General Kong of the People’s Army had managed to avoid the use of true strategic weapons even in the losing days of the war, successfully arguing that there was nothing to be gained by deploying such things while the fledgling Confederation controlled the skies. Now, after the war was over, he found himself once more staring into the fiery face of mass death and destruction and contemplating unleashing it.

That wasn’t the irony, of course. No, the irony was that after years of arguing against unleashing such force on his nation’s enemies, he was now forced to contemplate its deployment on his own home soil.

That level of irony was such that it should not exist in a sane universe, but then he had never once believed the universe to be sane.

“Shift air defense to cover the major cities and strategic areas,” he ordered. “Keep them from our homes as best you can.”

“What are you doing, General?” the Chairman hissed. “You’ll uncover huge sweeping portions of our nations!”

“I am well aware of that,” he growled in return, turning to an aide. “Bring me the strategic deployment computer.”

The man paled, shock echoing across his face, but he saluted and ran off.

The Chairman didn’t get it nearly as quickly as the young aide, but he did work it out eventually and paled almost as much under his sagging features.

“You can’t!”

“I must,” Kong countered wearily.

“No, it is too much!” the Chairman hissed. “I will have you removed.”

“You are welcome to try,” Kong said simply, “and if you can find someone with a better plan, I will voluntarily step aside for them. Until then, however, I will do exactly what I must to ensure that we do not end here.”

Tracking and intercepting a ballistic target coming in from orbital velocity is an exercise in frustration for the most part. The issue isn’t with determining the speed or direction of the object; rather it lies in trying to devise a system that can do all that, then code an intercept vector, launch a weapon, and take out the target in the precious few seconds you have to react.

It helps, however, if you’re watching for the target before it appears and already have weapons more or less locked and ready to deploy. Thousands of tracks sliced the sky to ribbons of smoke and flame, but from the ground thousands more reached up and began to swat them mercilessly from the skies in all corners of the planet.

In some areas, particularly places like the Middle East, where missile attacks were reasonably common, the counter assault was remarkably effective. In others, the worst being over entirely uninhabited areas like the Australian outback and the continent of Antarctica, the response was . . . lacking.