Daniel Suarez - Freedom (TM)

But why wait for the Daemon?

With an encrypted IP beacon beaming out the Daemon’s Ragnorok API to the entire Internet, it was only a matter of time until some other national power or corporate group had access to the Destroy function as well. There was no other choice.

Why not be the first? That’s what finally convinced Connelly to join this effort. Nuclear war was unthinkable—but all-out cyber war was not. They could finally unify the world under a single all-encompassing economic power. One that could achieve miraculous things. Countries didn’t matter anymore. The world was just a big market. It needed to be unified.

At the same moment Weyburn Labs was invoking the destruction of vast amounts of corporate data, they were also running a second script—one that invoked the Destroy function with a malformed parameter. It was all Latin to Connelly, but the big brains in Weyburn Labs had come up with a way to overstuff the Destroy function somehow, putting it into an infinite loop that would prevent it from destroying data, even if Daemon operatives somewhere in the data center tried to invoke it later manually. This malformed command would make these companies—and these companies alone—immune to the Daemon’s wrath. And it was these companies in which they had invested their wealth. It was a mix of corporations that would give them control of nearly every productive commercial activity and the right to rule since they alone had been smart enough to survive “Cybergeddon.” There would be a period of civil chaos in most countries, but they’d already taken steps to physically secure their facilities.

Connelly gazed at the dozens of television monitors showing the news of the world—financial meltdown. Violence in the Midwest. He glanced also at the ranch surveillance screens showing explosions and tracer rounds tearing across the prairie. It was high time for a cleansing fire.

“Got to hand it to the bastards. They’re really giving it their all. I wouldn’t have thought they could organize something like this. Where did they all come from?”

“Looks like the Daemon found a use for all those unsold cars.”

“When this is all over, we’ll need to take out those logistics people. Otherwise they’ll make trouble later.”

A nearby network analyst spoke into a microphone. “We have successfully deployed the Logic Bomb. Tests show the Daemon’s Destroy function is no longer responsive in all protected sites.”

A small cheer went up among the Weyburn Labs team.

Connelly nodded. That was fast. Apparently digital warfare was lightning war. They’d destroyed most of the corporate world in less than a minute. He knew it would plunge the world into a vast depression, but the end result would be worth it. What was the alternative, after all? Surrendering control of the civilized world to an uneducated mob?

He looked back up at the image of Earth on the big board. The view was centered on Western Europe, whose cities still glowed in the darkness.

Connelly imagined his father, the Southern Baptist preacher. What would he think of his son now? Even that hard-hearted bastard would have burst with pride. He would finally have been forced to admit that his son was a success.

“Commence the blackout.”

“Commencing blackouts, sir.”

Suddenly, like hitting knife switches, lights throughout Europe started tripping off—vast stretches of the continent plunged into darkness. Then Japan disappeared into the blackness of the sea. Beijing disappeared. A graphic depiction of the power of the merchant kings lay before Connelly as he beheld Earth. No one had ever fully realized just how much control they held. He trembled slightly with the power at his command. Two billion people had just been returned to the Middle Ages. Nearly a third of the human race. And most of the rest never had electrical power to begin with.

The Daemon was now a tiny shadow of its former self. It never stood a chance.

“Launch the data center strike teams.”

“Strike teams are go! Repeat: strike teams are go!”

The board operators chattered into their headsets, spreading Connelly’s command around the globe in seconds via private satellite networks.

Sebeck and Price had found clothes, body armor, and weapons quickly among the darknet factions moving in from the east. There was a wide diversity of equipment and armaments among the groups. They looked more like a high-tech militia than a true military force, but then they were following in the wake of Loki’s automated army.

Some operatives wore composite armor with full helmets, personalized with band stickers and ironic buttons, others just had hunting rifles.

The crowd drove a random assortment of civilian SUVs and Jeeps. However, they were a sizable force, spreading out toward the horizon in both directions and moving fast across the prairie. Someone had raided dealerships or something because most of these vehicles looked new. With gasoline going for eighteen bucks a gallon, Sebeck guessed there wasn’t much market for them anymore. Examining the call-outs extending over the horizon, Sebeck estimated this group to number in the thousands. The operatives varied in level from the numerous first-level Newbs, such as himself, all the way up to fifteenth- and twentieth-level Operators. There were tech factions, micro-manufacturing factions, logistics factions, and the most formidable groups of all—the infrastructure defense factions. They were the folks in full body armor with darknet electronic weaponry, packs of razorbacks, and flocks of microjets.

Wherever Sebeck went, operatives came up to him and shook his hand—asking to take pictures and pose with him. It was like some sort of macabre convention. Have your picture taken with the Unnamed One. . . .

Immediately after obtaining a loaner pair of HUD glasses and a computer belt, Sebeck opened a link to Jon Ross, finding Rakh’s call-out ten miles west of him—right in the center of Sky Ranch. He was glad to hear his voice over the comm line.

“Jon, thanks for saving our asses. How did you locate us?”

“Loki has eyes everywhere. And other people were looking for you, as well. It’s that quest you’re on.”

“You found Dr. Philips?”

“Yes, and she’s here with me. We’re safe for now. Is Price okay?”

“He’s fine. What’s the latest news?”

“Loki’s smashing through the ranch defenses. He’s got an army of . . . god, thousands of AutoM8s. Four or five hundred razorbacks. He must be spending every power point he has for this.”

Sebeck nodded. “If you saw him, you’d understand why. He looks only half-human. I wouldn’t want to be The Major when Loki catches up with him.”

“Pete, you were right about Weyburn Labs. Smart mobs scanning the surveillance system have discovered their facilities. I won’t show you the worst of it, but here . . .”

Sebeck saw an object zip toward him through D-Space and land in his HUD list. He opened it and sucked in a breath.

“There are dozens of young women still in cells there. It looks like The Major’s people were perfecting darknet identity theft.”

“Jon, we need to send forces to those labs first—before the researchers can destroy the evidence. Those girls are in serious danger.”

“I’ll put the word out.”

“Look, we’re closing in on the inner perimeter. I’m told that we’ll face resistance, if Loki hasn’t wiped them out, so I’m going to get off the line. I’ll need to be heads-up as we go in.”

“Give my best to Laney, and be careful, Pete.”

“You too, Jon. I’ll see you on the other side.”

Sebeck could already see explosions ahead. It looked like artillery airbursts. The thunder of detonations followed a second later. The vehicles were routed around the barrage and moving fast now, bumping across the prairie at fifty or sixty miles an hour. They passed distant burning wreckage riddled with shrapnel holes, broken bodies nearby, but the overwhelming majority of the force moved on—too spread out and moving too fast to be easily targeted by artillery.