The smell of bacon was a weapon.
It wafted up from the siege camp, thick and greasy, carried by the morning wind. It drifted over the factory walls, teasing the starving militia inside.
Jason stood on the roof of the Rouge Complex. He watched through binoculars.
Below, the Deacon's men were cooking breakfast on open fires. They laughed, eating with their hands, wiping grease on their duster coats. They knew exactly what they were doing.
"Psychological warfare," O'Malley grunted, racking the slide of his stolen rifle. "They're not just feeding themselves. They're starving us out mentally."
PING.
A bullet sparked off the railing inches from Jason's hand.
Jason didn't flinch. He didn't drop the binoculars.
"He's got a sniper in the water tower," Jason noted calmly. "Range: six hundred yards. Windage: full value left."
"I can take him," O'Malley raised his rifle.
"Save the ammo," Jason lowered the binoculars. He picked up the flattened bullet fragment from the concrete. It was still hot. "He's wasting rounds to send a message. It means he has plenty to spare."
A voice boomed from the camp below. The Deacon stood on top of his black train, holding a megaphone.
"Day One, Mr. Underwood!" the Deacon shouted. "Tick tock! The Lord is hungry!"
Jason looked at the bullet in his palm. It was a .308 caliber. Military surplus.
"Let's go," Jason said, pocketing the lead. "We have work to do."
The R&D Lab was a disaster area.
Howard Hughes had stripped the copper wiring from the walls. He had built a massive, spiderweb antenna array in the center of the room. It hummed with static, vibrating the floorboards.
"Talk to me, Howard," Jason walked in. "Did you find the signal?"
Hughes was wearing headphones, his eyes squeezed shut. He was tweaking a dial with the sensitivity of a safecracker.
"It's weak," Hughes whispered. "Fading in and out of the atmospheric noise. But it's there. The ghost is talking."
"Can we decode it?"
"It's Level 10 encryption," Einstein said, stepping away from a chalkboard covered in equations. "Nuclear launch codes. Enigma-style cyphers with a rolling key. Every minute, the algorithm changes."
"So we're locked out," Sarah said, leaning against the doorframe. She looked tired. The stress of the siege was wearing her thin.
"We need a supercomputer to break it," Einstein sighed. "Or a thousand mathematicians working for a thousand years."
Tesla laughed.
He was sitting in the corner, eating a can of peaches with a screwdriver.
"You think too small, Albert," Tesla chuckled. "You think in silicon. You think in binary."
Tesla stood up. He walked over to the corner of the room where a heavy tarp covered a glass tank.
He ripped the tarp off.
The team gasped.
It was the Brain Tank from the penthouse. The "Wetware" processor Alta had used to control the robots. Dozens of human brains floating in yellow nutrient gel, wired together with fiber optics.
"The hardware is disgusting," Tesla admitted, tapping the glass. "But the processing power is infinite. The human mind is the ultimate decryption engine."
"You want to plug the radio into that?" Sarah recoiled. "Those were people, Tesla. Dissidents from the Pit."
"They are processors now," Tesla shrugged. "We give them a purpose."
He grabbed the audio cable from the radio receiver. He jammed it into the input port on the tank.
The effect was instantaneous.
The brains in the jars twitched. Synapses fired. Blue light raced through the fiber optic cables connecting the tissue.
The static on the speakers changed. It wasn't noise anymore. It was a pattern.
Screee-ooo-bip-bip.
The sound sharpened. It became a voice.
"This is General Ironwood," a synthesized voice cut through the room. "Acting Commander of US Strat-Com. Identify immediately or transmission will be terminated."
The room went silent.
Jason grabbed the microphone.
"This is Jason Underwood," Jason said. "CEO of Standard Oil. We are transmitting from Detroit. We are under siege."
There was a pause. The brains pulsed with light as they processed the response.
"Underwood," Ironwood's voice crackled. "We have your file. The man who crashed the economy. The Architect of the Collapse."
"I prefer 'Disruptor'," Jason said dryly. "General, we need orbital support. We have hostiles at the gate. Heavy armor. We need a Kinetic Rod strike on coordinates 42 North, 83 West."
Ironwood laughed. It was a dry, rasping sound.
"Support?" Ironwood scoffed. "Son, you think we're sitting in a command center with coffee and donuts? We are twelve old men in a hole in the ground. The reactor is dying. The air scrubbers are failing."
"But the satellites are still up there," Jason pressed. "Hughes tracked the signal. The constellation is active."
"Active and drifting," Ironwood corrected. "Without ground-based guidance, they are blind. We can't fire them. We can't even talk to them."
"We can talk to them," Jason said. "We have the Babel Spire. We have the broadcast power."
"You have a megaphone," Ironwood said. "You don't have eyes. To fire a Rod of God, you need a laser designator on the ground. You have to paint the target."
"We don't have a laser," Hughes whispered. "We looted the armory. No guidance systems."
"Then you're out of luck," Ironwood said. "Unless..."
"Unless what?" Jason asked.
"There is one active rod," Ironwood said slowly. "Project Thor. Platform 7. It's already in a decaying orbit. It's passing over Detroit in... forty minutes."
"Can you drop it?"
"I can release the clamps," Ironwood said. "But without a laser lock, it's just a tungsten telephone pole falling from space. It will hit somewhere in the zip code. Maybe the enemy camp. Maybe your factory."
"We can calculate the trajectory," Einstein stepped forward. He grabbed the mic. "General, this is Albert Einstein. I can provide manual triangulation."
"Einstein?" Ironwood paused. "I thought you were dead in Princeton."
"Physics is eternal," Einstein said. "If I give you the precise atmospheric density, wind shear, and Coriolis deviation... can you adjust the fins?"
"If the math is perfect," Ironwood said. "Down to the decimal."
"It will be," Einstein promised.
"You have thirty minutes, Professor," Ironwood said. "Platform 7 crosses the horizon at 0900 hours. Give me the numbers, or watch it burn up in the atmosphere."
The connection cut. The brains in the tank stopped glowing.
"Thirty minutes," Jason looked at Einstein. "Can you do it?"
"I need to see the stars," Einstein said. He ran to the window. He looked up.
"Damn it," he cursed.
Detroit was covered in smog. Thick, yellow clouds of pollution rolled over the city, blocking out the sky.
"I can't triangulate without a reference point!" Einstein yelled. "I need a star! I need Cassiopeia or the North Star to align the grid!"
"We're blind," Sarah said.
Jason looked at the schematic of the factory on the wall. He pointed to the very top of the Babel Spire.
"Not blind," Jason said. "Just low."
He grabbed a brass telescope from Alta's display case.
"The spire punches through the smog layer," Jason said. "We have to climb."
"Climb?" Einstein looked at his shaking hands. "Jason, I am seventy years old. I cannot climb a radio tower in a windstorm."
"You don't have to climb," Jason grabbed a coil of rope. "You just have to hold on."
He turned to O'Malley.
"Get your rifle," Jason ordered. "We're going to the roof. And we're going to need cover."
"Against snipers?" O'Malley checked his scope. "On a ladder? Boss, that's suicide."
"No," Jason strapped the telescope to his back. "It's astronomy."