Isolation

Начало книги

Artillery pounded the city, fiercer and closer than before. Mei Hao stopped at the window in her rush, seeing plumes of smoke and gouts of flame amid the Chinese half of the city. The fires, too, were closer. The Partials were pressing forward, and the Chinese headquarters were no longer safe. Mei left the window and ran down the hall, a stack of maps in one arm and the army’s satbox in the other. She could already hear the two generals arguing.

“We have to move our headquarters,” said General Wu. Mei was his assistant, and it was no surprise to hear him arguing for retreat. He had proven himself a coward since the day she’d met him. She hurried into the room and laid the maps on the table; he spread them out without acknowledging her, and she opened the satbox while he examined them. “The devil army has held this line for weeks,” he said, pointing at a vague line scrawled through the center of the city with a red wax pencil; the line was vague by necessity, for there was no easy way to tell exactly which buildings were held by which army at any given moment. “Now they are pushing past it,” General Wu continued, “at least to here, and likely even farther.” He thumped the map with finality, as if pointing at his estimates had made it so. “Either way we are no longer safe here.”

Читать дальше →