Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

space station, with a
rotating tubular ring joined by thinner tubular spokes to an
inner ring surrounding the contra-rotating spin-compensated axial
tower. The living-quarters and hydroponics were around the ring,
in the fake gravity of the spin; the laser-cannon and
rocket-racks and particle-beam weapons and military
command-centre were in the free-fall hub. The whole enormous
mandala had a camp Nazi grandeur, spoiled only by the ungainly
arrays of solar panels it had sprouted while its nuclear reactor
had run down.
    It was one of dozens in various orbits. Space Defense had
enforced the Pax Americana of the US/UN Imperium, a twenty-year
Reich between the Third World War and the Fall Revolution. In
that revolution the battlesats had passed into the hands of their
personnel – soldiers’ Soviets in space – and,
ever since, they’d sought a role to replace their lost
empire. Everything from power-beam transmission to asteroid
defence had been tried, to little profit. The stations survived
on a trickle of subsidy – or ‘user fees’
– from the similarly diminished UN, paid mainly to prevent
the battlesats’ going rogue out of sheer desperation.
    Now the forces of the coup were offering them a new empire,
one a lot more justifiable and enforceable than the old.
    ‘So what’s the score with this one?’ Myra
asked.
    ‘Still loyal,’ replied Val. ‘They just
reported in to say they weren’t going with the
Alliance.’
    ‘Any way of checking that?’
    ‘Don’t know, I’m hailing them – ah!
they’re letting us in.’
    ‘I’ll go,’ said Myra, ‘you stay with
the big picture.’
    With a clunky, disorienting transition, she foundherself
standing in a real-time representation of the battlesat’s
bridge. It was about fifteen metres across, and crowded. The
interior matched the exterior’s style: banks of flashing
lights among chrome and black surfaces; a cluttered overgrowth of
retrofitted modern kit among a profusion of plants, like in a
civilian space settlement. The layout was optimised for
free-fall, with the crew-members strapped into seats and couches
at unexpected angles to each other. In this section of the shaft
there were actual windows, through which she could see the great
wheel turn in the sunlight, and the Earth’s swirling clouds
below. She blinked, and overprinted the real view with its
software image.
    The crew were wearing eyebands, and some of them could see
Myra’s fetch in their own virtual palimpsests of the scene
– but they spared her no more than a glance. Another
spectral presence had all their attention.
    The General sat on a window sill, surveying the bridge with
narrowed eyes. He’d been saying something; his words seemed
to hang in the air, resonating in the circuits of the display. He
interrupted himself and turned to face her.
    ‘Ah, Comrade Davidova – thanks for
coming.’
    ‘I wasn’t aware I’d been asked,’ she
said.
    ‘Oh, you were,’ the construct said. ‘This
is, as they say, no accident’
    Myra nodded. No doubt it was indeed no accident that the first
battlesat to allow her into its internal systems was the one in
which the General was addressing his troops.
    He waved a hand. ‘Welcome to a quick emergency session
of the military org’s local cell.’ He grinned.
‘Which is pretty much the command of this station.’
The watching crew-members gave herlonger looks now; some of them
even smiled.
    ‘We need your help,’ the General told her flatly.
‘Nice display,’ he added. ‘May I?’
    He reached over, thumb and forefinger pinching into her
translucent globe, and with frightening insouciance overrode all
her protocols and relocated her virtual view of the Earth and
near-Earth space into the centre of the bridge.
    She stared at the spinning shapes, fuming. He shouldn’t
have been able to do that –
    ‘We still hold most of the battlesats.’ A quick
sharp look. ‘That is to say, the anti-coup forces do,
whatever their other alignments. But the struggle is still in the
balance. We have about a sixth of the battle-sats securely on our
side, the enemy likewise, and the others undecided.’
    Myra was momentarily stunned. Despite what the General had
said to her earlier, she’d had no idea, no expectation that
the military org’s penetration of Space Defense was so
thorough – it must have taken years of work. But the
General gave her no time to question or