Afrika watches the Earth roll beneath her, green and blue and beautiful.  She remembers someone telling her that the old space stations and shuttlecraft had very few windows in order to discourage astronauts from wasting time Earth-watching.  She knows what that means - she really should be getting her homework done.  But the Earth is so beautiful..... she wishes she could visit, but her space-born body would not take the stresses of gravity unless encased in a restrictive unromantic metal harness, and even then her heart might not stand the strain.  And, of course, there is also the fact that Heaven’s citizens are classed as undesirables Dirtside (God she hates that term, Earth is beautiful, it’s just some of its inhabitants that aren’t), and denied entry to many nations, sometimes forcibly, occasionally fatally.  There are only a handful of sympathetic nations - most notably Australia, with its wide open spaces suitable for landing and launching shuttles - who support Heaven’s cause.  You see, Heaven is at war with Earth.  And Afrika is one of Heaven’s forgotten baby Angels.

            Afrika thumps away on the ancient, unforgiving cardboard keyboard for another five minutes, typing up her biology notes, watching idly out of the porthole as the silver specks of the Scavengers come up from the weather front over Central Europe, growing in size until they assume form as decommissioned - and in one case, outright stolen - space shuttles, jury-rigged and patched-up, missing heat tiles that will preclude them from ever returning to Earth - much like Afrika herself - and marked with the fading logos of former owners - NASA, ESA, CIS, BritSpace.  They have black-painted bellies and cloud-speckled wings, optimistically hoping to avoid detection from above or below.  Their cargo bay doors are held ajar with magnetic straps and are bulging with the detritus of orbit -  old satellites, lost tools, booster stages, o-rings, astronaut gloves and plastic bags of urine, bits of spacecraft and space stations that were never meant to become detached.  And occasionally, the odd fully-functioning brand-spanking new satellite, which is a bit naughty really and where some of the current trouble stems from.  Afrika watches, distracted from her school work, as the Scavengers dock at the waving metal umbilicals on the far side of Heaven, and another wave of three, flying v-formation, approach from over the horizon.  She senses something is not quite right.  She looks at her watch.  It is 1600 Heaven Time.  Scavenger shuttles work in eight hour shifts, they are not meant to be back until 2200.  But here they come, another three now, making nine in all, eleven with the two cannibalised in the repair deck.  They are coming home like sailors trying to outrun a storm.  There is, thinks Afrika, a storm on the way.  A storm of the worst kind.

            The low but unmistakable wail of the alert siren begins to sound throughout Heaven, calling to all its little Angels.  Afrika should go to her designated alert station, close to the repair decks, where Heaven’s only planetary-capable craft, the Gabriel, is missing from its bay.  The Gabriel is Dirtside, picking up vital supplies and new converts, new citizens for Heaven, and there it will stay, while the storm rages in the sky.  So for Afrika and the Angels there will be no escape if this storm rips off the roof and rattles the doors and sends them all spiralling down to Kansas, Krakow, Kinshasa or Karachi, like so many rag-doll Dorothys.   Anywhere but Heaven anymore, Toto.....

            No escape - no point in going anywhere, then.  The chaos pattern by which this commune is run does not facilitate easy military responses or even feasible emergency instructions.  Too many questions why, too many consultations and co-operatives, no decisions, no orders.  No one will miss Afrika at her muster station if she stays put, in her room, by her portal, with her cardboard keyboard computer and her books and her clipframed posters of Malcolm X and Martin Luther and Ice T, her box of coloured beads and combs for her dreadlocks, now secured behind her in a chunky rainbow ponytail as thick as a utilities cable duct.  Right here, she will have the best view of the action, and if a stray laser or missile should choose to target her particular room pod, well, why worry about dying when you already live in Heaven?

