Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

twenty-below midnight, when most of the
migration had camped around fuel-dump fires, Myra was sitting
with Jason in front of a portable electric brazier, in the
shelter of the dozing horse. She was simultaneously in the
command-centre with the others, and with Chingiz. The UN and US
had never intended to negotiate, and even the pretence had been
dropped.
    The Kazakhstani airforce was expending missiles, planes and
lives above Almaty now. From space the command-centre was pulling
down images of moves from the battlesats. Tiny, manned
hunter-gatherer probes were burning off, matching orbits and
velocities with the cached nukes. They had hunter-killer escorts,
and they were obviously from opposed coalitions – already
their exchanges of fire were being replayed on CNN, now that the
Kapitsa bombardment had stopped for lack of remaining
targets.
    ‘… no choice,’ Chingiz was saying.
‘Our first responsibility is to defend our people, the
people we’ve taken on the duty to protect, even if that
means killing more innocent people on the other side than would
die on ours if we don’t.’
    That’s talking, thought Myra, that’s the way to
look at it, that’s right. Screw the greatest good of the
greatest number. Or maybe not.
    ‘That’s the end of the world,’ said
Valentina.
    ‘It’s ending anyway,’ Myra said. She looked
up from the fire. ‘That’s my final analysis! We may
even save lives in the long run, if we blind and cripple the
forces that are getting ready for the last war.’ She
laughed bitterly. ‘In both senses of the phrase.’
    An officer leaned into the visual field aroundChingiz, and
spoke urgently in his ear. Chingiz nodded, once, then raised his
hand.
    This is it,’ he said. ‘Some of the space
settlers’ diamond ships have just entered the atmosphere.
They’re heading for – ’
    Connection lost.
    Myra jumped up, and to her utter horror and amazement she saw
them, jinking and jittering through the sky towards her. Their
infrared radiation signature was arrogantly clear – they
didn’t need to bother with shielding, unlike the stealth
fighters they resembled. One moment they were dots on the
horizon, the next they were discs overhead, swooping past at a
thousand metres. Their laser lances slashed the vast encampment,
and were countered seconds too late by futile fusillades of
skyward machine-gun fire. Then they were at the other horizon,
and - banking around for a second runscreams of people and beasts
in the night, dying under the laser beams and the humming rain of
their own misdirected, falling ordnance-
    Earth versus the flying saucers! Way cool!
    Myra shook off that mad thought and reached for the
command-centre controls as though through thick mud.
Valentina’s eyes shone in the firelight for a moment, and
Myra saw in them a reflection of her own resolution. Then she and
Valentina stooped together to their task. As Myra rattled through
the codes, she waited for the laser’s hot tongue on her
neck.
    The diamond ships were far too fast for human control, or even
for their enhanced, superhuman occupants. Their main guidance
systems were realtime uplinks to the space stations, which a few
good nuclear explosions could disrupt.
    The sky went white, and the black discs fell like leaves.
     
    The ablation cascade did not happen all at once. Lagrange went
to eternity instantaneously, in one appalling sphere of hell-hot
helium fusion, but Earth orbit was a different thing. Hours,
perhaps days, would pass before the last product of human
ingenuity and industry was scraped from the sky. Even so, the
comsats were among the first to fail. Most, indeed, were taken
out by the electromagnetic pulses alone. Riding into the first
dawn of the new world, Myra knew that the little camcopter
dancing a couple of metres in front of her might well be relaying
the last television news most of its watchers would ever see.
    Behind her, in a slow straggle that ended with the ambulances
and litters of the injured and dying, the Kazakh migration spread
to the horizon. The sun was rising behind them, silhouetting
their scattered, tattered banners. There was only one audience,
now, that was worth speaking to: the inheritors.
    ‘Nothing is written,’ she said. ‘The future
is ours to shape. When you take the cities, spare the scientists
and engineers. Whatever they may have done in the past you need
them for the future. Let’s make it a