Greetings Supporters of Crow’s Gambit.
As I start the process of working on the book to follow Crow’s Gambit I am writing a series of vignettes. They take place before, during, and after Crow’s Gambit as I work out my thoughts on where the story is going. Some pieces may end up getting stuck in Crow’s Gambit, some may end up in Crow’s Haven (book two), and some will just end on the cutting room floor. I will avoid spoilers as much as possible but they will give hints at some aspects of the story.
We currently need 59 Pre-Orders to get to Quill publishing. If you enjoy the story, are just curious about it, or just want to help me out please make a Pre-Order (if you haven’t) or ask a friend to consider doing so.
Here is Vignette #1, code named Joseph.
Joseph, whose name wasn’t actually Joseph, studied the large building through his goggles. They were more than binoculars. The optics did magnify the image but the embedded electronics and algorithms sharpened the image and adjusted the contrast automatically for him. Three dimensional overlays also provided information from the bots that were slowly circling the building. He had deployed a small squadron of them, mostly small fliers but a few creepers for good measure. In terms of hardware they weren’t anything special. Mostly off the shelf technology. The DPU, or data processing unit, and the software code it was running were what gave them their power. If they were discovered the DPU would automatically fry itself and wipe the software. No one would be able to trace them back to him or his government.
The assignment still made him bristle. He was a senior field operative. Keeping an eye on some American “cowboy” industrialist was beneath his abilities. If Beijing had a specific interest in Darrow Industries they weren’t telling him, and that bothered him. Of course if it was a fluff assignment because Beijing had lost face in him that would be worse.
A flashing yellow icon on his display indicated the A.I. program that was recording and processing the data had found something interesting, at least in a ones and zeros pattern matching sort of way. Shifting the angle of the goggles he zoomed in on the location indicated. Instantly the image resolved itself with additional information and data tags. Two people were leaving the building. He recognized the first as the young woman who had recently been hired by Darrow. The search algorithms had already identified her as Cassie McIntyre. On the surface there wasn’t anything remarkable about her but several flags and inconsistencies in the data had made the algorithms mark her as an enigma. As such she was indicated with a small question mark in the display. However, it was the person with her who was tagged with the flashing yellow icon.
She had her arm around the shoulders of a young boy. He looked to be about sixteen years old with dark hair. Joseph repurposed several of the bots to shift their positions toward the front of the building. It was risky to move so many at once. The building’s security systems were much cleverer than he would have thought. On two occasions he had almost been exposed by the automatic sensor sweeps. Seeing little choice he continued to move the bots closer to get a better look at this boy. A flash of static blinked across his eyes and then a list disabled bots started to scroll down the side. Apparently he’d triggered an automatic defense system. Several of his swarm had been fried by an electromagnetic counter measure.
Joseph sent a recall signal to the remaining bots and started his car. There was no sense in sticking around to see if they sent out a human team to investigate further. On his display a freeze frame image of the boy was displayed. As he watched the pixels adjusted and reformed as the program overlaid more data from multiple bots. The enhancement finished and a red triangle flashed on the image. Next to it another image popped up. Obviously the same person but several years younger. A string of characters appeared and Joseph let out a soft whistle. Maybe Beijing hadn’t lost faith in him after all.
The characters indicated this was an Obsidian level asset. His orders were to pursue and capture if possible. If not then the asset was to be terminated. Interesting thought Joseph. Very interesting.
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