The Curve of The Earth (38 page)

[Do you still want to sell half of it to the Chinese?]

Petrovitch blew out a deep breath, and Lucy pulled a face.

“You wanted to do what?”

“It was an idea I had. We still might have to do it, if it means getting out of here alive.”

Avaiq stamped his foot. “I want to be in on this conversation. If it concerns me, I want a say.”

“Yeah. Sorry.” Petrovitch stroked the smooth line of one of the shield panels. “There are people coming to rescue us. Whether or not they can is out of my hands, and is trusting a lot to luck. I wanted to make sure we had a bargaining chip if it came down to a stand-off, and one way would be to sell a share of this to someone with the clout to make the Yanks hold back.”

“You can’t,” said Lucy.

“I know I can’t. But apparently you can. It’s yours. You found it. You get to decide what happens to it.” He reluctantly held it out to her, and she took it from him, cradling it in her arms.

“Is that actually true?” asked Avaiq.

“Apparently. Our tame lawyer reckons that according to Alaskan state law, it’s legally Lucy’s. I don’t think that’ll bother the US government one bit, considering they just levelled Deadhorse.”

Lucy blinked. “They did?”

“Yeah.”

“Is there anything else I should know?” she asked, her voice rising.

He shifted guiltily. “Probably.” He really hoped Michael wouldn’t tell her about Jason Fyfe. Not just yet.

She gave him a hard stare, but thankfully didn’t ask any more questions. “There’s always the UN. That way the Chinese have an interest in it, and so does everyone else. Including the Americans.”

“If you hand it over to UNESCO, you’ll never see it again. I doubt if anyone else will, either. No one will be allowed to touch it because the arguing will go on for decades.” Petrovitch flipped over so he could sit down and stretch his leg. “You’ve realised that this thing is what the aliens considered most important.”

“Duh. Getting this to us was the whole point of the mission.”

“I wonder if there was a pilot. Or pilots.”

Lucy started to say something, then stopped. “I was about to say, we’ll never know. But that’s not actually true, is it?”

“No. No, it’s not. One day I’ll ask them.”

Avaiq coughed. “Can you two keep your minds on how we’re going to save our skins? I’m just a mechanic. I fix stuff. I’m not like you.”

Petrovitch rubbed at his face. “Okay. Our lot are about thirty minutes away. We can be back in Canada, if we go in a straight line, in less than three quarters of an hour after that. We’ve got to cover our arses for an hour and a bit. Any suggestions?”

[There is always the Attack faction. My efforts would be partial, and the effect here would be limited. It would also serve to antagonise the Americans further.]

Both Petrovitch and Lucy shook their heads.

[I am also picking up satellite-bound transmissions from the research station. It is likely that Joseph Newcomen is now in the custody of other US agents.]

“Who?” mouthed Lucy.

“Later,” said Petrovitch. “He doesn’t know where we are.”

[He knows which direction you were heading. They will follow your tracks along the river, and then they will find the vehicles. Then they will find you, no matter how well hidden Lucy’s shelter is.]

Lucy kicked him. “I hide out in the middle of nowhere for over a week, and within minutes of you turning up…”

“I should have been more careful,” said Petrovitch. “I should have shot him.”

“What are you talking about?” Avaiq’s temper was stirring.

“They’ve got Newcomen. That means we’re going to have company.” Petrovitch leaned forward and pressed his fingers into his damaged ankle, feeling for the muscles and ligaments. “About the same time as our lot turn up, so will they.”

“Okay,” said Lucy. She suddenly launched into a flurry of activity, pushing the weapon thing back into its case and slapping her hands on the two halves of the open lid. “The cold might have made you stupid, but not me. I suggest we run for it rather than wait for certain death. Less futile, slightly healthier.”

The artefact’s lid folded back down, and the join became a crack, a line, then vanished. She wrapped it up in the sealskin
and slid it towards the entrance, then started buttoning up her parka.

“She’s right, of course,” said Petrovitch.

“Of course I’m right.” She pulled on her mittens and gave herself a shake. Clearly, she was missing something. She lifted up her sleeping bag, swept her hand under it, and came out with a ceramic carbine. “Ready. Let’s go.”

