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Manmade tsunamis raced towards the Mumbai coast along with a massive cloud of radioactive fallout. 
     

 
     
     
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    T he satellite moved above the brown-green subcontinent as it headed southwest on its orbit. The camera’s optics silently zoomed on the slowly drifting mushroom cloud over the waters of the Arabian sea, just northwest of Mumbai. As the brown pillar of dust and smoke lazily drifted east, the optics on the satellite zoomed in further on the city. Sea water had flooded the roads and turned them into gridlocks. Panicked people were attempting to make their way through the water as rumors and fears of nuclear fallout spread through the media. The satellite noted all the damage and carnage, but in the serene desolation of space, it was a muted sight.
     
                    
    T he scene was anything but serene down below. At the operations center for the Indian aerospace command, the nodal agency for the combined Indian space based assets, chaos was taking hold. 
    “Tell me what happened!” Air-Marshal Malhotra ordered. As men around him hurried trying to get their assessments put together, Malhotra stared at the large screen in front of him showing the live video feed of what the satellite was seeing from above Mumbai. He looked at the corner of the screen as it showed various orbital parameters of the satellite in question. He saw that the bird overflying Mumbai at the moment was RISAT-2A , a recently launched satellite. RISAT, or Radar Imaging Satellites, were one of the newer generation series of satellites to be put under the Indian military command following the war with China. They were attrition replacements.
    For Malhotra, it was very much a sense of déjà-vu. It was as though he was witnessing the very same acts that had started the bloody war with China. The same opening moves in a game of devastation. When that war had started, it had been a younger Malhotra at the helms of the newly formed Indian aerospace forces, operating out of the city of Bangalore, in southern India.
    A much younger self… he rubbed his sleep-deprived eyes.
    And so it was. Over the two weeks of conflict that had taken place from the mountains of Ladakh to the cities of Bhutan and the high seas off the Indonesian coasts, space based assets had proven critical. At the time, however, India had been caught flat-footed on the military reality of space in modern war. It lacked redundancy in space assets which meant that every loss was crippling to satellite coverage. India had also lacked offensive space weapons such as anti-satellite or ASAT weapons…and the Chinese had not.
    Malhotra was on point when one of his precious birds had been taken out over northern Tibet by Chinese ASAT missiles later in the war. And it had almost cost them everything.
    Following the war, Malhotra had enjoyed an extended stay in charge of his beloved space units. Longer than most people in such positions. But he had been the right man with the right operational credentials to expand Indian military presence in space. In the last three years, he had initiated numerous crash programs to enlarge the command to the level where it actually was a full command, operated jointly by all three services. Several launches and deployment of military satellites had been authorized by the government. RISAT-2A was one of the products of this expansion program. And of course, he had also been promoted to fit the required rank for anyone commanding this force.
    But that war with China had been a “legitimate” war.
    What the hell is this? Malhotra wondered as he watched the black-and-white picture on the main screen showing the mushroom cloud losing its shape as it broke over the Indian coast.
    “What’s the prevalent wind conditions out there?” He asked one of the weather people sitting at their operations consoles.
    “East by north,” was the quick reply.
    “Fallout is heading inland,” Malhotra noted