And Heather was the same way. A malfunction wasn’t enough, she needed a win. Fame wasn’t enough, she needed to be the most famous. That’s why she’d smeared the other CamCos to the media; she hadn’t wanted success, she wanted the other CamCos to fail. If he won Capitol Summit for her, she’d return with another demand down the line, and another. That’s the sort of person she was. And surrendering was never going to appease her. There would always be something more she wanted to force out of him.

Tom made his decision then.

Heather, he sent to her.

What, Tom?

Here it comes.

Then he seized control of Heather’s weapons, aimed them at the nearest Dominion Agra skyboard, and blasted it to pieces. There was no reaction from Heather for a long moment. Tom maneuvered the ship in a graceful arc to its next target. Obsidian Corp.’s board. Yes. He launched missiles and took that one down in a liberating hail of flames. Burning fragments of skyboard rained down about the ship as Heather screamed at him in his head. He flashed to her neural processor and grew aware of the way she was reaching up to tear out the thought-interface node.

He acted quickly, activating the heat receptors in her processor, reveling in her shock when merely touching the interface node seared her fingers.

Nope. I’m not done yet, Tom thought to her. Touch that and you’ll have as many fingers as me.

If she’d had a moment to reason it out, she might’ve realized it was an illusion, not a real burn, but Heather was upset and furious and confused, seeing all her plans spiral hopelessly out of her control. Tom, are you crazy? Are you INSANE? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

Tom aimed his weapons at a massive image of Sigurdur Vitol’s face, then blasted one Wyndham Harks board after another. He carried on like that, dodging through the rain of debris, curving around one board, soaring straight through the narrow gap between two of them, the landscape below him growing and receding, skyboards raining debris from all directions.

And then words appeared in his brain. And they weren’t from Heather.

I like this game. But are you only going to target your own multinationals?

Medusa!

Fair enough, Tom messaged back, whipping Heather’s vessel in a joyful loop before blasting some Russo-Chinese boards. He popped out of the ship only a moment to dissuade Heather, yet again, from pulling the interface node out of her neck. He saw briefly through Heather’s vision center, the view of the most powerful men and women in the world gathered in the Rotunda, goggling up at the destruction.