Lucy sat behind Petrovitch. Sandwiched between them was the carpet bag: zipped inside it along with all his other kit was the sealskin-wrapped case. He could feel it pressing into his back.

[You are going to run out of land.]

“Yeah, where we’re going, we don’t need land. The sea ice’ll be thick enough.” He squinted down at the controls. “I’m more concerned about running out of fuel. These things burn meths like it’s going out of fashion.”

[Based on the vehicle’s previous performance, you have sufficient for another forty-five kilometres. However, Lucy Petrovitch is an extra load on your engine. This will cut the range to around thirty kilometres unless you lower your speed.]

“How about the chasing pack?”

[There are too many unknowns. Judging from the position of the satellite phones some of them carry, they are travelling faster than you. This might mean they catch you up, or it might mean they empty their fuel tanks before they reach you.]

“And this will all happen in the next ten minutes. Those planes out of Eielson? How are they doing?”

[The ones that attacked Deadhorse are returning to base. They have scrambled two more that were not at combat readiness, but since Eielson is some six hundred and forty kilometres away, those aircraft will not be overhead for another half an hour at least.]

“This isn’t inspiring me with confidence.”

[I can all but guarantee their planes will not find our planes. My chief concern is that they are guided to their target by visual cues given by personnel on the ground.]

“Can you jihad the planes?”

[These are the Wild Weasel variant that are specifically hardened against electronic countermeasures. Sasha, again: just because they are Americans does not mean they are stupid.]

“I’ll take that as a no.” They were close to the sea. Ahead of them was the pressure ridge of ice that had been forced up on to the shore by the tides that still raised and lowered the water that lay beneath. “In fact, if I didn’t know any better, they’ve got us pretty much where they want us.”

[Considering all the resources expended to make sure you were never supposed to get this far, we are technically ahead.]

“Go on, make it worse, why don’t you?”

[As you wish. If you cannot locate suitable access, you will need to carry the snowmobiles over the broken littoral zone to reach the flat pack ice.]

“
Yobany stos
, stop it.”

Lucy interrupted, speaking over the link even though she had her head against his shoulder blades.

“What are we going to do?” She’d worked it out. Michael had been talking to her at the same time as Petrovitch.

“The obvious thing.” Ahead of them, at the mouth of the river, Avaiq had already throttled down. Thick slabs of bluewhite ice stood cracked and jumbled in front of him, as chaotic as a Victorian graveyard.

Petrovitch pulled up next to him. He tapped Lucy’s hands so he could dismount.

“There’s usually a way through along the sand spit that sticks out into the bay,” said Avaiq, pointing north-east.

“Good,” said Petrovitch. He laid his bag across his seat and unzipped it. He took out the sealskin, and tied it tightly on to the snowmobile’s carry-rack.

“Sam? You can’t,” said Lucy, though she already knew that he could.

“Yeah. I’m doing that thing that fathers do at times like this.” He unclipped the axe and threw it into the snow. “So let’s assume we’ve had the argument, the tears, the rest of it, and it turned out that I was right all along. Go.”

She unslung her carbine and gave it to him.

“Avaiq will see you safely on to the ice. Michael will guide Maddy to you. There is,” and he popped up a map, “a massive iceberg grounded some five k offshore. Make for that.”

Avaiq looked confused. “Aren’t you…?”

“No. No, I’m not. You’re going to drive behind to make absolutely certain that the alien doohickey doesn’t fall off.” Petrovitch threaded his arm through the gun’s strap, picked up the bag and the axe, and started towards the ice ridge. Halfway there, he turned and shouted. “What are you waiting for?
Pascha?
”

“Sam?” said Lucy over the link.

“We’re not discussing this. You and the artefact go. I stay.”

“I just wanted to say that I love you very much and you’re the best replacement dad a girl could hope for.”

“If I cry, my targeting system won’t work properly.” He kept on walking. “You can say all this as you drive. Probably better that you don’t, though. I don’t need distracting.”

