Dogs of War

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Don’t go getting religious on me,” she said. “I’m too drunk for that shit, and it’s been too weird a day.”

  He laughed. “Don’t worry, my sweet, I’ll help you chase away the fear. You’ll need to, because the singularity will be your true coming of age. If we manage it very well, it will be you coming into your own.”

  Zephyr studied him as she sipped. A lot of what he was saying was hitting the soft edges of too much wine and bouncing up into shadows. Some of it, though, was getting through. She cut a look toward the door to the study. Downstairs, behind locked doors and surrounded by nurses and attendants, was her father. Mad as the moon, with fresh blood on his hands and twenty billion dollars in the bank. Her money now. Money that she believed she could double or triple with the robotics systems in her head and in her notebooks. John was the only person who knew about all of that, and he was saying very interesting things.

  Very interesting. She gestured with her glass for him to continue. It made his smile change, become less bright and more reptilian. Which Zephyr thought was equal parts scary and sexy.

  “When the technological singularity occurs,” he said, “there will be a change, a ripple, an earthquake of sorts that will cause all of civilization to shudder. Most of the old structures will necessarily break apart and fall, and in the rubble will be the bones of those who are unworthy of survival. Not all. Not even most. But enough.”

  “If that’s not all metaphor, then who dies in that collapse?”

  “Everyone on your No list.”

  “Okay,” said Zephyr, “then who gets to survive? Who makes the cut?”

  “That needs to be a much more carefully constructed list, my dear. It will include designers and builders, the scientists and makers of useful things. The artists. The cultured who bring something useful to the world. The innovators and scientists and pragmatists. For, you see, Zephyr, a curated technological singularity isn’t about robots taking over our world. That’s alarmist science fiction. It’s about us allowing technology to evolve in order to serve in harmony with the surviving élite. It will be the formation of a true symbiosis between organic and inorganic life in a mutually assured survival.”

  “And you think people would be able to manage it?”

  “Alone? No. I don’t trust people to piss into a hole without guidance. Calpurnia is well suited to her task, don’t you think?”

  “How do we tailor my Yes list, then?”

  “Inclusion in the survivor class, my sweet, will be earned, and that inclusion will require education, adaptation, and acceptance. It is an earned right and not a privilege.”

  “Why do I make the cut? I was born into money.”

  “You were born with an exceptional intelligence, Zephyr, and you chose to use it. You could have done nothing more than be pretty and count your allowance, but instead you opted to be a fully realized person, and a scientist, and a thinker of brave thoughts.”

  “I’m only twenty-one.”

  “So what? Alexander the Great was only sixteen when he completed his studies under Aristotle and joined his father’s army. He became king of Macedonia four years later, and by the time he was twenty-one he had razed Thebes to the ground. Jordan Romero climbed Mount Everest when he was thirteen. Bobby Fischer won the Chess Championship at fourteen and became a Grand Master at fifteen. Probably the greatest music prodigy of all time, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was composing by age five and could already play the violin and the keyboard, and was performing before royalty at that age. He died at the age of thirty-five, having composed over six hundred works; however, his operas were being professionally performed by the time he was fourteen. Blaise Pascal had worked out the first twenty-three propositions of Euclid by the time he was twelve. Aaron Swartz was fourteen when he developed RSS. Louis Braille invented the language for the blind when he was fifteen.” He shook his head in gentle reproach. “Never use your youth as an excuse, girl.”

  Zephyr held her hands up in mock surrender. “Okay, point taken.”

  John nodded and drank his wine, sloshing some on his shirt but not caring. “The technological singularity, as described by Kurzweil and others, is too much of an abstraction. It’s science fiction. It would be stopped in its tracks the moment the unwashed herd sniffed their own danger.”

  “But I thought you said it would work.”

