Charles Stross - Iron Sunrise

“Huh?” Frank heard a distant noise like the tide coming in; an impossibility, for they were more than three hundred kilometers from the sea, and besides, Newpeace had no moons large enough to raise tides. He pulled out his keyboard and tapped out a quick note to himself. “Who did you say you were?”

“I didn’t.” The woman stared at him. It was not a friendly expression. “You are Frank the Nose Johnson, correct?”

Something about her manner made him tense. “Who’s asking?”

She ignored the question. “And you are Alice Spencer, so you must be Thelma Couper. Three little piggies, warbloggers united. It’s your good luck that you’re all very lazy little piggies, up here on the roof this historic morning rather than down on the streets with the unsuspecting mob. If you’re smart little piggies, you’ll stay here and not try to leave the building. Relax, watch the fireworks, drink your beer, and don’t bother trying to get an outside line. I’ll come for you later.”

Alice grabbed hold of Frank’s arm, painfully hard. He hadn’t even noticed that he’d begun to move toward the stranger. “Who the fuck are you?” he demanded.

The woman ignored him, instead turning back to the staircase. “See you around,” she called over her shoulder, a mocking smile on her face. Alice loosened her grip on Frank’s elbow. She took two steps toward the stairwell, then froze. She slowly spread her arms and stepped backwards, away from the steps.

“What—”

“Don’t,” Alice said tightly. “Just don’t. I think we’re under house arrest.”

Frank looked round the open doorway leading down to the penthouse.

“Hey, freak! Get back! Didn’t you hear the boss-woman?”

Frank got. “Shit!”

“My thoughts exactly.” Alice nodded. “Y’know what? I think they want witnesses. Just far away enough not to smell the tear gas.”

Frank found that his hands were shaking. “That cop—”

“Smart guy.” It was Thelma; she sounded mocking, but maybe it was simply nerves — his or hers, didn’t matter. “How’s he armed?”

Alice seemed mostly unaffected. “He’s got body armor. Some kind of riot gun.” She paused. “Shit! He’s in blue. Did you see that, Frank?”

Frank nodded. “So?”

“So, cops hereabouts wear black. Blue means army.”

“Oh. Oh !”

The noise outside was getting louder.

“Does that sound like a demonstration to you?” asked Thelma.

“Could be the big one, for the land protesters they locked up last week.” Alice started dictating names to her chunky plastic disposaphone — she’d had it for only three weeks, since she arrived on Newpeace, but the digits were already peeling off the buttons on its fascia — then frowned. “It keeps saying ‘network congested.’ Fuck it. You guys? Can you get through to anyone?”

“I can’t be arsed trying,” Thelma said disgustedly. “It’s a setup. Leastways we’re supposed to survive this one long enough to file our reports and get out. I think.”

Frank looked at his own phone: it blinked its display at him in electronic perplexity, locked out of the network. He shook his head, unsure what to believe. Then there was a thud from behind him. He turned and saw that someone had come out of the stairwell and fallen over, right at the top. There was blood, bright on the concrete. It was Phibul, the small guy from Siam who was booked in one floor down. Frank knelt beside him. Phibul was breathing fast, bleeding messily from his head. “You!” Frank looked up and found himself staring up the barrel of a gun. He froze. “Get this sack of shit outa my face. You show your head, you bettah pray I don’ think you doalie.”

Frank licked his lips; they felt like parchment. “Okay,” he said, very quietly. Phibul groaned. The guard took a step back, servos whining at knee and ankle. The gun barrel was flecked with red.

“Nothing happen’ here,” said the guard. “You unnerstand?”

“I — I understand.” Frank blinked, humiliated and angry, but mostly just frightened. The guard took another step back, down the stairs, then another. Frank didn’t move until he was out of sight at the bottom. Phibul groaned again and he looked down, then began fumbling in his pockets for his first-aid kit.

The surf-on-a-beach noise was joined by a distant hammering drone: the sound of drums and pipe, marching with the people.

“Let me help, dammit!” Frank looked up as Thelma knelt beside him. “Shit.” She gently peeled back one of Phibul’s eyelids, then the other. “Pupillary reflex is there, but he’s gonna have some concussion.”

“Fucker whacked him over the head with his gun barrel.”

“Could be worse,” she said tersely. “C’mon. Let’s get him over to the sun lounger.”

A couple of pops and whines came from the edge of the roof — Alice was sending bird-sized drones spinning through the air to orbit overhead, circling for perspective shots taking in the entire square. Frank took a deep breath, smelling hot blood, Thelma’s sweat — surprisingly rank — and the stink of his own fear. A hot tangy undernote of dust rose from the soon-to-be-baking surface of the plaza. “I’ve got an open channel,” Alice called over her shoulder. “One of the local streams is relaying some kind of federal announcement. Do me a favor, Frank, get it out of my face. Transcribe and summarize.”

“Okay.” Frank accepted the virtual pipe, let it stream through the corner of his left eye as he watched Thelma efficiently cut up a wound dressing and gum it down on the mess of blood and thin hair atop Phibul’s head. Despite the fear he was glad they were facing this together — not alone and frightened, locked in their rooms or in a police cell. The distant surf had become an approaching roar of voices. Alice threw some output at him from two of her birds, and he shuffled them round until he could see the back of his own head, kneeling alongside the drained swimming pool next to an injured reporter and a busy woman. “This is — hey, everybody!”

He tweaked the stream over onto one of Alice’s repeater screens. There was a background of martial music (which hereabouts sounded like classical heavy metal) and a pompous guy in midnight blue, lots of technicolor salad on his pest, sitting uneasily behind a desk. “In view of the state of emergency, the Peace Commission has instructed all loyal citizens to stay indoors wherever possible. In the affected cities of Samara and Redstone, a curfew came into effect as of 2600 hours yesterday. Anyone outdoors in the region of Greater Samara and Metropolitan Redstone must seek shelter immediately. Assembly in groups of more than four individuals is forbidden and, in accordance with the Suppression of Terrorism Regulations, Peace Enforcement units will use lethal force if they consider themselves to be under threat—”

Thelma stood up. “I’ve got to get a channel off-world,” she said tensely. “You guys up to helping me?”

“How do you propose to do that?” Alice asked mildly, turning round. She was tearing repeater glasses rather than using optic implants — a stupid retro affectation, in Frank’s view — and they cast a crazy quilt of colored light across her eyes. “Didn’t you hear? We’re being routed around. If you try to crack their security, they’ll probably point some of their infowar assets your way—”

“I’ve got a causal channel in my luggage,” Thelma confessed, looking scared but determined. “It’s on the second floor. If we could get past laughing boy downstairs—”

“You’ve got your own causal channel?” Frank asked, hope vying with disbelief.

“Yeah, one that goes straight home to Turku via a one-hop relay in Septagon. No worries.” She turned her hands palms up. “Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies. But if I can’t get a secure handshake with it, it’s not a lot of use, is it?”