“Aj!”
And then she is there in front of him, like she’s come up off the ground. She combs glass crumbs out of her hair.
“Professor Lull.”
He seizes her hand, hauls her back towards the train.
“It’s all cut off on this side of the train. We’re going the other way.”
The two wings of attackers hook towards each other, closing a half-encirclement. Thomas Lull knows anything in that arena is dead. There is only a small gap to the dark, desiccated fields.
The families flee into it, dropping everything and running for their lives. Ash swirls and storms in the updrafts from the train fire; Lull and Aj are now within missile range. Rocks and bottles start to clang off the carriages, shattering into glassy shrapnel.
“Under here!” Thomas Lull ducks under the train. “Watch out for this.” The undercarriage is lethal with high-voltage cables and drums of pressurised hydraulic fluid. Thomas Lull crawls out to find himself looking at a wall of car headlights. “Fuck.” The vehicles are parked in a long line a hundred metres from the train. Trucks, buses, pickups, family cars, phatphats. “They’re right round us. We’re going to have to try it.”
Aj snaps her head up to the sky.
“They’re here.”
Thomas Lull turns to see the helicopters roar over the top of the train, fast, hard, low enough to swirl the flames up into a fire tornado. They are blind insects, combat bots slung from their dragonfly thoraxes like eggs. They carry the green and orange yin-yang of Awadh on their noses. Counterinsurgency pulse lasers pivot in their housings seeking targets. Deep under Delhi, helicopter jockeys recline on gel beds watching through their pineal eyes, moving their hands a centimetre here, a flicker there to instruct the pilot systems. The three helicopters turn in the air above the parked cars, bow to each other in a robot gavotte, and swoop down on their drop runs. Gunfire cracks out from beyond the line of headlights, bullets smack, and white from the spun-diamond carapaces. From ten metres they release their riot control bots, then climb, spin, and open up with the pulsers. The bots hit the ground and immediately charge. Cries. Shots. Men come running from between the cars into the open space. The helicopters lock on and fire. Soft bangs, dull flashes, bodies go sprawling, crawling. The pulse lasers flash the first thing they touch to plasma and pump it into an expanding shock wave, whether clothing or the ash-daubed skin of a naked naga. The karsevaks go reeling, stripped bare-chested by laser-fire. The counterinsurgency bots clear the vehicles in a leap like something from a Japanese comic and unfold their riot control shock-staves.
“Down!” Thomas Lull yells, shoving Aj’s face to the dust. The men flee but the springing bots are faster, harder, and more accurate. A body crashes beside Thomas Lull, face scorched in second-degree sunburn. Steel hooves flash, he covers his head with his arms, then rolls to see the machines hurdle the train. He waits. The helicopters are still up there. He plays dead until they pass over, frail craneflies never intended for human occupancy. “Up! Go, now! Run!” A prickle of suspicion on the back of his neck makes Thomas Lull look up. A helicopter turns a sensor cluster on him. A gatling pulser swings to bear. Then smoke billows between man and machine, the aeai loses tracking and the helicopter dips over the train, turrets stuttering laser fire. “Get behind the cars, down behind a wheel, that’s the safest place,” Thomas Lull shouts over the tumult. Then they both freeze in their flight as the air between the cars seems to shiver and the wash of light from the massed headlights breaks into moving shards. Men in combat gear fade into visibility. Thomas Lull pulls his passport from his pocket, holds it high like an Old Time preacher of the gospel.
“American citizen!” he shouts as the soldiers slip past, their suits now camouflaged in mirror and infrared. “American citizen!” A subadar with an exquisitely groomed moustache pauses to survey Thomas Lull. His unit badge bears the eternal wheel of Bharat. He casually cradles a multitask assault gun.
“We have mobile units to the rear,” the subadar says. “Make your way there. You will be cared for.” As he speaks the helicopters reappear over the train, now half ablaze. “Go now, sir.” The subadar breaks into a run; the lead helicopter locks its belly turret onto him and fires. Thomas Lull sees the officer’s uniform glow as it absorbs the laser, then the Bharati soldier brings his weapon to bear and fires off a Sam. The helicopter pulls up and peels away in a spray of chaff, the little missile zig-zagging after it, a line of fire across the night. A rain of tinsel the colour of burning shatabdi falls around Thomas Lull and Aj. Recognising a more potent threat, a squad of riot control bots has taken position along the top of the train attempting to hold off the Bharati troops with stun lasers and riot control chaff. The firelight catches on the chromed joints and sinews. The humans take them one at time with EMP fire. As each bot tumbles from the train it releases a clutch of fist-sized subdrones. They bounce, unfold into scurrying scarabs armed with spinning strimmer-wires. They swarm the soldiers; Thomas Lull sees one man go down and turns Aj away before the wire flays him to the bone. He sees the subadar kick one off the toe of his boot, raise his weapon butt, and smash it to pieces. But there are always too many of them. That is the tactic. The subadar calls his men back. They run. The scarabs skitter after. Thomas Lull still clutches his passport, like a tract waved in the face of a vampire.
“I think it will take more than that,” the subadar says, snatching Thomas Lull by the arm and dragging him in his wake. Beyond the line of vehicles men with flamethrowers fade out of stealth into visibility. And Thomas Lull realises that Aj has slipped his grip. He yells her name. He does not know how many times this night he has called that name in that lost, crippled by fear tone. Thomas Lull tears himself away from the Bharati officer.
Aj stands before the scurrying, bounding line of combat bots. She goes down on one knee. They are metres, moments away, flay-wires shrilling. She raises her left hand, palm outward. The onslaught of robots halts. By ones, then by two, tens, twenties, they spin down their weapons, curl up into their transit spheres. Then a Bharati jawan darts in and whirls her away and the flamethrower men open up, fire on fire. Thomas Lull goes to her. She is shivering, tearful, smoke-smeared with the strap of her small luggage still twisted in her hand.
“Has somebody got a blanket or something?” he asks as the soldier moves them through the line of cars. A foil spaceblanket unfolds from somewhere, Thomas Lull pulls it around Aj’s shoulders. The soldier backs away; he has seen aeai strike helicopters and fought robots, but this scares him. You do well, Thomas Lull thinks as he guides Aj towards the laager of troop carriers. We would all do well.
19: MR. NANDHA
Each of the five bodies has its fists raised. Mr. Nandha has seen enough death by fire to understand that it is a thing of biology and temperature but an older, pre-Enlightenment sensibility sees them fighting swirling djinns of flame. It would have been demonic at the end. The apartment is still sooty with floating polycarbon ash, drifts of vaporised computer casing. When they settle on Mr. Nandha’s skin they smear to the softest, darkest kohl. It takes a temperature of over a thousand degrees to reduce plastic to pure carbon soot.
Varanasi, city of cremations.
The morgue crew zip black bags shut. Sirens from the street; the firefighters pulling out. The scene is now in the hands of the law agencies, last of which is the Ministry. SOCO boys brush past Mr. Nandha, recording videos on their palmers. He is trespassing on another’s bailiwick. Mr. Nandha has his own comfortable methodology and for him simple observation and the application of imagination yield insights and intuitions police procedural might never apprehend.