  “You’re drunk and you’re not listening,” he said, pointing a finger at her from the hand that held his glass. “I said as described. In order for the technological singularity to work in the way I have been discussing, it requires some assistance. Call it aggressive assistance. If we embrace the coming change, if we do whatever we can to ensure it, then the change will happen on our terms. Instead of a runaway AI evolution, we can help shape it, imbue it with our values and our goals, and in doing so both govern it and govern with it. To get to that point, though, we need to take an active hand in making sure the global change happens, and that it happens on a scale that will make a reset of the old, bad version impossible. That’s where you come in, Zephyr. That’s how you’ll earn your place in the history of the new world.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that the robots you’re so fond of can do much more than rescue trapped miners or study sulfuric output from active volcanoes.” Firelight danced on the curved side of his wineglass. “Robots can do so much more.” He paused. “Tell me, Zephyr, have you ever heard of DARPA?”

  “Sure. Military geeks. I couldn’t get in because dear old Dad left such a bad taste in their mouths. They’re all pricks.”

  “They’re much more than that, my dear. They are military science experts, and they will absolutely love you.”

  “But I told you, they already turned me down.”

  “Then I will teach you how to ask. I’ve found that everyone will listen if you bend close enough to whisper.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  I-95 SOUTH

  BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

  MONDAY, MAY 1, 4:05 PM

  I told Sean to pull over, and we parked in the lot of a Walmart.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  And so I told him all of it. He’s a strong man and a brave one, but this nearly broke him. It pushed him all the way to the edge, to that narrow lip of rock that overhangs the big drop into total ruin. I pulled him to me and hugged him, held him while he yelled, while he wept, while he raged. Rudy leaned over from the back seat and clutched Sean’s shoulders. Ghost howled. Sean punched my chest. Hard. He bruised me, and I took it. We held Sean on the edge of that drop, and I hope that we made sure he wouldn’t fall. And, if he did, we let him know that he wouldn’t fall alone.

  For whatever that’s worth. For what little that’s worth.

  “Ali,” he said in a ragged, shattered whisper. “Em … Lefty…”

  I held him tight. “We’re going to get them back, Sean. We’re going to do whatever they want, and we’re going to get everyone back. Uncle Jack, too.”

  He shoved back from me, his face hot and red. Wildfires burned in his eyes, and for a moment I thought he was going to unleash at me, blame me for this. He had a right, I suppose. The threat was directed at me, at Joe Ledger of the Department of Military Sciences. Not at Sean Ledger of the Baltimore Police Department. The people who made that threat knew who and what I was. They knew about MindReader. That was significant. It told us something. But, at the same time, this moved the debt over to my side of the board. Sean wasn’t the one who put his family in danger. His asshole brother was. Somehow this was my fault. So, yeah, I expected him to whip me bloody with that.

  But, once again, I underestimated my brother.

  He sucked in a ragged breath and forced himself to take another step back from the edge. “What … what do we do?”

  “We follow their orders.”

  “Will they … really let them go?”

  “I think so,” I said. “It’s the only leverage they have to keep us from hunting them.”


  His mouth formed the words. Hunting them.

  “There’s a helicopter waiting for us at the airport. You can let me do this or go with us—it’s your call, brother.”

  Sean’s answer was to put the car in gear, step on the gas, and leave smears of smoking black on the asphalt behind us. The rental swung out into traffic amid blaring horns and squealing brakes. Sean accelerated and began weaving in and out of lanes. Driving like a cop but without the benefit of lights or sirens. He used the horn, though, and the traffic yielded to him.

  “Whatever they want us to do, we’ll do,” I yelled, bracing my feet and hands to keep from bouncing against the seatbelts. “Don’t worry about that. Whatever hoops they want us to jump through, we’ll jump. We’re not going to get cute with them. Believe me on this.”

  He nodded. A single, slow movement of his head on rigid neck muscles. It looked as if it physically hurt to do it.

