Jerome Preisler - Net Force--Attack Protocol

“Drop!” the big man husked.

Carmody stayed on his feet.

And then they were on him. All three of the men who’d appeared from behind the painted wall panel, on him together. One of the guards lunged at his knees from his left like a football tackle. The other, probably the one he’d floored, pounded his head with his gunstock again.

Carmody stumbled back against the wall, off balance, blood coursing into his eyes, stinging his eyes, his vision a sheet of red.

The big man moved closer. A sudden rush, like a glacier heaving forward. The guards were both up on their feet and pinning him against the wall, one on each side, using the full weight of their bodies to immobilize him. The big man brought one foot up and kicked him in the stomach with a size-sixteen boot. Carmody slid farther down the wall but stayed up. The giant kicked him a second and third and fourth time, but he stayed up.

There were more kicks. Rhythmic. Pistonlike. Like a machine.

The air fled Carmody’s lungs. The strength leaked out of his knees. The guards finally let go of him, the giant backing up a step or two. He realized they were giving him just enough room to fall flat on his face.

He didn’t go down. He felt limp and boneless. But he didn’t go down. His legs bent, his arms loose at his sides, he stayed up.

The big man’s face was right up in his. Brutal, heavy, full of aggression.

“Fuck you, American,” he said and grabbed his shirt collar with both hands and flung him to the floor like a rag doll. He landed on his back, and the massive boot came down on him again, grinding down on his diaphragm, its heel twisting and mashing into him.

“How does this feel, American? Do you like it? ”

Carmody drew a ragged breath, blinked blood out of his vision, and looked up into the giant’s eyes.

“I’m going to kill you,” he said.

A second passed. The big man’s upper lip twitched slightly. He hawked up a mouthful of saliva, spat wetly in Carmody’s face, bent over him, and jerked his head up off the floor, holding it between his hands and turning it toward the balcony.

“Watch,” the big man said. And then, raising his voice, “ Laso sa zboare. We will see if she can fly.”

Carmody heard the crack of a gunshot above him. His temples in a vice grip, he saw blood spray from Clinia’s head, then saw her body spill over the railing and swan to the floor. It landed three or four feet to his right with a flat, sickening thump.

The big man snapped his head back around so he had to face him again and then looked down into his eyes, the other two security men closing ranks around him, jabbing their guns to his temples.

“No wings,” the giant said. “Too bad.”

Get out of here , Carmody had said over the RoIP. There was no video. No other communication. He’d activated his comlink only to speak those words. To send her the message.

Then nothing.

Only silence from him.

Kali shivered on her motorcycle. The hard, glacial cold had clamped down on her like an anvil. Above her, the sky was swollen and palpitating with sound.

Get out of here .

The time stamp on her HUD told her that was five seconds ago. Over seven minutes had gone by since he’d climbed the wide castle stairs and passed out of sight through the archway.

Long enough. But she would keep her mind in focus.

“Cas,” she said. The name short for Castor, her guiding star. And for the name of the sleeper AI she had installed in her helmet computer.

“Somniator lucidus,” she said. The phrase Latin for Lucid Dreamer, and her code for awakening the AI.

“Hello, Outlier.” The voice was soft, male, neither old nor young. Its inflections vaguely British and somewhat West Country. “How may I assist you?”

“Are you screened from all outside systems?”

“Yes.”

“Then back-door into Sentinel, code H-9-6-4-0-3-A-1. Show me its livestream. Include all positional, navigational, and timing data.”

“One moment.”

Exactly two seconds later, the drone flock appeared on her head-up display, the images coming from Raven ’s high-altitude Sentinel scout, soaring above them like a hawk over a flock of migrating sparrows. There were easily over a hundred. Small, probably collapsible, probably 3-D printed. Very probably carrying explosive payloads, based on their number: one did not launch noisy drone swarms for surveillance. Their airspeed was about forty-five miles per hour, and the altimeter said they were at four hundred and twenty feet and descending rapidly. They were about two miles off.

That gave her four to five minutes before they arrived.

Get out of here , he’d said.

She had to hurry.

“Cas, export all files to Access Mundi,” she said. It was the web vault she shared with only one other person on earth. “Oarsman is to receive immediate notification.”

“Exporting.”

“Also, activate my helmet videocam. Full two-party encryption. Should my vital functions terminate, link the recording to my biodata and archive.”

“I hope that won’t be needed.”

“As do I.”

“Will there be anything else?”

Kali gripped her handlebars. Goddess, be with me.

“Stand by,” she said and fired up the bike.

Kali bounced across the apron, rode past the overturned Rezvani to the east side of the steps, and cut sharply back around a hundred and eighty degrees, so the steps and castle entrance were about ten yards diagonally to her right.

She braked and sat there a moment astride the bike. The main door loomed in the archway. Made of planks clearly sourced from full-grown trees, it looked solidly unmoved and immovable. But its wicket gate was smashed open.

Kali guessed it was about twelve feet high and eight feet wide. Guessed Carmody must have entered the castle through it. She’d been unable to see him from the west side of the stairs at that point; the Rezvani had blocked her field of vision. But he must have gone through the wicket. There was no other direct way in.

She tried to peer through into the Great Hall, looking up the steps. But once again she had a poor line of sight. She could see lights inside, an expansive sweep of checkerboard floor, a section of the ceiling with ribbed wooden arches large enough to be the frame of a sailing ship. The castle in all its immensity was like something out of a folktale, a Norse myth. Home of the giants.

I need you to ride like you did in Germany.

Kali let out her clutch, hit the throttle hard, and shot forward. A deep breath, and she cut sharply right toward the castle entrance, hopped her front wheel up onto the broad bottom step, and then up to the next, and the next, and past the overturned Rezvani’s mangled front fender. Then up onto the fifth and last step.

The archway in front of her now, the light from inside the main hall pouring over her, she crooked her elbows, leaned low over her handlebars, and thundered straight through the wicket gate into the Great Hall of Castle Graguscu.

It was 2:15 a.m. when the Camp Turzii drone swarm reached its destination after traveling over a hundred miles from its rooftop launchpad.

The location of the target was fixed and acquired using basic GPS coordinates. The in-flight formation was maintained with a vision-based flocking algorithm that used their electronic eyes to set distances that would avoid collisions between individual fliers.

Birds of a feather directed by a set of simple underlying instructions, their simple, cohesive aerial migration had a single objective. All fifty drones held it in their brains.

In the cold, dark sky above Castle Graguscu, the swarm dove to the attack.

The two guards Matei had brought up to the Great Hall with him were named Bela and Agoston. They were tough, combat-seasoned military veterans who had once belonged to the Hungarian 2nd Árpád Bertalan Special Purpose Brigade, and later as freelancers, rented their services to high-level corporate and political entities around the world. They had fought in many armed conflicts, overt and covert. They had hired themselves out as bodyguards to the reputable and the disreputable. Each of them had been in violent, bloody confrontations more times than he could count. Each recognized another hardcase when he saw one.