As he finally ran toward the ship’s weapon control center, he came across two frightened sailors. They had been off duty but they had gone back to their station to collect some magazines they had left behind. They had found the crew unconscious and been unable to wake them. Since then they had found several other people asleep. But even as they spoke John could see they were starting to flag as well, their eyelids drooping and their speech starting to slur. But he didn’t have time to argue with them. He cut them off, and told them he needed their help.

  “You,” he said, pointing at one of them, “get to the bridge immediately, wait there for me and make sure it is secure. Don’t lock the doors, but make sure no one comes or goes without the orders of a senior officer.” He waited for the man to react, but he was clearly already struggling to stay awake, as was his colleague. He watched them a moment, mildly sympathetic, and then changed his tactics.

  “You know what, I order you both to sit down … right here.” They both looked at him and the relief on their faces was palpable. Mumbling their acquiescence, they lowered themselves gingerly to the floor. They were asleep by the time their arses touched the cold steel.

  At the lightest possible dose John had doled out, he estimated he had about three hours. Any of them who had eaten a larger portion at dinner might be out for closer to six or seven. Longer than that and they would be in danger of cardiac arrest and possibly even paralysis. That was not desirable, but it was also unavoidable.

  He came to a halt in the weapons con and stepped inside. John approached the main control board and noted the flashing red light on the console. The weapons officer had been proactive and diligent. Clearly he had sensed that he was unable to stay awake and had reacted accordingly. Unable to maintain his station, he had activated the ship’s alarm and locked his console. If the ship’s communications had still been active, a warning would even now have been sounding at every Admiralty outpost in the world. Only the captain and first lieutenant knew the code to unlock the weapons console. Not even the weapons officer knew it. That way, if he thought he was going to be coerced into activating the ship’s weapons systems, he could remove himself from the equation by activating the alarm.

  Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for humanity as a whole, John had long since hacked the captain’s personal files. He had learned the code and now he pulled the weapons officer out of the way and reinitiated the console. It had to be reactivated on the ship’s bridge as well, but first John pulled the launch key from officer’s neck and inserted it into its sacred slot.

  Next he placed a small device he had co-opted from his own supply of tools and gadgets. It could loosely be described as a servo, not wholly dissimilar from one found in a remote control car, only it was a little more capable than that. While it was, in fact, one of the stupidest robots you would ever have the pleasure of meeting, it was still phenomenally flexible, versatile, and only an inch tall. And it was strong for its size. It had three limbs, each with three knuckles, and a pincer at each end with rubberized sides. It could grip, open, climb, twist, and do pretty much anything you could imagine an inch-high robot doing, as well as quite a few things you probably couldn’t. But most importantly, it could do all these things remotely, acting as an Agent’s eyes and fingers when they couldn’t be there in person.

  Setting the small drone next to the key, he opened a mental link to it and instructed it to grip the key with one of its pincers and brace its two free legs so that it could turn the key on his command. Then he ran from the room, wrenching the door shut and bending its handle sharply so that it would stay that way. That should stop any person who was somehow still awake on board from interfering. Stepping over the two sleeping sailors sitting in the corridor, he ran to the nearest staircase and started to ascend to the bridge once more. His internal clock told him he had one hour. Good, he was ahead of schedule. He only hoped the GBMD system was ready too.

  On the bridge he sat and waited. Once the Weapons Console Key was turned in unison with the Command Key he now held, John could operate all the systems he needed directly from here using programmed viruses he had implanted long ago. But like everyone else, he now had to wait. If they did not take out all the remaining hubs in their next attack, then whichever was left would have a mandate to return fire. Its presence obviously revealed, it would not only release the viral pathogen they knew was coming, but also bring its laser systems to bear on any and all military targets it could before it was also destroyed. Thousands would die, hundreds of thousands, under its blistering attack. So John knew he had to wait for the Americans to launch, or allow the satellites to pass overhead unhindered until they were in place once more.

  The irony was that the only way he would know if the Americans had launched would be because the AI satellites would tell him. So he sat and he listened. He listened to reports and information that the AI and his fellow Agents were supplying while they were within range of the now broken chain of satellites around the planet. He listened to Lana’s accusations of treason as she documented them formally. She was now accusing Shahim as well, which was interesting, but she was also accusing Mikhail of being an accomplice. Oh dear, that was nearly half the group, and Mikhail was from an Empire that was, historically, one of Princess Lamati’s greatest allies. But then, John thought, so was Lord Mantil, the personality that possessed the body of Agent Shahim Al Khazar.

  John sympathized with Lana with a smile. I guess you just can’t find good help these days, how will the universe’s genocidal maniacs survive, he thought.

  While waiting for confirmation of a launch from the US, John also listened to the latest reports from Agent Preeti Parikh as she made her way through Pakistan toward the last place Agent Shahim had been spotted. John frowned a little at the thought. That should be interesting. He had little against Agent Preeti, but she was one of them and he did not spare her too much pity as he thought about what she was walking into. That said, he had faced a surprised Agent once before, and while that element of surprise had been enough to clench victory for him, it had still been a far closer fight than he would have liked.

