Isolation (3 page)

ZUOQUAN CITY, SHANXI PROVINCE, CHINA

June 9, 2060

H
eron spent nearly a week surveying the complex, mapping each building in turn, and what she found did not fill her with confidence. The five buildings of the complex were of relatively flimsy construction, which likely saved costs when they were built but which would be a significant liability when they became the site of a protracted urban battle. An infantry assault would be the only way to take the complex without harming the machinery inside; the Chinese would have trouble defending it, as there was little cover, but the Partials would have just as much trouble defending it from a counterattack. And there would definitely be a counterattack. The Partial army was physically superior, the perfect soldiers, but the Chinese defenders outnumbered them both in personnel and in weaponry. If the Partials managed to get in, they would be virtually surrounded by two enraged armies—armies that could swarm the complex within fifteen minutes when the order was given. And yet the NADI strategists had wanted it this way. Heron didn’t see the sense of it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. They had trained her to follow orders, so she would follow them . . . but they had also trained her to uncover secrets. Almost unbidden, her mind went to work on her superiors’ secrets. What did they want? How would this course of action allow them to get it? She knew she could figure it out with just a little more information.

But that was not her job. She turned her attention back to the more pressing issue of how the Partial army could attack. The buildings, as she’d noted, were flimsy, but the walls around the perimeter were sturdy enough, and beyond that the city was filled with low buildings and narrow streets, a death trap for the oncoming Partials if the Chinese thought to fill them with snipers and anti-vehicle rockets. Obviously the Partials would predict this and simply shell the buildings to rubble first, and obviously the Chinese would predict
this
and not put any snipers in them at all, and on and on in an endless game of feint and counterfeint. Advance scouts elsewhere in the city would quietly relay each army’s intentions to the other, helping them to anticipate the flow of battle, but only the Partials had a spy as deeply embedded as Heron. She had to find a way to tip the scales.

The factory buildings were arranged in a circle around a central courtyard, in the middle of which General Bao had placed five artillery cannons, firing in an ongoing, irregular pattern on the Partial half of the city and continuously resupplied by the machinery in Building 4. The top of Building 2 held General Wu’s contribution, the much more defense-minded antiaircraft cannons. There were four of them, and Heron had marked each one with a simple tap on her mapping program. Unlike the artillery below, the antiair guns used smart rounds capable of identifying a target and correcting course midflight; they couldn’t turn corners or follow a dodging target the way homing missiles could, but at mid- and long range they were devastating. The Partials couldn’t stage a proper assault without an air strike, but they couldn’t land a proper air strike anywhere in the city thanks to this emplacement, and they couldn’t destroy the emplacement itself because the factory was too valuable. It was a puzzle with one obvious solution, and Heron wasn’t remotely surprised when her handler spelled it out.

“We need you to destroy the antiair guns,” he said. She was alone in a broom closet, the door locked and the scrambler pumped to full. At this level it made even her secure connection to NADI sound scratchy. “Your map of the complex is superb, and our battle plans are ready; everything’s in place, and the only loose end is the cannons. I need them gone, and I need them gone by twenty-three hundred hours tonight. Confirm.”

“What are my orders with the generals?” asked Heron.

“I don’t remember opening this call to conversation,” said the voice. “I asked you to confirm your orders.”

“Obviously you’re planning an assault,” Heron pressed. “Taking out the antiair means you’re softening up the counterattack, so I assume you’re assaulting soon, probably tonight at twenty-three hundred. What do you want me to do with the generals? Am I letting them escape again?”

“Please, by all means, go ahead and capture them.” Heron listened intently to his voice, trying to discern every bit of meaning behind his words. He seemed . . . off, somehow. She couldn’t put her finger on it.

“You want me to capture them?”

“Absolutely. Why else are you in there?”

“To map the complex and destroy the antiair guns,” said Heron.

“And to capture the generals,” said the voice. “Honestly, Heron, do I have to tell you every little thing?”

You always have before,
she thought, but kept that to herself. There was something very fishy about the way he was talking—not just the inconsistent personality, but his entire inflection. All she’d ever known of her handler was his voice, but it was her job to observe and analyze. She was built for it. And this communication didn’t fit his overall pattern. She checked her phone again, ensuring that the line was secure and that it was connected to the proper NADI signal. It seemed to be. What was wrong?

“Are you there, Heron?”

“I’m here.”

“Your orders are to disable the antiair guns, through whatever means you consider necessary. Once the invasion begins, you are to capture the generals and hold them until relieved by Partial commanders on site. Confirm.”