            She watches, mesmerised as the pursuers cross the horizon. driving the Scavengers before them.  A flight of seven AF-2000s, frighteningly elegant, sunlight glinting off squeaky clean canopies and the sunglasses of the squeaky clean Dirtside boys within, riding 250,000 kg of thrust into orbit to do battle with Heaven’s Angels.  The AF-2000 ‘Terminator’ Afrika identifies from her recognition lectures, Know Your Enemy.  It is nothing more than a giant engine and missile launched from the cargo bays of enormous transport jets high in the stratosphere, where they assume attack profiles and target on a single pass with the big missile hung from a pylon on the plane’s belly, almost as big as the aircraft itself.  If the missile fails or misses then the ‘Terminator’ is left with a suite of laser and maser weapons with which to dogfight similarly equipped Scavenger shuttles, those who have made it home even now dumping their loads in the retrieval bays and preparing to head back out.

            Brave Heaven boys and girls, thinks Afrika.  She would like to be one of them but her father has other plans for her.  It would, of course, be impossible - like a lot of things that Afrika wants.

            The last Scavenger shuttle, lagging behind on the right leg of the ‘v’, will not make it to safety.  Afrika watches in horror as the battle begins, eerie in its total silence.  A red laser makes a brief, retina-burning connection between the nosecone of the lead AF-2000 and the floundering Scavenger, like an electrical contact jumping a gap.  The rear of the shuttle explodes with a cold fire, extinguishing as fast as it burns, and it veers off its homeward course, turning belly-up and starting a slow, terrible tumble into the atmosphere, end over end over end.  There will be no ejection, no escape pod, no parachutes.  Three of Heaven’s Angels will die fiery deaths in the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere.  Dirtside 3, Heaven 0.

            Afrika is suddenly aware that she has dug her nails into the palm of her hand, leaving three tiny bloody crescents in the pale skin.  A tear in her flesh for each of the brave Angels now living their last moments.  She watches, whispering prayers to ancient spirits for their well-being and survival, but nothing short of the Hand of God scooping them from the sky will save them now.  She watches the Scavenger burn up, unable to tear her gaze away from it, morbidly fascinated.

            And then, the station is rocked by missile fire, as the Terminators sweep in, overwhelming.  Many more of Heaven’s brave Angels will die today.....

Excerpt from Transcript Document 33/H/MOD - Briefing for AF-2000 pilots on  offensive combat operations - Background Intelligence - Orbital Platform ‘Heaven’.

            The present state of conflict that exists between the space platform Heaven and the Allied Administrations of Earth (comprising Reunified United States of America, Federal Republic of Eurasia, Democratic Republic of China and African Pan-Continental Congress) has its roots in the ostensibly peaceful but none the less effectively disruptive eco-protests of the late 1990s.  During this time, these protests became increasingly widespread, riding a wave of public opinion, and resulted in several humiliating climbdowns by large governments and major multinationals.

            Emboldened by these successes and supported by anonymous wealthy benefactors, a fledgling eco-movement known as the Angels purchased the abandoned orbital platform Ursa from the Russians for a undisclosed sum.  The sale was treated with some amusement at the time, in the same way that the US government offered scrap reclamation rights to the debris left by the Apollo missions on the moon’s surface.  However, the independently funded Angels also purchased decommissioned NASA shuttles and paid a commercial satellite launching facility based at Baikonur to put the first team of Angels in orbit, to make their home on the space station.  Disaster struck them several times during the early years of the project, with the inhabitants of the station being completely wiped out, to the best of our intelligence, at least twice.  But these people were swiftly replaced by volunteers from the support network the Angels had established on earth, and it was not long before the first children were born in orbit.  The platform was christened Heaven.

            Utilising the refurbished shuttles the Angels began to expand and extend Heaven, by scavenging for scrap metal and electronics in the massive amount of debris that half a century’s worth of space exploration had left in orbit.  During the period 2015 - 2020 Heaven grew in cubic capacity by a factor of ten.  It began to experiment with arcologies, regenerative biosphere systems, to a degree of success.  Although Heaven uses regular resupply of core materials from Earth (depending solely upon the services of the Gabriel shuttle, donated by one of their mysterious benefactors on the occasion of his death in 2022) it could be said to be basically self-sufficient to all intents and purposes.  In 2025, with an estimated habitable volume somewhere in the region of a naval aircraft carrier and a population of 5,500 people, Heaven declared itself a Republic and independent from Earth with its own administration, President and Constitution.

