Will McIntosh - Defenders

It was strange, to think the Luyten didn’t know they were coming.

Dominique glanced at the feed originating with the sea-based B Company. The company was in skiffs, heading toward the beach. They looked awkward, riding six to a skiff in boats meant to carry twenty humans. They would attack from the west, while the airborne company attacked from the east.

The butterfly camera panned down to provide a glimpse of defenders moving through the forest below, then up, to provide their first look at the power plant. It was shaped like a figure eight lying flat. Four enormous storage tanks on stilts stood behind it, and all of this sat on a platform surrounded by a placid artificial lake of steel-blue seawater, pumped in from the nearby Pacific. The lake was bisected by three breezeways. A Luyten-modified heavy construction vehicle was crossing one of the breezeways, its Luyten operator clearly visible. Half a dozen other Luyten were moving around outside the plant.

The crackle of small-arms fire erupted in the forest below. The camera swung toward the trees.

By the time Dominique could see what was happening, it was over. Two Luyten lay dead, their centers jellied with ordnance wounds. Defenders confiscated the fallen Luyten weapons, and the company pushed on.

“There goes the element of surprise,” Willis said. “Though I doubt the defenders expected to make it right up to the gates without being spotted.”

Willis’s final words were partially drowned by an explosion coming over the feed, then two more on top of one another. The camera rose.

The Luyten had blown the three breezeways. Water surged to fill the gaps. The plant was now on an island.

“They’d better not set foot in that water. The Luyten will electrify it and fry them,” Colonel Willis said, stating the obvious. Dominique was certain the defenders would realize that immediately. They weren’t stupid grunts; their IQs were higher than the colonel’s.

When C Company reached the edge of the forest they hung back, out of range of the Luyten weapons. B Company—the one coming by sea—had landed on the beaches and was spread out, waiting for orders. Now the question was how to reach the Luyten.

Fifteen minutes crawled by as the defenders continued to hang back. Dominique wished whoever was controlling the camera would set it back down on Commander Douglas so they could hear the defenders’ planning, but it remained above the trees, providing a useless bird’s-eye view. Another camera was embedded with B Company, the third at HQ.

Three A-7 Razorback Harriers buzzed over the horizon from the north, from HQ and the Engineering Company. Dominique couldn’t easily see how three Harriers helped the situation, unless they used them to bomb the shit out of the Luyten position, which would mean destroying the power plant.

The first Harrier dropped low, close to the tree line. A defender sprinted out of the trees, leaped, and grabbed one of the Harrier’s skids, as if it were trying to pull the thing out of the air. The Harrier was more powerful than Dominique would have guessed; it rose rapidly, the defender clinging to it with one hand. Each of the other two Harriers took on a hitcher and rose as well. They rose steeply, headed toward the air above the fusion plant with blinding speed.

The Luyten, brandishing Y-shaped lightning rods, opened fire as they drew close. The defenders returned fire, pumping hot rounds from the handheld mortar launchers in their free hands. Dominique’s heart raced as she saw a Luyten go down. Then another, clipped on one limb and spun around.

From the beach side of the plant, defenders surged forward in twos, carrying the skiffs that had transported them to shore.

The first pair were hit by heaters, bursting into flame short of the artificial lake. Despite being thousands of miles away, Dominique felt singed by the heat that engulfed them, felt their loss like a sting as each managed a few steps before they fell, nothing but husks, black smoke rising from them.

Dominique took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She hadn’t expected to feel their deaths so strongly, to take them so personally.

The next pair made it, as the airborne defenders continued to lay down a blinding cloak of cover fire, the Harriers diving toward the plant, then rising just as rapidly. The pair hurled the skiff into the lake and retreated. The lake was shallow; the skiff landed with a splash and lay impotently on its side.

The third pair heaved their skiff beyond the first, and suddenly Dominique understood what they were doing: They were building a bridge out of the skiffs, which were undoubtedly composed of carbon fiber, and not electricity-conducting.

Another aircraft flew into view to the east, this one large, clearly not a fighter. Without slowing it dropped a pile of unidentifiable materials—slabs and poles.

One of the Harriers was hit. It spun in a tight circle, dropping rapidly. The defender clinging to it let go, plummeted a hundred feet, and landed in a tucked roll on the edge of the platform surrounding the plant. It came up firing, its shots uncannily accurate.

Seconds later lightning crackled, the pale blue zigzag landing just beyond the stranded defender. It trembled violently and dropped.

“Shit,” Dominique said. Colonel Willis looked at her. She kept her eyes on the feed.

Ten or eleven defenders were down, maybe more. Each time one fell, Dominique felt it like a punch in the heart. Another skiff went into the water, this one hurled, flying end over end before landing. One more, and there was a ragged line in place, like stones across a brook.

Immediately, the defenders charged across it. The first few had no chance, but there was no hesitation in their steps as they leaped from skiff to skiff until they were hit, and fell.

C Company surged from the tree line. As they passed the materials dropped moments earlier, each scooped up rectangular sections and pilings.

As the battle raged to the west, the defenders to the east constructed a bridge, fitting pilings into slots in the large rectangles. They took Luyten lightning and heat fire, but it was tepid compared to what B Company had faced, because now the Luyten were under siege. Only one of the Harriers was still in the air, but it was wreaking havoc on the Luyten position. Maybe three dozen defenders had made it to the platform surrounding the plant.

Dominique watched as a defender, screaming with a rage that seemed all too personal, charged two Luyten blocking the entrance to the plant. He put a dozen bullets in one while slashing the other open with an uppercut of his edged forearm. Before reinforcements could reach him, he stepped to one side of the door, swung his arm around, and pumped artillery bursts at the door from his forearm unit. Before the smoke had cleared, one of his comrades charged what was left of the big door, dropping his shoulder and battering it open.

Fighting at close range, the defenders made vicious use of their size and the built-in blades running down their limbs. To say they were fierce fighters didn’t capture the jaw-dropping combination of rage and cold efficiency they displayed. Dominique found herself on her feet, roaring with her companions as the defenders tore the Luyten apart.

When the defenders dragged the last of the Luyten bodies from inside the plant, Dominique counted fifty-four. It would take a while, because the Andes to the east and the DeValparaiso range to the west would slow them, but more Luyten would come. They would come three at a time, from the nearest quadrants first, their numbers growing each day until they believed they had enough to retake the plant.

There had better be a lot of them.

May 27, 2030. Washington, D.C.