Simon Morden - Theories of Flight

Miyamoto wiped the spittle from his cheeks. “I understand.” He sounded more subdued.

“I want you to go.”

“I have to stay.”

“I don’t have to justify myself to you.”

“Then stop.”

Petrovitch ground his teeth together. “Come on. We’ve got a bus to catch.”

He turned on his heel and stamped his way up the hill. Smoke was drifting across the road, obscuring it from his eyes and the satellites. Infrared was a mess, bright blooms of incandescence blotting out other smaller heat sources.

His assault on the summit of Highgate was petering out. The Outies were in the cemetery, while the cars growled outside the iron gates and brick walls.

He summoned the AI. “Fifty-one, thirty-three, fifty-six north: zero, eight, forty west. Get the tanks at Primrose Hill to smash it.”

The avatar walked by his side for a few steps. [You know you’re about to destroy the tomb of Karl Marx.]

“Yeah. What did he ever do for me?” Petrovitch involuntarily raised the shotgun to his shoulder, aiming down a side street. “Engels did most of the hard work, anyway.”

He remembered to pull the butt in hard before he squeezed the trigger, the only two conscious decisions he had to make. The gun kicked back and a man—he thought it was a man, but in reality it was only a half-seen blur behind a line of low concrete bollards—fell backward.

The inexorable advance was pressing down on him once more. He summoned more cars, raising them from sleep and sending them out to battle. The Outies were fluid, trying to flow around his forces like a flood, but the garage the coach hire operated from was just around the corner. He only had to hold back the tide for a few more moments.

The storm broke around him. Even as cars pulled out from curbsides and threw themselves at the gray figures, gunfire popped and glass shattered in curtains of shining crystal.

The avatar raised his hand and vanished, and Petrovitch got on with the task of surviving the next minute. He crouched down and took a look at the pitiful cover he’d given himself: halfway across the road, with Outies to his left and more in front. They might not even have noticed him yet, but a stray shot was going to hurt just as much as an aimed one.

Miyamoto was faring no better, a few meters behind him. Two cars were coming up the street, side by side. Not fast, not yet, but if he ran it would be into the path of one or the other of them.

Petrovitch had an idea. He took those two cars and slowed them down, taking them out of hunter-killer mode and telling them to do something different. He ran back to Miyamoto and forced his head low.

The cars flanked them, and rumbled on at jogging speed. Other cars overtook them, wheels up on the pavement, swerving with screeching tires to avoid the lamp-posts and signs, then hurtled away straight at the Outies.

The first artillery shells howled overhead, and there was an almost simultaneous flash of fire. The windows all around disintegrated as the shockwave hammered into the buildings around them. Petrovitch ducked.

Speech was rendered impossible by the simple fact he thought he was deaf. A burning vehicle, everything ablaze, even the wheels, rolled back out of the side street.

Straight toward them.

Petrovitch grabbed Miyamoto’s arm and threw him forward, slaving their moving shields to his position. It wasn’t quite fast enough. The car on their left shuddered as it was struck. By the time it managed to tear free, it was on fire itself.

They were across the junction. The coach depot was next left. Miyamoto was scrabbling to get upright again, and Petrovitch’s face was growing warm from the flames. They’d have to get the rest of the way on their own.

An explosion behind him sent him sprawling again. Shrapnel—plastic, metal, glass—sang through the air and zipped off the tarmac. Petrovitch was alive with pain. He tried to rise, to run, and instead stumbled as the splinters embedded in the backs of his legs tore into his flesh.

He fell, spilling shotgun cartridges onto the tarmac. The cars kept rolling onward as Miyamoto did a crouching shuffle between them. The man’s black clothing was white with dust.

He tried to summon one last effort, but the deep breath he took caught like acid in his throat and made him cough uncontrollably. Every spasm was accompanied by white flashes that blinded him and robbed him of what little control he had.

When he could see again, the ground in front of his face was flecked with red.

“Pizdets.” He sipped air, and found that he could move. With artillery shells thundering overhead and the crackle of hungry flames around him, he got to his hands and knees. That was all he could manage. Even that small movement made him gag. A glance behind showed him that his trousers were wet with blood.

“Miyamoto!”

He was a little way off, escort cars idling away to either side, regarding Petrovitch with his dark eyes.

“Miyamoto!” he shouted. Ragged clouds of smoke crossed between them. “What the huy are you doing?”

“I am watching you die.”

“I’m not dead yet. Get me up.” He tried to get one foot under him, and everything went momentarily gray. He swallowed, and it tasted of hot iron.

“If I do that,” said Miyamoto, “Miss Sonja will continue to fight rather than retreat, believing that you can offer her victory.”

“But we can win. We will win.”

“You will destroy her if you live,” he said. “Not now. She will survive this, while you will not.”

He started to walk away, up toward the crest of the hill, toward the Outies.

“Where are you going?” Petrovitch reached out for the shotgun that lay ahead of him on the ground, and dragged it back.

Miyamoto flicked his fingers behind his head at Petrovitch, discarding him as finally as a piece of litter.

“They’ll kill you too,” he called, and belatedly realized that was just what the other man had planned. Of course he could never go back, not with Petrovitch dead: it would be a failure, a disgrace, shameful.

The cars were still slaved to Miyamoto, even the one that was now thoroughly alight. They rolled slowly after him, beyond shouting distance.

Petrovitch could still call him, though. Of course he could. He had his number stored from earlier.

And Miyamoto answered. “What?”

“You don’t have to do this.”

“I will not act against you myself because of my promise to Miss Sonja. I can only stop you by leaving you out here, alone, dying, surrounded. When we are both gone, she will be able to make her decisions without your influence.”

Petrovitch tried to find the man on his map, and found that the nearest red dot to him was mere meters away. He was in amongst them.

Miyamoto grunted, swinging his sword. “This madness will soon be over.” He grunted again. Metal rang against metal, followed by a gargling cry. “Your revolution will have failed. Your futile war will have been lost. But she will be saved.”

Petrovitch screwed up his face. “Do you hate me that much?”

“Almost as much as I am devoted to her,” and he never got any further than that. He was in his last battle, cutting and dodging and piercing.

Then the connection went quiet. Miyamoto’s sword clattered to the ground, and Petrovitch heard voices over breathy panting. The one blue dot was almost obliterated by red.

“Miyamoto?”

The sword rang one last time. The point of it dragged across the ground, skittering and chiming.

The connection stayed live. He could hear the echo of explosions and squeal of cars, but nothing more from Miyamoto. The voices drifted away, and he knew they were coming down the road, straight for him.

If he didn’t move now, they’d find him sprawled there.