Ramez Naam - Apex

“Send for reinforcements,” he said. “More tanks. Helicopters. Everything.”

“Premier?” Gao said. “I have no communications.”

“The soldiers on guard duty here,” Bo Jintao said. “Grab one. See if their radios work. If not, send one to their base. Have them run if they have to. NOW!”

101

Reinforcements

Sunday 2041.01.20

“Yuguo!” a voice pulled him out of sleep. “Yuguo! Wake up!”

Yuguo rolled over, scrambled to unzip the door of the tent, found a face he knew as well as his own staring at him.

“Mother?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“Zhi Li told me to come!”

Yuguo watched the videos again and again, his mind reeling.

Any star you could name, someone had uploaded a video of him or her exhorting the people to take to the streets, to fight the coup.

It was incredible. The state had lost control of their tame digital pets. The perfect tools for pacification had been turned into tools for fomenting revolution.

Someone had hacked them.

Yuguo wanted to shake that guy’s hand. That was a real Chinese hero.

And all around him he could see the results. As he sat atop one of the sets of tables assembled in the center of the square, he could see people pouring in. They were climbing fences, climbing buildings, going anywhere the soldiers weren’t. The numbers here were swelling. And the images online showed much, much more. The streets of Shanghai were flooded with men and women. People’s Square was overflowing. In Beijing, it was much the same…

“Yuguo,” someone said. “There’s more you should see…”

Yuguo turned. Jian handed him a slate, one of the new, censor-free, satellite-linked slates they’d been fabbing in the Electrical Engineering building. On it were diagrams. Schematics. And downloads.

“What am I looking at?” he asked.

“Weapons,” Jian said softly. “Electronic weapons. Some we can load on our phones and slates. Some we can build.”

Yuguo blinked. “Electronic weapons?”

Jian nodded, and turned his head, pointing with his chin at the rows of tanks and armored vehicles.

“For killing those,” he said. “And they came with a warning. That we’re going to need them soon. Very, very soon.”

Yuguo swallowed. Whoever was hacking all this data knew things. And they’d been consistently on the side of the protesters. He had to trust that.

He stood up atop the table, and yelled.

“Everybody!”

Everybody!

“There are some new apps we all need to install. Jian’s going to post them now. Go check them out and learn to use them.”

Then he turned to Jian, and spoke more quietly. “Let’s get those schematics over to the engineering building. And tell them whatever they need, just to ask. We need to build those things, fast.”

Then he started reaching out to his peers, in People’s Square; at Tsinghua University, in Beijing; at Tiananmen Square, where the country’s largest protest was.

They all had to be ready.

102

Strike Team

Sunday 2041.01.20

Tao kept his body loose inside the troop carrier jump jet as they streaked south by south-west along the coast.

His brothers leaned back into their seats, eyes closed, minds relaxed, rehearsing the mission in silence.

The human pilot was not so sanguine. Tao could feel the man’s tension across the link the nanites had forged. They were flying across densely monitored airspace. Their military transponder and Identify Friend/Foe systems were active, announcing their location, announcing them as loyal Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force vehicles.

That was far safer, it had been determined, than any attempt at subterfuge.

But it meant constant challenges.

Civilian air traffic control from Shanghai’s Hong Qiao airport pinged them almost immediately after takeoff. More pinged them as their flight progressed. Those were easy to deal with. These two craft were military, after all.

Harder were the military installations.

Air defense radar picked them up as they flew over Zhejiang, prodded them for their mission and authorization.

They pushed even harder over Fujian, in the paranoid Air Defense space across the strait from Taiwan, where everyone drilled, and drilled again incessantly.

“Classified Mission, authorized by General Zhangshun Wang, 16 th Regiment PLAAF, Dachang,” their pilot insisted again and again.

“We have no contact with Dachang!” the air defense controller replied.

The humans were isolated, confused. They were frightened.

Tao coached the pilot.

“ Everyone is cut off. Now stop wasting my time so we can fix that.”

And then he refused to say any more.

Fujian let them through.

Their two strike planes refueled in mid-air just short of Guangzhou, sucking off the fueling hoses the longer range tanker dangled behind it, while Air Defense controllers grilled them again and again.

“You can see our flight numbers,” the pilot replied. “You can see we’re with 16 th Regiment out of Dachang. Everything else is classified. Take it up with your commander.”

Thirty minutes later, they were coming in hot – vectoring thrust downward as they hovered over the lawn of a beach-side mansion on Hainan Island, the side of the plane opening, brothers jumping out on fast ropes – as civilian air traffic control screamed at them.

Wu Jiabao paced nervously.

Around him, half a dozen of his men had weapons out and loaded. More were upstairs, in the outer parts of the house, in sniping positions.

Not enough. They needed reinforcements. Needed them badly.

He’d woken to the video. Woken to find out that his charge, his prisoner, was suddenly famous again, was suddenly being put forward as some sort of heroic challenger to the Prime Minister.

He looked over at the couch. The former Minister of Science and Technology, Sun Liu, sat there, a prisoner in his own home, his wife and three children next to him. He’d barely said a word. None of them had. They just sat there, fully dressed, staring at the paintings on the walls.

Wu Jiabao had taken away all of their devices as soon as he’d seen the video, as soon as he’d understood the scope of what was happening. Everyone? Everywhere?

Best that Sun Liu not know what was going on.

Best that he not get any heroic ideas.

Get the family. Drag them all down here into the most secure room in the house. As decadent a security room as he’d ever seen, furnished with a bar and a giant entertainment set and a suite of bedrooms.

Fucking asshole politicians.

Goddammit. What was going on in the world? Why were his communications down?

He’d done the best he could with civilian comms, sent messages and calls to people he knew the personal addresses of, demanding backup.

His radio crackled. That still worked, at least.

“VTOL troop carriers, Lieutenant. Two of them. Coming in fast.”

Wu Jiabao tensed. Friend or foe? Reinforcements or assailants?

“Have you hailed them?” he asked into radio.

“Roger. No response,” came the reply.

He held the radio to his mouth. Everything might depend on this. “Safeties off. Put a bead on those planes. I want to know who comes out. But no shooting unless I give the word.”

He pulled the radio away from his mouth, took his finger off the transmit button.

“Roger,” came the reply, from a half dozen voices.

Then a moment later. “I’ve got ropes. Men hot roping out of vehicle one!”

Shit. That meant assault!

Wu Jiabao pulled the radio back up.

“Oh my god,” it crackled. “They’re all–”