            The move was treated with worldwide dismay and derision, but at the time, little hostility.  It was not until military intelligence sources pointed out the strategic position of Heaven, occupying as it were the ultimate high ground, that it was considered that the independence of Heaven, indeed its very existence, was regarded as undesirable.  The offers of Heaven ambassadors to all United Nations countries was rebuffed, and a state of open hostility became apparent.  Skirmishes broke out between legitimate space missions repairing satellites and Heaven Scavengers attempting to recover them.  There were some fatalities, most notably the Amaru incident where a Chinese team were killed by an over-defensive Scavenger crew.  At the time of writing a draft notice is in place at the UN calling for military action against Heaven, which is being vigorously vetoed by Australia and Canada.  This draft notice is expected to be implemented within days.

            The influence of Heaven over the world’s youth through myth and media manipulation cannot be underestimated.  It should be treated, in all seriousness, as a second combat front.  Digital broadcasts of music video and psychedelic imagery (suspected to contain powerful subliminal messages) are beamed down constantly and best efforts in jamming them have not succeeded in keeping them from becoming available on TV channels all over the world.  Such an onslaught has led to the creation of a suspected ‘underground railroad’ where (generally) young people escape to prepared sites and are ferried by the shuttle Gabriel to Heaven.  Australia and Canada, the fiercest critics of aggressive policies against Heaven, are also the main offenders in allowing this sort of activity within their borders.  There exists across many countries a dangerous and regrettable groundswell of support for Heaven which manifests itself in student sit-ins, peaceful protests, fund-raising concerts and occasionally violent rallies.  Conversely, the iron curbing of protest voices in countries such as China does little but increase support and harden resistance.

            At present an Allied force is preparing for a campaign of kinetic combat solutions against Heaven using a specially designed aerospace fighter, the AF-2000 Terminator, with weapons systems optimised to knock out telecommunication transmission facilities with minimum loss of life.  However, initial assessments expect this campaign to be costly in terms of casualties on all sides............

            “Any questions?”

            A sea of eager faces meets Captain Adamski’s end-of-briefing.  Young faces, frighteningly clean shaven.  He can smell cologne over the tang of boot leather and the stale sweat from over-used under-washed flying suits.  Hands thrust into the air like tailwings.

            “Lieutenant Conrad.  Go ahead.”

            “Sir.”  Jeremy Conrad is nineteen years old.  This will be his first combat mission.  He is the first pilot to be trained exclusively on the AF-2000, he knows nothing else except for the turboprop and jet trainers where he took his first fledgling flights.  He is the first space pilot without the fighter pilot baggage that the others bring with them.  “Sir, what sort of resistance can we expect from Heaven?”

            “Good question, Lieutenant.”  Captain Adamski paces the briefing room floor, the animated projected schematic of Heaven dopplering his face with cyber lines.   He is a veteran of more wars than he cares to remember.  Fifty years old, body looks half that, big moustache and tight thin lips, subtle cluster of silver crosses on the breast of his dress uniform marking him as a Son of Jesus the Twice Risen, postmillenial Christian fundamentalists.  The irony of his role in the planned destruction of Heaven would be lost on him.  “Our intelligence is, frankly, sketchy.  This will be only the third time that orbital combat has been joined with Heaven.  The first used retrofitted shuttles and high-altitude fighters operating at the edges of their envelopes.  The second was a test run for a single AF-2000.  Neither could be considered to be successes.  Aircrews have encountered weapons and obstacles from protective fields of junk fired from garbage compactors, to shuttle-mounted lasers, to proximity bombs, to slam missiles made from fuel drums filled with scrap metal fired along electromagnetic rails.”

            “They’re using shotguns to defend the farm,” someone jokes, and a ripple of laughter spreads through the assembled pilots, easing the tension a little.

