by Tarah Benner
Just then, I hear a low beep from outside the room. The deadbolt kicks back into the lock, and the door swings open with a burst of cold air. A blond woman appears in a short white dress. She has to be a bot.
“Hey,” I growl. “Can you uncuff me?”
The bot ignores me and goes behind the curtain. I hear a series of beeps as it adjusts some machine, and then it breezes back to my bed.
Every cell in my body seems to recoil as it reaches out for my arm. I pull it back and shrink into the corner, glowering up at the bot. The humanoid draws back, its expression calculating. I can tell it’s conferring with the hive. It’s analyzing every interaction I’ve ever had with its kind, and I’m sure the results aren’t pretty.
A second later, the bot’s hand shoots out and seizes me around the wrist. I try to fight it, but I’m not strong enough. The bot cuffs my right arm to the rail.
Raw, unbridled rage surges through me, but there’s nothing I can do. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to ensure I don’t escape.
Then the door flies open again, and every muscle in my body goes rigid. Mordecai breezes in through the door, and a familiar fury ignites in my chest.
Mordecai’s skin looks pale and clammy, and I remember where Jade’s dagger struck him. He seems to be moving with a certain stiffness, and I feel gratified that he’s in pain.
“Good afternoon, Sergeant,” he says, forcing a smile to let me know he’s won.
I sit up as straight as I can in bed, still fighting the pull of exhaustion. I want to kill him — he’s four feet away — but I can’t do a goddamned thing.
“What do you want?” I growl. There must be some reason he’s kept me alive.
Mordecai’s smile widens. He seems to be glad I asked. “Do you know why you’re here?”
I just glare. I don’t want to give him the upper hand, but Mordecai seems to guess. “You don’t remember how you got here?”
I blink slowly, still trying to incinerate him through sheer force of will.
“Your friend Jade tried to poison you,” says Mordecai, crinkling his brow in mock concern. “Well, she tried to poison me, but of course she failed. You were the victim of her plan.”
I think back to Jade refusing to drink. She must have programmed the bot to poison the liquor. She hadn’t counted on a toast.
“I’m sorry I let that happen,” says Mordecai, though his face says the opposite. “I needed to show Ms. Armaz that she is more transparent than she thinks. I needed to teach her a lesson.”
“Where is she?” I ask.
Mordecai frowns, but the expression is just for show. He’s delighted that I have to ask. He slowly draws back the curtain.
Jade is lying in the bed next to mine, hooked up to tubes and machines. Her chest is moving at a rhythmic pace, and she looks relaxed in sleep. Only, her IV fluids look different from mine. There’s a plastic thing next to the bag with a bunch of buttons for the bots to control.
“What’s wrong with her?” I ask. I don’t remember what happened. She appears unharmed, but looks can be deceiving. Something is definitely wrong.
“She’s fine,” says Mordecai with a note of smugness. “Ms. Armaz is just . . . indisposed.”
A sick feeling bubbles up in my gut. I don’t like the way he said that. It sounds as though he’s torturing her.
“She sustained a few minor injuries — just some bumps and bruises.”
“Bumps and bruises,” I say, my voice shaking with rage. “Is that why she’s here?”
“She is a bit of a loose cannon, but she’s valuable to me, you see. She is perhaps the most extraordinary talent that the tech world has ever seen.”
The dread in my gut intensifies. There’s only one reason Mordecai would want a “tech talent” kept alive.
“She needed a shift in her perspective before we would be able to work together.”
“Jade will never work with you.”
“Why not?” asks Mordecai, sounding surprised. “You agreed to work with me. So will she. She just needs the appropriate motivation.”
My heart sinks. Bits and pieces of my conversation with Mordecai are drifting back into focus. He knew our plan, and he threatened Maggie. He knew that was the only way I’d do his bidding.
Suddenly, everything clicks into place. Mordecai doesn’t have any allies. He only has one move in his playbook: good old-fashioned coercion.
“You’re drugging her,” I say, staring at the device attached to Jade’s IV.
“Some people will never see eye to eye,” he says. “But we’re going to do important work together. I need to be sure we’re on the same page.”
I shake my head. “Important work?”
“Opioids tend to make people pliable . . . a bit annoying, but pliable.”
“You’re getting her addicted.”
It’s sick — even by Mordecai’s standards. My whole body is trembling with pent-up rage. I want to kill him slowly.
“I’m creating a demand,” says Mordecai. “Just a cost of doing business. I need the location of a few of her friends . . . an army of skilled hackers who will come to her aid.”
“You can’t control the world,” I say, smirking despite my misery. “You think you can make everyone do what you want, but you’re just one pathetic man.”
“There’s bound to be resistance to the inevitable.” Mordecai’s tone is even and controlled, but I can sense his undercurrent of rage. “A few rogue personalities I can deal with. I just want to make sure the next phase is successful.”
The next phase? My heart beats faster. My body is flooded with fear.
“Oh, silly me,” says Mordecai. “You’ve been in a coma. You are a bit behind on the times.”
He lets loose a chuckle that fills me with dread. Only death and destruction could make Mordecai giggle.
