Kill Decision

It's no secret that America relies on remotely piloted drones to target adversaries overseas. But now fifty other nations are developing drones of their own, and the next generation of unmanned weapons are much scarier: autonomous drones that acquire and destroy targets without direct human intervention. In Kill Decision, Linda McKinney is a myrmecologist whose research focuses on African weaver ants—one of the most organized and aggressive species on earth. The chemical-based communication of weaver ants allows vast colonies to act as a single, collective intelligence, killing anything that enters their territory. What McKinney doesn't know is that her research has been stolen by unknown forces who have co-opted her software model to power an army of autonomous swarming drones—and recent attacks on the U.S. homeland indicate where that swarm might be released. Saved from a drone attack herself by a secretive Special Ops soldier known as Odin, McKinney is suddenly propelled into a war she never dreamed existed. Together, McKinney and Odin must slow the spread of these swarming weapons long enough for the world to recognize their destructive power—and stay alive long enough to discover who is behind them. McKinney knows the stakes go far beyond her own fate. For thousands of years the 'kill decision' in war has been in human hands, and offloading that responsibility to mass-produced, insect-like machines would bring unintended, possibly irreversible, consequences for us all.