Wholesale Apogee by Travis S. Taylor

[Baen] A THRILLER RIGHT OUT OF TODAY'S HEADLINES MARCUS DORMAN HAS A PLAN FOR THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY—AND IT IS NOT ONE THAT REQUIRES THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The war for reality has just reached its peak. Two years after the Battle for the ISS, the world is still reeling. Nuclear blackouts fractured global power grids—and Marcus Dorman stepped in to rebuild them. Now, his network stretches across continents, threading together energy infrastructure, neural implants, and a constellation of secret quantum satellites. But this isn’t about money or control anymore. It’s about simulation. It’s about the very substance of our reality! From deserts to orbit, the Hot Eagle One Task Force races to stop Dorman’s next move: a quantum rendering system seeded with mRNA-linked human minds and powered by sleeper nodes across the planet. Somewhere inside a sensory deprivation tank, Dorman floats—rewriting reality one connection at a time. As astronauts battle in space, mercenaries clash in the Mongolian steppe, and a mysterious third faction watches from the shadows, the truth becomes terrifyingly clear: This isn’t just the next war. It’s the last upgrade . . . for reality!