Chapter 32: // The Burning Man

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The corporatists want to make it impossible to live independently without having to become hippies in a commune. But we’ve proven the people can create a high-tech, sophisticated society that’s both connected to the land and to the world as a whole. Darknet communities everywhere must be saved. We must upvote the importance of these attacks as a priority one threat to the entire network.

Vitruvius_E*****/ 4,103 18th-level Journalist

Jon Ross stared with a deep sense of dread at the two messages that had just now popped up in his HUD listing:

Chunky Monkey—logged off 08:39:36

Unnamed_1—logged off 08:40:33

Ross had added Sebeck and Price into his friends list so he was alerted to changes in their network statuses. He’d been checking the progress of their call-outs across the county every few minutes. They’d gotten through enemy lines, but their call-outs disappeared a mile or so later.

He let out a deep breath and held his head in his hands, unable to conceive of a scenario where this wasn’t bad news.

It was mid-morning and the situation in Greeley had become dire. The sun was up now, and it was another burning-hot day. Almost all the outlying farms had been burned to the ground; columns of black smoke striped the horizon. Likewise, the homes on the edge of town were being razed.

Ross knew that darknet video of this event would get out to the Web sooner or later. He wondered what people in the outside world were going to make of it. But then it occurred to him that he’d seen a hundred hours of footage showing violent conflicts in various parts of the world. What would the world think? Probably that America had finally lost its mind. But otherwise things would continue as they always had.

In the brief lulls in the fighting, Ross had used his HUD display to follow the unfolding farce that was mainstream news coverage. They were apparently being “liberated” from an insurgent occupation. Someone had created a darknet feed of mainstream news beyond the blackout.

Ross and a group of forty or fifty other men and women had spent much of the morning moving the ample numbers of abandoned cars from the fields in town to create blockades around the downtown perimeter, while the mercenaries busied themselves razing outlying areas. He also helped fill sandbags that were apparently intended for floods and packed them outside the walls of the middle school.

One mercy was that the helicopters had gone away some hours ago and not returned. The Cessna with Hellfire missiles had also flown off. They’d either gone to re-arm or had finished their role.

Luckily the mercenaries had not seemed to care about the unmanned surveillance drones Ross had brought with him. Neither had they been able to jam darknet radio communications. Ultrawideband was proving quite resilient. But then, the mercenaries appeared more interested in killing everyone than jamming their radios.

The chattering of gunfire punctuated by the louder cracks of hunting rifles filled the air. Ross leaned out from behind a masonry support pillar, looking both ways down Greeley’s empty Main Street.

It was littered with broken glass, debris. A burning car stood in the middle of the road at the end of the block. Bullet holes had chipped the concrete and bricks, and several of the buildings on Main Street were already burning from rocket and missile attacks. Beyond that was a wall of roiling black smoke and flames. Burning houses. Every few moments he heard another deafening boom, and debris would fly hundreds of feet into the air.

They were destroying the town block by block.

Ross looked to the center of the road where a fenced green with a World War II memorial and benches stood. The street ran around it to either side. The memorial was a tall granite obelisk with a thick square base about the width and height of a man and was flanked by defunct cannons plugged with concrete.

Ross could see OohRah and Hank_19’s call-outs behind it. He clicked on their call-outs and spoke into the comm channel. “Hank! You guys need me?”

OohRah’s call-out flashed as he replied.

[OohRah]: “We could use another set of eyes behind us. Come on over. Move quick and stay low. We’ve been sniped.”

Ross took another glance and ran to the center of the street at a crouch. He hopped the low iron fence at the edge of the green, and dove behind the monument, using the smaller Vietnam memorial nearby to provide cover from the opposite direction.

Hank and the sheriff nodded to him.

Ross brought his AK-47 to bear, watching their flank. “Where are they?”

The sheriff was pushing rounds into a spare clip while Hank kept watch down Main Street. “Pick a direction and start walking. You’ll find ’em soon enough.”

Fossen nodded. “Crazed gang members to the east, professional military to the west.”

“Or so the costumes tell us. . . .”

Ross examined the memorial stone. “This should be good cover.”

The sheriff shook his head. “Not from a grenade it won’t be. We can’t let them get close in.”

Another ear-stabbing boom sounded from the east end of town. “What the hell are they doing?” Ross brought up a D-Space video panel that showed an overhead view from a surveillance drone. He could clearly see the line of advance and the wasteland the private contractors were leaving behind them.

The sheriff ground his teeth. “They’re tossing demo charges into houses. Shooting flamethrowers into cellar windows. Burning everything.”

