Colonel Manuel Esposito popped the seal on the coffin-sized crate, bouncing on the balls of his feet in his eagerness. He didn't get Christmas presents from the Army often, and he could hardly wait to see this one. Playing with drones was gonna be fun, much better than that shitstorm in Asscrackistan.
The crate was packed with bugs the size of basketballs. When the light hit them they whispered into compliant life, huddled together in their coffin. They resembled giant hornets, with too many legs, and too many eyes, on stalks tucked into grooves. Where the eyes of an insect would have been an armored carapace flared, pierced with a couple of small holes from which NATO 5.56MM rifle barrels slightly protruded. They were bible black, seeming to suck the light out of the air, and every one had swiveled an eye to look at him.
At the tender age of five, he’d found yellow jackets stripping a turkey carcass tossed out in a field. Thanksgiving leftovers. They'd stung the shit out of him when he threw rocks at them and got too close.
A film of sweat broke on his forehead, and he wiped his brow. His goofy grin vanished, along with the bounce in his step. Cursing the Army under his breath, he retrieved the briefcase at the end of the crate and sighed in relief when the bugs didn't reach out and touch him.
Get over it Manny! They weren't bugs. They were machines--and at least they weren’t green. He banished the panicked kid, screaming, running for home, trailing a cloud of stinging hornets, and opened the briefcase. Skimming the instructions on how to operate the drones, he stopped cold when the realization hit him.
They weren't reconnaissance drones.
He glanced at the crate full of bugs and the stacks beyond. There were dozens of them, and a pallet of 5.56 ammo.
Holy shit. This is gonna suck!
The bright glare of his outrage left Faron shaking with anger. He clenched his fists until his nails dug in. It wasn’t enough. He clenched them again and pounded his desk. He had been certain his failsafe was completely hidden in the layers of code he’d used to conceal it.
They'd found his sly addition, excluding him from being killed by the swarm. It was an unacceptable security risk, so he was fired, his grants pulled, and his clearance revoked.
He couldn't use, or even discuss, any of his work or patents--everything he’d ever achieved. He snarled with rage and pressed his fists against the desk.
The General had turned him away from the lab, personally. Smug satisfaction at stripping his life of purpose was betrayed by the slightest curl of a smile, and the gleam in his eye became an emotional nuke that detonated in Faron's mind. That shock had stalled his thoughts and stilled his protests while the General turned and left him standing at the doors of the lab. With nothing else to do, Faron had come straight home.
The bully had remarked pointedly that Faron knew they knew how to dispose of his body. The General was gloating--because Faron had showed them how! They weren’t just taking his job and his career. They were stealing every thought he’d ever had and using them against him.
They weren’t going to take his ideas, everything he was, and kick him to the curb.
They couldn’t take this from him. It was him.
He’d show them that, too.
At first Steve wasn’t sure he understood what the man was saying. When he grasped that the swarm had just up and left, right in the middle of the field tests, his jaw dropped. Esposito had no idea where they’d gone, or why. There’d been no error code or hint of trouble. Even through the weird distortions and skips of the satellite call, the colonel’s desperation was impossible to miss.
Esposito expected to be court-martialed for this, and he was probably right.
Just as Steve realized he was probably going to be court-martialed himself, the submarine captain testing the marine variant interrupted to report the shoal had left his trial--at precisely the same time as Esposito's swarm. He was certain he would be keel-hauled for his failure.
He was probably right, too.
The nature of the problem suddenly became clear. This was no glitch. Steve hung up on the captain and speed-dialed Carl at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Good thing he'd played ball with the spooks, because he sure needed them now. That conceited snowflake he'd booted from the program must have had some other surprises hidden in the code.
He was still on the phone with Carl when his window shattered and the swarm poured in.
Part I
Part III (available on 2/24/18)
