Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

T wish you
well. Ihope you see your way clear to come back, when things are
more… settled.’
    ‘Perhaps.’ The man shrugged, the woman smiled
thinly, the child suddenly bawled. They departed, looking up
disconsolately at the screens, leaving Myra depressed.
    The man had looked like a small trader, one of the large
middle class raised by the republic’s mixed economy.
Despite all the devils it painted on its walls, the ISTWR had
always stood more for a permanent NEP than a permanent
revolution: only its defence and space industries were
state-owned, and apart from the welfare system everything else
(which in GNP terms didn’t add up to much, she had to
admit) was more or less laissez-faire. She wondered what
the family had to fear from the Sheenisov, who by all accounts
would have left their property and piety alone. In a way it was
not surprising: the Sheenisov had made their advances by bluff
and intimidation, by looking and sounding more radical and
communistic than they actually were, and their absence from the
comms net left a great blank screen for the most sinister
speculations to play on. So perhaps this kind of unwarranted fear
was the price of their progress.
    Well, she would make them pay a higher price, in a harder
currency. She drained her coffee and headed for the departure
lounge.
     
    At Almaty she picked up her documents, diplomatic passport and
line-of-credit card in a snazzy Samson-ite Diplock handed over by
a courier, and on the flight to Izmir she sifted through them.
The papers were literally for her eyes only, being coated with a
polarising film tuned to her eyeband which in turn was tuned to
her. Even so, and even sitting in thecompany class section at the
front of the jet, alone apart from the flight-attendant, Myra
felt the impulse to hunch over the papers, and wrap her wrist and
elbow around their corners like a kid in class trying not to be
copycatted.
    Suleimanyov had struck a bold deal with the ISTWR, and with
her. It was a deal which had been proposed by Georgi Davidov,
who’d died before he’d been ready to return with it.
Myra’s lips tightened whenever she thought of that; her
suspicions stirred and were not soothed back to sleep. He’d
had the contracts drawn up in the briefcase that was found with
his body in the hotel room. The terms were simple, a
straightforward offer of economic union and military alliance.
Kazakhstan would take over the ISTWR’s residual social
responsibilities, assimilating all of its inhabitants who wished
to become Kazakhstani citizens, subsidising the rest. It would
provide for the smaller state’s conventional defence,
leaving to its People’s Army and Workers’ Militia the
only functions for which they were actually fitted –
internal security and border patrols, principally the guarding of
the spaceport and airport. In return, Myra’s government
would integrate its space-borne weapons, including the nukes,
into the greater republic’s defence forces. They would
retain ultimate operational control – there was no way
Suleimanyov could expect them to surrender that – but for
all public and diplomatic and military purposes, they’d
work together under one command. At a stroke Kazakhstan would
have a military force commensurate with its land area rather than
its population.
    This new Great Power could then negotiate assistance from the
West. It could stand as a solid bulwark – possibly even an
entering wedge – againstthe Sheenisov, which the inchoate
regimes of the Former Union and warlorded China could not. The
nuclear weapons would be their bargaining counter. Useless
themselves – in any but the shortest term -against the
Sheenisov, they could be made available to the US or UN in
exchange for the hardware and orbital back-up and even, at the
outside, troop deployments that could hold back this new
Red tide.
    Myra, as the oldest available politician, with the longest
experience and the widest range of Western knowledge and
contacts, would make the initial approaches. In a way she would
be going back to her old business of selling nuclear deterrence
policies; the only difference being that there was, now, only one
logical customer. And because it would be an arduous job, on a
tight schedule, they were going to give her a week’s break
before she started, and a lot of money. She was to use that time
and money to get young again.
    Rejuvenation was something she