The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [129]
Plumes of red light. Boiling gas was squeezing itself through the curved doors to the heavens. As the gas hit fresh air, it caught in thin, livid flames.
There was violent flashover as all the laser-blasted fumes within the structure ignited at once. The explosion was sudden and elegant. The walls of packed hay splayed out like a giant child puffing a dandelion. The observatory blew its top. The rounded dome tumbled headlong down the mountainside, twirling like a tossed coin.
Tufts of flaming hay swirled across the blackened foundation. Bouquets of flame stuck to the molten instrument consoles. The Lady was in agony. She was blackened, on her knees. Her very bones were going. The mirror of Venus, stamped flat by the boot of Mars.
When dawn broke, the black helicopters had already been and gone. The local civilians were standing around the wreckage of their telescope. Their prized handiwork was a total, tragic loss. Some of them were spraying bits of flaming hay with fire extinguishers. Most were just wringing their hands, mourning in small groups. It was an awful thing to lose a major scientific instrument. It was a cultural calamity. Gonzales offered Van a pair of binoculars. Van refused them.
Van didn’t care to look at people as the smoke rose from their hopes and dreams. One of them was almost certainly Dottie.
“You gotta try this MRE, Van,” said Hickok. “A man who’s lost some blood needs to eat a meal. You learn that in combat.”
“Is that dogface chow?” said Wimberley, sniffing at it.
“No, man, this stuff’s brand-new. It’s civilian MRE. Made in Brazil! Got this sort of pork loin and pineapple thing going, these really spicy black beans . . . and it’s self-heating!”
Van put the food across his knees. He used the fork left-handed. The food tasted great. In Brazil, people could really cook. Why did Brazil never have wars? he wondered. Brazil was a really big country on a big American continent. How come Brazil had no enemies? It didn’t make sense.
Brazilians didn’t invent much. Well, that explained it.
Van had more oxygen. His tank was low.
“Here comes the enemy plane,” said Gonzales.
“Okay,” said Hickok, climbing to his feet. “Now this is the part that an Air Force boy likes best.”
The Indian actor was flying his newly purchased jet plane. He had just taxied off from the DeFanti airstrip. It seemed a little odd to Van that two groups of Chinese and Indian spies would fly off across the Pacific Ocean together, all polite and collegial, inside the same aircraft. But they were people of two practical nations, thought Van, and the trip here hadn’t been their idea.
For a moment, Van suspected that the Boeing was out of range of the overriding radio signal. But when it came to forward air-controlling operations in the mountains, Michael Hickok knew his stuff.
The jet banked hard left and roared over them so sharply that the mountainside shook. Birds exploded from the forest.
Wimberley had taken off his helmet to eat. He jammed his hands over his ears.
Hickok caressed his joystick. The captured jet spewed black smoke and rose in a steep arc. “Looka that,” crowed Hickok. “I got ’er. Boys, this is sweet.”
“Okay,” said Wimberley in a stunned, small voice. “You just used that black box and you pulled a jet out of the sky.”
Van and Hickok exchanged wary glances. Wimberley and Gonzales had not attended the Summit in Virginia. The general public was not at all up to speed about cyberwar projects to control civilian jets.
“Yeah, I did that,” Hickok told him, grinning. “Now watch me put ’er into a slow loop over the telescope ground zero there. That aircraft is chock-full of Indian and Chinese space spies. Can you imagine the nerve of those clowns? They’re supposed to hate each other! Everybody knows they hate each other! But here they are, infiltrating our own country, and picking on my favorite satellite. I have got them right by the throat!”
Wimberley stared at Van. “You can