For We Are Many (Bobiverse #2)

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.

I pulled up the video log for that unit, and—wow, that’s what the inside of a raptor mouth looks like. Good to know.

The raptor pack had gone to ground inside someone’s storage shed. I guess one of them decided he should take out the flying thing before it raised the alarm. Even acknowledging that they couldn’t know about radio, that was intelligent behavior. Bill and I would be discussing this one.

Meanwhile, I sent all units to surround the shed, dropped my frame-rate to real-time, and called Stéphane.

The drones and busters arrived and took up positions around the shed. And the moment they did that, the raptors made a break for freedom. They dodged through the circle of drones, leaped a fence, and made a bee-line for the perimeter.

It would be a coin-toss whether any of the security people could get into position to take them out, and at the speed the raptors were moving, there wouldn’t be much opportunity. Hopefully civilians would have heard the alert and had enough sense to stay indoors.

“Stéphane, have they killed anyone?”

“Not to my knowledge, but we’ll be checking out this hou—no, never mind, I see some faces looking out the window. Someone just gave me a thumbs-up. So no, no casualties.”

“Okay. They’re out of range of you guys now. I don’t have enough space to get my busters up to speed anyway, so I’m going to let them go. Maybe they’ll spread the word…”

“Tabernacle! You think they can talk?”

“Erm, probably not, but maybe they can teach caution through their behavior. Oh, and guess what? Seems raptors can dig, too. Wonderful.” I looked down at the hole through which the raptors were wriggling. It must have been seven or eight feet deep at the low point. Looked like we would be upgrading the fences. Again.

*

“Things just get more and more complicated.” Colonel Butterworth had his head propped up in one hand, elbow on his desk. “Cranston and Valter are starting to look like the smart ones.”

The colonel didn’t expect an answer. I think he just needed a drinking buddy. I had a cognac from Sam’s template—I was really getting used to the taste—and I just nodded. Truthfully, the raptor invasion hadn’t resulted in any fatalities, and we were already starting on getting the fences fixed. Metal rods driven down twenty feet, spaced six inches apart, would take care of the digging issue.

And Bridget—Dr. Sheehy, that is—had a device almost perfected that could detect parasite infection through body odor. No blood tests required, just wave your hand over it as you go by. Those would be installed in all building entrances as soon as she had all the, er, bugs out. Longer-term, we hoped to thin the parasites out to the point of eventual extinction.

Meanwhile, she’d come up with a name for the thing—Cupid Bug. Because, as she explained, it went for the heart. I had to admit, I appreciated Bridget’s sense of humor.

I also had several small batches aging of something that might turn out to be a replacement for Jameson. Or for paint thinner. Time would tell.

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