The Extra's Rise - Chapter 723

723: Quantum Leap (1) 723: Quantum Leap (1) The “declaration of war” didn’t arrive with fire and noise.

It arrived as a sound most people would mistake for silence-the low, steady breath of Aetherite collars spinning up across a continent.

On the main wall, our deployment graph didn’t climb; it curved, each node seeding another, each collar bringing two more online as installers and pre-staged crews met their marks.

What Skyveil intended as a choke became the ignition event for a transportation regime change.

The old map-routes, hubs, privileged corridors-stopped describing reality the moment space itself joined our payroll.

“Network expansion is ahead of every model,” Dr.

Chen said, not bothering to restrain her satisfaction.

“Aetherite draw is at twelve percent of legacy gate operations.

We can sustain continental coverage on current stock, and we can bootstrap new circuits from local storage indefinitely.” Legacy gates had been the toys of treasuries and the very rich for one simple reason: power.

A single intercontinental jump used to cost as much as a medium factory’s monthly bill.

Our collars turned that calculus into an accounting error.

Instantaneous travel went from a sculpture in a ministry lobby to a line item every shipper could justify.

“Marcus is going kinetic,” Reika cut in, violet eyes flicking as she pulled a new layer over the map.

The Skyveil lattice shifted from rings to spears.

“Multiple heavy transports converging on our sites.

Attack formations, not inspection patterns.” Not panic.

Doctrine.

He’d watched the blockade become irrelevant and moved to Plan B with a professional’s lack of melodrama.

‘He learned from Maxwell,’ Luna said, dry and approving.

‘No tantrum.

Controlled escalation.’ ‘It won’t save him,’ I answered.

‘We built for the day when fixed positions stopped being assets and started being targets.’ “Target priority?” I asked.

“Western command first,” Reika said, opening a pane that tracked a dozen converging signatures.

“Jin and Kali’s node.

Secondary: Research and Avalon.

Classic decapitation and denial.” It was good tactics-for an opponent who believed command was a room and not a protocol.

“Activate distributed command,” I said.

“Regionals hot.

Local authority with standing rules.

Western pair have full independent discretion.” The western link chimed.

Jin’s projection snapped in, the background resolving into a mobile command bay mounted inside what used to be an aircraft cradle.

Kali stood to his left, headset wire tucked close, calm in the way of a person who had memorized the shape of useful fear.

“Twelve heavies inbound,” Jin said.

“ETA forty.” “Critical assets?” I asked.

Kali answered.

“Already gone.

Staff and core hardware are offsite through our collars.

Remaining systems are decoys and time-waste.

If they breach, they’ll capture empty walls and clever thermostats.” She and Jin didn’t finish each other’s sentences; they left space the other moved into.

Tactical telepathy, earned rather than declared.

“We also have an opportunity,” Jin added, tilting a different feed toward me-the western news aggregate, a river of lower-thirds and aerial shots.

“Live cameras on approach vectors.

If we choreograph a response, we can let the continent watch traditional force solve a staged problem while the real world solves the real one.” ‘They’ve absorbed your first principle,’ Luna murmured.

‘Turn enemy motion into your message.’ ‘And they’re not waiting for permission,’ I thought back, pleased.

‘Good.’ “Execute,” I said.

“Your parameters.” “Copy,” Kali said, already turning away.

“We’ll keep it elegant.” The next thirty minutes stretched and contracted in the way only good operations make time behave.

In the west, Jin and Kali turned a converted hangar into a live demonstration lab.

In Avalon, our boards pulsed: gates breathing, micro-grids saturating, markets screaming into new shapes.

Across a continent, Skyveil’s aircraft wrote tidy circles in the air because circles were the only geometry their doctrine allowed.

When the heavies hit the western coordinates, the show began.

Security fences lit.

Automated turrets rotated with satisfying menace (non-lethal payloads; we wanted drama, not damage).

Counter-intrusion routines bit on Skyveil drones and fed them hall-of-mirrors telemetry.

For seven minutes, any watcher who still believed in the old game saw the old game apparently working: pressure, breach, control.

Then Jin lifted a hand, Kali nodded, and reality snapped to the new script.

The facility’s heartbeat-servers, vaults, racks of parts prepped for assembly-didn’t “evacuate.” It stopped being there.

Cameras caught the lurch of absence: a pallet jack half-pushed by a tech who flickered and reappeared in a different city finishing the same push without missing a beat.

A crate cleared a threshold in the west and completed that motion in a clinic storage room two thousand kilometers away.

A power cabinet completed a quarter turn on its casters in one feed and snapped into its footprint in another, clamps biting down.

The delay between feeds was not delay.

It was a blink.

Kali’s overlay threw up three legal notices in the corner of the public broadcast: notice of private property, notice of non-lethal deterrent use, notice of live demonstration under Imperial oversight.

Then the feed cut to a pediatric ward whose lights had been unreliable for months.

A nurse touched a warmer and didn’t look up because it stayed on.

“The public reaction-” Rose caught herself and switched to numbers because her job was numbers.

“Transport equities are in freefall.

Insurance is repricing air cargo risk as irrelevance rather than hazard.

Governments want the technical brief and the discount sheet.

And we’ve crossed the point where the word ‘monopoly’ applies to the other side when describing access.” My console chimed.

Marcus Stormwind returned.

He had the look of a man whose plans were good and had failed anyway.

The backdrop behind him was orderly chaos-controllers doing three jobs each and a wall of feeds that refused to comfort.

“That was impressive,” he said, tone flat enough to be honest.

“You’ve escalated this conflict beyond economics.” “Have I?” I asked.

“You flew heavies at empty rooms.

