The Human Insurgency by J. Kirsch

Chapter 1
     
The Resistance
     
    Video-feed streamed into the bunker as Hu Jin
watched. Beijing was wreathed in flames. Three large aircraft
hovered overhead like waterless carriers. They spat out sleek
fighter-craft like demonic cockroaches, and those cockroaches were
slinging slugs powerful enough to level whole buildings with a
single hit.
    "Dragon Unleashes the Wind. I repeat, Dragon
Unleashes the Wind." General Chao's words came in harsh and clear.
The Chinese code words changed every hour. Though it didn't seem
that the Enemy had tapped into the military's communications, they
used precautions all the same.
    Jin's aide sat across the table, her hands folded
tensely in her lap.
    "Meiyu, go catch an hour's rest. Just because I am
needed here, sleep be damned, there's no need for you to exhaust
yourself. Call in Ling to assist me. Get some rest."
    She shook her head adamantly as the ground shook
beneath them. One of Jin's monitors showed that another skyscraper
was on fire. People were jumping, many of them transformed into
flailing torches. Jin turned away.
    That's when he saw it, if only for the second time,
on the left-hand monitor. The new weapon in action still made his
heart pound. Those missiles arched, breath-taking in their grace.
He watched as they streaked for the nearest carrier-ship.
    The ship resembled an aircraft carrier, but its
contours were far more rounded. It looked like a giant, floating
oblong egg. Panels in the ship's flanks seemed to open on all sides
to release their deadly fighter craft. These seamless bays were in
the process of releasing at least a dozen more squads of the
cockroach ships when the missiles struck. Most exploded harmlessly
against whatever shields the Enemy used. But one of the missile's
propulsion systems suddenly tanked, holding clear of the fiery if
impotent deaths of its many siblings. It was designed to blend in
until just before that all-important moment of impact.
    And suddenly a projectile that should have been
harmless from all of the Enemy's past experience became an embrace
of the most lethal persuasion.
    The last missile held aloft in the sky, a hiccup in
time. Then the blast exploded like an opening flower, a blue nova
blooming in all directions, swamping the port side of the
carrier-ship.
    A gaping void, like half of a sandwich suddenly
eaten, appeared in the side of the invading carrier. The rest of it
began to break up and fall away. Even though this newly made junk
from space would probably crush hundreds of innocent people below,
Jin heard cries of jubilance over his com link. Heady slogans
filled his ears from other members of the Chinese Communist Party's
Secretariat. He heard Wen Shan's excited voice through the
static.
    "Our red blood shall flow with the revolutionary
fervor of our soldiers until every last Invader is wiped away
clean!" shouted Shan euphorically.
    Damn him for an idiot! Jin swore. As the
General Secretary of the CCP's most powerful and still functioning
governing body, Jin wanted to have that man shot. But Shan was the
descendant of the old elite because his great-grandfather had been
a Red Guard in the Cultural Revolution. Shan had been taught that
to struggle was glorious and wonderful. To that half-crazed lunatic
blood was something to be welcomed. If he could sacrifice 20
million lives to destroy 2 more of those ships, he would call such
a thing victory and crack his face with a hearty smile. He was the
type of man that would do things the costly way before ever
wondering, 'Is a better way within my reach?'
    God damn such men . God damn them all ,
Jin grumbled inwardly. But he needed every man he could get. He
couldn't afford to be political. Not now. Not with the plight of
the world at stake. In the midst of the excitement, watching the
video-feed of the Battle for Beijing unfolding, Meiyu had slipped
out. She returned with a cup of tea and modest plate of steaming
baozi.
    Jin ate without even tasting, typing in furious
commands to