Ross could clearly see it when viewed from above. Then the drone flew into a cloud of smoke and the image was lost. He nodded behind him. “What happens when they reach the middle school? There must be six hundred people in there.”

The sheriff peered through his M16 scope over the rim of the memorial. “We’ll either have to stop them from reaching it or die trying. Everyone else is digging in, too.”

Hank_19 kneeled down and nodded grimly to Ross. “My wife and daughter are in there. I don’t care about losing the farm. You can always rebuild buildings, but . . .”

Ross tapped him. “If you need to go back and be with them, I’ll understand.” Ross looked to the sheriff.

The sheriff nodded.

Fossen shook his head. “No. If we just hold out, we might still have a chance. Look at the darknet feeds. My daughter says they’re going haywire. These attacks here in the Midwest are a threat to the whole network. I’ll bet no single thing has ever been upvoted this high.” He looked to Ross. “The world is watching what happens here.”

The sheriff shrugged. “So what? So what if everyone cares? What does that do for us? The situation we’re in isn’t going to be solved by angry posts and best fucking wishes. Public outrage has never stopped these bastards.”

Fossen looked determined. “Jon, we’re just second-level. What can a twelfth-level Rogue do that could help us?”

Jon cleared his throat. “I can get into and out of places and networks without being detected, but in this type of situation . . .”

There was suddenly a deafening explosion that broke the last of the windows along Main Street.

They all ducked down, but peered over the rim of the memorial to watch the far end of the street. An M1117 armored vehicle flanked by twenty or thirty well-equipped soldiers on foot suddenly rounded the corner. The ASV swiveled its top turret and fired grenades into the upper-story windows. The walls and windows erupted with flames and flying debris.

A camera crew in helmets and body armor rounded the corner as well, filming the action as soldiers fired grenade launchers into the doors of shops on either side and raced through the openings while their comrades raked the walls and streets with gunfire.

Tracer bullets whined past and Ross and the others ducked down as stone fragments rained down on them. Metal whined into the sky.

“Jesus Christ!”

“I see the propaganda unit is here to film our saviors in action.”

Fossen crawled on his belly to look down the side street. “They’re coming down the next block, too.”

There were more explosions in the buildings down the street. Ross snuck a quick glance to see the ASV turret and its coaxial machine gun focused in their direction. The rest of the soldiers were nowhere in sight.

The sheriff stuffed newly reloaded clips into pouches on his web harness. “These fuckers seem to know what they’re doing. They’re following the number-one rule of street fighting.”

“What’s that?”

“Stay out of the goddamned street. They’re blasting through walls and destroying the buildings behind them as they go.”

Suddenly the ASV rolled forward, firing indiscriminately. Then a colossally loud explosion echoed across the town and they could hear masonry walls collapsing and wood snapping as a whole building avalanched into the street. The ASV’s diesel engine was still advancing.

The sheriff clenched his gloved fist. “Fuck it. We’ve got to do something. We can’t just lay here.”

Ross could now see more troops coming in from the next block as he stole a glance over the Vietnam memorial Fossen was hiding behind. “Heads down, Hank. About twenty more and an ASV on that side.”

“Time to fight.” The sheriff crawled over toward Fossen. “Let’s hit the second group while they cross the street.” He took a breath. “Ready?”

Ross nodded.

Fossen nodded as well.

“On three. Two. One . . .”

They leaned around and over the edges of the solid-rock memorial and opened fire at a squad of mercenaries running across the street about a hundred meters away.

Ross fired his AK in semi-auto mode trying to focus on a line of men dressed in black body armor and tactical gear. The soldiers immediately scattered and hit the deck. At over a football field away, it was hard to tell if any of them got hit or just dove for cover.

But moments after they opened fire, the turret of the ASV escorting them swiveled in their direction and opened up with a .50-caliber machine gun.

All three of them ducked down and hugged the ground as powerful, high-velocity rounds slammed into the back of the stone memorial, eating away at the far side. Ross felt the sting of stone chips like needles on his exposed skin.

Then loud explosions erupted on the far side of the larger, World War II memorial next to them—grenades impacting with deafening concussion. Then stopped just as abruptly.

The sheriff crawled to the far side of the green, pulling a metal canister from this harness. “Far side of the street! Behind the bank columns!”

Hundreds of rounds of small-arms fire raked their position in addition to .50-caliber bullets.

