Dan Wells - Fragments

COPYRIGHT

First published in hardback in the USA by HarperCollins Publishers Inc. in 2013 First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2013 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © 2013 by HarperCollins Publishers

Dan Wells asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007465231

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2013 ISBN: 9780007465583

Version: 2017-05-18

This book is dedicated to everyone who ever admitted they were wrong. It’s not a sign of weakness or a lack of dedication, it’s one of the greatest strengths a person—human or Partial—can have.

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

PART 1

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

PART 2

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

PART 3

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

PART 4

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

CHAPTER FIFTY

KEEP READING

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

aise a glass,” said Hector, “to the best officer in New America.”

The room came alive with the clink of glass and the roar of a hundred voices. “Cornwell! Cornwell!” The men tipped their mugs and bottles and drained them in gurgling unison, slamming them down or even throwing 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 Cornwell 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. No Watchdog was as loyal as his. She 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 had been 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 one of Samm’s first enemy engagements; 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 almost immediately 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.

Far away the soldiers stiffened, only slightly but all in unison, warned by the link about something Samm could only guess at. The colonel, he thought, and twisted his scope to look at Cornwell: He was as bad as ever, cadaverous and rotten, but his chest still rose and fell, and there didn’t seem to be anything immediately wrong. A twinge of pain, perhaps. The men in the room were ignoring it, and Samm chose to do the same. It wasn’t time yet, it seemed, and the party continued. He listened in on another conversation, more reminiscing about the old days in the Isolation War, and here and there a story about the revolution, but nothing that fired Samm’s memory as profoundly as the sergeant’s story. Eventually the sight of the pork ribs and the sound of chewing became too much, and Samm carefully dug a plastic bag of beef jerky from his pack. It was a pale imitation of the juicy ribs his former comrades were enjoying, but it was something. He turned his eyes back to the scope and found Major Wallace right as he stood up to speak.

“Lieutenant Colonel Richard Cornwell is unable to speak to you today, but I’m honored to say a few words on his behalf.” Wallace moved slowly, not just his walk but his gestures, his speech—every motion was measured and deliberate. He looked as young as Samm, like an eighteen-year-old human, but in real time he was nearing twenty—the expiration date. In another few months, maybe only a few weeks, he’d start to decay just like Cornwell. Samm felt cold, and pulled his jacket tighter around his shoulders.

The party grew as quiet as Samm, and Wallace’s voice carried powerfully through the hall, echoing tinnily in Samm’s earbuds. “I’ve had the honor of serving with the colonel my entire life; he pulled me out of the growth tank himself, and he put me through boot camp. He’s a better man than most I’ve met, and a good leader to all his men. We don’t have fathers, but I’d like to think that if we did, mine would be something like Richard Cornwell.”