Simon Morden - Theories of Flight

The women looked at each other. Tabletop looked at the mass of electrical tape in Petrovitch’s lap. “You want to make a singularity. With that.”

He equivocated for a second or two. “Pretty much.”

“How do you know you’re not going to level the entire Metrozone?”

“Because the instant it appears, the machine that made it is destroyed. I can show you my workings.” Petrovitch frowned and turned his camera back around. “Are you actually a physicist, because you always sounded like you knew what you were talking about?”

It was her turn to take a moment to think. “I must have been. The knowledge has to come from somewhere.”

“If I’ve got it wrong, I apologize in advance.” He glanced out the window. “Almost there.”

Valentina checked the magazine on her AK. It was as full of bullets as it was the last time she’d looked. “What is plan?”

“I’m going to try and get them to surrender.” Petrovitch scratched his hair. Scabs came away and caught under his fingernails. “Explain that their position is a whole world of pizdets, and they may as well give up.”

“Can I tell you it won’t work?” offered Tabletop. “Maccabee might have considered your offer, but Rhythm will refuse it out of hand. Just be glad it wasn’t Retread…”

Sonja said from the back seat. “We tasered her, then put her in a coma.”

“… because she would have shot your wife, the rest of her team, then herself, but not before setting the building on fire.”

“The other one. Slipper. Where is he? Epping Forest?”

“Yes. But he’s too far away to intervene.”

Petrovitch tutted. “I had attack helicopters not so long ago, but the EDF wanted them back. Shame.”

They were on the Seven Sisters Road, and the car glided to a halt. The three vehicles behind stopped too, blocking the street. Black-suited men with rifles started to emerge.

Petrovitch stepped out, device under his arm. He could see Chain’s front door in the distance. “Fiona, Tabletop, whatever I’m supposed to call you. I need to borrow you.”

She obediently joined him, and they walked a little way from the others.

“I’ll go in there and kill them for you. They won’t suspect anything, and they won’t have time to hurt your wife.”

“Tempting,” said Petrovitch. “But it’s been pointed out to me that I can’t really trust you.”

“You want me to contact them?”

“No. There are code-words you could use that I’d have no idea about that could mean anything. I just want the frequencies, encryption method, stuff like that. I’ll take it from there.” He sighed. “If I let you do something that means Maddy dies, I’ll want to lay waste to your entire country. So, it’s probably better if I screw up on my own.”

Her bodysuit had a series of switches along the inside of her left wrist, and she powered up for him. He supposed that if she was going to kill him, now would be as good a time as any. She was so close to her colleagues she could shout for them.

But then again, with every concealed button pressed, he saw more and more of her suit come alive. She had an enhanced musculature; a medical kit that would numb pain, boost adrenaline, clot her blood; he knew about the hatnav, but not the night vision or the multiplicity of concealed weapons. It would keep her warm or cool, it would turn a blade, it would deliver fifty thousand volts through her fingertips.

He infiltrated her suit’s computer, hacking it through the diagnostics routine. He was now closer to her than her own skin, and he took what he needed. The aerial was up her spine, and the short-wave burst transmitter an insignificant patch over one kidney.

“Ready?”

“For what?”

“Sorry,” said Petrovitch, “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

[There are hints of something coming across the Irish Sea. It is in unpowered mode, but every so often there is a course correction. I will attack as soon as it becomes possible.]

“Thank you. Let’s see what Daniels has to say for himself.”

Because he was using Tabletop’s callsign, the agent assumed it was her.

“What’s your mission status?” His voice was unrecognizable: digitized, spoken in a plain robotic monotone.

“ Dobre vyecher, Captain Daniels. Kak pazhivayesh? ”

The airwaves hissed for long enough to start making him nervous.

Then they cleared for a single word. “You.”

“Come,” said Petrovitch, “let us reason together.”

H e stood in the road, wondering what to say next. The two men inside Chain’s apartment knew all the moves. They would counter any argument he might make, and he would do the same to them.

“Okay, it’s like this: I’ve won and you’ve lost. Whatever happens from now on, I want you to remember that all your plans are in ruins; your cell is broken, your mission in tatters, your government hopelessly compromised. Whatever you came here to do, you failed.”

“We have your wife…”

“Yeah, yeah. I know that. I know pretty much everything, so why don’t we cut the govno and get down to business. If you would like to go home, I can probably arrange it. If you would like to go out in a blaze of futility, I can arrange that too. I know exactly where you are, I have more than enough backup to make good my threat, and there is no way you’re going to escape: the extraction team currently crossing the coast of what used to be Wales will never reach you.” Petrovitch paused. “Take as much time as you need. Think about it. You know how to reach me.”

“What have you done with Tabletop?”

“I’m using her codes. You can guess the rest,” he said ambiguously. “I’ll be waiting.”

“You… haven’t asked after your wife, Petrovitch.”

“No. No, I haven’t. Are you familiar with Schrödinger’s Cat?”

“No.”

“And another metaphor dies whimpering on the altar of ignorance.” He stopped transmitting and refocused on the street in front of him.

Tabletop rose on her heels and then her toes, rocking slightly. “What did he say?”

“I didn’t give him much of a chance to say anything. I gave him the bald facts and time to stew over them.”

“It won’t make a difference,” she said. “Maccabee knows that Rhythm wouldn’t let him surrender.”

“And if Daniels kills Andersson? What then?”

“He might, I suppose. But then you’d have to keep him, because you could never send him back to the U.S.” She stopped her rocking and rolled her head in a circle, stretching her neck muscles. “He’s not going to kill Rhythm.”

“Can I work on Andersson? Anything else I can say that might make him give up? They’re surrounded, outgunned, and the extraction’s going to be forced down before it gets anywhere near here. The only reason why they’re not dead is because my wife might be alive.”

Tabletop froze mid-exercise. “The extraction is by submarine.”

“Then what the huy is coming from the west?” He looked up into the darkening sky. “Ah, chyort. And I told Daniels. Excuse me for a minute.”

[Submarine.]

“Apparently. Is it possible that the Americans have a stealthed drone that could glide across the Atlantic, dropping it from say, twenty, thirty k up?”

[That information is highly classified. While I attempt to access the information, we will suppose that it is likely.]

“And what might such a drone be used for?”

[It would simply be a weapons platform, designed to be barely detectable before it became active over its target.]