Roy Merritt nodded to him and spoke in his familiar even tone. “Everything’s going to be okay, sir. I need you to stay calm and tell me where the bad guys are. . . .”
The Major stood in a command-and-control trailer lined with dozens of LCD screens and control boards. Board operators and drone pilots in headsets sat at each station monitoring every aspect of Operation Prairie Fire from above.
The Argus R-7 surveillance blimps were barely eighty feet long, but they could loiter over a theater of operations for up to two weeks using the solar cells covering their upper surface. One of the aerospace firms in their group had developed it and had sold hundreds to dictatorships in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
Flying at sixty thousand feet with no telltale contrail, they were all but invisible to the naked eye, and their sensitive long-range cameras could pinpoint and monitor individuals or entire communities, especially when combined with telecommunications and purchasing records. They weren’t invisible to radar or other sensors, but it was the public they were meant to monitor, not military opponents.
On the screens before him, the Argus cameras showed FLIR and color imagery of civilians in darknet communities in several Midwestern states. The forms on-screen were fleeing, fighting, hiding—but in all cases losing as the private military contractors squeezed them ever closer to their final stand.
Standing next to him was the towering South African colonel Andriessen. “Good news from your special unit.”
The Major nodded. “Yes, but they’ve lost their transport.”
Short loud beeps and red lights activated on several control boards.
“And it looks like this will be wrapped up fairly soon as well.”
The Major nodded as the beeping continued to spread along the flight line. Several flight officers pulled off their headsets and started talking urgently with their tech officers. Some LCD screens nearby were no longer showing stable close-up shots of street fighting, but instead showed whirling blurs, then blackness, then blurred lights again.
The Major walked over to a nearby flight officer who was struggling with his controls. “What’s going on? Why have we lost video?”
The officer turned off the alarms and pointed to another screen showing a row of red numbers next to critical measurements. “The temperature readings on our avionics system just red-lined. I think we’ve got a fire onboard.”
The tech officer leaned in. “Our fire suppression system did activate. So, give us a moment. . . .”
The Major looked in both directions down the line of drone pilots. There were red lights flashing on half the boards now.
The Colonel gave him a concerned look.
He started walking down the line, seeing more and more black screens. Temperature readings and pop-up messages reading Fire!
Within a minute virtually all of the control stations were blinking red. The video screens black. What started out as a frenzied chorus of urgent talk had turned into a reading room of technicians flipping through three-ring SOP manuals.
The Major shouted down to the Colonel, still standing where he’d left him. “What the hell’s going on, Colonel?”
The Colonel looked at all the blank screens and said nothing.
“How the fuck can this happen? The Daemon penetrated our encryption somehow and overrode our avionics.” He grabbed a headset sitting on the nearby board and hurled it onto the static-free tile floor with all his might, shattering it into several pieces. “Goddamnit! What is this, fucking amateur hour? I thought we put together the best goddamn electronic countermeasures team possible.”
The Colonel apparently thought it wise to just listen until he was asked a direct question.
The entire line of board operators was now looking up at The Major. They were shut down—blind to a complex multidimensional operation that required close coordination across six states.
The Major burned holes into them with his stare, and then stormed out of the trailer. “Colonel, get these drones back on line or get more.”
“They won’t get here in time.”
“Then get amateur astronomers with binoculars in a fucking Piper Cub—but get me real-time information on my battle space. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Major.”
They were now walking among several large trailers placed within an aircraft hangar—thick bundles of power cables running from each.
A Korr Military Services communications officer stuck his head out of a nearby trailer. “Major! You need to hear this.”
He extended a pair of radio headsets.
“It’s coming over all our encrypted channels.”
The Major hesitated before putting them to his ear. He heard a vaguely familiar voice speaking over the comms. . . .
Ross listened to the booming voice, echoing across the town. It seemed to be coming from the sky and was loud enough to be heard over the sound of nearby machine-gun fire. . . .
“Attention enemy force: you have unlawfully invaded this community. Drop your weapons and surrender and you will not be harmed.”
The gunfire and explosions had paused. There was sudden calm as the voice in the sky spoke again, this time in a foreign language that sounded vaguely Slavic—yet not Russian. It was nonetheless a voice Ross recognized as that of Roy Merritt.
The sheriff meanwhile had his HUD glasses back on and frowned in confusion. “Where is that coming from?”
Ross pointed into the street. “Him.”
They both looked down and saw the Merritt avatar with his hands at the edges of his mouth “shouting” his terms to the entire town.
“But it’s coming from the sky.”
“Hypersonic sound.” On the sheriff’s look, he explained, “High-frequency audio beam projection. I’ll show you later—just listen. . . .”
They could now hear laughter emanating from the private military contractors arrayed around the town, standing behind their ASVs or crouching in nearby buildings.
“You have violated the popular will of a critical mass of the population—which empowers me to take you into custody—by force if necessary.”
A distant shout. “Fuck you!” Followed by gales of automatic weapon fire.
“You have been warned.”
As Ross watched, Merritt’s avatar raised its hands and looked up into the sky—where Ross suddenly saw a grid of numeric D-Space call-outs appear and slowly grow larger. As they did, physical objects came into sight—what could only be described as shimmering mirrored “dots” or tiny spheres coming down from above. It was impossible to say how large they were because he had no scale reference, but from his limited view looking up from between bank pillars, he saw at least five—arrayed in an orderly pattern. Merritt’s avatar lowered his hands, bringing the dots even lower. They appeared to be spinning very fast, shimmering.
The sheriff looked up, too. “What are they?”
Ross clicked on one of the call-outs and read its properties. “Hot mirror . . . faceted high-rotation inertial gyroscope . . . see Fire-Strike. . . .” He clicked a link. “One-hundred-kilowatt solid-state laser . . . infrared.” He looked back at the sheriff. “I think the shit is about to hit the fan. . . .”
A bullet whined past and ricocheted off the wall.
Ross ducked but then heard Merritt speak again. “Network citizens! I need your help to identify the enemy. Aim any D-Space pointing device at enemy units until they throw down their weapons and raise their hands in surrender. You must respect their surrender. You will be scanned for honesty after this is over. Please keep pets and small children indoors. Thank you.”
Ross and the sheriff exchanged puzzled looks, but Ross put down his AK-47 and clicked on his D-Space pointer. It appeared much like a laser dot, but was only visible in D-Space. He cautiously peered out from behind the pillar and aimed his finger at a machine gunner sitting in the turret of the nearest ASV, bringing the dot to bear on the man’s head.