Then – it was a morning in New York – in orbit around every inhabited world and moon in the Solar System, cannon platforms appeared. Humanity’s slower-than-light GUTdrive warships had no hope of blocking the Squeem’s hyperdrive convoys.
And on Earth, rocks began to fall.
‘They came in too fast for the planet’s impactor defences to cope with,’ the Rememberer whispered. ‘Rocks from the Solar System’s own belts of asteroids and comets, sent in at faster than interplanetary speeds. And they were targeted. Obviously it was the Squeem’s doing.
‘Harry and his family, stranded on Earth, got an hour’s warning of the Manhattan bolide. Harry’s father knew New York. He got Harry off the island through the ancient Queens-Midtown tunnel.
‘The bolide came down right on top of Grand Central Station. The impact was equivalent to a several-kiloton explosion. It dug out a crater twenty metres across. Every building south of Harlem was reduced to rubble, and several hundred thousand people were killed, through that one impact alone, on the first day of the invasion. Harry saw it all.
-Xeelee: Endurance, "Remembrance"