  *

  Fires still burned in the remnants of Peshawar Army Base as Preeti Parikh drove up. She had ‘borrowed’ a Pakistani officer’s uniform and now she walked through the base with a flashlight, searching for her missing colleague. She answered questions and shouts from the other soldiers patrolling the base in perfect Iranian, which was, interestingly, the most common language in western Pakistan. She was carefully making her way closer and closer to the bunkers and silos in the northern part of the base. They were the last place that Shahim had been seen, but they were also under incredibly heavy guard, and she was having to navigate through the maze of tank groups, machine-gun emplacements, and artillery teams that now surrounded them. After several laps walking in ever decreasing circles around the silos, she had finally made her way to the inner cordon. This was the innermost perimeter around the silos, and there was no way she could just walk passed it. Searching her databases, she came up with a name.

  “Good morning, Sergeant, I am part of General Abashell’s team. He is expecting me.” They all knew the reputation of the general, and immediately set to locating him. The man was a legend, but more than that he was a veritable asshole and known for his furious temper. They didn’t even know he was here, but in the confusion after the attack, every unit in the vicinity had responded. It had been a mess, but they had secured the area. It was a little late, perhaps, as the cat was out of the bag, so to speak, in fact, six of them were, but there were ten more HATF-VI on the base, and they did not intend to lose track of any more of them.

  As various junior officers inside the complex scrambled to locate a general that wasn’t even on-site, Preeti feigned impatience, eventually stepping up to the guard and saying, “Well, have you found him yet?”

  The guard shook his head and was about to speak when she carried on, “Incompetent man, find him and tell him that his daughter Sowmya is here.”

  The man balked. The only person more feared than General Abashell was his daughter. She implicitly carried with her all the power of her formidable father, and was not without considerable military experience and standing herself. Waiting a moment, she assessed the affect she’d had on the poor man and then said, “Fool, I will find him myself.” and she pushed passed him into the inner base.

  On any other day the guard would have known which senior officers were and were not on-site and no amount of posturing would have convinced him otherwise. But this was no ordinary day, and the guard post, in fact the entire inner perimeter, had only been reestablished a few hours ago. So Preeti’s practiced impudence overrode the guards’ hastily given orders and they looked after her with a mix of fear, shock, and confusion as she walked into the silo complex.

  Unknown to her, the man Preeti truly sought was actually watching her. She was regularly updating the AIs with her position when she could so Shahim had known she was coming from miles away. And now here she was. He was also dressed in a Pakistani army uniform, and also speaking either perfect Iranian or Urdu as circumstances required, so he had managed to blend in with the soldiers as they arrived to defend the base. Now he stood with his back to the small lantern that his guard troop was using while manning the inner perimeter not far from the checkpoint. Silhouetted against the lamp, he watched Agent Preeti head to the bunkers and smiled. While the satellites still roamed overhead, he could do nothing. But thanks to him there was now a yawning gap in those satellites and it was fast approaching.

  He felt the AI’s call to the Council just as she did. He knew that the gap in the satellites’ coverage was now over the Indian subcontinent and coming his way. The AIs could not hope to get Pei Leong Lam online from China so it must have good reason to be calling a Council meeting when it could not get quorum. Shahim hoped he knew the reason, he knew it should be happening any time now.

  He watched as Agent Parikh stepped off the path from the checkpoint and discreetly looked up. She angled her face slightly westward toward where she knew the nearest satellite was even now heading for the horizon. Shahim would not look up to join her in Council. He had no answer to the questions they wanted to ask him, and no intention of making some up. But he listened in on the meeting as he had earlier when the first satellite had been destroyed. Soon the others would join as well.

  He saw immediately that it had indeed begun. The AI conveyed images to the Council without emotion as the eyes of its three remaining satellites tracked the launch of two hundred missiles from each of the GBMD sites in Florida and Hawaii. While the remaining Council members argued over the source of this new attack, the AI prepared to begin destroying the projectiles using the multipurpose laser systems on each of its three satellites. But as this went on, Shahim noticed Agent John Hunt go silent and his avatar become perfectly still. Hello, this is going to be interesting, thought Shahim as a new set of alarms went off in the meeting. There was a third launch cluster being detected, this time in the western Pacific. The satellites were tracking forty-six objects in the new launch, but they all seemed to be coming from the HMS Dauntless.

  “Wait,” said Agent Lana, “the HMS Dauntless? Isn’t that your ship, Hunt?” she stared at him, the extent of his betrayal sinking in. Well, no point maintaining pretenses anymore, thought John and Shahim in unison.

  As the three banks of missiles drove up through the atmosphere to intercept the orbits of the remaining satellites, John’s avatar smiled. He then raised his virtual middle fingers in a very human gesture at Lana and allowed himself a long, hearty laugh before vanishing from the meeting, disconnecting from the Council for the last time.

