And then, because she wasn’t burdened by the same sentimentality that had undone him, she shot him in the back of the head.
Heron glanced at her watch: 2255. The air strike would come at any minute. She retrieved the fallen phone and opened the browser, connecting to the cloud network and, through there, to the NADI computer system. She didn’t have a lot of security access—she couldn’t reach the jets in the air, or even the air force in general, and even if she could, she didn’t have the authority to convince anyone to call off the air strike. Her network privileges were limited to two things: contacting her handler, and managing her data uploads. She accessed her online memory, purged the GPS files, and requested a refresh from the current position of the mapping device.
After all, anyone drawing on that information would need the latest, up-to-the-minute coordinates for anything they might be planning.
CHINESE AIRSPACE, SHANXI PROVINCE, CHINA
June 9, 2060
“General Wu,” said the pilot, “there’s something on radar. It looks like the devil jets are launching an air strike.”
“She was telling the truth!” cried Wu. “Blast all devils to hell, and devil women to the deepest part of it.” He glanced over his shoulder, but the planes were still too far to be seen with the naked eye. “Make sure we’re far away from the blast radius—we can’t let this satbox be lost.”
“I—” The pilot stopped talking, and Wu felt himself being pressed fiercely into his seat by a sudden acceleration.
“What’s going on?” he demanded.
“The smart bombs flew past the factory complex,” said the pilot. “They’re coming for us.”
“Go faster!” said Wu. “Dodge them, go around them—they can’t follow us everywhere.”
“That’s exactly what they’re doing, General,” said the pilot, swerving madly through the air. “They seem to be homing in on us!”
“But . . .” The general’s eyes went wide. “No.” He opened the satbox, and there inside, clattering across the screen, was Mei Hao’s cell phone. Its screen was lit and seemed to be running some kind of GPS program. He opened his mouth to curse the devil whore, but the bombs struck, and he and everything around him evaporated in the heat of the explosion.
ZUOQUAN CITY, SHANXI PROVINCE, CHINA
June 10, 2060
SECURE CONNECTION ESTABLISHED, read the phone. Heron had procured a new one from the Partial ground troops after the fighting was over. The factory complex was intact, and it was theirs, and the defending armies had both been routed. Heron spoke calmly. “Agent Six reporting.”
There was a pause, and Heron could hear her handler’s breathing on the other end. He was not happy. “Good evening, Heron. Congratulations on a successful mission.”
Heron raised an eyebrow. “So you consider it a success?”
“The objective is ours, the defenders are on the run, and our casualties were minimal. Why wouldn’t that be a success?”
“Because you didn’t plan any of it,” said Heron. “You tried to kill your own army, and worse than that, you tried to kill me. I do not take kindly to people who try to kill me.”
“We thought you might have had something to do with—”
“I’m not finished,” said Heron. “I was designed to be a killer. You engineered me, from the genetic level, to be a heartless, analytical machine, ready to kill or sacrifice anyone to get the job done. I was made this way: What’s your excuse?”
“We are at war,” said the voice, “a war we must win at all costs; you know that—”
“What I want you to do,” said Heron softly, “is think long and hard about this. You made us to kill and conquer, and we are doing it better than you ever anticipated. Far better than you could ever do yourselves. You are no match for us. Do not make us your enemy.” She stared into the darkness, and a wicked smile crept into the corners of her lips. “Confirm.”
There was no answer but a muffled click, and the line went dead.
TURN THE PAGE TO READ THE FIRST CHAPTER OF
FRAGMENTS
BOOK TWO IN THE PARTIALS SEQUENCE
CHAPTER 1
“Raise a glass,” said Hector, “to the best officer in New America.”
The room filled with the clink of glasses and the roar of a hundred voices. “Cornwell! Cornwell!” The men tipped their mugs and bottles and drained them in gurgling unison, then slammed them down or even threw them at the floor when the booze within was gone. Samm watched in silence, adjusting his spotting scope almost imperceptibly. The window was murky, but he could still see the soldiers grin and grimace as they slapped one another on the back, laughed at ribald jokes, and tried not to look at the colonel. The link would be telling them everything about him anyway.
Hidden in the trees on the far side of the valley, well outside the effective range of the link, Samm had no such luxury.
He twisted the knob on his tripod, swiveling the microphone barely a fraction of a millimeter to the left. At this distance even a small change of angle swept the sound across a vast portion of the room. Voices blurred through his earbuds, snatches of words and conversations in a quick aural smear, and then he was listening to another voice, just as familiar as Hector’s—it was Adrian, Samm’s old sergeant.
“. . . never knew what hit them,” Adrian was saying. “The enemy line shattered, exactly as planned, but for the first few minutes that made it all the more dangerous. The enemy became disoriented, firing in all directions at once, and we were pinned down too fiercely to reinforce him. Cornwell held the corner through the whole thing, never flinching, and all the time the Watchdog was howling and howling; it nearly deafened us. All the Watchdogs were loyal, but not like that one. It was like he worshipped Cornwell. That was the last major battle we saw in Wuhan, and a couple of days later the city was ours.”
Samm remembered that battle. Wuhan was taken almost sixteen years ago to the day, in March 2061, one of the last cities to fall in the Isolation War. But it had been Samm’s first enemy engagement; even now he could remember the sounds, the smells, the taste of the gunpowder sharp in the air. His head buzzed with the memory, and phantom link data coursed through his brain, just enough to stir his adrenaline. Instincts and training surfaced almost immediately, heightening Samm’s awareness as he crouched on the darkened hillside, prepping him for a battle that existed only in his mind. This was followed by an opposite reaction—a calming wave of familiarity. He hadn’t linked to anyone in days, and the sudden feeling, real or not, was almost painfully comfortable. He closed his eyes and held on to it, concentrating on the memories, willing himself to feel them again, stronger, but after a few fleeting moments they slipped away. He was alone. He opened his eyes and looked back through the scope.
The men had brought out the food now, wide metal trays heaped high with steaming pork. Herds of wild pigs were common enough in Connecticut, but mostly in the deep forest away from Partial settlements. They must have hunted pretty far afield for a feast like this. Samm’s stomach rumbled at the sight of it, but he didn’t move.