“Because I need to.”

WuzzGart looked into Ross’s eyes, then he looked to PlineyElder. “I’ll bet you a thousand credits it’s a woman.”

Both men laughed.

“You have my thanks, gentlemen.” Ross put the velvet bag in his suit coat pocket, nodded once more, and headed for the exit.

Chapter 13: // Epiphany

“Sir! We need immediate air support! We are being overrun!” The panicked face of the lieutenant filled the monitor, his head distorting on-screen as it darted side to side. Staccato gunfire chattered in the background.

“Air support? Where the hell do you think you are, son, ’Nam? You’re in Illinois.”

“We need help!”

“Where’s your commanding officer?”

“Dead, sir!”

The Major sat in a windowless operations center thousands of miles away in an office park in Bethesda, Maryland.

The screen broke up for a moment. “We need evac! We have been surrounded and are being overrun!”

Gunfire in the background was suddenly much louder. There were screams of wounded and the sound of roaring engines—a sound that The Major was all too familiar with.

“Son. I need you to calm down and provide a concise report.”

“Sir—”

“Report, goddamnit!” The Major hit the MUTE button on the console and turned to a nearby technician. “What group is this?”

“Optimal Outcomes, sir. An outfit out of Dallas.” The technician brought up a map on his own screen that showed a satellite view of a planned community. “They’re bivouacked in a half-finished housing development in Huntley, Illinois.”

“Panicky fuckers.” He let up on the MUTE button.

The lieutenant was taking deep breaths. “We are being engaged by unmanned elements of the Daemon.”

“Razorbacks?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How many?”

“Unknown, sir. Our sentries were taken out by what appear to be radio-guided darts. If we had tactical radar to detect incoming—”

“What do you want, a Phalanx cannon? You’re not a military base. You were supposed to lay low and wait for orders.”

There was more mayhem and screaming in the background. The lieutenant on camera leaned out of frame and fired several bursts from a weapon. “Somehow they found our location. We are being overrun, sir!”

“Yeah, I can see that. Have the local police gotten involved?”

“I don’t know!”

The Major hit the MUTE button again and spoke to a nearby technician. “I need a mop-up crew down there, ASAP. Get them government credentials, and make sure they round up all the Daemon equipment they can find.”

He switched off the MUTE button and spoke to the screen. “How effective were fifty-caliber rifles against these things?”

“Sir?”

“The Barrett rifles. Are they effective against razorbacks?”

The guy tried to control his breathing. “Yes. Yes, sir. But the snipers were quickly taken out by return fire. Deadly accurate return fire.”

One of the technical advisers next to The Major leaned in. “Could have been acoustical triangulation or infrared muzzle-flash detection systems. They can track a projectile back to its source. It makes sense if Sobol was dipping into our research pipeline—we’ve got some prototypes in the field.”

The lieutenant shouted. “Sir! We need help. Now!”

Several Weyburn Labs consultants were still scribbling notes.

One of them leaned into The Major’s ear. “The inertial flywheel on the razorback that powers the blade arms is a problem in close quarters. Hundred thousand rpm rotation. If it gets cracked, it’ll turn into a shrapnel bomb. Ballistics tests show it’s safer to take them out at a hundred meters or more.”

More note taking.

“Sir! Can we get help?”

“We just have a few more questions, son. . . .”

“Goddamnit, sir! We are dying!”

“Well, then. You’re dismissed.”

Suddenly the lieutenant glared into the screen. “You fucker!”

There was nearby screaming, and the lieutenant turned to open fire offscreen. There were desperate shouts for help and the roar of engines. Then the lieutenant fled—a swift blur crossing the screen on his tail. After a few moments, of loud engine noise, there was suddenly comparative silence.

The Weyburn Labs team in the control room also sat quietly for several moments, still jotting notes.

“Have we determined yet whether these razorbacks are remotely piloted, autonomous, or semiautonomous?”

One of the consultants responded. “Surveillance recordings show them vacillating between fight-or-flight behavior and advanced problem-solving.”

“Which means?”

“Which means razorbacks can apparently operate independently or under the remote control of a pilot or remote AI—perhaps a cloud-based logic. A single operator could conceivably shift his control from one razorback to another—like jumping between avatars in a game.”

Another technician nodded. “They’re a promising concept. Razorbacks don’t require ammunition, and they terrify the populace. It’s the perfect crowd control weapon. Surgically precise.”

The Major pondered this. “And electronic countermeasures to their remote control?”

“The ultrawideband used by the Daemon makes ECM difficult, but not impossible. The trick is that we need EWOs in place with specialized equipment—but we don’t know where the Daemon is going to hit us next. And using the equipment jams our own communications.”

One of the technicians butted in. “Excuse me. Major, there was a Mark V security blimp over Huntley, too. It disappeared minutes before they came under attack. Whatever got it came in under radar. We just examined the blimp video. Looks like drone aircraft. Small. Fast. Not very sophisticated. It might even have simply rammed the airship.”

“So it’s got an air force now?”

Another one of the Weyburn Labs guys responded, “The darknet philosophy seems to be large numbers of small things—swarms. In this case, microjets. We’ve found the wreckage of several near sites where our surveillance drones have disappeared.”

“UCAVs?”

“Smaller and easier to manufacture. They use electromechanical systems; microscale propulsion with no moving parts. It doesn’t require the precision manufacturing of turbines. It utilizes thermal transpiration to conduct a hydrocarbon fuel through aerogel membranes into twin Swiss roll jet engines. That helps to maintain core combustion temperature in tiny jet engines. Quite fascinating if you—”

One of the consultants pointed at the monitor console. “Look.” There on-screen stood a figure dressed in a black riding suit and black motorcycle helmet, staring at them from two thousand miles away.

The Major leaned into the microphone. “Loki. You seem to be hunting my people. . . .”

“Major. The last time I saw you, you were . . . oh, that’s right. You were shooting Roy Merritt in the back.”

The Major gave a sideways glance to the assembled researchers, then spoke into the microphone. “A darknet lie.”

“Of course. Facts no longer exist. Everything is a ‘point of view’ now. I can’t wait to burn your house of bullshit down.”

“Apparently Dr. Philips was naïve to think we could rehabilitate you.”

“You realize your little campaign against darknet communities is doomed, don’t you? I know what you’re going to do before you do it.”

“You killed some people and wrecked some equipment. So what? There’s no shortage of trigger-happy dipshits willing to make a hundred bucks an hour. In fact, if you kill them, we don’t have to pay them their completion bonus.”

“I will find you, Major. And what’s in your mind will lead me to your masters. Their industrial empire is about to come to an end.”

The Major chuckled. “You’re not the first freedom fighter whose head I’ve put on a stick, Loki. You all fall in the end—usually betrayed by the very people you think you’re saving.”