Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

hologram fetch of herself and her
surroundings seamlessly merged with the images from several
kilometres distant.) She could see her own face, projected to
visual displays around the world by the camcopter hovering a few
metres in front of her.
    Right now she was trying to raise Logan. A residual loyalty to
her former comrades in space impelled her to warn them of the
probable imminent disaster. The scanning search of the Lagrange
cluster wasn’t picking up New View. At length, frustrated,
she switched to a broader sweep, and to her surprise connected
almost immediately.
    ‘Jesus fuck, Myra,’ Logan said, without
preliminary pleasantry. ‘This is your biggest fuck-up since
the Third World War.’ He didn’t make it sound like an
accusation.
    ‘Thanks for the reminder, comrade,’ Myra snarled.
‘I’m going against my better judgement telling you
this, but I’ve fallen out with your General. That little
electric fucker has had the bright idea of making his own bid for
world revolution, and I don’t intend to wait around to see
how it all works out in practice, thank you very much.’
    Tes, I had heard,’ Logan said heavily. The delay seemed
longer than usual; Myra guessed because she was strung out,
running on stretched time. ‘You called to say that?’
He sounded distracted. A very pretty black girl who looked about
ten years old stuck her face past his, grimacing at the camera,
filling its field with her microgravity sunburst of frizzy hair.
Logan shoved at her.
    ‘Oh, push off, Ellen May,’ he said, not unkindly.
‘Go and pester your mum, OK? Or Janis. She’ll have
something for you to do, you bet.’
    The girl stuck out her tongue, then flicked away like a
fish.
    ‘Kids,’ Logan grinned, indulgent despite
himself.
    ‘Yeah, they’re great,’ Myra said, with a
pang. ‘What I called you for is about that, actually. If
that kid’s gonna have a future, you guys better get your
ass out of Lagrange.’
    ‘We have,’ said Logan, five seconds later.
‘We raced through our preparations after the coup. We
haven’t got as much gear as we’d like, but the
asteroid miners are going to swing in and join us there. We
finished the burn twelve hours ago.’ He looked about.
‘Made a real mess of stuff I didn’t have time to lash
down,’ he added sadly.
    ^You’re on your way to Mars?’
    ‘Yes, at last.’ His grin filled the screen.
‘Free at last!’
    ‘What does the General think about this?’
    ‘Ah,’ said Logan. ‘When I found it was
bidding to use your orbital nukes in the coup, I figured the same
as you did. Not safe to stick around. You remember I said
we’d have to leave a few hundred tons behind? Well,
it’s among them, still in the clutter at Lagrange. We
ditched the bugger.’ His triumphant smile faded to a bleak
inward gaze. ‘I hope.’
    Ts it still in control of the Mil Org?’
    ‘I guess so. We couldn’t do anything to it, beyond
discarding the section the hardware was in. Its software is a
different matter, it gets everywhere, but, hell –
’
    ‘What do you mean „it gets everywhere“?
I’ve got a suspicion it’s downloaded to the
Sheenisov’s weird Babbage engines, but – ’
    Logan nodded. Teah, and it’s probably copied its files
to anything of yours that’s been in contact with it, like
your phone, but it’s just the source code, it can’t
do any harm so long as you don’t open the file –
’
    At that point the connection ended.
    Myra took her phone from her pocket and was about to jerk its
jack from her eyeband, just in case, when she realised the
precaution was irrational. If the bugger was actually running on
her phone they were doomed already. She thought about the time
the General had appeared right in her own command-centre, and
could only hope that Logan was right, and that only its source
code, and not its live program, had been secreted there. And in
other places…
    Someday, somebody would open a file stored in the Institute at
Glasgow, and find Parvus, and the General behind him. She wished
that person luck. Then she remembered Menial MacClafferty, and
realised she’d have to do more.
    She had just finished rattling out her urgent message when she
heard a dull, distant bang behind her, and turned. Through the
eyeband’s night vision she saw on the horizon the expanding
greenglow of the first cruise missile to hit Kapitsa. It was not
the last.
     
    Hours later, in the