She slid forward to take Petrovitch’s place and opened the throttle. The engine roared, and she drove off, heading east along the coast. Avaiq stared at Petrovitch for a moment, then followed Lucy. The two of them vanished into the fog bank, and he watched the glow of them in infrared fade and wink out.

He looked around. It wasn’t the best place to make a last stand, but he guessed that choosing somewhere appropriate wasn’t a luxury that most people in his position could afford. He climbed up the ice barricade to the top. He could hear motors buzzing away, but the noise seemed to be coming from all around him. That couldn’t be the case, so he slowly turned his head and ran the waveforms through an analyser.

He could discount the two sources behind him. The ones ahead were coming at him in a line, stretched out wide so they could cover the maximum area without losing sight of each other.

That would work to his advantage.

“Tell me as soon as they’re picked up.”

[Due to the nature of the aerial threat, the Freezone units are maintaining complete radio silence. I have instructed Lucy to do the same. Their links are switched off so they do not emit any radiation at all. Confirmation will come as an audiovisual signal, which you will have to confirm.]

“Distress flare, then. Okay.” He checked his pistol, and sorted through his bag for the gifts from the Freezone’s weaponsmiths.

A couple of quantum gravity devices: old school, but still terrible. Three pop-ups, which he would have planted already
but he’d run out of time. He had a good arm on him to increase their range. A remote, too. He ought to get that going now.

He worked quickly: it came in almost unrecognisable parts that clipped together around a first-order antigravity sphere. The remote would hover at knee height, and move around with little electric fans. On the bottom was a hook, and on that hook he hung one of the gravity bombs.

He talked to the remote, and it hummed into life, rising from his lap and spinning around once. Then it headed off back towards the land, dipping and lifting as it crossed the ground. It would have probably been better if he’d got hold of some white paint from somewhere, but at the very least it’d be a distraction they’d waste bullets on.

He was set. He zipped up the bag and threw it on to the ice behind him, then got into position for sniping. The noise of motorised vehicles grew loud, and the first dark shapes appeared out of the fog. Three of them, thirty metres apart: not the end of the line, but not the middle of it either. Somewhere on the right flank.

Petrovitch pasted the three targets with crosshairs, and let his onboard computer take over. One, two, three. Explosive rounds, meant for protecting a young woman from predatory polar bears, hit the widely separated men within a second. Each projectile bored into a chest, then detonated. One of the skidoos caught fire as stray chemicals ignited leaking fuel. All three drove on, riderless. The snow-rimed shore was marked with stark red blood and ruined, steaming corpses.

The echo of the explosions and the sudden run-on of the snowmobiles before they crashed into the ice wall ahead of them was not as loud as the silence that followed.

Convention dictated that he change position. But he wasn’t trying to avoid detection. He was actively courting it.

“How long now?”

[Unknown. I am… blind. The Freezone collective are my eyes and ears. To be cut off from any of them is unnatural and wrong.]

“I never thought I’d die this way,” said Petrovitch. “
Chyort
, I never thought I’d die. The dreams I had. Kept having. I was old and I still didn’t die.”

The engine noises cut off, one by one. “There should be two more to my left, the rest of them over there. They’re not talking to each other.”

[Because they would rightly surmise I could listen in.]

The flames from the burning snowmobile flickered prettily and started to die down.

“They’ll have to overcome me quickly. They have to realise that Lucy is out on the ice, and I’ve stayed behind. So no subtlety.”

He sent the remote rightwards, and picked up the first pop-up. He threw it hard, hard enough that it skittered to the ground only just within his vision, then slid away. That was it; that was all he had to do. Automatics would do the rest.

He launched the other two the other way, towards where he assumed the main force would be attacking from, then took control of the remote.

The image from the fish-eye camera was confusing until he deployed some software to deconvolute it, turning it from a distorted circle into a virtual bubble with him at the centre. He orientated it, and flew it north towards the ice barrier. Cracked ground, heavy with snow, passed underneath, and eventually he found a group of lines – made by two outer runners
and a broad, teethed track – that meant someone had passed by.

He turned the remote again, and chased it up the tracks. He’d probably only get one shot at this, so he pushed the fans to their limit. The whine they’d make would be audible, but only if there wasn’t other noise around.