The Sun-Scorched Plains' thrumming water pumps were a victory in silence, but in the game of perception, silenced victories could be drowned out by screamed lies. Howard Crane, exiled from the boardrooms and blacklisted by governments, had not been idle. He retreated to a new kind of battlefield, one he understood even better: the court of public opinion. His weapon was not the gun of a mercenary, but a media empire he had been secretly constructing with his dwindling fortune, a coalition of online influencers, tabloids, and "concerned citizen" movements that operated like digital mercenaries.
The first shot was a documentary, released on several platforms simultaneously. It was well-produced, expensive to do, and narrated by a highly regarded, avuncular broadcaster whose voice dripped wi
