“So what,” I wheezed. “Why do you care so much about what’s in Danae’s head? Is all this worth it just to add one more nanoweapon to your arsenal?”
Duke chuckled. “Since when are you so small-minded? Look around you!” He spread his arms to embrace the starry sky, ringed by the black sawteeth of mesas and hills. He sniffed the thin air disdainfully. “Look at where you are! There’s nothing now but dead sand and rag-assed nomads for a thousand miles in all directions, where cities of millions stood only a century ago. Walls of steel and concrete, longer and taller than ancient China ever dreamed. This was richest and most powerful empire this world has ever known—and what happened to those United States? Don’t tell me about the wars and the famines and the corruption. Those were only skin-deep. At the core, it was a loss of unity that brought the Empire down. They had no idea what those first computerized information networks would do to their shared sense of reality. When climate collapse hit, they couldn’t agree it was happening. They couldn’t even agree the Earth isn’t flat, or that medicine cures disease! And that’s what empires are built on, Alexei. That’s their magical lifeblood. Agreement.”
I managed to stand up straight again and well up the breath to correct him: “Empires are built on violence.”
Duke flapped his hand dismissively. “You’re smarter than that. The protection we offer our citizens, the pain we threaten, the spectacle of horrific acts—at the end of the day, these are nothing more than crude tools for extracting consensus from the citizenry, like fuel from sea water. But those nanobots in Danae’s brain could be the finest tool of all: a way to transmit anything we choose into a thousand heads at a time. We could make a memory into an airborne plague. Implant a billion brains at once with the same shared experience, the same exact certainty, immune to all doubt and misunderstanding. We could make the whole world agree at once.”
“Agree to bow to you as its supreme leader, you mean,” Kat guessed. “You’re talking about some kind of fucked-up mind control.”
He rolled his eyes exasperatedly. “I’m talking about a brand-new Empire, greater than any before it.”
“And chasing that power is worth more to you than Epak and the lives of everyone in it,” I said. “Isn’t it.”
That was the bait I needed him to take. He started to answer in the affirmative, but he caught himself. He grinned and wagged a finger at me before shouting for his troops to hear. “Peace. All I want is peace.”
“You?” Kat laughed. “You want peace like I want a hole in the head.”
However much Duke wanted to, he knew better than to keep arguing. “You should know me well enough to know that my love of blood pales in comparison to my love of power,” he said. “But if I must settle for blood, I will have it.”
He glanced at his troops and gave the shadow of a nod. For a moment everything was still. I searched their faces for any sign of what they were thinking.
They started toward us—hesitantly, but still coming.
My gambit had failed. I could see the lights on the Gray box blinking more rapidly with Kat’s pulse. We were out of options. I closed my eyes and braced for agony or oblivion.
Then something pinged.
“Wait!” Kat shouted at the top of her lungs. When I turned I saw her still clinging to the gun with her right hand, but her left dug her shard out of her pocket and scrolled through neon-red lines of data. “Wait a second!”
Duke motioned for his troops to pause. He looked at her impatiently. “Yes?”
“How’s the war with Norpak going? When’s the last time you checked?”
“Tell me how that concerns you.”
“One of your satellites just rose. You could find out.”
He snorted. “I have faith in my generals.”
“Check,” Kat said, throwing her pistol away and raising her hands. “Just check. Listen to me. I know exactly where Danae is—and unlike Alexei here, I don’t give a flying shit about honor or valor or whatever. Contact your generals, right here and now, and I’ll lead you straight to her.”
Duke studied her suspiciously. I shot her a glance, but I couldn’t read her expression.
“Danae is running!” Kat said. “She has tech that can mask her infrared, but she’s still here in this valley, running from you as fast as she can. Take my deal now, and you might still catch her.”
The self-crowned Emperor of Epak snuck a glance back at the convoy, and I watched him work it out for himself: Kat’s deal had all the makings of an obvious trap, but his squad’s trust in him was so eroded now that he had no choice but to take it. If he declined such a small request, he risked convincing them he had something to hide.
“All right. Fine.” He passed a look to one of his lieutenants, and she put on a headset and went to work with some equipment attached to the roof of the rover.
Seconds ticked by in silence.
“What are you waiting for?” Duke shouted.
“I’m not—” She shook her head. “I can’t reach the Keep.”
“Too late, then. The satellite passed the horizon.”
“No,” she said. “I can ping the satellite, but it can’t reach Bloom. It can’t detect any of Bloom’s transceivers at all.”
I hardly needed the Major’s training to see what was happening now. The energy among the Medusas shifted rapidly. Looks were exchanged. Attention slipped from ironsights.
“So Norpak had a final trick or two up their sleeve,” Duke said dismissively. “All the fancy cyberwarfare in the world won’t save them now.”
“No contact with Columbia Mouth either. Or Angel Station. Or Anchorage.”
“So it’s good cyberwarfare. It doesn’t matter! We have the superior strains and the geographic advantage. Norpak is dead.”
“Confirmed contact with land command,” the Medusa said. There was a stutter in her voice. Her eyes widened.
“Enough,”
