Bot Trilogy Book Three: A Silence So Mighty-hardCover

Burning autumn light poured from the sun overhead, casting hard shadows that stained the decaying concrete and cracked asphalt underfoot.

Sergeant Biggs peered around the edge of the tall building. Half a dozen troops spread out behind him, and a similar number were stationed beside another building on the opposite side of the street.

He scrutinized the scanner in his hand, confirming the absence of RF signals. According to its readings, they should be safe—yet trusting the little device felt foolish; he’d seen technology fail plenty of times.

All bots broadcast RF continuously, sustaining a communications network with others nearby. This unceasing transmission was one of the many reasons they were so dangerous—every bot shared the same information instantly, adapting with precision and speed that no human could match. The rebels had long been aware of the signals; they flooded the airwaves, impossible to ignore. They understood that the bots were communicating, planning attacks, or reporting rebel positions, but they had no way to decode or block them. That changed when Adam, Amira, and their friends arrived at the Mountain. They brought critical data—a sort of Rosetta stone—that made signal decryption possible.

Hijacked signals appeared incomprehensible—a labyrinth of machine code tied to hardware operations and cryptic sub-routines. Yet, with the supercluster computers buried deep beneath the Mountain, paired with the invaluable data Adam’s group had secured, scientists began piecing together a lexicon. Slowly but steadily, they were unraveling the language of the bots, moving closer to real-time interception and decryption. Though progress was painstakingly slow, momentum was on their side, and soon, the system would be operational—a game-changing breakthrough in their fight for survival.

When it was revealed that Adam, Amira, and their friends Jess, Mark, and April had come from the Nest, the news sent waves of excitement through the Mountain. During the early days of the Transition, the Nest emerged as one of the first information hubs, broadcasting on pirated frequencies through repurposed landlines. A brilliant hacker named Skip, known for his resourcefulness, engineered a low-tech network using antique modems and rogue BBS boards. Within the online community, he was revered by his hacker handle, Madox.

Skip and a scattered network of like-minded hackers worked tirelessly across the cities, sharing vital information—bot sightings, food availability, defense tactics—anything that could help people survive. The databases they built became lifelines, their broadcasts guiding desperate communities. Their ingenuity saved countless lives and reignited hope in a world where despair had become the norm.

Skip was lost when the Nest was destroyed. But Amira had been there before he died, working beside him to discover the secrets of the enemy communications. Using a captured bot, they were able to reverse-engineer its technology.

Now Biggs was here, deep within enemy territory, using this technology to get closer than anyone ever had to the corporation’s headquarters, the nexus of the Transition. It was difficult to reconcile that the plans to remake the nation had been devised within a dozen blocks of where they now stood. The crumbling buildings and litter-strewn streets around him did little to conjure impressions of a great society.

This the sprawling city had been brought to its knees by poverty and violence long before the Transition—an unfortunate circumstance that was leveraged early on to garner support for the plans President Forester had devised with Travis Eckhart, head of the corporation.

It turned out they had very different visions for the future, and when Forester finally realized this, it was too late.

Forester had been desperate. As an embattled president presiding over what many thought would be the last generation of a once great country, he had trusted Travis despite his better judgment and the warnings of those around him.

Once Travis had control, he removed Forester and dismantled his government. The rest was history—well, the Transition.

Biggs waved the patrol forward, sticking to the shadows as they moved from building to building. They’d been at it for hours, and there hadn’t been any contact yet, but the constant threat was wearing on them all.

Cars languished along the sides of the road, windows shattered, tires flat, and nature doing its best to reclaim the landscape.

Ahead was a dumpster overflowing with decaying garbage and refuse—it would burn easily. There’d been talk of creating a distraction, but Biggs had quickly shot that down. He didn’t want a distraction; he didn’t want the bots to know they were here at all.

In and out. Nothing left behind, no contact.

The mission? Establish the outermost perimeter of the corporation headquarters’ wireless network and record as much of the broadcast signal as possible. Biggs wasn’t clear on the finer details—he hadn’t exactly paid attention when they were explained. He was an operator, a gun-wielding apex creation forged in hellfire. Oorah!

When it came to all this fancy tech that seemed so vital to winning the war, Biggs only needed one piece of information: which direction to point the boom stick.

As he understood it, the long-term plan involved a special ops tech group infiltrating the headquarters to plant a virus into the corporation’s supercomputer mainframe. Once active, the virus would broadcast worldwide, infecting the bots and putting an end to this whole sticky mess.

Once they found the network and recorded their sample, they would know how close the tech group needed to be to plant the virus.

The plan sounded simple—Biggs liked simple. The fewer steps, the fewer mistakes.

They were within eight blocks of the main building now. It was impossible to believe they hadn’t picked up any RF signals or seen any bots—the entire place looked abandoned back to nature.

They also hadn’t located any trace of the corporate network either. A corpsman on the opposite side of the block was doing a constant scan up and down the frequencies. The hope had been to plant the virus from somewhere deep within the city—a safe, defendable location. Eight blocks out from the hornet’s nest was far from safe, and they still had no signal.

Biggs leaned forward, visually scouring the street, before sprinting to join the signalman.

“Still nothing?” Biggs struggled to control his breath, sweat pouring down his face—heavy gear and stress. They’d decided against exo-rigs for the forward team. Too bulky and challenging to move with stealth. If they made contact, Biggs knew they’d regret it.

The corpsman shook his head. “Noth’n yet—the spectrum is flat.”

Biggs leaned close to look at the screen. “You sure you’re using that thing right?”

The man gave him a blank stare through small round glasses.

Biggs raised his own scanner. “This one’s dead too—just nothing out here to pick up. Is there any chance this is equipment failure?”

“For both of us?” The corpsman shook his head. “Very unlikely.”

Biggs frowned, his face dark. “We just keep move’n closer than—something has to pop up.”

He signaled for the patrol to move up. Silently, they spilled around the buildings like spiders scurrying between corpses.

Six blocks, now five. Still nothing. Biggs studied the scanner in his hand, banging it against his palm. Something was wrong. Either the equipment was malfunctioning, or they were being set up. Or, the place was abandoned. That made no sense. All the intel pointed to this as the central location of the corporation and the hub of the Transition.

The scanner in his hand suddenly lit up. RF frequencies skittered across the screen, just a few blips at first, but soon, the parade became thick and constant.

Directly ahead of them on the next block, one of the abandoned cars shuddered and began moving, unfolding into a standing position. Biggs realized with horror that it wasn’t a car at all but a heavy battle bot lying dormant.

He saw similar movements up and down the block in several places. The bots rose to full height, then stood motionless, dust and debris sliding from their heavy metal armor.

Biggs waved his men down; they all dropped to a crouch, weapons raised, waiting.

The bot nearest Biggs suddenly spun toward him and rumbled forward, its battle cannon training onto his position.

"Compliance is mandatory. During the transition, there will be casualties. If you do not resist, you will not be harmed.”

Prefer a different format?  Click Here.