Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

coming out on the diamond ships, of course.’ He
laughed. ‘The colonial bourgeoisie!’
    ‘Well, whatever you want to call them,’ said Myra,
‘you know they’re planning to take charge, through
the ReUN and the battlesats?’
    ‘Oh, sure,’ Logan said. ‘Everybody knows
that.’ He shrugged. ‘What can you do? And anyways,
what difference is it gonna make to us?’ He flourished his
tiny laser. ‘We’re safe.’
    ‘No, you’re not,’ said Myra. She flicked her
gaze upwards, checking the firewall ‘ware. It was sound.
‘I’ve just learned – from my Defence Minister,
no less – that I have a clump of city-buster nukes stashed
somewhere in the clutter around you.’
    ‘Is that a problem?’ Logan asked. ‘Best
place for them, surely.’
    She had to admire his cool.
    ‘Somehow I don’t think that was why the
International asked for them to be put there.’
    ‘Ah,’ said Logan. ‘So you know about
that.’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Myra. ‘Thanks a bunch for not
telling me.’
    Logan mumbled something entirely predictable about
need-to-know. Myra cut off his ramble with an angry chop of her
hand.
    ‘Give me a fucking break,’ she said, exasperated.
‘I can figure that out for myself. The nukes are an element
of the situation, but they’re not my main concern right
now. I just thought I should let you know that I know about them,
for the same reason that you should’ve told me: for the
sake of politeness, if nothing else. OK?’
    ‘Well, yeah, OK,’ Logan allowed, grudgingly.
‘So what is your main problem?’
    ‘I was wondering,’ said Myra, ‘if
you’d grabbed them because you intended to do something
about the coup. Like, you know, stop it’
    Logan laughed. ‘Me personally?’
    ‘No. The International. And don’t tell me you personally are the only member it’s got up
there.’
    ‘Oh, no, not at all.’ Logan stared at her,
obviously puzzled. ‘We got plenty of comrades, I mean New
View is basically ours, but it’s been a long time since the
Party had an army, Myra, you know that as well as I do. We do
have a military org, like, but it’s just a… a small
cadre.’
    ‘Of course I know that. But I also know what a small
military cadre is for. It’s so that when you do need
an army you can recruit your soldiers from other armies.
You telling me the space fraction’s done no Party work on
the battlesats? In all those years?’
    Logan looked uncomfortable. ‘Not exactly, no, I’m
not saying that. We have – well, naturally we have
sympathisers, we get reports -’
    ‘And so do we,’ she said. ‘Some of them from
the same comrades as you do.’ She wasn’t entirely
certain of this – need-to-know, again – but it would
give him something to think about. ‘Who actually knows
about the nukes?’
    ‘Valentina Kozlova,’ said Logan. ‘And your
ex-husband, Georgi Davidov.’ If Logan noticed Myra’s
involuntary start at this news, he gave no sign. ‘And me,
obviously. That’s it. The only people who know. Unless
there’s been a leak.’
    ‘Hmm,’ said Myra. ‘Reid doesn’t seem
to know about them – he knows we have nukes in space, but
he thinks they’re all in Earth orbit.’ She
paused.
    ‘Wait a fucking minute. If you’re the only person
up here who knows about them, then the request from the Party a
couple of years ago was in fact a request from you. You,
personally.’
    ‘Well, yeah,’ Logan said. He didn’t seem
bothered at all. ‘In my capacity as Party Secretary for the
space fraction, that is.’
    ‘You took it upon yourself to do that? What the
fuck was on your mind?’ God, she thought, there I go
again with the incredulous screech. She added, in a flat, steady
voice, ‘Besides, what gave you the right to interfere in my
section, and in my section’s state?’
    Logan squirmed, like someone shifting uncomfortably in an
invisible chair. ‘I had a valid instruction to do it. From
the military org.’
    ‘Ah! So there is someone else who knows about
it!’
    ‘Not as such,’ said Logan. ‘The military org
is…’ He hesitated.
    ‘Like you said, a small cadre?’ Myra prompted.
    ‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Logan. He looked
as though he was steeling himself for an admission.
‘It’s an AI.’
    Myra felt her back thump against the back of her chair –
she was literally thrown by this statement. She took a deep
breath.
    ‘Let’s scroll this past us again, shall we?