"Charles Stross - Missile Gap" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

Beyond the Indonesian island chain Australia and New Zealand hang lonely on the edge of an abyss of
ocean.
The map pans right: strange new continents swim into view, ragged-edged and huge. A few of them are larger
than Asia and Africa combined; most of them are smaller.
Voice-over:
Geopolitics was changed forever by the Move. While the surface topography of our continents was largely
preserved, wedges of foreign material were introduced below the Mohorovicik discontinuityтАУbelow the
crustтАУand in the deep ocean floor, to act as spacers. The distances between points separated by deep ocean
were, of necessity, changed, and not in our geopolitical favor. While the tactical balance of power after the
Move was much as it had been before, the great circle flight paths our strategic missiles were designed
forтАУover the polar ice cap and down into the Communist empireтАУwere distorted and stretched, placing the
enemy targets outside their range. Meanwhile, although our manned bombers could still reach Moscow with
in-flight refueling, the changed map would have forced them to traverse thousands of miles of hostile airspace
en route. The Move rendered most of our strategic preparations useless. If the British had been willing to
stand firm, we might have prevailedтАУbut in retrospect, what went for us also went for the Soviets, and it is
hard to condemn the British for being unwilling to take the full force of the inevitable Soviet bombardment
alone.
In retrospect the only reason this was not a complete disaster for us is that the Soviets were caught in the
same disarray as ourselves. But the specter of Communism now dominates western Europe: the supposedly
independent nations of the European Union are as much in thrall to Moscow as the client states of the
Warsaw Pact. Only the on-going British State of Emergency offers us any residual geopolitical traction on the
red continent, and in the long term we must anticipate that the British, too, will be driven to reach an
accommodation with the Soviet Union.
Cut to:
A silvery delta-winged aircraft in flight. Stub wings, pointed nose, and a shortage of windows proclaim it to be
an unmanned drone: a single large engine in its tail thrusts it along, exhaust nozzle glowing cherry-red.
Trackless wastes unwind below it as the viewpointтАУa chase planeтАУcarefully climbs over the drone to capture
a clear view of the upper fuselage.
Voice-over:
The disk is vastтАУso huge that it defies sanity. Some estimates give it the surface area of more than a billion
earths. Exploration by conventional means is futile: hence the deployment of the NP-101 Persephone drone,
here seen making a proving flight over land mass F-42. The NP-101 is a reconnaissance derivative of the
nuclear-powered D-SLAM Pluto missile that forms the backbone of our post-Move deterrent force. It is slower
than a strategic D-SLAM, but much more reliable: while D-SLAM is designed for a quick, fiery dash into
Soviet territory, the NP-101 is designed to fly long duration missions that map entire continents. On a typical
deployment the NP-101 flies outward at thrice the speed of sound for nearly a month: traveling fifty thousand
miles a day, it penetrates a million miles into the unknown before it turns and flies homeward. Its huge
mapping cameras record two images every thousand seconds, and its sophisticated digital computer records
a variety of data from its sensor suite, allowing us to build up a picture of parts of the disk that our ships
would take years or decades to reach. With resolution down to the level of a single nautical mile, the NP-101
program has been a resounding success, allowing us to map whole new worlds that it would take us years to
visit in person.
At the end of its mission, the NP-101 drops its final film capsule and flies out into the middle of an
uninhabited ocean, to ditch its spent nuclear reactor safely far from home.
Cut to:
A bullтАЩs-eye diagram. The centre is a black circle with a star at its heart; around it is a circular platter, of
roughly the same proportions as a 45 rpm single.
Voice over:
A rough map of the disk. Here is the area we have explored to date, using the NP-101 program.
(A dot little larger than a sand grain lights up on the face of the single.)