  Shahim, meanwhile, started to walk toward the Agent standing off the road, walking around behind her and deploying his weapons array. She sensed a person approaching but assumed it was simply another guard and so she disconnected her laser link with the satellite, which was rapidly disappearing over the horizon anyway, and closed her array. She was still in shock over the fact that they were under attack again. Without much thought she turned toward the approaching steps, thinking more about the satellites than the man she could hear coming.

  Sorry Preeti, thought Shahim as his hands powered toward her head. Time slowed as he focused on the attack, his systems readied and braced. He had been here before, he thought, but before he had been the one caught off guard. His systems blithely factored in every mistake he had made into his tactical options, and also John’s errors. John had waited a fraction of a second too long, allowing his hope that he might avoid the fight to delay his attack for the millisecond it had taken Shahim to register that there was, in fact, something wrong.

  Shahim displayed no such hesitance.

  He let Preeti turn into the blow, but no more. It began the instant his systems said it was time. His left hand came up hard and fast at her face, his first and index fingers pointed, his right hand coming up on the other side to grasp the back of her head and hold it in place. By the time she registered an attack, his fingers were microseconds from impact. Her view flashed an alarmist red as tactical came online, but already his thumb was driving into her eye, stabbing with vital force and precision.

  Her hands came up to grab at his forearm as his thumb penetrated her eye socket. Shahim pushed inward with all his strength, focusing all his might on crushing the weapons array and grinding it backward, fighting to crack the lobe behind it and get at the substrate and neural cortices that lay in her skull.

  As her hands focused on pushing outward against his left arm, Preeti’s right foot came up and over at lightning speed, gathering centrifugal momentum as it went, her high kick connecting with his head like a cannonball. He flinched away, tucking his head down as he saw the blow coming, then felt it resonate through his skull like a struck bell.

  He could feel her eye orb breaking, as could she. She bent, shifting her weight and bringing both legs up, hoping to get one between them for leverage. He saw it coming and mirrored the action. For a nanosecond they seemed to hang in midair as their legs all lifted as one, then they were falling, exquisitely slowly, their tactical systems darting and twisting in response to each other as minute, seemingly inconsequential twitches rippled across their bodies. All the while Shahim continued to drive his fingers into her brain, and she fought to gain some purchase against him.

  When they hit the ground, they became a writhing mass that seemed to leap this way and that as one limb or another fired outward in their battle, hers ever more frantic, his focused beyond measure. An attempt to lock her foot in between his arms, a parried blow from his sonic punch to deflect her; each sent them skittering in the dust or thumped them both upward to spin and twist in midair.

  When he could, Shahim was sending focused sonic needles at her right ear, pounding at the drums there, racking her audio systems and the connected accelerometers that fed her onboard attitude indicators. It would not fool her tactical systems completely, but it gave him microsecond windows when he was working off more accurate information than his opponent.

  She knew it too, she knew he was gaining a greater and greater advantage every moment, and she knew her skull would not withstand the punishment much longer. Every time they impacted the ground, she knew her lobe might shatter under the megaton per inch pressure Shahim was still exerting against it.

  As alarms continued to blare in her head, she stopped trying to pry his hands free and let her fists go, landing terrific blows even as her options faded. He felt his body register the damage as she pounded his torso and even tried to punch his head with her powerful fists, but he could feel her skull cracking now. It would be over any moment.

  He stopped trying to block her feet and fists and instead brought his legs up now to wrap them around her head and neck as well, adding their weight to the pressure his fingers were exerting.

  Armed guards were finally converging on them, as if in slow motion, shouting at him and raising their guns. What was he doing? Why was he attacking the general’s daughter? Shahim was tired of all the violence but knew he had to stop them. Even as Preeti still wrenched her powerful body this way and that, he set his deployed laser to wide burn flash.

  Keeping the setting low so the effect wouldn’t be permanent, he fired four flashes in quick succession, turning his head as he did so. In the ensuing confusion, the blinded soldiers clawed at their singed eyes. Preeti registered the flashes, she had not hoped for much help from the soldiers, but it had been a small probability option flashing in her tactical list. It went out. There were not many options left, she thought.

  And then were none, as the rupture she had feared finally happened and Shahim’s thumb finally penetrated to the infinitely softer substrate within her head. He drove it inward, grinding his thumb around in her skull to crush her synthetic brain.

  As her systems started to shut down one by one, she gave in. Her machine consciousness was fazing in and out, shuddering as parts of her mind were torn from her. Deeper within her brain, her personality overlay sent a simple message through her small onboard subspace tweeter to leap the small distance between her and Shahim.

  “Why, Lord Mantil, why?”

  The Agent did not reply. He might want to try and convert her, as he had been converted, but in the thick of the base’s defenses, he’d had neither the luxury of a prolonged debate nor the prolonged battle it would have taken to subdue her without destroying her.

  She went stiff. Her mind no longer registered. It was done. As he pulled his thumb from her eye socket, and pried her rigid dead fingers from his arm, he silently considered her question. I asked the same thing, he thought, as he rolled the now stiff, defunct body of Agent Parikh off him and stood up.

 

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