Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

interrupted. ‘The
Company checked him out. He’s clear.’ He glanced at
Myra, then grinned at Denis Gubanov. ‘Bit of a commie
son-of-a-bitch, but he’s on your side.’
    ‘Good,’ said Myra, winging it. ‘I’m
going through this to confirm that nobody here is a
suspect. That leaves only one possibility. Georgi must have
shared his idea with somebody, and it can only have been the FI
Mil Org. The General.’
    She let them think about that while she explained to Jason,
Nurup and Mustafa about the nukes and the AI.
    ‘It has its own agenda,’ she concluded, addressing
everyone again. ‘And it’s working through the
Sheenisov. It wants those nukes, very badly. So do the spacers.
Whether they used each other – the information on one side,
the weapon from the other -knowingly or not, Georgi’s
murder was a move in that rivalry. Whoever controls these weapons
has a gun at the head of everyone and everything in Earth orbit
and at Lagrange – which adds up to about ninety-five
percent of the human space presence. And I would remind you that,
thanks to the coup and counter-coup, the General controls most of
the Space Defense battlesats. Now, this has a bearing on what we
do about the UN ultimatum. Which is ‘ she grinned ferally
‘ – the second item on the agenda.’
    ‘Excuse me,’ said Jason, standing up. ‘Just
who does control these nukes, at the moment?’
    ‘We do,’ said Valentina and Myra, at the same
time. Myra gave Val an especially warm smile, hoping that her
apparent – and partly paranoically real – earlier
suspicion hadn’t wounded their friendship beyond
repair.
    ‘It’s dual key,’ Valentina explained.
‘Defence Minister and Prime Minister have to go into the
command-center workspace at the same time.’
    ‘And, well, it’s not hardcoded in, but right now
obviously we have a treaty commitment to give the President of
Kazakhstan the final say,’ Myra added. ‘And his
strategy, at the moment, is to stonewall until the last minute,
to try and get some military aid concessions out of the Western
powers and/or the UN against the Sheenisov.’
    ‘So he intends to turn them over eventually?’
Jason asked.
    Myra hesitated. ‘OK,’ she said at last.
‘This doesn’t go beyond this room, and that goes for
everyone here. You guys at the window, too – military
discipline, death penalty under the Freedom of Information Law if
you breathe a word of it. Everybody clear?’
    They all were.
    ‘All right then – yes, he does intend for us to
turn them over, eventually. What else can we do?’
    ‘We can use the weapons,’ said Denis. ‘In
space.’
    Val’s lips set in a thin line. Myra shook her head.
    ‘Massacre,’ she said. ‘I won’t do it,
except as a last resort’
    ‘You’re all missing the point,’ said Jason.
He looked around at all of them, as though unsure whether he had
a right to speak.
    ‘Go on,’ said Myra.
    ‘OK,’ said Jason, ‘I’m just speaking
for myself here, not for the CIA or East America. I don’t
know if I’ll ever get back to either of them.
Anyway… the point you’re all missing is: who are you going to surrender your weapons to? Formally, no doubt,
it’ll be the UN. But physically, somebody’s gonna
have to dock with them, bring them in, disarm them. Space
Defense, and maybe some of the space settlers, have the equipment
and expertise to do that. There must be ways of getting past the
software of your controls – there always are. Believe me,
there are no uncrackable codes any more. Your cooperation would
be useful, but it’s not essential.’
    Myra lit a cigarette. ‘OK,’ she said.
‘So?’
    Jason paced over to the window, peered out. ‘Still
quiet,’ he said. He glanced at his watch.
‘We’ve been in here, what? Half an hour? Soon be time
to talk to the people, Myra.’
    ‘That’s cool,’ Denis said.
‘We’ve got agitators out there, they’re keeping
people more or less up to speed. The line is that the President
is negotiating.’
    ‘As I’m sure he is,’ said Jason. ‘But
what does either side have to negotiate? Both sides have hit the
bottom of the tank. You have nothing to offer, and the West has
nothing to offer you. They will not save you from the Sheenisov.
So if I were any of the other players – in particular, the
spacers and your FI Mil Org, rogue AI or not – I’d be
working very fast right now on two objectives. One is taking you