The sheriff shouted over the roar. “When I pop the smoke, give it a few moments, then . . .” He jabbed his thumb toward the bank. He pulled the pin and tossed the canister over the fence halfway between both enemy forces. After a few moments, billowing clouds of white smoke began to rise—immediately raising hails of gunfire that whipped the air above them.

The sheriff led the way, rolling over the low, cosmetic fence around the green. Ross and Fossen did likewise, and followed as the sheriff half-slid and half-crawled toward the steps of the bank across the street.

They were halfway across when they heard grenades exploding among the monuments where they’d just been. Ross could see another one arching in from down the street, blasting the obelisk and toppling it. Machine-gun fire still zipped and sizzled through the air overhead, and then Fossen shouted and toppled onto the asphalt.

Both Ross and the sherriff went back and grabbed him under the armpits, leaving behind his rifle and his HUD glasses as they dragged him to relative safety behind the pillars of the bank building.

Ross reloaded his AK-47 as he stood behind a pillar.

The sheriff reloaded as well. He just shook his head and shouted over the deafening thunder in the street. “They’ve got too much firepower!” He eyed the stone walls and heavy wood door behind them. “I don’t think we’re getting out of this corner!”

“I don’t think they saw us pull back.” Ross looked down at Fossen, who was lying against the back wall, trying to sit up. A pool of blood was expanding around him.

“Damnit!” The sheriff crawled over to Fossen and put down his gun. “Hank, let me see where you’re hit!”

Fossen shook his head. “I’m in trouble, Dave. My guts are on fire.”

A bullet impacted the wall three feet to the right of him and ricocheted around the vestibule.

Fossen didn’t even flinch. “Get back to the school. Look out for Lynn and Jenna.”

The sheriff took off his HUD glasses, too, and looked into Fossen’s eyes. “We’re gonna stay right here. We’re on our own goal line, Hank. You hear me? No room to lose ground.” The sheriff grabbed Hank, and for the first time Ross noticed the dark cloth of the sheriff’s shirt was stained with blood as well.

The sheriff held on to Fossen, stopping him from sliding down the wall. “You remember, when we were kids? You remember the heat lightning? And the creek?”

Fossen nodded weakly.

There was another deafening explosion outside and the sound of shattering glass.

Fossen looked up. “Bury me next to my dad, okay, Dave? And you look out for my girls, okay . . . ?” And then his head slumped and the sheriff held him tightly, sobbing.

Ross still stood with his back to a pillar. Outside he could hear the ASVs moving down the street, troops blasting apart nearby buildings.

The sheriff let his best friend’s body slide to the floor. He left his HUD glasses as he stood with some difficulty. Then he picked up the M16 and came up behind one of the pillars.

“I’m sorry about Hank, Sheriff.”

He just shook his head and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

“Let me see your wound.”

“Fuck it. That’s not gonna be what kills me today.”

“If we’re going to try and stop them from reaching the school, then it’s pretty much now or never.”

The sheriff nodded and looked at Ross.

They nodded to each other, and then suddenly Ross saw a very strange series of D-Space alerts running through his HUD listing—all highest priority. They indicated the launch of a number of different processes he’d never heard of, but one of which caught his eye: Burning Man Instantiated.

“Wait a minute. . . .”

The sheriff frowned at him. “What?”

Ross was tracking something moving along Main Street—a D-Space call-out unlike any he’d seen before. It was wreathed in flame and bore the name Burning Man, a two-hundredth-level Champion. Ross had never heard of such a level before.

It was coming their way.

“Get your HUD glasses on, Sheriff. Something’s up.”

He looked like he’d had enough games, but he moved out of Ross’s sight, while Ross tried to peek out into the street.

Ross could see two ASVs in the street, drawing fire from other townspeople in nearby buildings. Just then the building across the way detonated in a massive explosion, sending brick, wood, glass, and clouds of dust out into the street.

But through the dust an avatar approached with a confident walk that seemed familiar. It was headed directly for Ross, walking straight through mercenaries and the hull of an intervening ASV like a ghost and emerging from the other side.

The avatar appeared to be dressed in a tactical operations suit, with a bulletproof helmet and mask as well as body armor. He had twin .45 pistols in combat holsters, but was otherwise unarmed. As the avatar came to the foot of the stairs it turned to Ross and flipped up its faceplate.

Roy Merritt nodded to him and spoke in his familiar even tone. “Everything’s going to be okay, sir. I need you to stay calm and tell me where the bad guys are. . . .”

The Major stood in a command-and-control trailer lined with dozens of LCD screens and control boards. Board operators and drone pilots in headsets sat at each station monitoring every aspect of Operation Prairie Fire from above.