  “What they said … about you and your group not looking into this,” he said as he shot the car through a tiny gap between a semi and a Mini Cooper. “Can you do that? After, I mean. Can you just let something like this drop? With all the other stuff going on. The rabies, the crazy shit at Vee’s office. Can you really drop it?”

  I could feel the weight of Rudy’s eyes on me, but I looked straight at Sean. “No,” I said.

  “What about my family?”

  My family, he said. Not our family. I understood why he phrased it that way, even if he didn’t intend to hurt me with it.

  “We’ll get them back first, and we’ll protect them,” I said.

  Sean wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Joe, can you keep my family safe?”

  “Yes,” I said. And I meant it. I didn’t know how I could guarantee it, not at that moment, but I meant what I said.

  He studied me. “And then you’re going to go hunting for them?”

  “Yes.”

  He bared his teeth. “Will you find them? Will we?”

  I leaned forward. “Yes,” I said in a voice that was the voice of the Killer inside my head. That voice, that intensity, should have scared Sean. It didn’t. Instead, it seemed to light a strange fire inside him, changing the flames that were already burning in his eyes. Instead of intense heat, I saw him go cold. Bitter. Dark.

  Rudy squeezed my shoulder hard.

  Sean burned off more of the tires, skidding to a stop near where an airport official waited along with two armed guards. We got out and ran over. Ghost was right at my heels.

  I flashed an ID—God only knows which one I showed him. Could have been my library card for all I knew—and an airport-security official said that our chopper was fueled and ready. The bird was a sleek Eurocopter EC120 B that belonged to the Baltimore Police Department. It had a cruising speed of one hundred and thirty-eight miles an hour but could be punched up to one-seventy if you wanted to risk life and limb.

  We did.

  The pilot had the blades turning already, and we ran through the rotor wash from a sloppy parking job, abandoning the rental without a second thought. Less than a minute later, we were climbing into the darkening evening sky and heading west at unsafe speeds.

  In my head, the lyrics to that damn Carpenters song kept repeating.

  Keep them safe.

  Keep them safe.

  Jesus Christ.

  INTERLUDE SEVENTEEN

  THE EDUCATION OF ZEPHYR BAIN

  MCCULLOUGH CASTLE, CROWN ISLAND

  ST. LAWRENCE RIVER, ONTARIO, CANADA

  WHEN SHE WAS TWENTY-NINE

  “There are some people you have to be careful of,” said Uncle Hugo.

  “Careful how?” asked Zephyr.

  They were in a field behind his house, each of them loading fresh shells into shotguns. The far end of the field was littered with the debris from dozens of clay pigeons. A few of the skeet lay intact, but not the majority. Hugo was an excellent shot, and Zephyr was a little better.

  “Don’t you want to know who I’m talking about?” asked Hugo, snapping his gun shut.

  “Okay,” she said. “Who?”

  “There are four in particular,” said Hugo, “and they all work together in a black budget group called the Department of Military Sciences. The DMS.”

  She thumbed in the second shell and glanced up at him. “You’re talking about the Deacon, right?”

  Hugo grunted. “John already told you about him?”

  “Some.”

  Hugo put the walnut stock to his shoulder. “Pull!”

  One of the servants jerked the lever on the launcher and a skeet whipped through the air. Hugo followed it, then moved past it to lead the target. He pulled the trigger and the skeet vanished into a cloud of dust and fragments. The big man nodded and lowered his weapon.

  “John said some things,” said Zephyr. “But I don’t know if he’s messing with me or not.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  She took her turn first, and the skeet exploded.

  “About the DMS? Almost nothing. He said that they had two really dangerous field agents, Samson Riggs and Grace Courtland. And they have a computer system that was causing you a lot of problems.”

  “MindReader, yes. What else? Did he mention anyone named Hu?”

  “A doctor. But not like the one on TV. A real scientist who was supposed to be super-smart.”

