The inside of the Vanguard mobile comms trailer was crammed with tangled coaxial cables, glowing cathode monitors, and the blue, pulsing light of high-hum satellite transceivers. The air smelled of burnt transformer oil, hot circuit boards. The rich, roasted aroma of coffee that Toby Mallow was boiling in a dented tin pot over an open gas burner.
Outside the trailer’s open rear doors, thousands of agricultural workers, commoner veterinarians, and frontline guard post soldiers stood gathered in the clearing between the geodesic domes. The rain had ceased, replaced by a cool, clean breeze that swept down from the northern mountains. It carried away the last traces of purple fungal smoke.
Professor Bramwell Heseltine stood leaning over the backup signal console, an unlit hand-rolled cigar clamped between his teeth, his calloused hands adjusting the gain on an ancient, empty pocket-tube signal amplifier. “The Federal Board is attempting a sky-high choke-hold on our transponder frequencies, Toby. They’ve rerouted three military satellites to jam our uplink.”
“Let them try,” Toby grinned, his fingers flying across the clockwork keyboard. “I routed the carrier wave through the Eurasian Bastion’s diplomatic quantum relay and the Pan-African deep-sea sound cable. Unless Judith Brandt wants to declare war on Moscow and Cairo at the same time, she can’t cut this line without blacking out half the planet.”