The Argus R-7 surveillance blimps were barely eighty feet long, but they could loiter over a theater of operations for up to two weeks using the solar cells covering their upper surface. One of the aerospace firms in their group had developed it and had sold hundreds to dictatorships in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Flying at sixty thousand feet with no telltale contrail, they were all but invisible to the naked eye, and their sensitive long-range cameras could pinpoint and monitor individuals or entire communities, especially when combined with telecommunications and purchasing records. They weren’t invisible to radar or other sensors, but it was the public they were meant to monitor, not military opponents.

On the screens before him, the Argus cameras showed FLIR and color imagery of civilians in darknet communities in several Midwestern states. The forms on-screen were fleeing, fighting, hiding—but in all cases losing as the private military contractors squeezed them ever closer to their final stand.

Standing next to him was the towering South African colonel Andriessen. “Good news from your special unit.”

The Major nodded. “Yes, but they’ve lost their transport.”

Short loud beeps and red lights activated on several control boards.

“And it looks like this will be wrapped up fairly soon as well.”

The Major nodded as the beeping continued to spread along the flight line. Several flight officers pulled off their headsets and started talking urgently with their tech officers. Some LCD screens nearby were no longer showing stable close-up shots of street fighting, but instead showed whirling blurs, then blackness, then blurred lights again.

The Major walked over to a nearby flight officer who was struggling with his controls. “What’s going on? Why have we lost video?”

The officer turned off the alarms and pointed to another screen showing a row of red numbers next to critical measurements. “The temperature readings on our avionics system just red-lined. I think we’ve got a fire onboard.”

The tech officer leaned in. “Our fire suppression system did activate. So, give us a moment. . . .”

The Major looked in both directions down the line of drone pilots. There were red lights flashing on half the boards now.

The Colonel gave him a concerned look.

He started walking down the line, seeing more and more black screens. Temperature readings and pop-up messages reading Fire!

Within a minute virtually all of the control stations were blinking red. The video screens black. What started out as a frenzied chorus of urgent talk had turned into a reading room of technicians flipping through three-ring SOP manuals.

The Major shouted down to the Colonel, still standing where he’d left him. “What the hell’s going on, Colonel?”

The Colonel looked at all the blank screens and said nothing.

“How the fuck can this happen? The Daemon penetrated our encryption somehow and overrode our avionics.” He grabbed a headset sitting on the nearby board and hurled it onto the static-free tile floor with all his might, shattering it into several pieces. “Goddamnit! What is this, fucking amateur hour? I thought we put together the best goddamn electronic countermeasures team possible.”

The Colonel apparently thought it wise to just listen until he was asked a direct question.

The entire line of board operators was now looking up at The Major. They were shut down—blind to a complex multidimensional operation that required close coordination across six states.

The Major burned holes into them with his stare, and then stormed out of the trailer. “Colonel, get these drones back on line or get more.”

“They won’t get here in time.”

“Then get amateur astronomers with binoculars in a fucking Piper Cub—but get me real-time information on my battle space. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Major.”

They were now walking among several large trailers placed within an aircraft hangar—thick bundles of power cables running from each.

A Korr Military Services communications officer stuck his head out of a nearby trailer. “Major! You need to hear this.”

He extended a pair of radio headsets.

“It’s coming over all our encrypted channels.”

The Major hesitated before putting them to his ear. He heard a vaguely familiar voice speaking over the comms. . . .

Ross listened to the booming voice, echoing across the town. It seemed to be coming from the sky and was loud enough to be heard over the sound of nearby machine-gun fire. . . .

“Attention enemy force: you have unlawfully invaded this community. Drop your weapons and surrender and you will not be harmed.”

The gunfire and explosions had paused. There was sudden calm as the voice in the sky spoke again, this time in a foreign language that sounded vaguely Slavic—yet not Russian. It was nonetheless a voice Ross recognized as that of Roy Merritt.

The sheriff meanwhile had his HUD glasses back on and frowned in confusion. “Where is that coming from?”

Ross pointed into the street. “Him.”

They both looked down and saw the Merritt avatar with his hands at the edges of his mouth “shouting” his terms to the entire town.

“But it’s coming from the sky.”

“Hypersonic sound.” On the sheriff’s look, he explained, “High-frequency audio beam projection. I’ll show you later—just listen. . . .”

They could now hear laughter emanating from the private military contractors arrayed around the town, standing behind their ASVs or crouching in nearby buildings.

