He felt the AI’s call to the Council just as she did. He knew that the gap in the satellites’ coverage was now over the Indian subcontinent and coming his way. The AIs could not hope to get Pei Leong Lam online from China so it must have good reason to be calling a Council meeting when it could not get quorum. Shahim hoped he knew the reason, he knew it should be happening any time now.

He watched as Agent Parikh stepped off the path from the checkpoint and discreetly looked up. She angled her face slightly westward toward where she knew the nearest satellite was even now heading for the horizon. Shahim would not look up to join her in Council. He had no answer to the questions they wanted to ask him, and no intention of making some up. But he listened in on the meeting as he had earlier when the first satellite had been destroyed. Soon the others would join as well.

He saw immediately that it had indeed begun. The AI conveyed images to the Council without emotion as the eyes of its three remaining satellites tracked the launch of two hundred missiles from each of the GBMD sites in Florida and Hawaii. While the remaining Council members argued over the source of this new attack, the AI prepared to begin destroying the projectiles using the multipurpose laser systems on each of its three satellites. But as this went on, Shahim noticed Agent John Hunt go silent and his avatar become perfectly still. Hello, this is going to be interesting, thought Shahim as a new set of alarms went off in the meeting. There was a third launch cluster being detected, this time in the western Pacific. The satellites were tracking forty-six objects in the new launch, but they all seemed to be coming from the HMS Dauntless.

“Wait,” said Agent Lana, “the HMS Dauntless? Isn’t that your ship, Hunt?” she stared at him, the extent of his betrayal sinking in. Well, no point maintaining pretenses anymore, thought John and Shahim in unison.

As the three banks of missiles drove up through the atmosphere to intercept the orbits of the remaining satellites, John’s avatar smiled. He then raised his virtual middle fingers in a very human gesture at Lana and allowed himself a long, hearty laugh before vanishing from the meeting, disconnecting from the Council for the last time.

Shahim, meanwhile, started to walk toward the Agent standing off the road, walking around behind her and deploying his weapons array. She sensed a person approaching but assumed it was simply another guard and so she disconnected her laser link with the satellite, which was rapidly disappearing over the horizon anyway, and closed her array. She was still in shock over the fact that they were under attack again. Without much thought she turned toward the approaching steps, thinking more about the satellites than the man she could hear coming.