Саймон Морден - Degrees of Freedom

“Sam? Sam!” Madeleine ran toward him, closing the distance with her long-legged strides.

He looked through the pictures from half a world away to Madeleine, standing right in front of him. “Hey.”

“What happened? Where’s Sonja. Why are you just standing there?”

He blinked CNN away. “We need to call a press conference.”

“A what?” She grabbed his shoulders and inspected him for wounds. “What are you on about?”

“A press conference. Ten minutes. At Container Zero.” He grabbed a list of accredited journalists in the Freezone and flashed them the message. “If they’re going to kill me, they’re going to have to do it in public.”

She spun him around and checked his back and his skull. “You’re not hurt—anymore than you were before. So please make some sense.”

“Okay, okay. I will explain, but if you thought it was pizdets before, it’s worse now. We don’t have time to hang around.” He faced her and put his hand behind her neck. When their foreheads were touching, he told her. “The CIA told Sonja they’d take me down if she didn’t do something about me first. Now she’s killed herself. And they’re rioting in America.”

“I don’t understand. She… she did what?”

“This, everything that’s happened: Sonja was trying to save me. And now she’s dead, I guess the CIA really are coming for me. And Dalton went to California to try and get Pif out: a crowd of around twenty thousand Reconstructionists are attacking the courthouse.” His fingers lightly gripped the rope of her hair and his hand ran the length of it from tip to tail. “We’re not going to lose.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because in a moment, I’ll tell the world what Sonja told me. Better still, I’ll show them. What’s the point of having eyes that work like cameras if I don’t record the important events?”

“Oh God. You’ve got it all saved. Even, even that.”

“Yeah. Even that.” He let go of her. “Come on. We need to get ready.”

“But what about all these armed people we’ve just turned out onto the street?”

He thought furiously for a moment. “I’ll appoint one in ten to collect the guns back in and return them to the trucks. They can guard them, and any other ones the Oshicora security teams turn in. I’ll give everyone the headlines and, chyort: running a city would be so much easier if foreign agents weren’t trying to kill me.”

Petrovitch composed a short message and pushed it out first to the Freezone, then to the newswires. Already, there were steadicams and portable satellite dishes wending their way into Regent’s Park. Red flags flapped overhead, and there seemed to be people everywhere, moving in front and behind and all around, happy they’d not have to fight.

Tabletop took Petrovitch down in a flying tackle that came from nowhere, and she lay on top of him, spreading herself out like a starfish over his flattened form. “Stay still.”

Madeleine’s gun was in her hand, and Valentina’s AK panned the crowd, then the windows and rooftops overlooking the road. Lucy planted her red flag in the road and held it out to cover him. A single shot echoed across the open space, and a hole pocked the flag, passing under Lucy’s outstretched arm. The tarmac sparked in front of Petrovitch’s head, and Tabletop immediately picked him up and laid him down again so she could curl around his back. A man in overalls dropped with a cry, clutching at a stain on his leg.

The ripple of awareness flowed outward. Madeleine shouted. “Shooter. Everyone down.” Some in earshot started to duck, while others were left standing, briefly.

“Michael?”

[One moment.]

Lucy looked down at the hole. She shut her eyes tight, but didn’t move.

[Park Crescent. Fourteen. Second floor, third window from the right. Encrypted digital transmissions of the same type as used in Tabletop’s stealth suit.]

Petrovitch couldn’t move. “Let me up, I know where they are.”

“No, you tell us. We’ll deal with it.” She tightened her hold, and he knew he wasn’t going anywhere without her permission.

“You’ve got it on your wrist.”

She let go, glanced down at her forearm and pointed. “Three up, three right. Building on the left. Suppressing fire.”

Not all the guns had been handed back, and from the noise, it sounded like none of them had. The entire frontage of the terrace smoked with pulverized stone and every window pane shattered.

[Target is moving. Staircase down. Going to the back of the building.]

“Send it to Tabletop.” Already she and Valentina were running, waving their troops on. It looked wild and uncoordinated, but he couldn’t see it for himself. Madeleine’s hand had closed around his backbrace and she carried him like a piece of luggage, his legs bouncing and skidding on the road, to find cover behind one of the trucks parked at the entrance.

She dumped him down, and glanced back out. The door to number fourteen was being kicked in, with scores more people branching off down side streets to cut off the agent’s escape.

Lucy wandered past in a daze, still carrying her flag, and Madeleine eased her down next to Petrovitch.

“Thanks,” he said to her. “I wish you’d decide whether you’re a hero or not. I’m getting gray hair.”

Lucy laughed, then sobbed. “I don’t know. I just do stupid stuff sometimes.”

“It worked this time. If you didn’t save my life, you saved Tabletop’s.”

“Why are they doing this?”

“Because they’re scared of us.”

More gunfire sounded across the rooftops, sustained bursts that cackled and rattled in waves as the wind blew the sound.

[They have the target surrounded.]

“Now I’m thinking clearly: tell them to try and get him to surrender. Rights under the Geneva Convention, repatriation, all that. Assuming it’s a him, don’t know why.”

[And if he will not comply?]

“I want it on record that we offered. If he won’t go for it, see if you can hack his suit: it carries enough injectable painkillers to render him insensible.”

[He is using a burst transmitter. It is non-trivial to hold the signal long enough to negotiate with the suit’s hosting protocol.]

“A miracle would be really useful.”

The shooting stuttered to a halt.

“Safe to move?” asked Madeleine.

“I don’t know.” His arm was aching, bleeding pain through the blocks he’d put into place. When he inspected it, he found that his superstructure was bent. The fragments of bone had shifted. “ Chyort voz’mi. ”

“What’s the matter?”

“Forget it. We need to get these journos inside the park.” He clawed his way upright. “Give them a couple of minutes to set up, dial their satellites if they need them, then just push me in front of them. Come on, Lucy.”

[We have an unconscious CIA agent in custody.]

“ Yobany stos, we’ve done something right at last.” He put his good arm around Lucy’s shoulders and together they rode the tide of people toward Container Zero. Madeleine stayed very close behind them, gun drawn, trying to make certain no one else was going to pop up and have a go.

Petrovitch called Tabletop. “Strip the suit off him: I want him and it separated by the largest distance possible.”

“Then what do we do?”

“Make sure he stays alive. That would be brilliant.” He had a feral grin on his face that was obvious to everyone around him.

“You never look that happy,” said Lucy.

“The guy who nearly shot us is our prisoner. If he doesn’t want his perfect teeth and genetically enhanced face on every screen on the planet, then he’s going to have to hope Mackensie’ll call his dogs off.”