The Red by Linda Nagata

Author:Linda Nagata
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SAGA PRESS

ATLANTA LAUNCH

ATLANTA SHUTDOWN

DENVER LAUNCH

DENVER SHUTDOWN

NEW YORK LAUNCH

NEW YORK SHUTDOWN

“New York first,” I say.

“Go ahead, Vasquez,” the colonel says. “New York. Make the LT happy.”

What if it doesn’t work? What if New York blows up first? I squeeze my eyes closed as Jaynie launches the shutdown program.

“Delphi, tell me.”

“No report yet.”

Seconds tick past. Then Delphi speaks to everyone over gen-com. “The New York device has disarmed itself.” Screams of joy echo in the stairwell, followed by faint cheers from far below.

Jaynie’s graceful fingers free Atlanta next, and when the thumbs-up comes through on that, she shuts down the cancer in Denver, in Philadelphia, and in Phoenix.

It’s all over, isn’t it? We slammed the TIA.

I want to believe it, but I hear something. I hear jets outside.

It sounds just like Africa, fierce engines roaring on the edge of hearing. They don’t scare me, though, because I know they must be ours—and I want to go see them. I want to go outside and be under the stars and know that the world isn’t dead. It’s a compulsion. My hands start shaking, I want it so bad. Going off-com, I yell down the stairwell to Flynn, “Tell everybody to move up one flight. Spread the word off-com.”

“Sir?” Flynn calls, incredulous.

“Off-com,” I repeat. “Don’t clutter gen-com. I’m just going outside.”

She calls the order down. I hear it repeated by Nakaoka. As Flynn clomps up the stairs, I leave my post at the top of the stairwell and move to the door.

The jets are a lot closer now. I can’t see them, but their roar builds with incredible speed as they sweep in from the west: low, fast, and dark. My helmet filters the engine noise, but it still vibrates in my bones and shakes the world. For a second I think I hear Delphi screaming at me, but it has to be my imagination . . . that way we sometimes hear voices in white noise.

A light flicks on in the east. Bright white. It’s not the sun. It’s a rocket—a huge, multistage rocket, an anomalous tall tower of propulsion lifting off from out of nowhere. It’s got to be at least ten miles away, but the glare of its first stage chases back the night.

Vanda-Sheridan not only makes satellites; the company launches them too.

The rocket climbs straight up. I have no way to tell how far.

The jets pass my position. Fighter jets: I see the glow of their afterburners as a sonic boom slams across the land. And then they release two missiles, with blazing trails that outrun the fighters and arc upward on a course to intercept the rocket, which has begun a slow turn north.

The missiles chase the rocket, but it’s hopeless. They will never catch it.

Then the rocket’s guidance system fails. I think the fighter pilots are jamming it, interfering with its navigation. It flips over, nose down, and it explodes.

For some tiny shard of time, I look at the fireball, but I can’t really see it. It’s like God, or the seed of a new universe blossoming—something that is just not meant for human eyes.

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