Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [156]
He wandered off through the crowd, still shouting imprecations.
‘What’s all that about?’ Cat asked. Jordan grinned at the joy and puzzlement on her face.
‘Babylon is fallen,’ he said.
‘Does that mean we’ve won?’ Janis asked, when the dangerous driving and the firing into the air had stopped. The four men who shared with her the front seat of the truck all shouted ‘Yes!’ or ‘No!’, and then laughed. As soon as the news had come through she had been told to leave the shelter. The small convoy had picked her up (gun on the ground, one hand on her head, the other with a thumb stuck out) at the Strathcarron junction. They were heading south at a speed that forced her to look into the far distance or at the faces of her companions – anywhere but at the road.
‘That’s your answer for you,’ said the man between her and the door. Donald Patel had an accent like MacLennan’s and it seemed incongruous with his delicate dark features. ‘It means the Americans are not coming, that’s for sure. They won’t be seeing much of the rocket’s red glare over there for a while.’ More laughter.
After half an hour news came through that His Majesty’s Government had decided to continue the struggle against terrorism from exile. A new voice interrupted, announcing that the United Republic had been restored, and a provisional government established. The Hanoverian forces on the ground, bidding to negotiate an end to the conflict short of actual surrender, were politely informed this was not an option.
Janis realized, as the trucks lurched and swayed towards Glasgow and the traffic got heavier all the time, that the men’s jubilation at the victory of the Republic was not that of soldiers being demobilized. Most of the people on the road had just been mobilized. They were going to war. And she wouldn’t be waving them a cheery goodbye and catching the red-eye to Heathrow.
At Buchanan Street Bus Station the convoy stopped. They all piled out and were pointed to a huge marquee where she was stamped and registered and sworn in again, stripped and showered and tagged. She was a soldier.
The enemy was described by her unit’s political officer: ‘It’s not so much the Hanoverian remnants we have to worry about. It’s all the Free State rabble that flourished under their protection. The eco-terrorists, the cultist mini-states, the backyard separatists and sandpit socialists who betrayed the Republic the first time. The fake left who preferred having their own petty kingdoms to fighting their corner in a democracy. They all went along with the Restoration Settlement and only made noises when our people were surviving like hunted beasts. Now they’re coming out of their holes to have a go at carving a bigger chunk for themselves. They think the Republic is weaker than the Kingdom. Our job is to make them think again. They can have any way of life they want, run their communities as they see fit, but they can’t keep other folk out with guns or use guns to expand their territories. They can even keep their guns, but it’s going to be our guns on the street.’
All the species of cranks and creeps, she thought. This was her war.
19
Dissembler
On high moorlands and city streets, in gutted refineries and abandoned service areas, she fought through the hot autumn and bitter winter. Days of storm alternated with calm, chill silences when the smoke of burning villages rose straight into a pale blue sky. She crawled through mud and water, bracken and barbed wire.
She learned about what was going on out in the world in snatches from television and radio. With Dissembler out of action, all the programs that ran on it, most importantly DoorWays™, were useless. The effect on communications was convulsive, and not altogether unwelcome: it was primarily administrative and military machines that were crippled. Turks and Russians fought inconclusively on the Bulgarian front; the Sheenisov (the name had caught on,