“The president of the United States has died,” he says. “The US government is flailing. It wasn’t prepared for what I unleashed. The vice president will be addressing the nation in an emergency joint session of Congress. I intend to have my voice heard.”
My heartbeat seems to be pulsing in my head. The president is dead?
“Now that phase one is complete,” Mordecai continues, “I simply can’t afford a Space Force mutiny. I need a military presence I can count on — an army capable of defending this colony.”
All of a sudden, something inside me snaps. The hatred pulsing through my body is all-consuming, and I lose myself in that rage.
“I won’t help you,” I snarl. “I’ll never help you. I’d rather be dead than answer to you.”
Mordecai is watching me with feigned detachment. I can tell that I’ve struck a nerve.
“You can torture me, drug me, beat me to death . . . but I will never help you kill.”
Mordecai is watching me with a calculating expression. He seems to be searching my face for weakness — a vulnerability that he can exploit.
I’ve known plenty of men like Mordecai Blum. I know how he operates — how he preys on fear. But there’s nothing more he can do to me — at least not anymore.
“You haven’t asked what became of Ms. Barnes,” he says. “You must remember your tearful goodbye.”
I blink but don’t say a word. I’m done being yanked around by this man.
“Ms. Barnes, Mr. Ping, and my dear sister escaped,” he says. “They followed your plan to a T. Well, almost . . .”
I swallow. I can’t allow myself to feel relief. There’s something Mordecai hasn’t said — something he seems to be holding back.
“What was the name of that air force colonel?” asks Mordecai. “The one who launched the missile?”
A darkness unfurls inside my chest. Why would he bring up Colonel Sipps?
“Funny she hasn’t detonated that EMP.”
I glance around. There’s not a window in this room. For all I know, I could be on Earth. Sipps could have blown Elderon to bits. I can’t trust anything Mordecai says.
“Do you thi
nk it was difficult to learn where Sipps had sent my sister and dear Ms. Barnes?”
He stares at me expectantly, but I keep my expression blank. Inside I’m screaming, but I won’t let him see.
“Ms. Barnes thinks she is safely sequestered in an apartment in the East Village. My sister took the coward’s way out. She couldn’t cope with all she’d unleashed. She decided to remove herself from the equation.”
I get a chill at Mordecai’s words. Is he saying what I think he’s saying? Is Ziva really gone? He must be bluffing about the safe house. He can’t know where they are.
“The trouble is,” Mordecai continues, “you seem to be stuck up here. I could have one of my bots pay them a visit . . . just to see how they’re settling in.”
“No,” I whisper. The sound is primal — and completely involuntary.
“Or I could withdraw the generous medical treatment your friend Jared is receiving.”
My stomach twists. I’d forgotten about Jared’s involvement. He was supposed to be on that shuttle.
“Yes, he’s alive . . . but only just.”
Mordecai flashes a bracing smile, and I want to rip his heart out. My whole body is thrumming with a murderous rage. I feel as though I’ve lost control.
“I expect your full cooperation,” says Mordecai. “And who knows? Ms. Barnes might just make her career.”
Mordecai slaps my leg, and that fury roars in my chest. Mordecai already knows he’s won. He’s been one step ahead this whole time.
“I hear there’s going to be quite a stir at the joint session of Congress . . . Rest up, Sergeant. You’ve had an ordeal. It’s a brave new world, and I need you ready.”
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading Colony Assassin. I know many of you are probably still screaming about that cliffhanger, but I promise you’ll have a satisfying resolution as the series continues.
The Elderon Chronicles were always meant to span five to six books. A long series gives characters room to grow and allows readers to build strong connections with them. Selfishly, it gives me more time to spend with the people I create. After three books, I know these characters like old friends, and I am not ready to part with them yet.
I enjoyed getting to spend some time with Jonah and Maggie individually in this book, but I had perhaps the most fun meeting Jade. Jade’s character was always the “assassin” I had in mind when I came up with the title, but as I was writing I realized that the assassin could refer to Jonah (a former army assassin) or Mordecai (the president’s assassin).
Jade has a rich and deeply complex backstory, which I explore in one of my Patreon shorts. It’s this backstory that makes her so fascinating to me, and if you are not yet a patron, I highly recommend that you become one.
As always, I had the opportunity to explore some of the terrifying, interesting, and unusual new technologies that are part of our world today.
Hypersonic missiles as described in the book are currently in development. These missiles travel at Mach 5 or higher — five times faster than the speed of sound.
Once launched, a target would have mere minutes to respond before the missile would strike. Even more alarming is that these missiles do not follow a predictable trajectory. Unlike a ballistic missile, a hypersonic missile can be maneuvered midflight, and shooting one down would be, as Jonah said, like hitting a bullet with a bullet.
Both China and Russia are aggressively pursuing the development of hypersonic missiles, and Air Force General John Hyten has warned that the US is currently incapable of defending against these weapons. The future of stealth is a weapon’s speed, and the United States’ defense capabilities are rapidly being outpaced.
