Jon Evans - Swarm

“My God. It’s the great libertarian crackpot conspiracy.” I was stranded somewhere between amazed and appalled. “Let me guess. Grassfire, your network of networks, it’s mostly people who read a lot of Rand and Heinlein growing up, right? Lots of engineers, not so heavy on the social workers?” A flash of enlightenment hit me. “You thought Axon was your big advantage, too. You thought you were five years ahead of everyone else. Convoy was just a cover all along.”

“Not just. In a perfect world, Anya and me really would have spent our time searching for sunken treasure.” He grimaced. “But it’s not a perfect world. Far fucking from it, as recent events show. So, yes, to answer your question, we know people, indirectly, in Chinese military research facilities, and all kinds of other interesting places. We even have facilities to manufacture our own drones.”

“Wait, wait, what? You have your own drone air force?”

“Only a few dozen. We’re just beginning to gear up for mass production.”

“Mass production,” I echoed. “This is insane.”

“Tell me about it.”

“ Why didn’t you tell me? ”

Jesse winced. “Sorry. You wouldn’t have approved. You’ve still got that reflex Canadian faith in government. In defiance of both history and reason, I might add. You might have gotten all political on us and decided you had to tell someone. We just couldn’t take the chance.”

“Yeah,” I said dully. My best friend had hidden the most important thing in his life from me for years. It felt like being stabbed in the stomach with a rusty knife. It was almost as bad as Sophie’s betrayal.

A heavy silence fell.

“Fucking politics,” Jesse said. “Ruins everything it touches. Guess what? Anya and I broke up.”

I blinked, shocked. “Really?”

“Yeah. We’re still, like, business partners, but not… not romantic. Not any more. Just, we couldn’t handle both, it was too much. Stress and strain. Conflict between duty and, ah, I don’t know, whatever the fuck. Yeah. Right after we got back from Haiti. Or maybe I did something there that made her… Fuck. I don’t know.”

I had never seen him so incoherent while sober. “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.” He sighed. “Me too.”

After a long moment I said, “Look on the bright side. At least she didn’t sell weapons to psychotic Mexican drug lords in your name and get you catapulted onto the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.”

“I’ve always wanted to be on that list. It’s been, like, my life’s ambition.”

“Then you should have stayed with Sophie.”

He barked a laugh. “Yeah. We can sure can pick ‘em, eh?”

I shook my head ruefully. “It’s almost funny. Ortega kills the head of the DEA and a hundred people in New York, and now this crazy octuple presidential assassination -“

“Some of them are prime ministers. I think one’s actually a chancellor.”

“Don’t distract me with details. He kills the leaders of the free world so he can showcase his super-duper killer new technology to would-be customers,” a rationale that still seemed insane but was the only one available, “and meanwhile, unbeknownst to him, everyone who’s anyone already had it the whole time.”

“Yeah.”

“But what do you care, right? You’ll be cheering him on from the sidelines. Death to the Presidents! Down with the governments!”

“Hey,” he said sharply. “Being libertarian does not mean I support anyone’s murder, not even a president. And even politically I do not want Ortega to succeed. Far from it. From a proper perspective a few politicians less makes no difference, but if the G8 get whacked, I guarantee you governments everywhere will use it as the excuse for some seriously draconian fascism, and most of the sheep will be so scared they won’t even argue. Half will probably fucking applaud. We need him to fail if we’re going to have any chance at success.”

“Success?”

Jesse didn’t answer.

I decided to table that for later. “So you do want to stop him.”

“Sure I do. If we could.”

“But we can.” I took a deep breath. “I can. With the override sequence. That’s why I have to turn myself in.”

Jesse gave me an oh-for-God’s-sake look. “James, I am terribly sorry to be the bearer of such awful news, but there is still no overwhelming need for you to crucify yourself. I seem to recall that Sophie knows at least as much about the override as you do, and she’s working with the Americans now.”

“Is she really.”

“Well. Theoretically. Who knows what the fuck she’s really up to. But the G8 meeting begins in Greenwich in five days. You think you can make them listen to you before then? Nuh-uh. If they found out you’re not guilty, they would very quickly figure out that Sophie is. And that means she’ll have already manufactured nine different proofs of your guilt. Every system she’s ever built has multiple redundant levels of security. No way they’ll believe you.”

He was right, but – “How else are we supposed to stop him?”

“Maybe we could do it ourselves.”

“Right,” I said sarcastically. “Of course. I mean, not that I don’t admire your libertarian do-it-yourself ethos. But I happen to have more faith in the collective efforts of the British and American governments and their billions of dollars and millions of people and entire fucking militaries than your little network of would-be John Galts. Call me a crazy deluded socialist.”

“Fair enough,” Jesse said, unruffled. “But why not have both? Like I said, we can warn them without turning you in. I don’t know what you’ll have to add, honestly. There’s already all kinds of chatter that whoever hit New York will attack the G8 next. Probably mostly from conspiracy theorists who happen to be right for once, but they’re already taking that threat seriously.”

I stared at him. “Then they should cancel the meeting. Or move it.”

“They can’t. Imagine how that would look. The eight most powerful men and women in the world hiding from a nasty rumour? Might as well have everyone huddling in mineshafts forever. So they’re still going to hold it, but the security will be insane.”

“The security will be irrelevant against multiple swarms of drones,” I protested. “Unless they’ve got something that can shoot down UAVs on thirty seconds’ notice.”

“I know. Not that we know of. They’re already working on anti-drone drones, and by ‘they’ I mean a team headed by your girlfriend, using her Axon architecture of course. But I can’t see them being ready by next week.”

“Just for the record,” I said bitterly, “I’m not really still thinking of her as my girlfriend. Selling me out to a drug cartel that tortures people to death for fun is kind of a big relationship no-no in my book.”

“You’re so judgmental.”

“What can I say. My surname is Kowalski and my given name is James and there is a slight flaw in my character.”

He smiled at the reference and switched back to the subject of killing drones. “An electromagnetic pulse, maybe. That would knock them out of the air. Like Haiti.”

“Maybe. But multiple swarms, coming in at staggered times – they wouldn’t stop them all. And the bombs are triggered by impact, they’d still go off.”

Jesse shrugged. “Maybe there’s something else up their sleeve, but nothing we’ve heard about, and we hear about most things.”

“Right. Grassfire. Remind me again how exactly you conjured up this vast global conspiracy of top-secret informants? You went backpacking through hacker spaces around the world and they all just popped out of the woodwork?”

“Yes, exactly,” he said tartly. “No, of course not. We’ve spent years encouraging people who believe in liberty to seek out positions close to the gears of power, especially technical positions, and report on what they learn. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t just me. It wouldn’t have been possible without Anya’s uncle’s money. Also.” He took a breath. “You ever heard of a hacker named LoTek?”