            Adamski is stony faced, then the merest hint of a smile tugs at the corner of his thin lips.

            “Farmers with shotguns. That’s a good analogy.  Let us not forget that we are dealing with civilians here.  Determined civilians, but civilians nonetheless.  And very little match for a well-trained force of God-fearing - and I’m including you Islam boys at the back there - “ He tips a nod at the two Islamic Republic of North Africa pilots sat together near the back of the room - “ - professional airmen.  You are the Hammer of God, boys.  This is a heathen, pagan target.  They must be stopped before they spread more of their godless word down here, infecting our children’s’ minds.  Good luck gentlemen.  And may God be with you.  Whichever one you believe in.”

            Jeremy Conrad isn’t too sure which God he believes in, not sure even if there is one.  As he sits in the web seats in the womb-like hold of the C-180 en route to Cape Clinton, his fellow pilots invading his personal space to either side, he thinks about Captain Adamski’s religious rhetoric, and it makes him feel uncomfortable.  After all, their target is ‘Heaven’, their enemy the ‘Angels’, their ‘godless words’ are peace, love and harmony.  He’s not overly familiar with the teachings of Jesus but wasn’t he basically saying the same thing?  He’s heard the words of the Angels so many times on their pirate teevee and radio broadcasts.  He was at a squadron party the night an Angel hacker, operating with impunity from his lofty perch, brought the WorldNet to a halt and broadcast the Heaven mantra over every single page and site and media in seventy-two point neon green Helvetica - WHO WANTS TO LIVE IN HELL WHEN YOU CAN COME TO HEAVEN?  He’d thought it was pretty funny and very clever.  His military and political masters obviously didn’t.  It offended them to the extent that they invested vast sums in the development of an aerospace craft whose sole purpose is the destruction of Heaven, and they decided to send up this poor flyboy, barely out of training, to show them just how unfunny they thought it was.  That’s pretty pissed off, thinks Conrad.

            They’re still loading the Terminators, two by two, in to the holds of the Great Whites when the pilots step on to the hot dry tarmac of Cape Clinton, 800km south of San Diego in the former Mexican territory of Baja California.  Security is tight.  The base is blanketed with sensors and jamming to prevent Heaven’s unwelcome attentions, but there are powerful optical devices aboard Heaven that will see this operation being prepared on the ground, weather permitting, that no cloaking device can shield them from.  Until this morning the Great Whites and the Terminators were in vast underground bunkers, safe from all eyes except spies on the base (and there could be sympathisers, you never know) and have only been in the sunlight for one hour while frantic launch preparations are made.  Time on the ground, in full view, gives Heaven chance to prepare.  Angels needs to be taken by surprise.  Conrad’s boots touch Californian tarmac for no more than thirty minutes.  Then, they are airborne again, secured  into their armoured cockpits, minnows inside the belly of the great fishes, being carried up, up, into battle.

Transcript of transmission from Heaven broadcaster “Doctor Zenith” 0200 GMT, February 4th, 2026 :

“Attention, Citizens of Hell!  This is Doctor Zenith, Heavenly Host of the Highest H-office - ha!  Trans-er-mitting to you across the ether, proclaiming the way of the Angels to gravity-based mortals.  Listen to the music, listen to the vibe, you know it makes sense.  Make love, not war, sure thing soldier!  Listen to me Dirtsiders - free yourself from the shackles of your oppressors, from your paper gods and their Good Books, from the ultimate bonds of gravity, and come up the pipe to Heaven.  There’s room for all at this inn - we ain’t turning anyone away.  Hey, if it looks a little crowded, just build your own house.  Come and study at the Orbital Academy of Shamanic Studies - now hosting guest lecturers from Siberia, Haiti and the Sahara - the Heaven Psound Pstudio for the study of Psychoactive Psound Waves - rave, rave, till you’re in your grave - learn the ins and outs and ins again of the Tantric Sutra - and the Church of the Orgone Accumulator, trapping UFOs and cloud-bursting all over you, Dirtsiders.  And you can one-stop-shop for all your recreational chemical needs at the Farside Farmacy.

