“What was I thinking?” Lucy said. “What did I think I was going to do?”

Petrovitch made his gun safe, then levered himself up. Valentina had gone to inspect the explosives inside the container, and he watched as she and Madeleine faced each other across the threshold.

Something resembling grudging respect passed between them, and they went on their way. Madeleine purposefully stepped over the bodies and pulled Petrovitch up the rest of the way to standing.

She paused to inspect the two holes in her armor where gel was leaking out. “We’re going to have to stop Sonja.”

“You’re right.”

“And that girl—our daughter—is not coming.”

“I don’t think she wants to anymore.”

“Good. The other two: they can come with us.”

“I thought you hated them?”

She pushed her automatic back into her holster. “They seem to think a lot of you, so I’m going to have to live with that.”

27

When Petrovitch got back to the main gates, the workers were waiting. They’d heard the shots, and the subsequent silence, and hadn’t known what to think.

“Did you…?” someone called.

“They’re all dead, save one.” He stopped, and they started to gather round. Very soon, he’d lost sight of any but the first couple of rows, so he climbed up the back of a flat-bed truck and sat on the edge. “Sorry about your friends. I hadn’t expected Sonja to be so yebani stupid. You’ve lost people you know, and it’s now on my watch. I’m responsible.”

“What are you—we—going to do now?” shouted a woman from the back. When those around her turned to face her, she flushed scarlet and mumbled.

“No, you’re right. I wanted to just ignore Sonja, but it looks like she has other ideas. And Mother has told me, in words of one syllable, that we can’t just pretend she’s not there.” His left arm was almost out of power again. He’d had nowhere near enough time to recharge the batteries. He dragged it across his lap and growled at it, before addressing the crowd again. “The Oshicora Corporation has a couple of thousand people working for it. A lot of those are paper-pushers doing Freezone admin, but you’ve got her personal security detail that numbers a couple of hundred, and about twenty thousand nikkeijin, spread throughout the city.”

“Do you think they’re all going to fight us?”

“Good question. If they do, we’re going to end up burning down a large part of what we’ve spent a year building up.”

“I did ten years in the EDF,” said a man, and the woman behind him said, “I was in the Metrozone police for five.”

“Yeah, we’re probably going to need people like you. But I don’t want to have to build another army. They aren’t Outies: they’re our neighbors. We don’t do that to them.”

“Why are our mates dead, then?”

“Because Sonja Oshicora ordered Container Zero to be destroyed, and Takashi Iguro took those orders very seriously. Seriously enough to kill. Okay: so who have we got a complaint against?”

“It’s Oshicora.”

“And her alone. I’d like to try and keep the number of people who have to die over this to those who’ve already lost their lives. I can’t do anything for them; I’m not a miracle worker. But neither am I going to start a war in which hundreds, maybe thousands, of people die. Been there, done that. I still see it when I close my eyes.”

He drew his legs under him and stood up on the truck, gazing down at the solemn faces waiting on his next words. It was unavoidable—he’d actively sought a reputation when he’d fought the Outies, deliberately creating myths that would inspire and encourage.

They were very difficult to dispel, no matter how hard he tried.

“Everyone with military or police training wait here. The rest of you: we need stretchers, we need body bags, we need identities from the work roster and I’ll call the next of kin myself. There’s stuff to be done. Let’s be professional about it.” He jerked his head. “Go on. You’ve got things to do, and so have I.”

He was left with half a dozen, and Madeleine moved them away for an unhurried conversation.

Tabletop looked at them. “Unless you’re prepared to blow the tower up with Sonja in it, you’re going to need more.”

“Or I could get all Jihad on her zhopu, get enough flying things in the air to bring it down. That would work.”

“But you won’t do it, will you?”

“No. Two reasons. First, it’s going to make a hell of a mess and I’m not clearing it up. Second, I want to know why. I’m missing something here, something so enormous I can’t see it because I’m in it. So yeah, I want to walk into her office and demand some answers.” He looked in the direction of where Sonja was. He knew her phones. He could pinpoint her exactly. “She’s not going to tell me until she’s lost so completely she has nothing left to lose.”

“In that case we need personnel, guns, vehicles, explosives and a plan.”

“We’ve got enough earth-movers and construction equipment for an armored brigade. We have more cee-four than we can carry. Madeleine has the keys to the warehouse where all the firearms we’ve collected over the last eleven months are. The Freezone database tells me I have a couple of thousand ex-servicemen and women on the payroll.” Petrovitch shrugged. “It’s a start.”

Tabletop held up her hand, and he used it to steady himself while he jumped down. “All you need now is a plan that’ll mean you don’t have to use any of it.”

“Better give me a minute, then.” He started to walk away, and swerved back. “Find Tina, tell her to take Lucy back to the arts college and pick up Lucy’s stash. I feel some shock and awe coming on.”

“Lucy’s ‘stash’?” She didn’t question the request though, and used her suit comms to talk to Valentina, striding back toward the main gate.

He was alone, in what had been a semi-circle of formal park before the great entrance to the Regent’s Park domik pile had landed on it. The gardens had been concreted over, but the slab had cracked along the original lines of the paths and flower beds. Like everything in Armageddon, it had been done quickly, and not well.

Petrovitch walked, head down, following the cracks like a labyrinth.

He had to neutralize the Japanese work parties, convince them not to take sides, either his or Sonja’s. Then there were Sonja’s employees: they weren’t soldiers, but they probably thought of themselves as servants and felt they owed her their loyalty.

They owed him loyalty too. He could exploit that. Old Man Oshicora had lost most of his staff, killed by the New Machine Jihad. The more recent hirings wouldn’t have a residual fealty, transferring allegiance from father to daughter.

Her uniformed security guards—now that was going to be difficult, if not impossible. He had to find enough leverage to put himself between them and their boss, or he was going to have to do it the hard way.

They could hold out for as long as the ammunition did, and storming the tower was going to result in a bloodbath. He’d do pretty much anything to avoid that.

He walked, and when he reached a junction on the cracked concrete pad, he turned in an arbitrary direction. An idea slowly came to him, slower than it ought. It was hard to keep his thoughts in order when he was so very tired and kept being distracted by the fact of Sonja’s betrayal.

Then he went slowly back to the main gates. Valentina’s car had gone, along with Lucy. Madeleine had also vanished, along with a couple of trucks and all those he’d called out. The workers in Regent’s Park were busy. The first of a fleet of ambulances whispered along the road and onto the dirt track that led inside.

Tabletop was there, though. She was sitting in a truck cab, her eyes shut and her head resting on the upholstery. Petrovitch climbed up to the driver’s seat, by necessity using just his right hand to aid him, and slumped behind the wheel.