The sky over Juiz e Flora turned red and then a killing rain of plasma fell.
***
From the rear facing camera in the Jabberwock, it looked like the Groundwire exploded into a red cloud. And from the cloud issued a blinding tapestry of red lightning that grounded itself into whatever offered the quickest route to ground; buildings, cars, trees, people. Worse were the globules of burning stuff that fell out of thin air where the red cloud formed. Some of them were the size of beach balls and wherever they landed, fires sprang up and metal melted.
“What was that?” Gibson said, staring at his screen. Borstein was staring at it in stunned silence.
Forgetting the camera was even there, Gibson tried to raise Javelin Base again. “Javelin, what the fuck was that? Is that what it was supposed to do?” On the screen, the red cloud was growing. It was also drifting with the winds—toward a residential sector.
“We…” The transmission was spotty from the interference from the Groundwire. “We don’t know.”
“Oh God.” Borstein muttered as the cloud flared with more killing lightning and plasma rain.
Gibson reached up and switched the monitor off. For a full minute the only sound was their breathing as they both tried to keep from weeping.
The next thing the world heard ws Gibson’s choked voice. “When they sent us up, they said ‘they killed some of ours, let’s go get the bastards’. But… oh god. God… it’s us. We’re the bastards.”
