Necahual — Tobias S. Buckell

Originally published in So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy (May 2004)

We drop out the wormhole towards a mess of a planet by the ochre light of a dying sun. From the cant of orbit, upside down and even then through virtual portholes we can see tiny spots of white light blossom in the atmosphere.

We're liberators.

Each one of those little blossoms of light is an impact. A chunk of rock with a controller vane on it, predestined for a certain point. It clears out the enemy's ability to hit back above the stratosphere.

I know from past experience that sunsets here on New Anegada won't be the same for a long while. As I a child I'd sat on porches near the coast to watch the magnificent sunsets of my own world for many months after The League came to liberate us...