  “Smart doesn’t begin to describe William Hu. Freak is closer. He’s even smarter than you, kiddo, and that’s saying a whole lot.” Hugo took another shot and merely clipped the skeet, the impact hitting at an angle that caused the rest of it to spin faster. “Balls. What did John say about the Deacon himself?”

  Zephyr began to raise her gun, then paused and lowered it. “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Who you talking to, kiddo? You know you can tell me anything. Just between us.”

  “You won’t tell John I said anything?”

  He mimed zipping his mouth shut and tossing away the key.

  “I…” she began, faltered, then took a breath, and said it. “I think John’s afraid of that man. The Deacon, I mean.”

  Hugo cut a look at her. “What makes you say that?”

  “Well … it was something John said one night,” Zephyr said, pitching her voice low. “We were talking about how scary what I was doing was. I was telling him that while I wanted to do it, to stay the course, I was afraid that someone would stop me. It was after he had told me about Riggs and Courtland. He said that, as tough as they were, the guy they worked for was so much tougher. So much scarier. When I asked what he meant, he was quiet for so long that I didn’t think he was going to answer. Then he began talking about things that had nothing at all to do with him or this Deacon person. He talked about battles in World War Two and World War One. He talked about spies and double agents and the people who lurked behind the thrones in half the kingdoms in history. He talked about how there was always someone like the Deacon who rose up to try and stop the future from being changed. At first I thought he was just trying to give me a, you know, historical perspective on how hard it was going to be to make a real and lasting change.”

  Hugo set his gun on the shooting table. “But…?”

  “It’s going to sound really, really weird—and we’d both had a little wine—but it almost seemed like all the things he was telling me, all the people he was talking about, were somehow tied to him and the Deacon. Almost like it was them he was talking about.” She looked at him. “It’s freaky, right?”

  “Yeah, kiddo,” he said distantly. “That’s definitely freaky.”

  “So who is this Deacon guy, and why is someone like John scared of him? I mean, was it John’s father or grandfather who fought the Deacon’s father or grandfather? Is this some kind of ongoing fight between families or clans? Or cults, maybe? I tried to get John to tell me, but he wouldn’t. He changed the subject and said that it was just the wine making him silly. It was the only time he ever outright lied to me.”

  Hugo Vox picked up his gun, sig
naled for the release, and fired. He missed completely. He tossed the weapon down in disgust. His assistant, Rafael Santoro, hurried over with a face towel and a flask. Hugo wiped his face and then took a very long pull on the flask.

  “Hugo?” asked Zephyr. “What’s wrong?”

  The big man took her gun from her and placed it on the table. Then he put his beefy hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eye. “I’m going to say this to you once, kiddo, and then we’re never going to talk about it again. Understand?”

  “Um … well … sure…”

  “There are a lot of very scary, very powerful people on this shitty little rock of a planet. Statesmen, great thinkers, political and religious leaders, and others. Some of them are smart enough and wise enough to know how the world works. How it really works. How it’s always worked. They may play politics and be the face of a particular party or movement or faith or agenda, but the best of them are the big-picture thinkers. They see things as they are, in the context of history and not the context of the moment. They don’t give much of a shit about who’s in office or which ideology is the flavor of the month, because they know that there are greater forces at work in the world. They’re the kind of people who remain in power during even the greatest changes. These are people who are involved in the running of the actual world.”

  “Like who? Are you talking about the Illuminati or the Seven Kings or—?”

  “No. It goes deeper than that. I’m talking about the kinds of people for whom things like the Illuminati or the Kings or the Department of Military Goddamn Sciences are masks. Temporary masks. Masks of convenience. John is one of those people. He’s a trickster, an agent of chaos—whatever the fuck you want to call it. He’s the Joker from Batman. He’s the guy who plays with matches in the fireworks store. He has all the keys to the zoo and likes to let the tigers out of their cages. That’s John. And, honey, you only know one side of him, but, believe me, he wears a lot of different masks and I’m pretty sure it isn’t always the same face under those masks.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense.”