Ramez Naam - Apex

…and letting it fly.

Rubber bullets ripped into them, knocking the lines of shields down and back.

Zhi Li watched the lit Molotovs whistle through the air, tumbling in flight, up over the crowd, over the burning barricade, past the withdrawing ranks of riot-armored soldiers…

And saw one crash right into an armored vehicle, one with what she’d learned was a sonic cannon. It burst into a ball of flame across the cannon and the top of the tank-like thing.

A roar erupted from the crowd.

They were doing it. They were holding them off.

Bai watched from the rooftop, his body stealthed and flush against the roof, his mind reeled in tight, a silenced sniper rifle in his hand.

His magazine was still full. His rifle unfired.

He lay there and watched, his heart flushed with pride.

The people were rising.

Rangan watched the news from the Bunker.

The world had gone stark raving mad. Molotov cocktails were flying again in Detroit, in LA, in the ghettos of DC. Protests were heating up, here, abroad, everywhere.

And China. Jesus, China. The net was awash with China now. He could close his eyes and pull up a hundred Chinese mindstream feeds. Chinese kids waving flower signs in front of tanks.

Chinese kids throwing Molotov cocktails.

And Kade was going there.

At least now things made sense. As much sense as any of this insanity could make.

Tomorrow was Stockton’s inauguration. They’d be holding it inside the Capitol building, for fear of disruption. For fear of the Million (post)Human March.

Rangan just hoped he could keep that from turning into the Million Crazy Human March. The Million Dead Human March.

Jesus.

107

Desert Strike

Sunday 2041.01.20

They came in low and fast, from the East, across the darkened desert landscape. Tao watched from the co-pilot seat of the aircraft, laden with Confucian Fist, as the wire-frame of the complex in the distance came closer and closer, rising towards the artificial horizon. Thirty kilometers. Twenty-five. Twenty.

At sixteen klicks they’d be over the horizon. The target would be in sight. The target that housed a data cube. The data cube Sun Liu had pointed them towards.

Their planes had chameleonware engaged, but the sound of their engines would give them away, the heat from their exhaust would give them away. Bending light around your skin could only do so much.

They were outgunned. They were outmanned. They’d refueled twice to reach this remote depot in the depopulated west. They were near the limits of the endurance of their aircraft.

There would be no reinforcements.

There would be no extra ammunition.

Strike fast. Strike hard. Achieve the objective. Or die trying.

Nineteen kilometers.

Eighteen.

Seventeen.

Sixteen.

The top of a building appeared. The pilot pulled back on his stick and the whole complex popped into sight. Targeting displays came alive. Red rectangles converged on anti-missile cannons, on electronic-destroying microwave beams, on anti-personnel guns, on a rooftop radar installation.

RADAR WARNING flashed on the cockpit glass as the site’s radar lit them up.

BEEEEEEEEP. A tone indicated they were being targeted.

The pilot fired.

Four cylindrical launcher pods – two on each wing – came alive with fire. Each launcher let loose a spiraling barrage of the cigar-wide micromissiles, as tubes packed within each pod let loose in succession, milliseconds apart.

In a quarter of a second the plane put a hundred and twenty tiny, lethal, all-too-smart missiles into the air, racing ahead of the plane at eight Gs, spreading out, zigging and zagging to make themselves more difficult targets to stop.

The small base responded instantly. Lasers came alive, flicked from missile to missile, seeking to confuse them, knock them off course, destroy them. Projectile launchers fired a screen of millimeter-scale debris at the flight paths of the missiles to cause collisions. Proximity-alarmed Gatling guns came alive, projected the course and direction of the missiles, fired a spray of hot lead bullets, hundreds per second, at the locations where the incoming ordinance would be.

Lasers struck missiles at twelve kilometers east of the facility. Explosions lit up the night. Missiles burst into flame, veered off course, detonated their warheads prematurely, set off their neighbors.

Almost a hundred kept coming, accelerating as the lasers ate away at them.

Gatling gun rounds first hit them at three kilometers east. Missile engines burst apart. Fuel exploded into air. Explosions sent nearby missiles tumbling, setting off further explosions.

More than fifty missiles kept coming; more Gatling gun rounds, more explosions, as close as half a klick away.

Thirty missiles hit the screen of defensive particles a hundred meters from the eastern edge of the complex. Missile warheads and guidance systems ripped themselves apart. Explosions were deafening now. Shrapnel kept moving forward after missiles were destroyed, slamming into buildings, into equipment, into personnel.

Metal rain and explosive detonation blinded radar, blinded thermal imagers.

And in the moment of blindness, the second aircraft slid smoothly over the horizon to the west, and unleashed its own barrage.

They came in hot after destroying the base’s defenses. There were still humans down there. Armed adversaries.

At one kilometer out the pilots of both planes rotated their wingtip jet engines nearly skyward, brought them in on hover, noses of both planes angled slightly down, thirty-millimeter cannons ready to fire on anything moving on the ground.

Tao pointed. “That’s the building,” he said, pointing at the two story structure as they came within a hundred meters of it. “Flush it.”

“Roger,” the pilot said. “Opening up.”

A targeting rectangle appeared on the landscape. The pilot pulled his trigger.

The heavy rhythmic sound of a chain gun thrummed through the plane. Tao could see muzzle burst out ahead of the nose, could see their rounds ripping into the structure, as the pilot systematically worked his gun over it, sending decimeter long, three-centimeter thick, nearly kilogram heavy rounds through anything that stood in their way.

Down there, Tao thought, soldiers were dying.

Better them than him.

Better them than his brothers.

The second plane came on station, hovered at its own angle, ninety degrees off their starboard, opened up with its own gun.

“Movement!” the pilot yelled.

A figure in the doorway of the building, still up, somehow, still alive!

There was something on his shoulder. Missile launcher.

Red streak. Fired!

Chain gun rounds ripped the shooter in half.

Missile, en route to Griffon Two!

Tao tracked with his eyes, tried to get ahead of it. Griffon Two was turning, vectoring thrust, trying to twist out of the path of the shoulder-launched heat seeker.

But they were so close!

Flares fired out of its belly in the last instant.

The missile slammed into its port engine in a burst of flame.

Griffon Two spun, wildly.

It was spinning at them, coming this way as its human pilot tried to take control.

Tao grabbed the co-pilot’s controls of their own craft, faster than the human pilot could react, pushed hard to the right. The plane slid, tilted, twisted. He caught a glimpse of Griffon Two looming huge, fire where the engine should be, then the cockpit as it spun, alarm on the human pilot’s face, and his brother.

His brother Sung. His face calm. His hands on the co-pilot’s controls, trying to get the plane under control.

Then the plane was past, still spinning. And as they twisted themselves he saw Griffon Two’s wingtip touch the ground, and then the whole plane tumbled, slammed to the ground.