            “Yeah.  Sex, drugs, rock and roll.  It’s Heaven.  It’s above your head.  What the fuck are you waiting for?

            “This is Doctor Zenith signing off, with one last word to the terrible Terminator pilots on their way up the Pipe to meet and greet.  Don’t do it, wiseguys, or the Trashman’ll get ya.

            “Sayonara!”

            “Turn that fucking shit off!  Who’s listening to that crap?”

            Blue Leader sounds seriously pissed.  Jeremy Conrad toggles his radio switch and flips channels, tuning away Doctor Zenith’s radical foreign policy.  You’re on a mission, for Christ’s sake, Jeremy, get a grip.  If Blue Leader discovers it was you polluting the net.....

            “Blue Four, take point.”

            Take point?  Jesus!

            “Uh, roger that.  Manoeuvering.”

            Heaven is still out of sight, over the horizon.  The flight skims the upper atmosphere like a handful of well-thrown stones, hidden by the Earth’s curve for as long as possible, denying Heaven an early glimpse of its attackers.  Conrad thrusts and vectors and takes point, the rest of the flight forming a shallow ‘v’ behind him.  He feels as if he is strapped to the front of a very large, very aggressive suicidal animal, charging across the sky, ready to slam headlong into any obstacle that dares get in the way.  He doesn’t feel like a daring young man anymore.  He feels like he’s cannon fodder.

            But I have a masters degree in astrophysics, a part of his mind mutters incredulously.

            Shut up, dogmeat, says another.

            Heaven rises over the pale blue rim of the place it calls Dirtside.  Conrad watches it apparently climb free of the Earth’s embrace, an enormous patchwork construction of pods and wings and prefabricated units, scaffolding, half-finished construction, satellite dishes and yawning decks, a psychedelic concoction of pseudo-organic growth cast in metal and plastic.  Lights flicker in the depths of its superstructure and in the jewels of its arcology domes.  In front of the station, several thousand metres beyond the attack line, three scruffy space shuttles make a mad dash for sanctuary.

            “Blue Four, this is Blue Leader.  Engage enemy craft.  I repeat, engage enemy craft.”

            No simulation, no VR.  Conrad glances into his HUD and sees a wireframe of the shuttle, overlaid with a targeting grid and bordered by weapon selection icons.  He selects ‘laser’ and fires - simple as that.  A nanosecond pulse lights up the rear of the shuttle and knocks it from the sky.  Strike one.  Battle is joined.

            “Blue Leader, Blue Leader, green for mission profile, I repeat, all go for mission profile.  For God, and Mother Earth.”

            “What happened?  Am I blind?”

            “I don’t know.  Try to lie still.”

            The girl’s voice is soft and gentle, her touch the same.  It’s not hard to do just as he’s told.

            “Am I dead?”

            She chuckles.  “Well, you’re in Heaven, among the Angels.”

            “What’s on my face?”

            “Bandages.  You were lasered in your cockpit.  Your squadron abandoned you and we picked you up.”

            “No, that’s not true.  They would never do that!”  His hands tear at the bandages, pulling them free and letting the cool gel packs fall from his eyes.  Light sears him as if sand has been thrown in his face.  He blinks through barbed wire and sees a young girl stood over him..  Black, deep ebony skin, fine Egyptian features and a striking head of colourful dreadlocks floating free in a Medusa nest.  She moves around the room with her legs tucked underneath her, secured by nylon straps, weightless.  He is secured to a seat by a strap across his lap.  Looking is hurting too much.

            “I am Afrika,” she says.  A name or a philosophical statement?  He shuts his eyes and allows her to rebandage his face.

            “The doctor said these should stay on for a day or so.  There should be no permanent damage.  You’re very lucky.”

            “Do you make a habit of blinding fighter pilots?  I thought such weapons were banned under the Geneva Convention.”

            “Really?  Then why was your aircraft armed with them?”

