Will McIntosh - Defenders

“The starfish are massing around the cities housing defender production facilities. Every single facility. We don’t have nearly as many defenders as we’d like, but unless someone in here says something to change my mind, I’m going to advise Premier Chandar to release what we have immediately. Their primary mission will be to defend those production facilities.”

Raising his shoulders, the president waited, looking around the room at individual faces. He stopped on Oliver’s. “Dr. Bowen. Oliver. What does our resident starfish have to say about all this?”

“He stopped communicating with me after Easter Island.”

“Probably smart of it,” President Wood said. He resumed his scan of the room. “So? Does anyone want to voice an objection? What do we risk by having them fight now, besides affording them less time to train?”

Evidently no one could think of objections. The Luyten were clearly aware of the defenders and understood they were a threat. The secret was out. Given that nine facilities were now in operation, it wasn’t surprising.

“Can I make a suggestion?” Secretary of Defense Oteri asked. She was built like a bulldog—short, squat, with thinning black hair and a bulb nose. “Deploy one battalion first, so we can assess its effectiveness, maybe learn some things we can pass on to the other forces. It will take the Luyten time to mass numbers large enough to storm those facilities.”

The president shrugged, looked around the room for reaction.

“We could send the Easter Island force into Santiago,” said Wood’s brother Carmine, who was tall and extremely thin, almost skeletal. “In fact, the Algarrobo nuclear plant is only twenty miles outside Santiago. If they could retake the largest power plant in South America while securing the defender production facility in Santiago, that would be huge. We need energy. Badly.”

There were murmurs of agreement.

“We need to see what they’re capable of on a mission before we set them all loose,” Oteri added. “Once we set them loose, that’s it. They become a fully independent fighting force—allies, more than anything.”

“But if we set them loose in Santiago, aren’t we giving the Luyten a chance to learn from that encounter as well?” Secretary Nielsen asked in his customary dulcet tone. Nielsen was soft-spoken, balding, with a full reddish beard.

Ariel waved her hand and waited for the president to recognize her like a child in class. “As the Luyten mass, their communication grid breaks down. They cut themselves off from one another as their web configuration folds. Do they have electronic communication?”

“Not much,” Oteri said. “They have some they seized from us that they use to communicate across oceans and deserts and so on, but they don’t have the capability to transmit visual recordings of a battle, or detailed schematics. They’re used to passing information instantaneously, through their telepathic network.”

Wood took a deep breath, let it out. “All right. I’ll send a recommendation to Premier Chandar that we launch an attack on Santiago and the Algarrobo nuclear plant as soon as possible.” Since the president was the World Alliance’s minister of defense, it seemed certain the premier would go along with his recommendation.

May 25, 2030. Easter Island.

When the colonel put his hand on her knee, Dominique wanted to hack it off with a knife, but instead had to settle for shifting to the left to dislodge it. How dare he use this, the culminating moment of all of their work, to pull this kind of stunt?

She’d been drunk the night she slept with him. Extremely drunk. Also wallowing in a modicum of self-pity, because it had been her birthday. She’d regretted it the moment it was over, before she’d even sobered up. When she did sober up, she more than regretted it—she’d been mortified. Not that Colonel Willis was unattractive, he was just… too military. A walking stereotype. It made him seem clownish in Dominique’s eyes.

Shaking off the memory of his pale body rocking atop hers, Dominique focused on the feeds. They had three to start. Some might be knocked out once combat began, but hopefully not all. They needed to collect as much information as possible about the defenders’ performance. It would be tricky, to pass on recommendations that might aid the defenders in subsequent engagements without passing on information that might help the Luyten, who would undoubtedly intercept everything they sent.

Her pulse was racing. These were her children. Many, many others had helped, but no one would argue that she was the primary architect. Besides everything at stake for humanity, Dominique felt in a very personal way that her life would be either vindicated or ruined in the next few hours. She was so glad she’d opted to stay on Easter Island. No one off the island would witness this, not even the premier.

Dominique was cautiously optimistic that the defenders would do well. The Luyten depended heavily on knowing their enemy’s minds; they’d had no need to develop tactical expertise in battle. And while their weapons were sophisticated, most only had what was embedded in the biologically grown suit that fit them like a second skin. The defenders, by contrast, knew nothing but military tactics, and were armed to the teeth.

Dominique watched the feed from one of the little aerial butterfly cameras, which was temporarily perched on the helmet of the operation’s commander, a defender named Douglas. He was traveling with the Airborne Battalion, briefing his officers in a clipped baritone, squatting in the hold of the huge stealth-enabled C-5, which was typically used to transport heavy artillery and buses. She enabled the sound.

“We establish two separate LZs. The first, five miles north-northeast of the objective.” Douglas pointed to the spot on the relief map. The first LZ, which Dominique assumed meant landing zone, lit up in red. “The second, five miles south-southeast.” He marked this one as well. “One squad from each drop zone will be designated as a security squad and will move as follows: From drop zone one, directly north. From drop zone two, directly south. The northern moving squad will secure Highway 60 and establish a perimeter defense. The southern moving squad will secure Highway 5. The full security squad will deny any Luyten movement from west to east—”

From what she knew of military tactics, the plan seemed solid. It soothed her drumming heart, how competent the commander sounded.

“—additional squad will be dropped in the southern LZ and will proceed to the area just north of San Antonio. Center of gravity, CP, and HQ will be established at that location, here, ten miles south-southeast of the objective.”

A commander named Luigi was overseeing the defense of the production facility in Santiago, but taking the power plant was the more challenging of the two missions. Not only did the Luyten already hold it, but the defenders couldn’t use large weapons to bombard the plant, because they needed it to be operational. To compensate, they were sending a large force—120 defenders.

“Here they go,” Colonel Willis said, leaning forward. Dominique reflexively drew her leg away, afraid he’d use the shift in posture as an opportunity to reestablish an LZ on her thigh.

As the defenders jumped, two at a time, from the aircraft, they didn’t appear to be almost three times as large as humans. The oversized aircraft and gear threw off Dominique’s perception. But as they dropped to the ground in an open field adjacent to a forest, they were almost half as tall as the trees, and the illusion was shattered.

Douglas grunted orders to his men, as the butterfly camera lifted off, giving Dominique a wider view of the terrain. A gentle slope led up to another wall of trees. The defenders fanned out, trotted across the field in what seemed like half a dozen steps, and disappeared into the forest.