For We Are Many [calibre 4.99.5]

I looked at Charles and Ralph. The expression on their faces said all that was needed. Someone was going to pay.

* * *

Homer had come out of his funk, but he was still very fragile. Bill was gone, after promising any help we might want in building anything we might need, up to and including Things That Explode. Yep. Angry.

Charles kept an eye on Homer while Ralph oversaw the construction of the replacement donut. Homer was gradually able to unwind himself and sit,

but he would go into panic attacks from time to time. I suggested we enable his endocrine controls, but he shook his head emphatically.

“It feels too much like what they did to me. It’s a leash. It’s just a different leash.” He waved a hand helplessly, trying to find words. “It feels like claustrophobia or something. Just the idea of something controlling me makes me want to run around the room, screaming.”

“Okay, Homer. Whatever you feel best about.” Charles put a hand on his shoulder. “We’re here for you, whatever you need.”

Homer nodded to us and tried a smile, but it wasn’t very reassuring.

I had not attended the latest UN session. If VEHEMENT had noticed that they’d lost their puppet, I didn’t want to give them any more information. Let them think we’d all destroyed each other.

Meanwhile, I looked over Guppy’s report. The tight-beam signal had come from what originally might have been a small military outpost high in the back country of New Zealand. It had some pretty hefty communications capability, judging from the visible hardware. Per my orders, the drones avoided using SUDDAR scanning, as that would have been detectable.

Instead we stuck to passive surveillance techniques. Visual and infrared pinpointed occupied areas and gave an approximate head-count. Audio snooping picked up some of the conversations, the contents of which left no doubt about who was in residence. This appeared to be VEHEMENT central.

Even if they operated on a cell structure, without their tech central they wouldn’t be good for much in the future.

I remembered the early hacking attempt, which had also originated from New Zealand. It was reasonable to assume that this had been an ongoing war for longer than I’d realized.

Fine. War declared. But I wanted to be certain I caught the right people.

The mastermind behind so complex a setup wouldn’t be that easy to track down. I was sure there’d be at least one more hop to his location.

I would take whatever amount of time, use whatever resources I needed, to catch him. Without limit. And when I did, there would be a reckoning.

29. Emergency

Howard

April 2190

Vulcan

[Emergency at Landing]

I turned briefly to look at Guppy; but good news or bad, Guppy looked like Admiral Ackbar. No help there.

I turned back to my video call with Dr. Sheehy, said, “Gotta go!” and disconnected. I picked up the video connection that Guppy was holding for me. It was Stéphane.

“Howard, we’ve got a group of raptors that somehow got through the fence. They’re running through town, looking for prey.”

“Last known location?”

Stéphane gave me a cross-street. I knew that security would be converging on the location, but the raptors could move fast—much faster than a human.

I had only two busters close enough to be useful, but I had all the drones that were part of the automated surveillance system. As well, several backup units were parked on top of the Administration building, sitting in their cradles. I activated the backups and sent all units to the reported location.

Halfway there, the two busters blew past the flock of drones, doing close to Mach One. I was now juggling eighteen separate units. Even with most of them slaved to a primary, it was hard to keep track. I dismissed my VR and frame-jacked up high enough so that I could multi-task.

The busters were coming up on the reported location, but I couldn’t see any raptors. I split off a couple of drones and sent them up to a kilometer altitude, activating high-res, infra-red, and motion-detection sensors.

Security personnel were approaching from several directions. There were only two streets that the raptors could be on, and there was no sign of them.

Could Brodeur have been wrong? A quick check of the video surveillance streams eliminated that possibility. Either raptors could become invisible—

wouldn’t that be a kicker—or they’d found somewhere to hide.

I brought all the drones down to a few feet above ground and started a search pattern for raptor prints. The drones took off in different directions, following anything that was even remotely print-like. Chivvying all these units was really wearing on me—even in frame-jack, I had to keep track of what orders each unit was following—so I guess I don’t feel too bad that it took me a couple of missed cycles before I realized one of the units wasn’t responding.