Swarm

The phone had no more than five minutes of power left. Probably much less, given that its screen, radio, and CPU were all running at or near capacity right now. We would be cut off after this UAV kamikaze mission, if not during. Unless -

“Wait.” I leapt from my berth and scrabbled through my baggage. “I brought a hand charger.”

I had added it to the pile atop our bed in Pasadena, what felt like a lifetime ago, in case it might come in handy in Colombia. Handy wasn’t the word: it might be a lifesaver. I plugged it into the phone gently, trying not to disturb Sophie’s control, unfolded its crank, and began to rotate it as fast as I could, transforming my own muscle power into electrical charge.

“Shit!” Sophie tapped rapidly at one corner of the screen. “I can’t do it. Sorry. There’s too much lag. I can’t aim it accurately.”

We waited for a moment as she banked the UAV in a wide circle.

Her mouth thinned. “I’ll get it. I’ll go around and do it again.”

I said, “Let me do it.”

Sophie shook her head almost automatically.

“Let me do it,” I repeated. “Who wrote the interface? Who runs the tests in the lab? Who plays a lot of video games?”

She gave me a startled look. Then a slow smile began to spread over her face.

“Yeah,” I said. “Who knew it would be a survival skill? Give me that thing. I’ve spent twenty-five years building up hand-eye coordination for exactly this moment.”

I passed the hand charger to Jesse, who took to it with such enthusiasm that I feared for its structural integrity, before I took over. I’d done this before, for our wind-tunnel and field tests, but this UAV steered like a cow, and getting the feel of its controls took some practice. But not too much. In a way I really had been practicing ever since my first game of River Raid at age eight.

About ten seconds before impact the camera got close enough for us to make out the gunmen who had seized us, staring up at their unexpected aerial visitor. I was tempted to try to kamikaze right into one of them, but the impact probably wouldn’t be lethal, or even serious; drones were very light aircraft, and ours didn’t have the benefit of high explosive. Instead I aimed the UAV at the waterline where the propellers churned. During the last five seconds I could hear its engine’s faint buzz, filtered through the cabin porthole.

The screen went blank. The Ark Royale didn’t even shudder. For a few seconds I feared the sacrifice dive had been useless.

Then a faint but grinding vibration began to keen through the vessel’s hull; the sound of a troubled motor. Fragments of the crashed drone had gotten caught up in the ship’s propellor. The noise grew louder, and more sickly, and the whole ship began to tremble. We heard shouts in Spanish. Then the engine shut off.

“Okay,” I said, losing my laserlike video-game focus at last, suddenly aware that I was sweating heavily, my hands were trembling, and my head ached. “Now what’s the second objective?”

Chapter 30

After the USVs arrived we used the tools in my electronics kit to mostly remove the hinges from the cabin door. It wasn’t easy, partly because they weren’t exactly designed for the task – although the wire stripper was surprisingly effective – and partly because we didn’t know if a gunman waited outside. Two of us worked as silently as possible while the others tried to cover their tracks with conversation.

“We’ve got two handguns on board,” Jesse told me. I hoped our captors, if they were listening, couldn’t speak English. “In a secure compartment on the bridge.”

I said, “Somehow I don’t think a firefight is going to work to our advantage.”

“I know. That’s why I didn’t get them. But in case we need them.”

“If we need them, we’re already fucked.”

Anya looked at me as if that was cowardice rather than simple truth, then returned to working on the lower hinge. The other was already unbolted and loose enough to pull free of its bracket. I glanced at my iPhone’s screen. The camera on the UAV parked up top showed two men on the aft deck, one looking down at the propellors, one talking on a satellite phone.

“So you have no idea where the killer Colombian drones came from,” I said to Jesse.

“How would we know anything about that?”

“Why does the DEA think you do?”

“We didn’t give anything to a drug cartel.” He hesitated for a second. “At least not directly. I can’t believe you thought that for even a second. I mean, come on, man.”

“Not directly,” I pounced. “Meaning what exactly?”

“We have been sharing the tech with a… kind of grassroots NGO,” he admitted. “Sort of like Amnesty International, or Transparency International, but more active. Somebody there might have -” He didn’t finish the sentence.

“Not might. Did,” I corrected him, almost enjoying this; it wasn’t often I got the opportunity to rake Jesse over conversational coals. “Who are these selfless altruists?”

“Called Grassfire.”

“Never heard of them.” But Sophie had twitched at the sound of that name.

“You’re not supposed to. They’re not an NGO in the traditional sense. More of an open source insurgency.”

“Insurgency. Sure sounds nonviolent.”

“It’s not like it sounds. I’ll explain later.” Jesse sounded testy.

Anya grunted with triumph as the lower bolt came loose. We only had to lift the door up off its hinges to open it. Unfortunately, we had no idea what was outside, except that there were three violent and heavily armed men somewhere on board, who had probably already reported their predicament to whoever had sent them, and we were probably fifteen miles from land on a ship whose engine no longer functioned. I had little faith in Jesse’s ability to able to explain anything later. The odds still seemed heavily in favour of there being no later for us at all.

“We have to move fast. We’ll have two minutes at most.” Sophie passed me my phone. “Are you sure you can do this?”

“No, I’m not sure. But I think so.”

Anya and Jesse looked deeply dubious.

“OK,” Sophie took a deep breath. “First we knock on their door.”

She pushed a button on my phone, thus issuing commands to the USVs now clustered around the ship. I waited and listened as ten of the twelve submersibles began to bump repeatedly into the hull. I had hoped for something unnerving and intense, but all I heard was a faint tapping.

I checked the view from the drone up top. Still two men on the aft deck, meaning one gunman unaccounted for, very possibly right outside our door. At least the men I could see were up on their feet, with anxious body language.

“Now we break it down,” Sophie said, and looked at me.

Guiding the second UAV was easier, partly because the target was bigger. I simply divebombed it straight for the Ark Royale. It didn’t really matter where it hit, but I aimed it right at the men on the aft deck, hoping to scare them, and caught a gratifying glimpse of them fleeing into the common room fast enough that we heard their pounding footsteps as the pale blob of the ship expanded rapidly to swallow up the UAV’s camera. Then the camera view went dark.

I switched back to the view from the drone above and squinted at the screen. This was the important part. Wreckage from my controlled crash lay scattered all over the aft deck. As we watched, the gunmen went out to investigate, impelled, I hoped, by inescapable human curiosity, although their body language was more like scared and bewildered. One figure appeared, then another… and then the third.

“Now,” Sophie commanded.

The cabin door was unwieldy but we managed to lift it off its hinges and open it. Anya and Sophie darted outside. Jesse and I followed. The three of them fought to replace the door on its hinges as I began to guide the third and final UAV down towards the Ark Royale, piloting it remotely as I followed the