That had all stemmed from the use of Chinese and Indian drones to drop high-explosive military payloads on New York, London, and Madrid in the mid-twenty-first century. Neither nation was directly involved, of course, but they both sold their obsolete drones on the open market and the value of the weapons had long since been hammered home to terrorist groups worldwide.

Useless in their original tasking, drones like the Carnivore and Terran Raptor were sublime at sowing terror and confusion. Cheap, easy to use and deploy, and capable of wiping out a city block before anyone even thought to look for them, they quickly became the weapon of choice for terror groups worldwide.

By the 2070s, several international treaties existed and India had been embargoed for almost a decade for selling automated weapons to nonaligned parties. It was only after India finally capitulated upon joining the Block that the international supply of the ugly weapons began to dwindle. Historically, drone warfare had become a disgusting relic of an earlier time, something taught in schools as a cautionary tale more than anything else.

It was a stance that Potts agreed with. To his mind, if you were going to kill a man you should have the guts and honor to at least accept a degree of risk yourself, no matter how small. Pushing a button and killing people by remote was no way to do things. It made soldiers lazy and careless.

The world had politicians for that already. It didn’t need to add soldiers to the list.

Now, however, he needed more guns in the sky and drones were one way to do it. It would take time to get them out of storage, tested, and armed, but all the more reason to start now. He’d take heat for it, but if it saved the city, then he’d happily turn the spit on himself.

Potts found himself distracted and scowling at the tactical display, however, and his mind was brought rudely back into the present.

“Why do we have fighting in the Bronx? I thought our units were still trying to get through traffic.”

“They are, General. Those are reports from police and civilians mostly. We’re monitoring them from overheads and intercepts,” the aide said. “Almost eighty percent of reported fighting across the city is from police and civilian units, sir. We’ve got men and machines into some areas, and that number is growing fast, but the city is effectively gridlocked and we just don’t have any of the highly mobile units available. They’re all overseas at the moment.”

Potts closed his eyes. “Damn.”

There was just no way in hell that police units would have the firepower needed to crack these bastards, and in New York neither would civilians, for the most part. Lives were being lost and he knew that there wasn’t a damned thing he could hope to do about it.