What the United States most likely does have is an e-bomb — a high-powered microwave device that could be mounted on a missile and deployed over its intended target.
Most of the time when we hear about the threat of an electromagnetic pulse, it’s being discussed in the context of a nuclear explosion such as Starfish Prime. Starfish Prime was one in a series of infamous high-altitude nuclear tests carried out by the US in 1962. The effects of Starfish Prime shocked the world and affected the flow of electricity hundreds of kilometers away.
When a nuclear bomb is detonated, it releases a small portion of its energy as gamma rays. These collide with air molecules and cause electrons to accelerate. This acceleration creates a powerful magnetic field capable of destroying electronic devices. (In the aftermath of Starfish Prime, hundreds of streetlights in Hawaii lost power.)
If a blast is big enough and high enough, it has the potential to fry an entire continent’s worth of electronics. But electromagnetic pulses can occur naturally as the result of a solar storm and can be produced by humans without a nuclear blast.
Many countries (including North Korea) have the missiles and satellites to launch an EMP attack — an attack that the United States is unprepared to survive.
In my research, I found EMPs described as “civilization killers.” If one was detonated at a high enough altitude, it would wipe out our electrical grid, disable our communication systems, cripple our cities’ infrastructures, and devastate our defense capabilities.
Just think about that for a moment. Consider an America where no smartphones, computers, TVs, or gas pumps work. Think of every electronic device that you rely on each day.
Imagine you’re at work when everything suddenly goes dark. The lights go off, the phones stop working, and your computer is reduced to a useless piece of junk. Perhaps you walk or bike home (because your vehicle might not work). If your commute is on par with the American average, that would take you anywhere from four to five hours.
You reach your house dying of thirst only to find that there’s no water when you turn on the tap. How much food do you have in the house? Enough for three days? Four days? Five?
If you are able to walk to a grocery store, you’ll find it completely dark and swamped with people. If you don’t carry cash, you’re screwed, and soon people will start looting. Grocery store shelves will empty overnight as supply chains come to a grinding halt. Any perishables will quickly spoil. What will you do for water?
If this sounds like a nightmare to you, I suggest you read this prepper’s guide to surviving an EMP attack. It’s about as Walking Dead as you might imagine, with a surprising emphasis on banding together with your neighbors for protection.
The most formidable threats in the future will no doubt come in the form of cyberattacks. The events carried out by the Bureau for Chaos described in this series were all based on real possibilities — most of them hacks carried out as exercises to demonstrate vulnerabilities in technology.
When it comes to cyberattacks, we have only seen the tip of the iceberg. In 2017, the US became aware that Russians had infiltrated and probed its power grid. A group called Dragonfly 2.0 hacked dozens of energy companies and gained access to their networks. They managed to obtain hands-on control of the interfaces, which would have allowed them to create widespread blackouts at will.
The more frightening possibility is a cyberattack on a nuclear facility. In 2009, an attack known as Stuxnet destroyed roughly 1,000 Iranian centrifuges by using portable media to install a worm on the facility’s air-gapped system. The attackers — most likely the United States and Israel — used four software exploits to breach the facility’s controls. Since then, security experts have begun to rethink the possibility of a viable attack against nuclear systems and take preventative measures.
But I believe a devastating cyberattack on our nuclear systems is inevitable. In our day-to-day lives, hacks have become almost commonplace. 2017 was the year of the data breach, and 2018 was the year of data exposure. (Data exposure occurs when cloud users misconfigure a database where information is stored, allowing it to be exposed to anyone who knows where to look.)
In November, Amazon revealed that it had inadvertently exposed customers’ names and email addresses due to a “technical error.” USPS exposed the data of
60 million users in an API vulnerability for InformedDelivery. The service allows users to view mail before it arrives, but the breach told hackers when important documents and checks would be arriving in the mail.
Marketing and data firm Exactis left 340 million records out on the web for anyone to see — most likely data on every American. Not only did Exactis expose these users’ physical addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers, but the database also contained highly personal information, including children’s genders and ages.
As I was writing this, I heard on the radio about the Marriott breach that exposed the data of 500 million Starwood hotel customers — the largest ever. According to Marriott, the names, phone numbers, email addresses, birthdays, and passport data of 327 million customers were exposed, and 100 million additional customers had their credit-card numbers compromised.
What’s most troubling about this cyberattack is that the Chinese hackers believed to be responsible were also behind the Anthem hack and the hacking of the Office of Personnel Management. The latter hack included poorly guarded data on Americans’ finances, family members, and romantic relationships — information that, once paired with travel data, could have far-reaching consequences.
This data could be used to identify spies and government officials, dig up information on their finances and relationships, and potentially blackmail them into giving up state secrets or even becoming informants for China. The possibilities are endless.
It seems to be only a matter of time before all our information becomes public record. The data exposed in even the worst attacks pales in comparison to the data many people willingly share, but I still find this loss of control disconcerting.
I choose not to own a smart-home speaker like the Echo or install cameras around my house because I find the mere possibility of mass surveillance creepy. I avoid giving out my personal information whenever I can avoid it, but still more of my data is out in the world than I would like.
