Theories of Flight

30

He woke up, not knowing where or when he was. He had been on a green hill, leaning on a staff, feeling the smooth, knotted wood under his fingers. Below him was a cluster of domes. One of them was large enough to hold a town. Empty now, everyone gone, and he would not follow.

Not with this old body.

He looked up, up, up, past the clouds and the blue sky, past the glare of the bright yellow sun. There were points of light moving, blinking out, one by one. The game was over. He had won.

He laid himself down, smelling the damp grasses as they surrounded him, sensing the cold, dark soil beneath. He was on the earth, on the Earth, and he knew without a momentary flicker of doubt that this was not the end, that he would transcend both life and death.

He closed his eyes, and opened them again.

The co-axial machine gun was chattering, the gunner crouched in front of a video screen with a joystick in his hand, directing fire at the targets he could see pixelated before him.

The major was using another screen, and the driver a third. They all seemed to be talking simultaneously into their microphones: short, clipped phrases, laden with information, all but unintelligible to one not trained in the art.

The tank lurched forward. Petrovitch put his hand out, still dazed by his dreaming, and connected with Valentina’s thigh.

“Sorry,” he mouthed.

It didn’t seem to bother her. She mouthed something back. Petrovitch ran a lip-reading program over the images.

“We are here,” she had said.

He called for the satellite image, and remembered that, at some point, they’d lose the high-definition infrared camera over the horizon.

“The eye-in-the-sky thing: when is that?”

[In forty-eight minutes’ time, for twenty minutes. We cannot gain complete victory before then, though the inner zones will be clear. With the Outies in retreat, it will be impossible to reacquire the complete data set. Targeting will become non-trivial, and will inevitably lead to both delayed response and increased casualties.]

“When we have satellites of our own, this won’t be a problem. I don’t suppose we can use the Hubble?”

[Wrong orbit.]

Petrovitch tutted, and peered down on them from above. Six of the tanks had spread out over what looked like a golf course, advancing under the shadow of the road which arched above them on thick concrete supports. The headstones of the extensive cemetery adjacent were being used for cover, although respect for the dead crossed neither side’s mind.

Their tank was rolling up the flyover, slapping down its tracks, heading toward a barricade of overturned cars on the very brow of the bridge, and the gunner was using their height to his advantage.

The figures within the narrow space between the cars seemed too exhausted to raise a cheer or a wave. And even though he could have looked before and hadn’t for fear of what he might find, he looked now. He zoomed in and searched each battered helmet, each bare head, for someone who might look like Madeleine.

He couldn’t find her.

He felt himself react: his heart spun faster, his skin prickled, his stomach tightened, his breathing quickened. He forced his primal instincts back down. He needed to think clearly.

The tank was still firing, but wasn’t being fired on. Safe to disembark. He levered himself upright and pulled down the ladder. Valentina picked up her AK and stood behind him, swaying against the motion of the vehicle.

“You don’t have to come,” he shouted to her.

She shook her head and reamed one of her ears free of wadding. “What?”

“You don’t have to come,” he repeated.

“Do not be stupid,” she said, and waited for him to climb out onto the hull.

Petrovitch reached above him and undogged the hatch, pushing it with his palm as he ascended until it fell back against the armor with a clang. Cool air swapped with the fetid fug inside, and he put both hands either side of the opening to swing his body up and out.

They were almost at the barricade. The machine gun ceased fire, and the turret swung back to face the front. Petrovitch took Valentina’s rifle almost absently. He was busy searching the faces that were now peering over the top of the toppled cars’ sides.

The tank clattered to a halt, and he jumped off, clutching the gun. He walked up to the barricade, and still the defenders said nothing, eyeing him and Valentina warily.

“Who are you with?” called a voice indistinctly.

Petrovitch pulled the dried papier mâché from his ears and threw the hardened lumps behind him.

“Who are we with?” Petrovitch glanced behind him at the massive tank. “Yobany stos, do you think we rent these things by the hour? Who do you think we’re with?”