“Confirm,” said Heron. He’d changed his story, but he acted as if this was the same plan he’d stated at the beginning of the call. Were the guns truly a more important target than the generals? They might very well be, if they could make or break the success of the enemy counterattack. Her handler broke the connection, and Heron turned off her scrambler. Her watch said 2148. She didn’t have long before 2300, and whatever NADI’s true plans might be, the guns had to come down.

PARAGEN BIOSYNTH GROWTH AND TRAINING FACILITY, UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

January 31, 2059

“Y
our accuracy is improving,” said Latimer. He was her private instructor in firearms and infiltration, running her through trial after trial, race after race, a kind of shadow biathlon: running and shooting without ever being seen. Heron knew that her accuracy was more than just “improving”—it was better than his now. Accuracy was the least of her accomplishments. She could cross the entire course, ten square miles of rugged northern forest, without once being tagged by the guard drones or autoturrets, and she hadn’t failed an assassination in ten straight days. His praise was rare, and she was grateful when she got it, but to mention only her “accuracy,” and with the faint praise that it was “improving,” was practically an insult.

“Thank you,” said Heron. “You’re too kind.”

“It’s time to start you on a new course,” said Latimer, gesturing for her to follow him. She was still calming down from the last time trial, her breathing and heart rate slowly decelerating, but she kept her recovery internal, showing no signs of weakness as she followed him across the room. He gestured to a chair, and as she sat he waved at a holovid projector, waking it up with a swipe. A single title icon appeared in the center of the room—she was never allowed to see more than was strictly necessary—and he grabbed it. The holovid blinked, and suddenly the room was filled with people, frozen in place: men and women, many of them in uniform. It was not a uniform she recognized. The women in the room looked like Heron—the same black hair, the same unique eye shape, the same basic bone structure and skin. The men, on reflection, were similar as well. Heron had only ever seen that look on herself and the other espionage girls and made the immediate assumption that this was a room full of Theta-model Partials, but she discarded the idea almost immediately. The people were too varied in age and height to be Partials; it was more likely that these were humans, from the group the Thetas had been designed to look like. “They’re Chinese,” she said. “That’s the Chinese military uniform, which means . . .” She scanned the room, analyzing their positions and attitudes, and finally pointed at a short, balding man. “He’s the leader, and the man beside him is his second in command, and the three behind him are bodyguards. Is this who we’re fighting?”

Latimer cocked his head. “I hadn’t realized you’d seen the vid already.”

“I haven’t,” said Heron. “It just seems obvious.”

“‘Obvious,’” Latimer repeated, a slight smile on his face. “How much do you know about the Isolation War?”

“That’s the war we’re being trained for.”

“And?”

“That’s all.”

“‘Obvious,’” said Latimer again. “You’ve never seen a Chinese person in your life, you know nothing about the nature of the war, and yet from a single static image you intuit who they are and how you’re connected to them. You have a gift for observation.”

“Thank you,” she said again.

“The Isolation War,” said Latimer, “is their fault—not theirs alone, by any means, but they’re the ones we’re fighting right now, so it may as well be. If they’d just given us what we wanted, no one would be fighting anyone.”

“What do we want?” asked Heron. The instructors had been very tight-lipped thus far about the nature of the war—about the nature of the entire world, for that matter. She knew the training facility like the back of her hand, but virtually nothing of what lay beyond. If he was in the mood to talk about it, she intended to learn everything she could.

“We want what everybody wants,” said Latimer. “Natural resources. In this case, resources are literally what everybody wants, and there’s not enough to go around. Let’s back up a bit to give you the full context: The most valuable resource in the world is energy, and energy traditionally comes from oil, which traditionally comes from here.” He waved his hand and the people disappeared, replaced by a menu Heron hadn’t seen before. She had just enough time to read the folder names before he chose one and the list disappeared: Australia, Images, Indonesia, Japan, Maps, NADI, Russia, and Theta. He chose “Maps” and selected a world map. It filled the room in gently glowing 3-D.

“Here,” he said, pointing at a yellow patch at the junction of two landmasses. “This is called the Middle East.”

