the U.S.A. You’re going to tell them that you can hand over a safe, stable, functioning Metrozone within a calendar year. You’re going to tell them the price is that they get their zhopi out of our faces. And you can tell them that if they even think about pressing the big red button, you will ruin their economies for the next hundred years. Got that?”

  Sonja bit at her lip, and Petrovitch waited. “I thought,” she said, “we were going to take the north Metrozone for our own.”

  “And we are. We’re just going to trade up after twelve months. Trust me.” He made the image she saw on her screen smile. “Have I ever let you down?”

  “Not yet,” she conceded.