parachuted in, invisible to prying electronic eyes, and touched down.
Mai and Duc fan out to establish a perimeter and protect it, even as hundreds more hit the ground, roll, and come up ready to follow orders beamed at them from commanders still up in the sky, watching from live satellite feeds.
A portable airstrip gets rolled out across the grassy meadow. Within the hour the thorium nuclear power plant airdrops in and gets buried into the ground, then shielded with an artillery-proof cap.
Once power is on, Camp Nike takes shape. The ballistic-vest wearing civilian Chinese contractors have built whole skyscrapers within forty-eight hours. Here they only need to get four or five stories high for the main downtown area. They get a bonus for each extra geodesic dome fully prepped by the morning. The outer wall of the camp is airlifted in. It’s been constructed in pieces in Australia ahead of time, and the pieces slam down into the ground via guided parachutes. No one glances up, this part of the invasion has been practiced over and over again in Western Australia so much that it’s old news.
Twenty minutes before sunrise two large transports land and the civilians rush them. The field is cleared of non-combatants soon after, leaving the ghost city behind it.
It is dawn when what looks like a hastily organized contingent of the North Korean Army crests the hills. Thirty soldiers here to scout out what the hell just happened, Mai imagines.
Mai ends up outside the perimeter, guardian to the north gate.
“Welcome to Camp Nike,” Duc mutters.
Someone is riding shotgun through their helmet cameras and jumps into the conversation. It sounds like Captain Nguyen, Mai thinks. “Make a slight bow to the commanding officer, wave encouragingly at the group.”
Mai’s hand rests on her hip, where a sidearm would usually be.
“No threatening gestures, keep your arms out and forward,” her helmet whispers to her. Aggressive body- posture detected and reported by her own suit. It feels slightly like betrayal. Old habits die hard: Mai can’t help but reach for her hip.
She is, after all, still a soldier.
The small group of men all have AKS-74s—which the North Koreans call a Type 88—but they’re slung over their shoulders, even though they can see Mai and Duc in full armor.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Mai mutters.
“Hold your positions,” command whispers to them.
It isn’t right. Standing here, unarmed, holding her hands up in the air as if
One of them steps forward, his hands in the air, and she realizes he’s nervous.
Mai points to a signpost near the gates.
The sign’s in Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese and English, and also emblazoned with the internationally- recognizable logos of all the camp’s primary private sector sponsors.
There’ll be more of that when people got inside. Shoes and clothing by Nike. Dinners by ConAgra. TV by Samsung. Computers by Dell.
The men read the sign, and start shaking their heads.
This, Mai thinks, is a moment of balance, where the world around her could swing one way or another.
Duc takes initiative, to her surprise, and waves at the men cheerily. He flips his faceplate open, so they can see his expression, while Mai curses him silently and fights the urge to grab him and yank him to safety.
All it’ll take is one well-aimed shot from a sniper somewhere out there to kill him, now. Or for one of these men with an AKS-74 to spook.
He might as well not even wear the armor, she thinks, absently reaching for her hip again.
There is no gun, though. There never will be.
Mai’s not close enough for her translation software to help her understand what the group of men is arguing over. But Duc has gotten close enough to be surrounded.
“They want to see the food,” he reports.
“What?”
“They want to make sure they’re not being tricked into a prison camp. They won’t disarm until they see that what they were told about the camps was true.”
One of the men holds up a cheap, black smartphone and points at it.
Six months ago these things were dumped into North Korea by the millions. Each phone disguises its texting and data traffic as background static, and otherwise functions as a basic, jamming-hardened satphone. Between the satellite routing and peer-to-peer whisper comms, they created a “darknet” outside of Pyongyang’s official control.
The Beloved Leader decreed death for anyone caught with one, but the experiment succeeded. Well enough to spirit out video and pictures of starving children, of brutal crackdowns on attempts to protest Pyongyang by desperate, starving peasants, and all the other atrocities that had built the case for international intervention.
It has been through these phones that messages explaining the camps and invasion had been sent twenty- four hours ago.
Promising food and safety.
These soldiers are defecting, and can see the walls. Now they want to see the food.
It’s all about the food.
“Three of you, leave your weapons in the bin,” Duc says, “go in and come back out to report what you see.”
It is a reasonable compromise. Duc and Mai let the three unarmed men pass through, and five minutes later they’re back, excited and shouting at their comrades.
One of the men whistles back toward the crest of the hill. As if melting out of the countryside, a river of people carrying what possessions they had came trickling down the hillside, and out of the distant scrub where they’d been hiding.
The first two hundred new citizens of Camp Nike stream in through the gates, and once they’re through, all that is left are the full bins of AKS-74s waiting to be destroyed.
“Were you worried?” Duc asks as they watch the North Koreans line up at refugee registration booths.
“Yes,” she replies. “I think we’d be foolish not to worry when people with guns walk up to us.”
Duc thumps his chest. “With these on? We’re invincible here.”
Maybe, Mai thinks. She looks back at the small city inside the walls. But we aren’t the only ones here, now, are we?
For forty-eight hours the stream of humanity continues. A thousand. Five thousand. Ten thousand. The Korean People’s Army is too busy chasing ghosts to notice right now: false reports about touchdowns. Jammed communications. Domination of their airspace.
Satellite telescopes, early warning systems, and spyware pinpoints the point of origin of several missile launches. They die while still boosting up into the air, struck from above by high-powered lasers.
Electromagnetic pulses rain down from heavy stealth aircraft drones, leaving any unshielded North Korean advanced military tech, which is far more than anyone realized, useless metal junk.
By the time the North Koreans managed to haul out their ancient, analog Cold War-era artillery, Mai is on her way to the barracks to bunk down for her first real night of sleep.
The shelling begins in earnest. A distant crumping sound, but without the accompanying whistle of the rounds falling.
The Point Defense Array pops up. Green light flickers and sparks from the top of the almost floral-looking
