Freedom TM

backup generators. They can run for as long as they have diesel fuel. Some even have local power generation facilities.”
    “Then why the blackout if it doesn’t bring the servers off-line?”
    “The blackout isn’t meant to cripple the Daemon, General. We already eliminated it as a threat with the Destroy function calls.No, the blackout is a psyops action. It’s a demarcation between the old order and the new one for the general public. People need to be shocked into accepting their new situation. Revealing just how vulnerable they all are accomplishes that. They will seek protection.”
    “But
three days
without power?”
    “Our social psychologists told us the panic should make people eager for strong leadership.”
    A nearby board operator looked up. “I’ve got Colonel Richter with a status report on the darknet militias, General.”
    “Put him on.”
    “Go ahead, Colonel. You’re on speaker.”
    A slightly distorted voice came through the speakers. “General, this is Richter. Darknet militias are stopping their advance on a broad front. They appear to have degraded command and control.”
    Control room crew chuckled among themselves and clapped. Connelly and Johnston exchanged looks.
    The general nodded. “That’s good news, Colonel.” He turned to Johnston. “Apparently the blackout has affected the bandwidth of these local operatives.” He turned back to the speaker. “Once we finish up Operation Exorcist, Colonel, I want you to prepare a counterattack to wipe out these local militias.”
    “Understood. Do we take prisoners?”
    “No prisoners. Now’s our chance to get these bastards out of the way.”
    The line clicked off.
    Johnston took a seat nearby. “Which brings up the code injection. Now’s as good a time as any to let the Weyburn folks see if they can control the Daemon.”
    General Connelly’s face was unreadable. “Our secondary objective is just that. Let’s achieve the primary objective first.”
    “But a modification of the Daemon’s code base needs to happen, General.”
    “Once we’ve solidified our beachhead, Mr. Johnston.”
    The control board operator looked up, frowning. “General, we’re getting some strange reports back from the data center strike teams.”
    Connelly cast a look at Johnston. “We’re not done yet.” He then turned to the board operator. “What sort of reports?”
    “There don’t appear to be any people in the target data centers, sir.”
    Connelly pointed to the monitors on the big board. “Put up some video, goddamnit. I want eyes.”
    Board operators started working switches. Images of the white snow on major news channels and the lull in fighting outside on the ranch grounds were replaced by head-mounted cameras on distant mercenary strike teams. These images were variations on a theme—racks of servers that appeared damned near identical all around the world. The grainy video showed heavily armed soldiers in black body armor and helmets moving through aisle after aisle of computer racks.
    The screens showed hundreds of soldiers. There were Asians, Latinos, Africans, and Caucasians—mercenaries from a hundred different global firms. But none of them were finding human targets.
    The board operator looked up again. “I think we found something you should see, sir.”
    “Put it on this screen.” He pointed to the closest one on the control board.
    The board operator nodded and clicked a few switches. Suddenly a grainy video from a soldier’s head-mounted camera appeared there. It showed commandos milling about a fifty-inch plasma television sitting atop a Romanesque pedestal. The television displayed the logo for Daemon Industries, LLC, and the message:
    Click to play …
    Johnston frowned. “What the hell is
that?
”
    The board operator looked up again. “They’re finding them in a lot of the data centers, General.”
    On the big board they could see more and more of the small monitors displaying strike teams arriving at the center of each data center and finding a similar plasma-screen television. All of them showed the Daemon Industries, LLC, logo with the message “Click to Play.”
    Johnston closely studied the bank of monitors on the wall. Soldiers half a world away were pulling up their masks and giving the all-clear signal. “General, were we expecting to find these?”
    Connelly ignored him and spoke to a nearby Weyburn Labs analyst. “Is our data still intact?”
    “Well, the Destroy function is still