Rods from God

At 02:47 fireballs erupted into the sky from central London. Eighty sequential sonic booms, less than three seconds apart, shattered glass from Guy’s Hospital to City Hall. Enormous balls of flame leapt from the top of the Shard into the sky at a nearly vertical seventy-five degree angle.

The phenomenon resulted only in noise and broken glass, no injuries. The military rushed around in jeeps and the media (naturally) posited terrorism. Yet several days passed without any definitive explanation.

Answers came at last in the form of a weak repeating FM radio broadcast, of all things.

“Hello, citizens of Great Britain. This is Commodore Schmidlap of the Sealand Royal Navy, broadcasting from twelve kilometers off the coast of Suffolk.

Several nights ago, Sealand launched a series of projectiles at Mach 30 into low Earth orbit, using the structural girders of the Shard as railguns.

Sealand is now capable of rapid orbital kinetic bombardment anywhere in the world.

For years, Great Britain has laughed at HRH Prince Michael and Sealand’s sovereignty. Consult your records on Project Thor if you have any doubts about our new, one hundred percent legal kinetic defensive capability.

Stay away from our micronation. You have been warned.”

200 words. For this week’s Sunday Photo Fiction prompt.

[Don’t worry, no one can yet reach LEO with a railgun…you need about 10km/sec of delta v, roughly Mach 30. Current rail guns can get to Mach 7 (plus or minus).

Now the SpaceX guys could probably put a Thor system up…legally. Hmmmm.]

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