Ian McDonald - Desolation Road

“Show me.”

The drone sat in her ear all the way to Dr. Alimantando’s house and up in the weather-room, thick with dust and littered with half-empty teacups left by Limaal Mandella, her attention kept wandering out of the four windows in airborne pursuit of the drone.

“This is it, ma’am.” Dhavran Mantones pointed to a patch of the faded red scrawling at the precise apex of the ceiling. Arnie Tenebrae stood on the stone table and peered with a hand lens.

“What is it then?”

“We believe it is the Temporal Inversion formula which will render the time winder and anything within its sphere of influence timeloose and chronokinetic. We’re going to try it out this evening.”

“I want to be there.”

Where was that droning coming from? Arnie Tenebrae was beginning to fear it originated from within her own head.

The sound even filtered down to the sub-basement of the Bar/Hotel, where a clandestine resistance meeting was in session. Five souls gathered around a brown wooden box: a radio transmitter built into a packing crate.

“Pray they don’t intercept us,” said Rajandra Das, mindful of crucified television news reporters.

“Have you got them yet?” asked Santa Ekatrina Mandella, dedicated anti-authoritarian. Batisto Gallacelli thumbed the transmit switch again.

“Hello, Parliamentarian forces; hello, Parliamentarian forces; this is Desolation Road, can you hear me, this is Desolation Road.” He repeated his incantation several times and was rewarded by a crackle of voice. The antiliberationists pressed close around the hand-set.

“Hello, this is Free Desolation Road, we warn you, exercise extreme caution, Whole Earth Army in control of temporal displacement weapon: I repeat, be alert for time displacement weapon. Urgent you attack soon as possible to save history. Repeat, urgent you save the future: over ..

The voice crackled an answer. Alone of the five, Mr. Jericho was not concentrating on the static syllables. His attention was fixed on some point beyond the roof.

“Shh.” He palm-downed for hush. ‘There’s something up there.”

“Over and, out,” whispered Batisto Gallacelli, and cut transmission.

“Do you hear it?” Mr. Jericho turned slowly, as if trying to maximize a little lost memory. “I know that sound, I know that sound.” No one else could even hear it through tile, brick and rock. “Engines, air engines… wait a moment, Maybach/Wurt engines, push-pull configuration! She’s come back!”

Heedless of pass laws and illegal congregations, the counter-revolutionaries boiled up out of the sub-basement into the sfreet.

“There!” Mr. Jericho pointed to the sky. “There she is!” Three pinpricks of light winked in midbank and swelled with a breathtaking shout of power into three shark-nosed propeller airplanes. In arrowhead formation the three airplanes pounded over Desolation Road, and as they passed the lead plane snowed leaflets. The streets were instantly full of running guerrillas. They separated the five counter-revolutionaries and drove them into shelter. Mr. Jericho glance-read a leaflet blowing past him in a cloud of dust and prop-wash.

“Tatterdemalion’s Flying Circus Has Come to Town,” it read. “Bethlehem Ares, Beware!” The innocence made him smile. Thirty years old and she still hadn’t learned worldly wisdom, God bless her. The flying circus looped over Desolation Road and came in at roof height. Six ripping explosions tore across the town. Mr. Jericho saw blue-white beams flash from the airplanes’ wingtips and he whistled in blatant admiration.

“Tachyonics! Where in the world did she get tachyonics from?” Then he was hurried into the Bar/Hotel and the soldiers took up rooftop positions to return fire.

As she led her formation in across the railroad lines for a strike at Steeltown, Persis Tatterdemalion realized she was having the time of her life.

“Angels green and blue,” she sang, “commence second attack run.”

There had been no escaping. Ed was gone and gone was Ed, but she could fly over the edge of the universe and never be far enough away to forget about him. Even in Wollamurra Station there had been no escaping. There had been a filling with craziness instead, a craziness that found her two crop-spraying punks out of jobs to fly the two stunters she’d bought from Yamaguchi and Jones, equip them with the very latest in military technology, and make a crazy, name-of-love attack first on a Bethlehem Ares Steel train chuffing across the High Plains and then on the slag-black heart of the dreamgrinding Company itself, fortress Steeltown. She waggled her wings and the flying circus closed behind her.

She loved the way the soldiers ran like chickens from the snap snap snap of her tachyon blasters. She loved the purity of the blue-white beams and the bright flowers of the explosions as she destroyed offices, storage tanks, trucks, bunkers, draglines, solar collectors. She’d loved it from the instant she’d pressed the firing buttons and sent two Class 88 haulers, fifty wagons and two engineers up in a blaze of subquantal fusion.

“Boom!” she sang, and pressed the firing studs. Behind her three parked cargo ’lighters exploded in gouts of fire.

“Whee!” she cried, and banked the Yamaguchi and Jones for another pass. Her radio crackled and a familiar voice hissed in her ear.

“Perssiss, dear, it’ssss me. Jimmmm Jericho, you know?”

“Yah, I know,” she shouted. Her tachyon blasters cut long smoking gashes through Steeltown. Chimneys collapsed, pipework tumbled.

“Immmportant infffformation. Desssolattttiion Road isss under occupattttion, repeat, under occupattttion, by the Whole Earthhhh Army Tactical Group, repeat, Whole Earthhhh Army Tactical Group. Company isss defffeated, repeat, defeated.” A fan of missiles broke from ground and homed in on her.

“Kaboom!” she said and vaporized them. “Defeated?”

“Yesss. Am sssspeaking to you ffffrom the Bar/Hhhotel on illegal rrradio sssett. Sssuggessst you attack military targetsss, repeat, military targetssss. Arnie Tenebrae in command.”

She passed low over Desolation Road again and saw the trenches and dugouts. She flew over the bluffs and saw there the crucified bodies and the sunshiny helmets of the soldiers in their cliffside positions. Arnie Tenebrae? Here?

“Angel Group, reform,” she ordered.

“Good girl,” hissed Mr. Jericho, and broke transmission. Angels green and blue fell into arrowhead formation behind her. Good kids. She briefed them on the new situation.

“Check,” said Callan Lefteremides.

“Check,” said her brother Venn.

Angel flight turned as one and closed on the Whole Earth Army positions. They flew scant metres above the desert. Wingtip tachyon-blasters snipped at the defences, missiles burst from the revetments toward them.

“Angel green angel green, missile on your…” A Long Brothers Type 337 “Phoenix” surface-to-air missile, fired in panic by one Private Cassandra 0. Miccini, caught Venn Lefteremides, and blew the tail clean off his Yamaguchi and Jones. Angel green rolled into a death spiral and crashed in the middle of the abandoned new housing complex beyond the railroad lines.

Persis Tatterdemalion thought she had seen the flutter of a parachute. So, Arnie Tenebrae, this is for you. She turned the nose of her airplane Steeltownwards and thumbed the firing studs.

Arnie Tenebrae watched the air strike from her window with curious admiration.

“They’re good. Awfully good,” she mused as the two survivors of Tatterdemalion’s Flying Circus skipped in at rooftop height to launch another tachyon strike into Steeltown.

“Ma’am, don’t you think you should move away from such an exposed position?” suggested Leonard Hecke.