Heron had never seen a world map before and drank in the new information hungrily. “Why is it called the Middle East?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Latimer. “It’s all gone now—one of those little countries attacked another one with a nuclear device and wiped the entire region clean. No people, no buildings, no oil. There’s oil all over the world, really, but the Middle East was like a convenience store; when it closed shop, the world freaked out. Something we needed to survive was gone forever, in the blink of an eye. The next few months was a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos, with every nation scrambling to grab as much of what was left as it possibly could: Russia grabbed Norway, Brazil grabbed Venezuela—none of these names mean anything to you, and you’ll learn the details later, but suffice it to say that the world’s political powers became very suddenly and selfishly concerned with ‘having enough,’ which almost immediately translated to ‘having more than anyone else.’ China was arguably the greediest, and invaded Russia at its earliest opportunity. Once they had that taken care of, they turned their eyes to us.”

Heron studied the map. “Where are we?”

“Here,” said Latimer, stepping forward and gesturing to the Western Hemisphere. “America and Canada had their oil reserves up here, in the north, and plenty of other resources as well, uncomfortably close to China and their new holdings in Russia, which made a landgrab almost inevitable. And we don’t take kindly to grabby strangers.”

The map was faintly labeled, and she saw that the area he was describing was collectively known as North America. She looked down at her uniform, and the patch above the left breast pocket:
NADI
. “That’s what this stands for, isn’t it? North American . . . Department . . .”

“North American Defense Initiative,” said Latimer. “NADI is a military alliance, formed to keep the Chinese off our lawn.”

“So we’re defending against an invasion?”

“Actually, China is. NADI worked so well as a deterrent that China decided its best course of action was to turtle—tuck its head down, hold on to everything it had, and ride it out. With so much of Russia and Southeast Asia already under their control, they had a wildly disproportionate chunk of the world’s resources, so they didn’t really need to waste any of it trying to get ours. They closed off all foreign trade, all international relations, all everything. They don’t buy our stuff, and most importantly, they don’t sell theirs to us.”

“The Isolation War,” said Heron, putting the pieces together. “They want to stay isolated, but we can’t survive if they do.”

“Like I said,” said Latimer, “you have a gift for observation. Let’s go back to the embassy.” He waved, and the map dissolved instantly into the roomful of Chinese people from before. He waved again and the image leapt into motion, the people moving back and forth, in and out of the edges, talking and smiling and shaking hands. They were speaking Chinese, and Heron was delighted to find that she could understand them perfectly: small talk and random pleasantries, just like she’d learned in class. It gratified her to know that she was actually using the seemingly useless phrases they’d been teaching her for months.

“The short man you pegged as the leader is General Wu Po Shu; pay close attention, because he’s your target.”

Heron thought back to the training she’d been doing: stealth, infiltration, and attack. “You want me to kill him?”

“Not at first,” said Latimer, “though it might eventually come to that. Tell me, Heron, do you know what ‘espionage’ means?”

“Ms. Spinney says it’s about gathering information,” said Heron, “but so far all you’ve taught me to do is sneak in and out of somewhere, so I assume it’s focused on gathering information you’re not supposed to have.”

Latimer laughed. “We’re the US government,” he said. “There is no information we’re not supposed to have. Think of it instead as ‘gathering information from people who don’t want to give it to you.’ In your case, that’s General Wu.”

“So I sneak in and steal his computer,” said Heron, “or his phone.”

“If all goes well, he’ll hand you his computer and ask you to help him hide his secrets on it. This is not an in-and-out mission, Heron; this is long-term. I assume you noticed the physical similarities between you and Wu’s party here?”

“I look Chinese,” said Heron, nodding. “The espionage models are the only ones who do; plus we’re the only ones who speak the language.”

“Not the only ones, but yes, that’s the idea.”

It seemed clear now that she thought of it. “You want me to live with them, and pretend to be one of them, and report back to you on a regular basis about what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.”

“Exactly,” said Latimer. He pulled a small card from his pocket and threw it to her; it was an ID card, all written in Chinese, with her picture in the corner. “Your name will be Mei Hao. If you do your job right, we can place you as highly as Wu’s personal staff—we’ll get you in the right place with the right papers and then arrange a job opening with a high-powered rifle. With you on the inside, we’ll know everything we need to know about that part of the war: where the defenses are, how strong they are, where the supply lines run, and so on. With that kind of information, we can arrange something far more valuable than a quick assassination.” He gestured at the holovid, and a class menu popped up. “We’re starting you today on a new course of study: cultural classes, advanced linguistics classes, interrogation, surveillance—the whole super-combo meal. Master this and you’ll be able to blend in like a native and gain the trust of anyone in China.”

“And then kill them,” said Heron.

“If necessary, yes,” said Latimer. “Does that bother you?”

Heron cocked her head, confused. “Should it?”

Latimer smiled. “Absolutely not.”