Will McIntosh - Defenders

Erik stopped walking. “You want to see your companions? I’ll take you to them.” He turned, then stormed through the doorway, which led to an immense escalator. Oliver climbed onto it, then had to jump from step to step as Erik, not satisfied to let the escalator carry them along, strode down the stairs.

When they reached the lobby, Erik curled around beneath the steps, crashed through a door, and breezed past a security checkpoint with Oliver running to keep up. They headed to the end of a long hall. Erik pushed open another door that led into a walled courtyard. He held it open for Oliver.

“There you go.”

Oliver stepped through the door. Erik slammed it shut behind him. His friends were piled beside a fence, their bodies riddled with bullets.

July 10, 2045. Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Everyone stood as President Carmine Wood breezed into the war room, flanked by his brother, the former president Wood, and his wife and chief advisor, the former actress Nora Messina.

Dominique still couldn’t believe she’d been flown to Colorado Springs to join strategic command. As far as she knew, no one else on General Willis’s invasion team even held federal positions any longer. Maybe as the chief engineer of the defenders she was considered irreplaceable.

She felt a certain sick satisfaction that Willis would end his days as the modern face of incompetence and failure, but she wasn’t proud for feeling it. There was nothing good about any of this.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen, ladies,” the president said in his nasally voice. He was getting old; there was a noticeable bend at the top of his spine. He’d seemed so much younger seven years ago, when he’d been elected not through his own accomplishments but because of his wildly popular brother, who was credited with helping to turn the Luyten War around when all seemed lost.

“We’re losing,” the president said with no preamble. He allowed a moment of silence to stretch, to emphasize his words. “But you already knew that.”

Yes, Dominique knew that. The defenders held most of the world’s major port cities. They held the Panama and Suez Canals. They held Gibraltar and Morocco, so they controlled the Mediterranean Sea. They had superior weapons, maintained air and sea superiority, and held all of the defender production facilities. They didn’t sleep; they just kept coming, day and night, wearing down humanity’s superior numbers.

Something else had become clear, at least to Dominique: They carried boundless rage toward their creators for designing them so carelessly. Deep down they knew they were fucked-up, that there was something missing at their core. In a very real sense, Dominique was responsible for that rage.

When she’d been charged with creating them, her focus had been 100 percent results oriented. It had never occurred to her to give any thought to the quality of the defenders’ lives. She’d designed their hands to shoot and climb, not paint; she’d designed them to be tough and angry, not content.

She’d designed killers.

“During the Luyten War, when things looked their worst, we took decisive action,” the president was saying. “I believe it’s time for decisive action again.” Dominique had missed some of what he’d said. She needed to stay on task.

An aide activated a map of the world. There were yellow circles set over about a dozen major world cities, all of them currently under defender occupation.

“Based on our current intelligence, it will be a matter of months, if not weeks, before the defenders are able to erect cloaks over the territory they hold and install their spectroscopic nuclear detection technology. Once that happens, our military options become extremely limited.”

Dominique leaned forward in her chair, examining the cities with the yellow circles over them. New York, Los Angeles, London, Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul, Moscow, Mumbai, São Paulo, Mexico City. The Alliance couldn’t possibly be planning what she thought they were planning.

“All told, the Alliance has seventeen cruise missile submarines on the open waters, doing their best to evade defender naval patrols.” President Wood II rested his hand on a table and took a deep, sighing breath, as if he didn’t want to say what he needed to say. Surely everyone in the room knew what he was going to say. “We’re going to target the defenders’ centers of gravity with nuclear strikes while we still can.”

No one stated the obvious. There were still millions of people living in those cities under defender occupation. Bombing them meant bombing human civilians.

“The defenders will not be expecting this,” the president said.

No, they wouldn’t. Neither would the people living there. Dominique listened carefully as Peter Smythe, Wood’s secretary of defense, filled in the details. The strikes would kill an estimated 20 percent of the defenders’ forces and a quarter of their weapons capability. It would cripple their communications for a short time, during which Alliance ground forces would launch an all-or-nothing assault on their remaining assets.

A woman Dominique didn’t know raised her hand. “I’m assuming Premier Santos made this call?”

“The premier is against this action,” Wood said. “We’re acting in concert with China, Russia, India, and half a dozen other countries.”

There was stunned silence. The Alliance had split? This was worse than Dominique thought.

“Ms. Wiewall,” the president said. Dominique raised her head. “How will the surviving defenders react to this action?” he asked.

“I can’t answer that question,” Dominique said.

“I’m sorry?”

Dominique shrugged. “I’m not a military strategist. Their reaction will be whatever gives them the best chance of defeating us. Your military people will have to advise you on what that would be.”

July 11, 2045. Mapleton, Utah.

“There they are.” Luis pointed at the horizon, where tufts of white smoke rose toward the sky. Kai had been expecting mushroom clouds, like the ones he’d seen in pictures of Hiroshima, but these were thinner, maybe because they were tactical nukes rather than big bombs.

No one said anything as they cruised along Route 89, elbow to elbow in the back of the open troop transport. Even if Kai felt like cheering the deaths of tens of thousands of defenders despite all the human lives that were being snuffed out at the same time, someone within earshot might have loved ones living in Los Angeles.

Kai wondered what he would have done if, when they were informed yesterday about the nuclear strikes, Atlanta had been one of the targets. Would he still be here, willing to fight? No. Not a chance. There would have been nothing he could do to save Errol, but he wouldn’t be carrying a rifle now.

He understood that it was necessary. It was still a terrible thing to do.

Kai fingered the plastic sack holding the radiation shield he’d been issued. They’ll help , Sergeant Schiller had said as they lined up to get one, but there’s no guarantee you won’t get sick . I’m not going to lie to you: You probably will get sick. But with the shields, you’ll live. How comforting. In an ideal situation, they would have twenty thousand big, expensive radiation hazmat suits to hand out, but this was not an ideal situation.

The convoy pulled off the highway at the next exit. They passed a shopping center with a Target, an Applebee’s, CVS, Golden Dragon Chinese. A little farther along they passed a strip mall. Just beyond it, they turned into a neighborhood, past a big sign that read WINDMILL PLANTATION.