DEDICATION

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.

PART 1

CHAPTER ONE

“Raise 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.”