“You have violated the popular will of a critical mass of the population—which empowers me to take you into custody—by force if necessary.”

A distant shout. “Fuck you!” Followed by gales of automatic weapon fire.

“You have been warned.”

As Ross watched, Merritt’s avatar raised its hands and looked up into the sky—where Ross suddenly saw a grid of numeric D-Space call-outs appear and slowly grow larger. As they did, physical objects came into sight—what could only be described as shimmering mirrored “dots” or tiny spheres coming down from above. It was impossible to say how large they were because he had no scale reference, but from his limited view looking up from between bank pillars, he saw at least five—arrayed in an orderly pattern. Merritt’s avatar lowered his hands, bringing the dots even lower. They appeared to be spinning very fast, shimmering.

The sheriff looked up, too. “What are they?”

Ross clicked on one of the call-outs and read its properties. “Hot mirror . . . faceted high-rotation inertial gyroscope . . . see Fire-Strike. . . .” He clicked a link. “One-hundred-kilowatt solid-state laser . . . infrared.” He looked back at the sheriff. “I think the shit is about to hit the fan. . . .”

A bullet whined past and ricocheted off the wall.

Ross ducked but then heard Merritt speak again. “Network citizens! I need your help to identify the enemy. Aim any D-Space pointing device at enemy units until they throw down their weapons and raise their hands in surrender. You must respect their surrender. You will be scanned for honesty after this is over. Please keep pets and small children indoors. Thank you.”

Ross and the sheriff exchanged puzzled looks, but Ross put down his AK-47 and clicked on his D-Space pointer. It appeared much like a laser dot, but was only visible in D-Space. He cautiously peered out from behind the pillar and aimed his finger at a machine gunner sitting in the turret of the nearest ASV, bringing the dot to bear on the man’s head.

In moments, a discernable beam—like an intense ray of sunlight—shot from the nearest mirror ball and burned through the particle-filled air, becoming invisible by the time it reached the ground. But the soldier leapt up and tore off his helmet screaming and rolled off the turret. Other soldiers looked at him and ran to assist. Ross turned his pointer to them, and each time he brought it to bear, they quickly stopped what they were doing and fled several yards.

“Sheriff, do you know how to use your pointer?”

He was already pulling his haptic glove on. “Hell, everyone does. . . .”

In a few moments other rays of energy were zapping down from above, and the soldiers were scurrying around like ants under a magnifying glass. It didn’t take long for dozens more darknet members behind sandbags and shutters to join in.

Nor did it take long for the mercenaries to focus their gunfire up at the distant mirror balls that were raining down terror upon them. Tracer bullets started spraying skyward. But the devices were apparently more distant than they seemed, or durable. And even though one eventually did falter, wobble, and spin out of control into the streets below. There were many more of them.

In minutes the soldiers were fleeing their positions. Even soldiers in windows weren’t safe—the array of mirror balls always seemed to provide a vector that could zap them. They pulled back into the shadows.

Meanwhile the sheriff showed the intensity of an all-night gamer. “Fry, you bastards!”

The Merritt avatar stood apparently observing the action. “Enemy force, you may not leave this area. You must surrender. If you lay down your weapons and surrender you will not be harmed.”

The remote turrets of the nearest ASV were spraying the buildings as the soldiers retreated by the dozen down the streets—unable to find cover because they’d destroyed every structure between here and the edge of town.

Ross and the sheriff focused on the firing ASV, and they saw many other pointers do likewise—clustered on its engine vents, or big rubber tires. Burning rays of heat fried airborne smoke particles on the way down their target, and before long the engine compartment on the vehicle began to smoke.

The sheriff stared intently at it. “God help you when you get out of that thing, you sons a bitches. . . .”

Now more than a few soldiers were kneeling in various places in the street, their arms raised. Several assault rifles were lying on the pavement. One of the retreating soldiers opened fire on them, cutting several down before they got involved in a firefight among themselves. They, too, were quickly subdued, and to Ross’s amazement, he was soon looking at a staggered array of kneeling mercenaries extending down the street.

The other ASVs in town were roaring back where they came from, soldiers trying to grab on.

Merritt shouted again. “You may not leave. You will be stopped if you try to leave. Surrender!”

There no longer appeared to be any resisting soldiers in view. The enemy was in full retreat. Ross couldn’t help but smile at the apparition of Roy Merritt standing firm in the public square.

Ross turned to the sheriff, who was now leaning back against the pillar.

“About that bleeding. I think I’m gonna need a doctor, after all. . . .”