They were all afraid. He wanted to harness that energy. As a senior officer, Colonel Jia Yuanjun had been trained to browbeat his troops if necessary, driving out weakness, but not every situation called for blunt force. These four were among his select. More importantly, they were right to be nervous, so he’d planned to redirect that adrenaline, binding them to him with aggression and pride. Everyone in the blue light of the flatscreens was very young for this task. They were so lost, too, here on the other side of the world from their home. Colonel Jia was only thirty-two, less than ten years older than any of his technicians — but like their fear, their youth could also be an advantage. Their hormones ran healthy and strong. That was another reason why Lieutenant Cheng Dongmei was present. Dongmei was the only female in the room, and, in fact, one of just eleven women in the entire battalion.
She was smooth-skinned and elegant even in her tan jumper and with her black hair cropped as short as the men’s. The red Elite Forces patch on her chest curved along the top of her breast. Her gun belt flared from her hips, accentuating the hourglass of her waist. Colonel Jia did not want Dongmei for himself, for reasons that he could never tell anyone, but he was not above using her to drive the others.
He spoke in Mandarin, the dialect of the ruling Han. “If these signals are correct, it’s spreading even more quickly than we’d hoped,” he said.
“They are correct, sir,” Huojin said.
Jia swung on him. “Your sector shows the most gaps! Why?”
“The wind is not as strong in northern Colorado as it is elsewhere tonight, sir,” Huojin said. “Perhaps the weather predictions could have been better.”
Jia nodded, concealing his pleasure behind a stone face. Huojin was the only one in his team who was not Han. Huojin was nearly full-blooded Yao, one of China’s many ethnic minorities, a distinction that had become even more significant since the loss of three-quarters of their nation’s populace. Jia often put him on the defensive even though Huojin was his second best data/comm technician. That constant tension, like the presence of Dongmei, helped everyone in the group as they strove to outperform each other.
“The weather is ideal,” Jia said, rebuking Huojin. There would never be a time when the wind carried evenly from British Columbia to New Mexico. Then he relented. “Your dispersal patterns are adequate given local conditions.”
“Sir,” Dongmei said, “I still have one fighter southbound from Idaho with two bomblets onboard. Shall I route him toward Colorado?”
“Hold your fire,” Jia said.
Their attack had been painstaking, because they’d possessed only ninety-three capsules of nanotech to spread up the entire length of North America. Jia wanted to keep any reserves as long as possible. In truth, Huojin’s sector appeared to be no less saturated than the others‘, especially given the innumerable valleys and basins hidden within the Rockies.
Huojin was operating with another handicap. The military installations in Utah had prevented overflights farther east, shielding Colorado from the border patrols they’d used to seed the mind plague elsewhere. Reaching into Montana and Wyoming had been equally problematic, so hours ago they’d detonated thirty-four of their capsules high in the atmosphere, allowing the nanotech to sift down toward the areas where the Americans maintained the core of their Air Force and government.
Jia turned his gaze to the screens again as if looking for those invisible streams. The bunker where he stood was on the outskirts of Los Angeles, but Jia had almost forgotten. This room transcended that distance. The quiet that held these young soldiers in the eerie blue light was a place of its own, and Jia reveled in it. Together they hung poised above America through a distant constellation of satellites and planes, watching as the plague zone grew and consumed the enemy.
It was a humble scene from which to conquer a superpower. They had only a few pieces of expensive equipment mounted on desks made from crates, with so few chairs that Huojin and Yi sat on crates themselves, buried deep within a hurriedly built complex of naked concrete. A single air-conditioning vent rattled above them. The cables to and from their electronics lay banded together on the raw floor, twisting away toward data and power jacks set in the wall by the only door. The room was cold. The sole, overwhelming smell was the dusty rock stink of the concrete.
Jia couldn’t think of anywhere else he wanted to be, not even his parents’ apartment in Changsha — not even if some magic could have resurrected them.
“There,” he said, pointing at Gui’s third screen. VANCOUVER. The tangled coastline of British Columbia was still lightly populated, which left few breeding grounds for the nanotech, and Jia had been reluctant to send his fighters inland from the Pacific. The Chinese and the Russians both regularly patrolled the coast, and they had every reason to send their jets into eastern Oregon, contesting their borders with the Americans, but until the initial strike they’d tried not to act out of character. The aircraft Jia sent from L.A. were no different than their usual patrols except that these fighters dropped tiny, explosive-free bomblets into enemy lines.
The wind was unfavorable in Vancouver, blowing south, not east. “Begin our next wave now,” Jia said. “All of you. Secondary targets.”
His team murmured to faraway pilots, their fingers clacking through several keystrokes and preset commands. Jia was struck again by Dongmei’s elegance, not her physical perfection but the fine clarity of her voice. In their own way, the men were even more graceful, like dancers. Jia was cautious to watch Dongmei instead, pretending the same habit as everyone else. For once, he didn’t resent her. The first-wave fighter she’d preserved went dark on her screens, then realigned itself — a red triangle now moving east instead of homeward. Other fighters rocketed inland from the coast. Jia hoped to see strikes deep within British Columbia, Montana, and Wyoming within minutes.
“Sir, we have contact over Arizona,” Yi reported.
“There are also American fighters scrambling out of Cheyenne,” Huojin said.
“Advise your crews,” Jia said calmly.
The enemy knew something was very wrong. More aircraft would get off the ground, but their options were limited. When the American planes ran low on fuel or ammunition, or if they were hit, where could they go to? They might touch down in no-man‘s-land west of the plague zone, where they would be useless, unable to rearm — or they could take their chances in the deepest stretches east of the Rockies.
Either way, a few aircraft made no difference. Jia had every advantage of surprise and position. He was up-weather.
He allowed himself another measure of satisfaction as he studied his team again, taking in their display screens, their voices, and their rapt young faces. The American West lay before them like the pieces of a puzzle. Dongmei’s three screens each held slightly more than half of Idaho or northern Utah, with the state borders digitally superimposed along with major landmarks such as GREAT SALT LAKE and BOISE.
Most of the terrain was captured in low-res satellite video. Even more resolution was lost because the displays were nearly colorless. Still, these maps were sufficient. Freeways and old cities marred the land like dark veins and clusters, and, in many places, those features were closely tied to the data that most interested Jia.
The People’s Republic of China did not possess the same presence in space as the United States, not even after the Americans’ losses during their civil war. In fact, the Zi Yaun series were also known as CBERS, the jointly developed China — Brazil Earth Research Satellites. The Brazilian Space Agency had provided a significant percentage of the technology and also funded much of the launch costs, sharing in the satellites’ operating time until China took full control during the plague year.