“It’s got EDF markings, but neither of you two are EDF.”

Petrovitch glanced down at his chest. Laser markers were spidering trails across his Oshicora-issue worksuit. Perhaps if the militia still had ammunition, he’d have been more worried.

“I’m looking for Sergeant Madeleine Petrovitch. I thought she was here.”

“And who are you? And what the hell have you done to yourself?”

“I’m her husband.” He waited, declining to answer the second question.

The voices behind the barricade muttered to each other.

“What are they doing?” whispered Valentina.

“I don’t know. I kind of assumed they’d want to be rescued. And where the huy is Maddy?” He’d had enough, and raised his voice. “Maddy? Maddy?”

“She’s gone.”

Petrovitch thrust the AK at Valentina and was up and over the turned-over cars. Someone had the misfortune to get in his way: Petrovitch took him one-handed by his throat and threw his back against a car roof.

As he held him there, he had the opportunity to see who it was he was slowly choking. A kid, not so much older than him—or the age he was supposed to be—impact armor leaking gel from half a dozen places, a gash in his plastered-down hair that was black with dried blood. He was terrified, and had been almost all day. Being assaulted by a blind madman had pushed him to his limit.

But no one tried to drag his attacker off. The seven survivors were too exhausted, too surprised to react. Petrovitch had enough time to contemplate his own folly and loosen his grip.

The militiaman collapsed to the floor, holding his neck.

“Sorry.” He had to know. “Where is she?”

As he turned, he saw a line of bodies he’d missed from the sky: shapeless bumps covered by uneven tarpaulin. He looked at them, judging their length and build. It was difficult to tell, and he knew there was only one way to be sure.

“She’s not here.”

The kid he’d half-killed had found his voice.

“But she was.” Petrovitch kept staring at the still forms under their collective shroud.

“She went with Andersson. To get help.”

“When?”

“Three hours ago.”

Petrovitch tried to push his glasses up his nose. He ran a scab-encrusted finger against his bandages, and realized just how different he looked. No reason for anyone to trust him, let alone recognize him.

A different voice addressed him; a short woman with a square face, bright, fevered eyes peering out from under the solid rim of her helmet. “The radios we’ve got didn’t work anymore. Neither did our phones. We were right on the front line and we didn’t know what to do. The sergeant said we had to stay because those were our orders.”

“Zatknis! I just want to know where she is!”

“She left us. She said she’d be back.” The woman had been clutching her rifle to her armored chest like it was her last point of contact to a world of reason. Now she threw it down with contempt. “That was three fucking hours ago. She left us.”

It was getting beyond painful for Petrovitch, too. “So what did she say before she and Andersson left? And Andersson? Why him?” He remembered Andersson, and how good it had felt bringing his knee up into the man’s yajtza. “Why would she go anywhere with him?”

“He said he knew where there was a cache of heavy weapons. A MEA place, with its own guards. He didn’t have the stripes to order them to hand them over and come with him. But the sergeant did.”

“And they never came back.”

“They never came back.” The woman’s anger at being abandoned softened. She was safe now, and she was telling the husband of her platoon leader that he was, in all probability, a widower.

“Do you know where they went?”

She looked helpless, shrugged, turned to her comrades for help.

“The airport,” someone said. “I think it was the City Airport.”

It would make sense. If he were to stand on the barricade, he could have seen where the airport was, just on the bend in the river where the docks used to be. Five k, less. Half an hour on foot. She knew how to hotwire a car—Petrovitch had taught her—and there’d been vehicles at the airport she could have used. Fire engines, even.

She hadn’t come back.

If anyone ought to have been able to keep a promise like that, it would have been her. She would have moved both Heaven and Earth to do so. She would have fought with all the fury of a demon and the skill of a warrior. And yet, Madeleine Petrovitch was still mortal.

