Will McIntosh - Defenders

With the sun sinking into the trees, they stopped for the night at a long-abandoned logging camp a hundred miles from the nearest paved road. A row of rectangular red clapboard cabins reminded Dominique too much of the barracks at CFS Alert. Rusting appliances—a meat locker, water cooler, washers, dryers—were piled by the weed-choked ruts that passed for a road in front of the cabins.

Dominique grabbed her gear and headed for one of the less decrepit bungalows. She glanced back, looking for Forrest. He was talking to Carmine Wood in front of the lead vehicle. Dominique didn’t want to invite him to share a cabin in front of an audience. She’d have to wait.

Between the cabins, she could see a rickety metal pier on a shallow river, with a contraption that reminded her of a giant sewing machine built into the pier. She pulled open the door, and stopped dead.

There was a Luyten nest in the cabin. Still clutching the doorknob, she watched as President Wood swung open the door of the next cabin. He paused as well, looked at Dominique.

“There’s one in there, too?”

Dominique nodded. She checked the next cabin down. Same thing. The Luyten must have used it as a safe base, back during the war. Normally you wouldn’t find this many nests together, so far from human targets.

“Chief? Look at this.” Forrest was squatting beside an abandoned truck. Dominique followed Wood over.

There was a Luyten tunnel entrance, camouflaged within a trash dump behind the truck. Forrest was kneeling amid the rotting paper, bottles, and cans, peering into the hole.

“They had quite a compound here,” Wood said.

“I wonder if there’s any chance they left weapons behind,” Forrest said. He pressed his face close to the ground, trying to get a better line of sight into the tunnel.

“You’re not thinking of climbing down in there, are you?” Dominique asked.

“I doubt you’d find much,” Wood added.

Forrest shifted left, then right, still trying to get a line of sight. “I don’t have anything else productive to do. I think I’ll grab a flashlight and take a look.”

Dominique resisted the urge to kick his leg, which was splayed beside her foot. She could think of something productive they could do.

“ Jesus! ” Forrest shouted, jerking back.

“What is it?” Wood asked.

He flattened onto his stomach and slid partway into the hole. “I thought I saw something. I swear, it looked like a baby Luyten. Then it was gone.”

A sharp cry of surprise startled Dominique. She whirled.

A Luyten was standing behind them. Dominique gaped at it, then noticed another standing between two of the cabins, fiddling with the exoskeletal battle suit it was wearing.

“They’re armed !” Dominique shouted.

She wasn’t the first to notice. Sheena stood unmoving, her rifle leveled at the Luyten closest to her.

“How the fuck did they get hold of weapons?” Wood hissed.

Dominique wasn’t concerned about where the weapons came from. If the Luyten chose to use them, they were all dead. But if the Luyten wanted to kill them, they would have done it by now.

“Sheena, put the rifle down,” Dominique said. “You know that’s not going to help us.”

Sheena lowered the muzzle, but held on to the rifle.

“They’re not killing us,” Wood said, half to himself. “Why aren’t they killing us?”

“You did sign a treaty with them,” Dominique pointed out.

Leave now. The words blasted through Dominique’s mind. From Forrest and the president’s reactions, they’d received the same message.

“That’s the best offer I’ve gotten in a long time,” Wood said. He raised his voice. “Let’s go, into the transports.”

No one had to be told twice.

As they crawled along the logging road in the dark, intent on putting a substantial amount of distance between themselves and the Luyten before setting up a camp, Dominique had an epiphany.

“They never gave up those weapons,” she said aloud.

Everyone looked at her.

“How could we possibly verify that all of the Luyten turned themselves in after the war? They knew we couldn’t. Some of them retreated deep into the wilderness instead. They know we’re on the run ourselves and not a threat, so when Forrest started poking around in their tunnels, they decided to simply come up and tell us to get the hell out of Dodge.”

“If you’re right, there must be more than one of those compounds. They could have them all over the world,” Forrest said.

“I’ll bet you anything they do,” Dominique said. They were like fleas on a dog; every time you thought you were rid of them, there they were again.

October 20, 2047. Washington, D.C.

From his parked car, Oliver watched kids shooting baskets, a couple playing tennis, joggers circling the track. He marveled at the mundane scene. There wasn’t a defender in sight, nothing to indicate that everything had changed.

He spotted Kai and Lila, pulling into a space at the other end of the parking lot. Oliver stayed in his car as they got out and headed across the soccer field, slipped through the gate, and headed down the hiking trail. He allowed three minutes to tick off on the car’s clock before he stepped out of his old Toyota and followed them into the woods.

They were waiting about a quarter mile in, Kai sitting on a fallen tree, Lila pacing.

Lila gave Oliver a fierce hug; Kai smiled and nodded, clearly in pain from the short hike. Every time Oliver saw Kai, he hoped to see some noticeable improvement, but they were more than two years removed from Kai being shot. This might be the best he was going to get. It was a depressing thought.

“So what’s going on?” Oliver asked. He’d been surprised to find the note in his mailbox.

“We were contacted by a Luyten yesterday,” Lila said.

“A Luyten?” Oliver clutched Lila’s arm. “A Luyten spoke to you?” He’d never expected to hear those words again.

As Lila laid out a horrific story of plans to exterminate most of the human race, of the offer of a Luyten alliance, Oliver’s insides roiled. He would need to find a bathroom as soon as their meeting was over. It was a familiar sensation, one he hadn’t missed in the least since he went into hiding.

“You can’t trust Luyten,” he said when Lila was finished. “If we did manage to wipe out the defenders, they’d turn around and wipe us out. I have no doubt of that.”

“So what you’re saying is, with or without the Luyten’s help, we can never revolt, because if we win, the Luyten will turn on us,” Kai said.

Oliver hadn’t really thought about it like that before. He wondered if Island Rain’s people had. “If we overthrew the defenders, we’d have to get them to surrender before their numbers were too badly compromised, so they would still be an effective deterrent on the Luyten.”

“That’s quite a balancing act.”

Oliver’s feet were getting tired. He sat on the log, stared off into the bare winter branches. As far as he was concerned, it was too dangerous to do anything the Luyten wanted them to do. They were too powerful, too clever; they’d find an utterly unexpected way to turn things to their advantage. “As soon as we create defenders the Luyten can read, we’ve ceded all control to the Luyten.”

“I agree,” Lila said. “It’s too dangerous.”

Movement among the trees caught Oliver’s eye. Gold patterns, shifting among the bramble and tree boughs in the woods. Oliver stood, straining to see.

Kai stood as well. “What?”

Oliver knew what it was. As it moved closer he could make out the limbs, the eyes. The real jolt of terror hit him when he saw that one of the eyes was nothing but a ruined mass of scar tissue.