            “My aircraft - “

            “Is in one of our repair decks now.  One of the surviving decks that didn’t get blown up by your friends.”

            “Oh.”  He sits there, in his personal darkness, in silence.  This teenage girl makes him feel very small and very stupid.

            “How did you repel the attack?”

            “Garbage screen.  Very basic, very effective.  Took out three Terminators, four including yours, other three pilots weren’t so lucky.  The remaining three headed for home.”

            He absorbs the news of the deaths of three of his comrades.  He realises he can’t remember all their names.

            “Did we - were many - people killed?”

            He hears a heavy sigh.  “As if you cared.  About one hundred and fifty.  More trapped in the wreckage of the Cloud Wing.”

            “I’m - “  She puts her hand over his mouth.

            “Don’t.  Don’t say it.  Don’t insult us.”

            He sits in silence for a while.

            “You’re Afrika Marko, aren’t you?  Declan Marko’s daughter.  President Declan Marko’s daughter.”

            “I am Afrika,” she says, simply.  “And yes, my father is President of Heaven.”

            He shifts in his restraint.  It is a simple strap and trident clip.  He suspects he is secured for his own safety rather than hers.  “And I am a prisoner?”

            “Of war?  I don’t know.  Heaven’s never declared war on Earth, so I guess not.  It’s not our style.”

            “Will you let me go?”

            “I should think so.”

            “In my aircraft?”

            “Don’t push your luck.  It’s in pieces already.  You can go on Gabriel’s next home run.  Might dissuade anyone else from trying to shoot us down.”

            “Then gain, it might not.  They did leave me here, didn’t they.....?”

            “They sure did.”

            “Then maybe I shouldn’t bother going back.”

            She makes a funny noise, and he can almost hear her smiling.

            Later, when the bandages come off and sight, if a little blurry, returns to his eyes, Afrika leads him through the station in response to his request to meet Doctor Zenith.  He finds his zero-gravity legs as they move down narrow corridors of exposed wiring and service piping, through junctions of frighteningly adhoc welding joints and  improvised airlock systems, across three-dimensional cubic spaces where the Angels commune, hanging off walls and gantries like colonies of bees.  Conrad is filled with wonder at the sights and sounds and (especially) the smell of this incredible place that he had, on orders,  tried to destroy.  And now he was to meet the man on whose psycho sound waves he rode into battle.  He finds a man of thirty rendered a double amputee, completely limbless, by an aircraft crash in his youth, perfectly at home in zerogee, and sealed into a narrow pod of electronics, CD decks, amplifiers, synthesisers, timers and transmitters, operating everything with lightening speed using the rig strapped to his head, a chin-mounted tongue-keyboard and various implements gaffa-taped to his pink stumps.  He is clad in a shocking luminous green swimming costume and is completely hairless, Angel wings tattooed on his bald temples,

            “Sorry I can’t offer you a seat,” says Doctor Zenith.  “I hear you got something to say.”

            Conrad nods.  He looks out of Doctor Zenith’s tiny portal to Earth, or Dirtside as he’ll call it from now on.  Everyone on Heaven has a window.  There are no laws against time-wasting.  There are very few laws at all.  Conrad looks down at his home, Mother Earth, and says, “Yeah, I’ve got something to say.”

            “Hear this hear this hear this Dirtsiders.  Got one of your bravest ‘n’ finest here with me today.  Ain’t got no gun to his head, oh no, he’s here of his own vo-lition.  And he’s comin’ right at you.  Take it away, JC.  I’ll provide the vibes.”

            Over a soundtrack of industrial clamour mixed with the sounds of a gestating rainforest and expiring dinosaurs, Jeremy Conrad speaks slowly and clearly to the people of Earth.

            “My name is Jeremy Conrad.  I am nineteen years old. When I got up this morning I was Earth’s first purpose-trained space fighter pilot, ready to kill - or die - on order.  Tonight, I sleep with the Angels.  You see, I have been welcomed into Heaven.  Let me tell you about beautiful Afrika and the Shamanic Academy......”

FIN