Perhaps he’d thought that he would have felt her passing, something akin to having his heart ripped out and stamped on. He hadn’t noticed after all. He’d been busy doing other things that now felt hollow and pointless. He thought she’d do what she always did—be strong, lead her troops, survive, and then come back home to him.

He sat down. He sat down and put his head in his hands.

[There is a discrepancy in the story you have just heard. Shall I explain?]

“Yeah.”

[Madeleine is reported to have left this location three hours ago. If I assign a margin of error half an hour either way… ]

“I don’t need to see your working. Just tell me.”

[The MEA security evacuated the City Airport at seventeen minutes past two, which would have given her more than sufficient time to reach them before they left. Your current location was denied microwave relay capability at twelve thirty-five, but further south, it was viable up until two thirty-one when the Outies destroyed the electricity substation.]

“Just tell me.”

[When Madeleine and Corporal Andersson left here, the surrounding area was mostly Outie controlled, but the North Circular Road was still clear. The Outies did not completely take Manor Park until after your wife would have passed through. There was nothing preventing her and Andersson either reaching their destination or transmitting messages once they were in range of a working relay. They did neither.]

“So… what? What are you saying?”

[That something else prevented her from completing her mission. That she might not be dead.]

“What the huy happened to her then?” His head came up. The MEA troopers were standing around him in a loose circle. They looked as ragged as he did.

“We’re very sorry,” said the woman. “But we’d like to get out of here before the Outies come back.”

“They are not coming back,” said Valentina, sitting on top of a car, kalash across her knees. “They are beaten. They are running like whipped dogs. Also, there is nowhere for you to go. All bridges across the river have gone, destroyed by EDF. You are deserted by your commanders.”

“So who’s in charge?”

Valentina jumped down and slung the rifle over her shoulder. “He is. He organized defense of Metrozone. He fought war. He won it. So if you answer to anyone now it is Samuil Petrovitch. He has rescued you, and you owe him your lives.”

“Enough, Valentina. Enough.”

“Is true.”

“She’s gone. No one knows where. She went with a man who thought she’d be better off with him than with me and they’ve both disappeared.” He looked at his hands. The state of them should be causing him debilitating pain, but he could block that out the way he could block the ruin that were his eyes. It turned out that nothing could quite prepare him for the way he felt now. There was no software hack in the world he could use. “Go. Just everyone go. The major will give you a ride back into the central zones. You can decide for yourselves what you’re going to do next.”

“And what will you do?” Valentina didn’t move.

“Look for her. Keep looking until I find her.”

[Lucy wants to speak to you.]

“Is it important?”

[Yes.]

Petrovitch gripped his forehead and squeezed his temples until he could feel it. “Lucy?”

“Sam? Sam…”

Petrovitch sat up sharply. “What’s wrong?”

There was a sound that could have been a slap, open-handed, skin on skin. What followed a moment later was definitely a gasp.

“What’s wrong?” said a voice. “I’m what’s wrong.”

“Chyort. Sorenson.”

“I’m assuming this, this thing, means something to you.” Her voice was tight, barely controlled. “I will hurt her, very, very badly, and will keep hurting her until you stop me. You’re going to stop me, right? You know how. Like you did with my brother.”

He got slowly to his feet. He located the position of the phone she was using, and ordered an automatic car to come and get him.

Moments before, everything had been indistinct and uncertain. He knew now what he was going to do. He was almost grateful to her, for giving him this distraction. He had not been quite this angry for a very long time. Not since Chain’s death. Days, at least.

“Yeah. I know how to stop people like you.”

She must have hit Lucy again.

“Then what are you waiting for?”

And again.

“Tell her,” said Petrovitch, “tell her I’m coming.”

“Kind of counting on that. Don’t take too long.” Sorenson’s last sentence was punctuated with a crack at the end of each syllable.

Petrovitch terminated the call, and waited until he had finished shaking with rage. He focused on Valentina.

“Forget what I just said. Something else has come up.”

She simply nodded, and climbed back over the barricade. A car was weaving its way up the flyover toward them.