“Yeah. About that plan. It sucked anyway.” He picked up his bag and ran to the dangling ladder, latching on with his free hand. Theatre, nothing more. Dangerous theatre, a stunt that could get him killed. But he needed to be seen, just for one last moment.

The bowser had wandered: rather than going straight, it had curved gracefully to the left, but had managed to avoid the front skids of one of the ARCO planes. It banged up against the hangar door, and started to edge further leftwards.

“Tell me they’re right outside.” The plane rose further, and him with it.

[They are right outside. Sasha, I think you should reconsider…]

“I don’t. Go or no go?”

[Go.]

He triggered the bomb.

A white flash lit up the hangar. The pop of the explosive was lost beneath the hot roar of the plane’s turbines as they cranked up. The tank of fuel ripped apart, and the liquid inside vaporised as the shock wave hit it.

“Cameras. Now.”

The fireball lit with a dirty orange roar, and he let go of the ladder. Higher than he’d like, he fell to the concrete floor, and landed in a heap. The heat from the burning cloud of fuel washed over him, and he pressed himself against the ground.

[Hangar cameras are offline. Sasha?]

“Yeah, yeah.” He looked up and the structure was ablaze. The external doors had blown out, with the remains of the steel shutters lying on several cars. Flames met falling snow in the dark pre-dawn, and inside, bright blue fire was running in rivers towards him. There was shouting and screaming, but none of that seemed to be coming from him.

Over his head, his plane was moving towards the newly exposed opening. Its white paintwork was black and bubbling at the nose, and both engines seemed to be labouring. Still, it didn’t have to fly that far. He launched it forward.

Inevitably, all eyes still capable of seeing watched it leave, bursting from the bank of churning flame and trailing smoke. Barely aloft, it skimmed the runway as it limped across the airfield.

Using the distraction, Petrovitch picked himself and his bag up, and ran for the back door. His ankle turned. He blinked away the pain and kept going.

The explosion had weakened the hangar’s structure. Fire had done the rest. It groaned and creaked, and started to fall. First the arch sagged, then the walls failed.

On the far side of the runway, Petrovitch’s plane ploughed into Ben and Jerry’s control centre. It tore through the building, breaking itself and whatever was inside the one-storey prefab. At some point before it came to rest, its fractured fuel tanks gave up their load, and a second fireball rose into the Arctic sky, red reflected against the underside of the clouds.

[They are completely blind.]

Hot metal was falling from above, peppering him and the other planes at the far end of the hangar. There was the door. He didn’t stop, just aimed a two-footed kick on the lock.

He fell outside, in the swirling snow. It was dark, and no one knew he was there.

The hangar was still collapsing, and as the ARCO planes underneath cooked, they added more fuel to the fire. Something went bang, and shrapnel sang by. It was a singularly unhealthy place to be, but his ankle was giving him all kinds of trouble. The pain he could deal with – it was making sure he kept his foot pointing in the right direction that was the problem.

He hunched over and hobbled towards the next hangar, putting his shoulder to the falling snow. The light from the burning fuel was a bright glow: explosions sent meteors arcing through the air to land hissing in the drifts.

Petrovitch put his back against the metal wall of the hangar, even as it reverberated with a dull clang. “Newcomen?”

“What have you done?” He sounded aghast.

“No more Mr Nice Guy, Newcomen. The gloves are off.” He looked down at his hands. “At least figuratively. Their surveillance network is down, and I’m a free agent. This is what I want you to do: grab a snowmobile and make sure it has enough fuel to get you to the research station.”

[Sasha?]

“I know what I’m doing,” said Petrovitch. “Watch and learn.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” Newcomen was saying. His breathing was ragged, panicked.

“Just take one. No one’s going to stop you. If you ever want to see some answers, you’ll do as I tell you.”

“You’ll die here. And that’ll kill me.”

“Look, I’m not holding your hand any longer. Do it now or get caught in the crossfire. Your call.” He was interrupted.

[The teletroopers awaken.]

Petrovitch swallowed hard. “Okay, Michael. Talk to me. Can we do this?”

[One moment.]

“Chyort, not again.”

[It is not like jihading a commercial car. These are highly sophisticated weapons of war with entirely different protocols and encryption. Different again to the model you encountered at the airport.]

“You’re just building your part up now, aren’t you?”

[Yes. It seems absurd that they have not learnt the lessons of a decade ago, but there is no accounting for the stupidity of humans. They have brought these machines here for some reason or other: I am not inclined to pursue that avenue at the moment.]

“Good. Let’s chase them off the streets, just like we did the Outies.”

[Very well,] said Michael.

Petrovitch watched him do it, brutally ripping control of the teletroopers away from their virtual masters and slaving them to his will. One moment the jocks in Nevada were popping the next stimulant in the blister pack and preparing to hunt his scrawny Russian hide down; the next, every rig had flatlined, limp and unresponsive as a fresh cadaver.

“You did this once before,” said Petrovitch. “You made monsters and marched them across the Metrozone.”

[And now someone else builds the monsters. I merely make them march.]

The crackle of flames and the billows of smoke had started to die down. The creaks and groans of the collapsed hangar had calmed to the occasional settling moan. It was quiet enough to hear shouted instructions and the revving of engines. Quiet enough to hear the pressurised hiss of pistons as the first of the teletroopers unfolded from its resting position and straightened up to its full height.

Its cameras scanned the darkness. Through Petrovitch, Michael knew where the manual door mechanism was. The teletrooper stamped over and a retractable blade extended from the back of its hand, thin enough to be able to spear the on switch.

The chain started to rattle, and the snow flurried in through the widening gap. Petrovitch watched, piggybacking the images Michael was receiving, as the other thirty-one robots pulled themselves upright and levelled their weapons.

“Yobany stos. No wonder they win wars.”

[Sasha? What of mercy?]

“What of it?”

[Do we show mercy?]

“Did they show us mercy? Did they tell us the truth? Did they help us?” He pulled on his mittens. “Did they look after Lucy for us, or did they try and feed us all to the wolves?”

[Is that your answer then? I should kill them all?]

Petrovitch tested his ankle on the ground. Weak. Unstable. He’d torn something. It didn’t matter for now. “They would have killed us. They still will if they get the chance.”

[Then permit me to deny them the opportunity.]

He started to limp away, further from the pyre. “All yours. I need to see what’s so important about this envelope.”

He dug it out of its hiding place, and gave it a shake. There was definitely something inside, but it was small, flat. He guessed at a data card, and for that, he needed the reader in his bag, and somewhere safe to use it, inside and out of the driving snow that was blinding him every time he looked up.

He trudged on, dragging his foot with every step. There was another hangar coming up: he’d try in there, even if it meant just sitting in a cockpit with the heater turned on.