Jeff Carlson - Plague Zone

“This is what we’re supposed to be looking at, right?” Emma said without using the radio, raising her voice to be heard outside her helmet.

Deborah bent beneath the weight of her air tanks, taking care not to bang her faceplate against the eyepiece. She saw a black-and-white topography like the bottom of an egg carton, a symmetrical row of bumps joined by perfectly identical ribs and struts — but was she looking at the nano or just the material of the substrate itself?

A speck of dust wouldn’t be so uniformly structured. She was sure of that. But the only way she’d known how to capture samples of the mind plague was to wave the substrates in the air, then insert the slides one by one into their microscopes and look for proof of the invisible machines. Unfortunately, holding the tiny squares in her gloves was an exercise in frustration. The substrates were made of sapphire, she remembered, but were just one centimeter across and only one millimeter thick, which made them as substantial as cellophane.

If Emma had zeroed in on a nano at last, this would be only part of it. Was the magnification set too high? They were actually making some progress. It wasn’t enough, but at least they’d taken a few steps forward.

Deborah was the most proud of saving Emma. I need her, she’d told Caruso. She worked with me with Goldman, she said, urging him to bring Emma through their decon tents into the command center, and Caruso agreed. It was the first time she’d deceived a superior in her life. Placing her friend above everyone else was selfish. Something in her had broken, but for Caruso to drop the entire nanotech program on her shoulders was beyond unfair. He expected too much.

Deborah was finally questioning herself and what was most important to her — her country or her life. It was only an incredible bonus that Emma was so smart. Emma had clever hands and a good memory, and Deborah allowed herself to feel a bit of rivalry. There’s no way I’m going to let her show me up, she thought. “Okay, I see it,” she said.

“Now what?”

I don’t know, Deborah thought, but Bornmann was watching and she couldn’t bring herself to admit her ignorance.

Captain Bornmann was a lion of a man, not because he was especially large but because he had a slow, lazy way of moving that radiated danger and stamina. Bornmann had led the commando team into Complex 3, risking the lives of his men to secure this equipment. Deborah understood why he was hovering. He wanted miracles, but she couldn’t give him any.

“Listen up!” Rezac said on the intersuit radio. “They’re reporting nuclear strikes across Wyoming and Montana.”

“Christ,” someone said.

“The Chinese just hit most of our silos. Now they’re decapitating our command centers. It sounds like most of our gear topside is gone.”

Deborah nearly had to sit down, swooning, as her blood leapt in her veins like a drum. The wildness she felt was unlike her. She wanted to run, but where?

“We just had a coded message out of Salt Lake,” Rezac said. “They’re getting it, too — fighters, followed by troop carriers.”

The attacks were insanely bold and well choreographed. The Chinese had sent their planes toward their own missile strikes, and yet the invasion worked because so many of the U.S.-Canadian radar stations were out of commission. There had also been jamming. During the past two hours, Grand Lake’s satellite links had filled with interference or failed completely. The survivors at Peterson AFB and in Missoula reported the same complications. The Chinese had total air superiority. They’d probably set a dozen AWACS planes above the Rockies, creating an electronic umbrella. That was why the missile launches from China went undetected — and now those aircraft must have been sacrificed by their own generals, either burned outright or short-circuited by the electromagnetic pulse.

As for the fighters and troop carriers, no doubt those planes had come in extremely low to the ground, using the Continental Divide as a shield against the nuclear blasts. They must have timed their arrival at their targets just minutes after the ICBMs hit.

This isn’t over yet, Deborah thought. It didn’t matter that the war was lost. The enemy had beaten them at every turn, but she knew the men and women around her would never give up. Neither would Deborah, not with the guilt she felt for lying to Caruso. That deception had been a small thing, saving Emma, but Deborah had always placed her integrity above her personal feelings.

Now the two of them would pay the price. They were on the front line. If the Chinese wanted this base and high-level prisoners, they would probably succeed, but first a lot of people would die. Room by room, Deborah thought like a mantra. We’ll fight them for every goddamn room.

“General Caruso has ordered us out,” Rezac said.

“Out?” Bornmann asked.

Deborah felt the same uncertainty, even dismay. She had made her decision to fight.

“Pack it up,” Rezac said. “We can’t hold this base against ground troops. That’s impossible. All they need to do is bring the roof down on top of us. We’re getting out.”

“Out where?” another man asked.

“You heard the lady,” Walls said. “We’ll go for the north tunnel.”

“Jesus Christ,” the same man said, but the group was already in motion.

This is crazy, Deborah thought, even as she whirled to reevaluate the nanotech gear. The AFM was more versatile, but Emma seemed to have adhered a sample of the mind plague to the test surface of the MRFM.

“We need both of these,” Deborah said to Bornmann.

“You got it.” He gestured for his men and said, “Sweeney, Pritchard, load ‘em up. I’m on point with Lang. General Walls, I need you and everyone else to carry more air tanks, sir.”

“Right.” Walls accepted the order without protest.

The tanks on their suits were only good for another forty minutes. Deborah didn’t want to be a problem, but she wondered how they could have any chance at all if the mountain was covered in enemy troops and nanotech. What if this was another mistake?

Then the power failed and left them in blackness.

Deborah was competitive. She had a hard time understanding anyone’s failure, especially her own — and she’d changed her mind about General Caruso. The truth was that he’d misjudged the situation in delaying his launch against the Chinese. He was reluctant to hit U.S. soil. That much was forgivable. They all hoped California would become American territory again someday, and San Diego and Los Angeles were vital cities on the coast.

Before her small group left the command center, Caruso had reversed his diplomatic efforts. He tried to negotiate their surrender. He was willing to lose if he could extract a few conditions from the Chinese before standing down, and it took an awful kind of bravery to broker a cease-fire. It was the same sort of courage Ruth must have summoned to end the previous war. Caruso would always be remembered as the man who capitulated. He’d even fought to take that role, wresting power away from the secretary of defense because he thought he could better manage the job.

He should have known better.

The problem was that every word needed to pass through his translators to the Chinese and back again, sometimes twice or even three times to be certain. Their failing communication links only intensified these delays as Caruso switched from satellite phones to radio bands and the very few hard lines between the Rockies and southern California.

The enemy had strung him along expertly. The Chinese were masters at stonewalling. They kept promising top-level contacts even as they claimed that each of these officials were already engaged with other members of the U.S. military. Each time, Caruso’s teams scrambled to reach those Americans themselves. Too often, they verified that these people were cut off or infected or dead. Confronting the Chinese with this information only led to more contradictions and excuses, all of which needed to be translated as well.