We moved clinics onto stable power and cargo through holes in space.” “By rendering my entire industry obsolete overnight.” “By delivering affordable instantaneous transport to anyone who needs it,” I said.

“If your industry dies as a side effect, I won’t mourn the scarcity it enforced.” He let a few seconds tick.

Good officers learn to consult their internal calculus before speaking.

“Terms?” It was the right question, and he was smart enough to ask it without bargaining chips in hand.

“Full integration,” I said.

“Skyveil personnel and assets folded into Ouroboros Transport.

Warfighters become builders.

Pilots become network ops and safety auditors.

Shareholders compensated at a premium to last undistorted close.

Senior leadership offered roles if they can learn a different kind of sky.” “And Elena?” “Equivalent,” I said.

“With an extra clause for community energy programs.

She’s about to need it.” As if cued, the energy map on our wall twitched.

Luminalis’s careful braids of power met a phenomenon they had not planned for: demand walking out.

Chen expanded the view and couldn’t help the laugh that slipped out.

“Arthur,” she said, giddy the way physicists get when the world behaves better than the math promised, “our micro-generators are outcompeting Luminalis because Elena is showing her hand.

Districts she throttled ‘for stability’ are queueing to install our units.

We’re seeing municipal councils pass emergency appropriations to buy independence.” Elena Brightforge had spent a career teaching a continent that energy flowed through her hands.

In showing how much she could cut, she had reminded everyone why not being cut mattered.

“Marcus,” I said, turning back before he could end the call on his own terms, “twelve hours.

The longer you wait, the worse your price and the harder your integration.

This isn’t a threat.

It’s a market function.” He didn’t flinch at the pressure.

“Understood,” he said, and cut the line like a man who would rather decide off camera.

‘Two down?’ Luna offered.

‘Two accepting gravity,’ I corrected.

‘Which is what down really is.’ Reika stepped into the well with a report that read like a victory parade for adults.

“Western demo complete.

No casualties.

Minor property damage on our decoy fences.

PR impact maximal where we needed it-public, municipal, and mid-tier enterprise.

Jin and Kali have turned their script into a protocol: vacate, simulate, relocate, publicize.

We can template it.” “Status west?” I asked.

“Expanding collars to secondary cities,” Reika said.

“Kali’s people are hardening three sites that will draw Skyveil’s ‘last stand’ reflex.

Jin is in talks with two regional governors who want in before this week’s budget cycle.” I let myself smile.

Not because we had “beaten” Skyveil, but because we had converted opposition into a public lesson: location-based coercion dies when location stops being a constraint.

On the energy side, the lesson began writing itself even faster.

Our ops feed filled with images I hadn’t ordered and would have greenlit instantly: principals at a rural school clapping when their lights didn’t flicker at noon; a farmer’s co-op wiring a barn full of coolers to a unit that hummed like a cat; a clinic posting their first “No blackout hours today” sign in two years.

We hadn’t “attacked” the grid.

We had made parts of it optional.

“Chen,” I said, “publish the micro-unit schematics to civic partners under a permissive license.

We’ll sell them the parts and the service and the warranty, but the build list should be readable by anyone with a vocational program and a stubborn uncle.” “On it,” she said, already texting three people who would make it prettier than my directive had sounded.

“Rose,” I added, “you know what to do with those clinic and school clips.” “I do,” she said.

“And the copy will be boring.” “Good.” The day stretched on, less like combat than like surgery: precise, planned trauma with controlled outcomes.

By mid-afternoon, Skyveil pilots had stopped trying to scare gate rooms and started loitering where their insurance still made sense.

Luminalis stopped rerouting around our plants and started filing complaints.

Markets stopped shouting and started repricing to the new baseline.

The floor’s ambient light shifted from emergency red back to the sane blues of monitoring.

My console pulsed with a final west-link update.

Jin’s face, tired and bright; Kali’s, steady.

“Demonstration protocol archived and distributed,” Jin said.

“Local teams trained.

Also-” he hesitated for the half-second that means the next sentence is personal and professional all at once, “-Kali proposed pre-warming gate rooms with dummy draws in neighborhoods we haven’t yet announced.

It lowers Luminalis’s ability to spike us during first-use.

Early tests: flawless.” Kali didn’t look at the camera, but the pride was there-held down, but there.

“They will try to make first experiences feel unreliable,” she said.

“We will make first experiences boring.” “Boring,” I said, “is the revolution people keep.” We closed the link and let the room breathe.

The storm that had threatened in the morning had moved on.

Avalon’s light came in low and gold, striping the floor.

The boards hummed, not with crisis, but with throughput.

Two Great Guilds were now in the part of the story where their leaders asked lawyers what words would make surrender feel like merger.

Ten watched and re-wrote their plans around a fact they’d spent fifty years avoiding: you cannot blockade a rail that runs through the thing you thought you controlled.

“Marcus will call back,” Rose said, not guessing, reading.

“Elena will wait longer and pretend it’s strategy.” “And the other eight?” Luna asked, curious.

“They’ll adapt,” I said.

“They’ll optimize.

They’ll hire better lobbyists.

And they’ll still be optimizing scarcity while we’re building abundance.” Luna’s presence warmed, amusement and agreement braided.

‘You almost sound like you’re enjoying this.’ ‘I enjoy watching systems stop hurting people because someone decided profit required it,’ I told her.

‘Everything else is logistics.’ On the wall, our network drew itself in clean, unromantic lines.

Collars came online in places whose names rarely reached capitals.

Micro-grids flickered into dependence only on themselves.

The old routes remained for those who needed them one more day, and that was fine.

Tomorrow there would be fewer.

The day after, fewer still.

If the guilds wanted a war, they could keep calling it that.

I was content to declare-and deliver-something harder to fight: a different default.