Will McIntosh - Defenders

June 9, 2045. Sydney, Australia.

There were no human-sized seats in the aircraft, so Oliver stood clutching the pant leg of a fire suit hanging from a hook above him, trying to stay on his feet as the Harrier weaved and dove and banked. He watched what was left of Sydney through the bottom of a window. Human soldiers ran from the cover of one bombed-out building to another. A platoon of defenders vaulted over rubble, looking eager to kill.

“Where are our heavy weapons?” Oliver heard Erik shout into his comm.

“Most have been redeployed,” a gravelly-voiced defender replied.

“Redeployed to where?”

“Moscow, Mumbai, Washington, Shanghai…”

Oliver had a moment of thinking he must be dreaming this. Surely this wasn’t happening. Kai was in Washington.

“What about Sydney?” Erik asked. “What about me?”

“If the Alliance doesn’t turn its force to engage us in their cities, you’re going to die.”

Erik turned toward Oliver, shock and fear evident on his face. It was reassuring to see Erik was afraid to die. “I need Lila. We have to find her.”

“I agree.” His mind was racing. Besides being major population centers, there was something about the cities the defender on the comm had mentioned that struck a chord.

Then it came to him: They were all cities that held mothballed defender production facilities. They were going right after those facilities. Surely the Alliance had thought to destroy those facilities before they launched the invasion. Surely.

Below, blackened rubble and fires were replaced by the green calm of grass and trees. Belmore Park. Since Lila hadn’t returned to the hotel after the funeral, and she clearly hadn’t gone somewhere with Erik, Oliver’s best guess was the park. She spent a lot of her free time there; the normal-sized trees and plants made her feel less like a child, she’d said.

The Harrier dropped close to the ground, its enormous rotors causing the trees to bend and sway like reeds as leaves were torn from branches and blew in all directions.

They cruised along the main walkway, everyone aboard seeking some sign of Lila. Now that they were here, Oliver realized how futile this was. If she’d been here when the bombs began to fall, she would have sought shelter. Not in buildings adjacent to the park, though; she was too smart for that. She would have sought low, protected ground, or better yet, climbed down into a sewer.

“Watch for open sewer holes, or other places she might have taken cover.” Of course, all of this assumed Lila had been in the park when the invasion hit.

June 9, 2045. Washington, D.C.

Kai was fairly certain Tony Vellikovsky had a third seven in the hole. He so hoped he was right, because if he was, there was no way Vellikovsky could cut loose, and Kai had just drawn the ten he needed for a straight.

Kai saw Vellikovsky’s bet. “Raise.” He pushed another eighty thousand into the pot.

Vellikovsky looked pained, yet pleased. He saw the bet, raised another eighty.

Just in case he’d read it wrong and Vellikovsky had a full house instead of a set of sevens, Kai saw the raise, flipped his hole cards. “Straight.”

Vellikovsky leaned toward the cards, as if he doubted Kai’s assessment, then he looked up at Kai. “You called my raise with a jack-nine?” He pushed away from the table and stormed over to the gallery. “Honey, did you see this?” He gestured toward Kai. “He called my raise with a jack-nine.” He turned back toward the table. “Can you even spell ‘poker’?”

Kai smiled. “Sorry, Tony. Insults don’t sting much when you’re raking the insulting party’s money toward you.”

“You play like a twelve-year-old.” Evidently, Vellikovsky wasn’t finished. “Seeing my raise when you know the odds are against you, just in case you get lucky?” He pointed at Kai. “You won the hand, but you’re an idiot. I don’t know how you’ve lasted this long. Ben. ” Finally, he sat down.

With great effort, Kai kept the smile on his face, but he could feel himself flushing, with embarrassment and anger. No one called him that. No one called him Benedict Arnold.

The next hands were dealt; he tried to concentrate.

He’d never even met Mandy Caron, the author of the book that insisted on defining his life, yet he hated her more than everyone else he hated on Earth combined. The book itself painted Kai as being far more instrumental in winning the Luyten War than he’d actually been, but it was the title that people remembered, even though it was meant to be ironic.

The Boy Who Betrayed the World.

“Ante is thirty thousand,” the dealer announced.

“And thanks for the rotten cards,” Vellikovsky said to the dealer. “All night, you’ve been handing me shit. You deal me a set, then finish off his straight.”

“Come on, this is getting embarrassing,” Kai said, his patience gone. “Stop with the tantrum and play your goddamned cards.”

Someone in the gallery spoke over him, shouting, “Jesus, they’re invading Australia!”

Kai jumped from his chair. “What? Who?” The last time he’d spoken to Lila, everything had been okay.

“The Alliance.”

“What Alliance?” Vellikovsky said. “There is no Alliance.”

The guy projected the feed onto the wall so everyone could see. There were four POV screens, most of them aerial shots above a city in smoking ruins. Planes filled the sky, some of them enormous, like nothing Kai had ever seen. They were like flying aircraft carriers.

“We’re invading the defenders?” Kai asked. Lila had hinted at problems, but war ? He pulled out his comm and tried to reach Lila at the number she’d given him, although he knew it would be blocked. It was.

There was an emergency exit to the left of the gallery. Kai headed for it, ignoring the alarm that sounded when he shoved the door open. Unless they’d airlifted the emissaries out before the assault, Lila was in that ruined city. So was Oliver.

First, he had to get Errol. It would change nothing about what was happening in Australia, but suddenly Kai had an overwhelming need to have Errol with him. It was ironic—most mornings he was relieved when the nanny showed up to care for the boundless, chaotic force that was Errol. Now all he wanted was to be with him.

He’d clambered down two flights, taking the steps three at a time, when he finally stopped to catch his breath and think about what to do. He needed to understand exactly what was happening. Breathing hard, his fingers shaking, he activated the news on his phone.

The newscaster said the defenders had delivered an ultimatum, demanding huge territorial concessions, and threatened military action if their demands weren’t met. That must have been the problem Lila had alluded to but couldn’t talk about. In response, the World Alliance had re-formed, and attacked Australia.

The newscaster, who had been rattling off details in a breathless voice, suddenly went silent.

“We’ve just received new information. The conflict may be expanding beyond Australia. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is directing civilians to evacuate the following cities.”

The names of the cities appeared below the feed. Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco. Last on the list was Washington, D.C. The list was alphabetical. It was most definitely not in the order of cities most likely to be hit by a counterstrike.

Kai sprinted down the stairs, heading for the garage under the hotel.

June 9, 2045. Sydney, Australia.