Simon Morden - The Curve of The Earth

He walked up to one and looked into its stereoscopic imaging equipment. It looked disturbingly like huge black eyes.

“What are we going to do?” asked Newcomen.

“I thought we’d spray-paint them pink and give them each a girl’s name.” Petrovitch circled the one he was closest to. “Isn’t that right, Svetlana?”

“There are so many of them. I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, I’ll agree with you there. This is a lot of hardware for just us. Almost as if they’re expecting a much bigger party than the one we might possibly throw.” He reached out and laid his hand on Svetlana’s thigh. Her hip was as high as his head, and the joint — every joint — was carefully recessed and protected with interlocking plates. Not enough room to even wriggle his fingers inside.

They were designed to be tough to kill, to take the bricks and the bottles, the bullets and buckshot, even the smaller anti-tank rounds. They could dish it out, too. Rotary cannon and assault shotgun, grenade launcher. Shoulder-mounted rockets, even.

A man, maybe a thousand k away, would sit in a virtual rig and control it all like it was one big video game. Boom. Head shot. Soldiers under fire would find cover, call in an air strike, scramble back to safety, and only rarely press on to their objective. A teletrooper would shrug off the small-arms fire and just keep going. The rattle of shells and shrapnel against its hull would be muted, less it was distracting.

The cavalry finally arrived. Engines roared outside, doors opened and boots clattered. Petrovitch carried on his circumnavigation of the teletrooper, ignoring the fact that he was being surrounded by men dressed in Arctic camouflage. They all had guns, and they all pointed them at Petrovitch.

He watched them watching him through their full-face masks, each of them printed to resemble the same skull that sat beneath their skin. Except the eye sockets were larger, and the grins more toothy. Ghouls. He was encircled by ghouls.

“Step away from the machine, Dr Petrovitch.”

He looked around for the source of the voice. A figure, dressed in bulky, expensive top-of-the-range civilian kit, but still wearing the skeletal mask, stepped through the ring of soldiers. He had a shotgun held loosely in his hands.

“So which one are you? Ben or Jerry?” Petrovitch looked around for Newcomen. The American was being ignored by his countrymen as someone of no consequence, a mere bit-part player to the main act.

The question confused the man. His hidden face flexed the surface of the mask. “I said, step away from the machine.”

“Or what? You’ll shoot me?” Petrovitch’s bag was by the door, but he was still carrying the axe. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“For the third and last time, step away from the machine.” Even his voice was disguised, subtly filtered and modulated.

“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.” Petrovitch switched the axe into a two-handed grip. “Where’s my girl?”

The man, Ben or Jerry, raised his shotgun and fired it without warning. The taser round caught Petrovitch in the fleshy part of his outstretched palm. The impact rocked him backwards. He kept his feet, but he couldn’t prevent the discharge that followed.

No matter that he could block the pain: he had no control.

He swung the axe, but couldn’t see where it hit. His arm thrashed, and the weight of it threw him to the floor.

Someone had modified the taser. The shock went on for far longer than it should. If he’d taken it to the chest, it would have stopped his heart.

It ended, eventually. Petrovitch looked up at the circle of gun barrels and fixed-grin faces. He gripped the plastic body of the shell and pulled the barbs out of his hand. Blood oozed out.

“Step away from the machine, Dr Petrovitch.” The man in the skeleton mask chambered a fresh shell, indicating that he was more than prepared to keep shocking him until he complied. The used cartridge clattered on to the concrete.

The axe had embedded itself in Svetlana’s leg. The blade was wedged in the shin, enabling Petrovitch to use the haft to lever himself up. “I want to know where Lucy is.”

With a sound like a sigh, the man raised the butt of his shotgun to his shoulder.

“I can keep this up all night if I have to.”

Petrovitch gripped the axe, tore it free. “It’s the only thing you can keep up all night, dickless.”

This time, the taser hit his side. He was just too slow, too disorientated, too full of interference and conflicting signals to parry it. The electrodes had to punch their way through his dense jacket, though, and only just grazed his skin. He was thrown to the floor again, but as he fell, the device shifted and lost contact.

It gave him a moment to recover. The man, with a hiss of annoyance, worked the pump for another shell.

“That’s enough.”

Petrovitch thought at first it might be his own voice. He blinked away the stars to see Newcomen, armed with his own FBI-issue pistol, aiming at his tormentor’s back.

“Agent Newcomen,” said the man. “What in God’s merciful name are you doing?”

“I’m stopping you. This, this isn’t right.” Newcomen’s voice was wavering, but his gun was steady.

“I think you’re forgetting which side you’re on.”

“No,” said Newcomen. “I know which side I’m on. I’m on the side of the law.”

“Sometimes, Agent-” said the man, but Newcomen interrupted, his voice a roar.

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. That’s the fourteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States of America, you bastard, and you will obey it.” He was gasping for breath by the time he’d finished. He also looked ready to pull the trigger.

Petrovitch hauled himself up again. He was sore, deep inside. He used the axe as a crutch and walked forward until the barrel of the shotgun taser was against his chest. “If it was me, I’d have killed you by now. I’d have put a bullet in your head, because, hey, it’s what I do. And you’d deserve it. Newcomen here? You should be on your knees thanking him that he still plays by the rules. He’s an idiot, because he thinks the rules haven’t changed, but I’ll take an honest idiot any day over a niegadzai sooksin like you.”

Beneath the mask, muscles twitched and a decision was made. “Okay. Let’s move out.”

The soldiers snapped their guns upright and jogged to the door. The man in charge was in their midst, surrounded, safe. Then they were gone. Engine sounds faded away, and they were left with the creak of the hangar and the sympathetic swing of the lights.

Newcomen was locked rigid in his shooter’s stance. Petrovitch hobbled over and rested a hand on the agent’s wrist.

“We’re done here.”

Newcomen’s expression turned from concentrated determination to startled bewilderment. “What just happened?”

“You rediscovered your spine.” Petrovitch pushed the gun down until it was pointing at the floor. “And I’m grateful.”

Dinner had been unsatisfying. Not because the food hadn’t been good, or plentiful, but it had been like eating in an experiment, closely observed by the researchers. Newcomen had been in turn sullen and nervy, and Petrovitch’s own emotional state had even now barely dropped below incandescent.

That they’d been served by Reception Guy, a known secret service plant, just added insult to injury. Petrovitch had gone to sleep with his gun in his hand.