Skyfall

One engine stuttered, of the two that were firing. The flame went off, came on again, stopped a second time, clouds of unburnt particles gushing forth. The other motor roared on for some seconds before the first one started again, firing now with its full-throated flame to match its companion. Pushing evenly together to raise the acceleration, the speed, higher and higher.

But they were not supposed to be firing now. A short burn had been programmed to start the core body in orbit downwards towards the empty Russian steppes where the engines could be fired one last time to slow it and bring it down for a soft landing.

This was not going to happen. The continuous firing brought the rocket into the atmosphere, sooner, faster, the acceleration climbing until the engines stuttered and were silent, out of fuel.

Within seconds the force of the atmosphere struck it and heated it, the molecules of air impacted by the metal rushing downwards at five miles a second. The fittings on its end, the jacks and arms, glowed red, then white, then were torn away in droplets of molten metal. The pressure was uneven and the great rocket wobbled, was buffeted by the thin atmosphere, began to turn.

It had been designed that way, to be stable nose up upon takeoff, stern down for landing. With ponderous ease it turned end for end so that the great plug nozzle of the engines came first. This was made of ablative material and intended to resist the heat of re-entry. But not this speed, not this heat. It glowed, hotter and hotter, then began to break away in burning fragments. Short moments later the entire structure of the rocket began to disintegrate.

Too late. It was going too fast. The incandescent mass of fire and metal punched a hole through the atmosphere, through the clouds.

Towards the Earth, towards the growing, expanding landscape below.

A last look at the evening sky for Sir Richard, a last breath of the evening air. The first stars on the horizon, a star above, almost directly above, a shooting star perhaps.

Not a star, a light, a flame, one moment a point, then a disc, then an unbelievable flame-shedding spear pointed directly at him, dropping to impale him.

For an instant his horrified face was bathed by the red glow, the grounds, the building, all illuminated as by the light of a terrible red dawn.

Then it struck.

Six hundred tons of rocket struck the Earth at five miles a second and turned this frightful speed into energy, heat energy that exploded outward with the force of an atomic bomb. One moment the plant, the towering flats of Cottenham New Town, the Library Gardens, the shops, the pubs, were standing there. The next instant they were not.

Buildings, bricks, bodies, trees, furniture, cars, everything was destroyed in a fraction of a second, vaporized in the heat, torn apart and wiped from existence. Half the town and all the factory went in the first explosion. The rest followed so closely behind that there was no time, no warning. Perhaps some were momentarily aware of the incredible sound of impact and the light that followed; perhaps a few knew that something impossible had happened and had the beginning of a burst of fear that was destroyed before it could be formed.

After the explosion came the shock wave. The air, compressed far beyond its capacity to absorb more energy passed on its tremendous charge an instant later, an expanding canopy of death that radiated in all directions. It passed through a flight of birds a mile away and, unmarked, they all fell dead from the sky.

On the ground it was a rolling barrage of invisible guns that lifted up the ground, the trees and hedges, the plants and animals and buildings and obliterated them, pulverized them as it passed. It ran over the Tanner farm and mixed man, cow, milk, machine into a hideous jumble, exploded the house of Giles' wife and son the same instant.

The dart was never thrown, the game never finished, the holiday plans left unfulfilled. Irene would have to worry no more about her Post Office account. There would certainly be no Blackpool this year.

There would be no life, no future, no existence for twenty thousand nine hundred and thirty-one men, women and children. Where this town and all its bustling life had been there was now only a seared wasteland, a desert of death in England's green countryside, decently concealed for the moment beneath the shroud of dust and smoke that hid the horror below.

23

GET 07/52

President Bandin was in the toilet, in his own private toilet when someone pounded on the door. He burst out seconds later, holding the towel, his hands still wet, fire in his eye. Bannerman was standing there, white faced, almost trembling. This in itself was enough to stop Bandin, who never in his life had expected to see that leathery skin drained of blood, the man suddenly as old as his years, older. The words came quickly.