Will McIntosh - Defenders

Oliver couldn’t help thinking of Five. What was going through his mind, as he waited to follow the battles through the minds of his enemies? Was he nervous? Afraid?

“Mr. President?” Oteri gestured toward the wall of video feeds being transmitted from cities around the world. “The Luyten are attacking. Mumbai, London, Rio, Seoul.”

The president, who had been huddled in a corner, discussing something with his brother, hurried over.

In London, they were all over the streets, already past the defense perimeter. Oliver watched as a half dozen barreled through Trafalgar Square. It was raining, so their lightning bolts were electrocuting fleeing civilians in wide arcs around the points of impact. Bodies lay everywhere, the ruined soles of their feet smoldering. Crisscrossing blue blades sizzled along the puddled ground.

“How did they get through the perimeter defenses so quickly?” Wood shouted.

Nielsen was scanning data on his portable system, his fingers flying across the keys, seeking some answer.

“ Look at Shanghai ,” someone said.

They were in Shanghai as well, marauding through the darkness of the downtown area.

“They know the threat is real,” Ariel said. “They were waiting to see what the defenders could do. If the defenders had stumbled in Santiago, I bet they would have gone back to their slow-and-steady strategy.”

The population clock on the wall was racing backward. The human population was tens of millions fewer than it had been an hour before.

“They’re coming from underground,” Nielsen called out, still working his system.

“Underground?” Wood spun to face Nielsen. “How the fuck is that possible? All the subway lines were blasted precisely so they couldn’t come from underground.”

“They’re coming through the sewers.”

“The sewers ? What do you mean, the sewers? They’re as big as fucking elephants.”

Elephants without bones. The voice in his head made Oliver flinch.

“Elephants without bones,” Oliver repeated aloud.

“What did you say?” Wood asked.

“I didn’t say it, Five did. Elephants without bones.” On the feed from New York, Oliver watched one of the big, rectangular sewer grates glow red and drop away. He pointed at the feed. “New York. Watch.” A Luyten squeezed out of the hole, its appendages folded tightly behind it until it popped free.

President Wood cursed a blue streak. He turned to Oteri. “Get the defenders out there.”

“They’ve already been released,” Oteri said. “Premier Chandar ordered it ten minutes ago.”

For once, Wood didn’t seem annoyed to be reminded he was not in charge. He seemed relieved.

It was difficult for Oliver to watch the carnage on the screens, but he couldn’t turn away; it was his duty to stay apprised of what was happening.

What was happening was, people were dying. The streets of London, New York, Rio, Shanghai were littered with corpses as the starfish killed everyone in sight on their march toward the production facilities.

“Order civilian evacuation of the areas surrounding all production facilities. Those people don’t know which way to run,” President Wood said.

The Luyten were choosing routes that sidestepped combatants, instead wreaking havoc on civilians, who had nowhere to hide. Some of the Luyten were being picked off by stationary visual-recognition drones set up on rooftops, but each of the drones only worked once, then the Luyten knew where they were and took them out.

Their heaters were firing almost continuously, burning and melting people, vehicles, the sides of buildings, leaving behind a landscape that resembled a giant scar.

“Where are they?” Wood growled.

It was a rhetorical question. The defenders were now an independent army, allied with the human forces but formulating their own battle plans. From this moment on, the human forces would have no idea where the defenders would strike, what tactics and strategy they might use.

In Manhattan, the first Luyten reached the production facility’s inner defenses and tucked behind buildings to wait for reinforcements. The ten blocks surrounding each production facility were heavily fortified. Silver heat shields the size of buses lined the perimeter; the turrets of heavy VRA guns poked from reinforced window slits in many of the old brick and concrete buildings. Oliver knew this sort of battle would not be as one-sided. In tight urban quarters their soldiers would be better able to hit Luyten, who didn’t hold the element of surprise, and the automated weapons systems would take their toll. He was also aware that if they lost these battles, the war was lost as well.

May 27, 2030. Atlanta, Georgia

Cheena held the clunky box with its fat antenna up to her ear and said, “Talk to me, Hoochie. Anything new happening?”

The reply came after an absurdly long delay. “All quiet on the eastern front,” a woman’s voice squawked, causing Lila to flinch.

“Music to my ears,” Cheena replied. “Death to fish.”

Hoochie responded with a “Death to fish” of her own. Evidently it was their sign-off.

They were perched on a catwalk far above the floor of a defunct factory. Huge tanks lined the floor and walls, some hourglass-shaped, others spherical, a few tubular.

A voice burst from the walkie-talkie, paging Cheena. Cheena retrieved it. “Walk, tell me what you’ve got.”

“I’ve got defenders ,” Walk said. “Two platoons were released from the Cheshire Bridge production facility an hour ago. Reliable source.”

Cheena raised her fist in the air. She was eighteen. Her long legs and confident style made Lila feel twelve. “What do they look like? Tell me, tell me.”

“Huge,” Walk reported. “I mean, huge. And angry, like trembling with rage. It’s not a good day to be a fish.”

The three of them burst into cheers. Lila hugged Alfe fiercely, then Cheena. Finally, something to give them hope. More than hope, if the reports from Chile were true.

Cheena set the walkie-talkie down on its end. “I’d say this calls for a celebration.” She stuck a finger in her jacket pocket, fished around until she came out with a little white ball of Lace. Setting it on the catwalk, she squeezed it until it popped, shooting a cloud of particles into the air. She and Alfe craned their necks, inhaled deeply. Lila followed suit.

Lace was a memory enhancer. You were supposed to think back to a time in your life and the drug would draw out those memories, making them super-vivid. It was also supposed to make you feel light enough to reach the clouds. Maybe Lila wasn’t inhaling enough of it. She took another big breath, thought back to when she was ten. If she was going to relive a time in her life, she wanted to relive ten.

At first it only felt like she was reminiscing about the good times, which she often did.

At Tybee Island Beach with her friend Margot and their dads. Eating oysters. Her dad singing oldies after he’d had a few beers. She and Margot making faces, singing modern hits to drown him out, only to have him sing louder.

Lila, stealing Dad’s access code and reprogramming his phone to take on the voice of a porn actress from an interactive she found in his cloud. Then Dad, after toning down the language, leaving the voice intact for a week, so Lila had to endure lurid, “Ooh, you like that, don’t you?” comments from his phone.

The memories grew warmer, more vivid, washing over her in waves.

Loblolly School. Seeing it again filled her with a glowing warmth, a profound comfort. She and Margot created Loblolly using a virtual-world-building kit, filled with characters their own age. It took them all summer, but it was worth it. Every day after school they’d meet in Loblolly and hang out with kids far more interesting than their actual classmates.