Will McIntosh - Defenders

“Hello, Five,” Oliver said. “Are you in the immediate vicinity.”

I’ll be there in a minute.

“Why do you risk coming here if you can communicate with us from eight miles away?” Lila asked.

I think it’s important that we meet face-to-face.

“You don’t have a face,” Lila said.

“If we do this, we’ll need able military commanders and strategists ready to go, all over the world,” Oliver said, ignoring her crack. “How are we going to recruit them, now that Earth2 is no longer an option?”

It hurt Lila to hear him say it aloud. Almost as soon as she’d learned Dominique was still alive, Lila was back to not knowing if she was or not.

We’ll contact them directly, as soon as the altered defenders are in place.

They could do that, couldn’t they? Every time Lila thought she grasped the magnitude of the Luyten’s advantage, another facet of it surfaced. If they were allied with the Luyten, humans would suddenly have an effective means of communication with no chance of defender interception.

“What about weapons?” Kai asked. “The defenders have total control of weapons.”

Five pushed out of the brambles behind them.

Getting access to weapons will be the focus of our initial attacks. We’ll use improvised explosive devices and suicide attacks. In the United States and Russia, there are large caches of outdated weapons buried in various unguarded locations. We’ll liberate those as well.

“You have all the answers, don’t you?” Lila said. Then she thought about what Five had just said. “Hang on, your initial attacks? Are you picturing a guerrilla war, like you fought against us?”

Of course. When you’re facing a larger, better-armed force, it’s the most effective—

Five stopped there, Lila assumed, because it was reading her thoughts. She laughed out loud, relishing a rare moment when a Luyten looked foolish. “You see it now, don’t you? That’s not going to fly against defenders.”

“What? Why?” Oliver asked.

This is why we need to work together.

“ What is? ” Oliver asked.

Lila turned to face Oliver. “Guerrilla wars work because the larger force can’t catch the enemy. They attack, then duck back into the woods, or melt back into the population.”

“So?”

Lila folded her arms. She was going to have to spell it out for him, wasn’t she? “The defenders don’t care who they kill. As soon as you start attacking, they’ll turn and lay waste to the population, just like they’re planning to do anyway.” Oliver was nodding now, and so was Kai. “They’re not going to go chasing after each individual attacker; they’re going to point their tanks at crowds and open fire.”

Oliver looked toward Five, but he’d gone silent. Lila kicked at a fallen branch, feeling a little smug, waiting for someone to pick up the pieces, if they could.

It was Five who broke the silence. The initial attacks will be Luyten only. They’ll be small. The defenders will think we’re attempting the coup on our own, and they’ll turn their guns on us. Soon after— very soon after would be our preference—humans will rise up, and we fight a war on a million fronts, all at once.

“How exactly are we going to get a billion people to rise up, more or less all at once?”

When the time comes we’ll push everyone able to fight. We can be very persuasive.

“You’re going to persuade a billion people?” Oliver looked dubious. “I’m not sure anyone’s going to respond to Luyten shouting orders at everyone at once.”

Oh, they won’t be generic orders. We’ll speak to each person individually, by name. If we have to we’ll shame them into fighting, or scare them.

“A billion people? Have you done the math on that? It’ll take forever,” Kai said. “We’ll have to target certain block leaders, rely on them to spread the word.”

Oliver, do you remember the MRIs and CT scans you subjected me to while I was your prisoner? Remember the curious repetitive nature of my brain structures?

“Sure.”

If a species evolved with the ability to exchange thoughts with many others at once, wouldn’t it make sense that this species also develop separate, parallel processing centers of conscious thought?

Oliver looked stunned. “You can think—and communicate telepathically—on multiple tracks simultaneously?”

The implications of that boggled Lila’s mind. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of separate lines of thought all going on at the same time in one head? The entire species thinking like that, and communicating telepathically. All of those lines of thought connected in a vast web. They were even more alien than she’d imagined.

Do we have a deal? Five was looking at her.

Lila grunted. “I imagine you knew we had a deal before I was aware I’d made up my mind. That’s not to say I don’t have deep reservations about this.”

Humans draw a hard line between thinking something and saying it aloud. I’m asking you to say it aloud.

Lila considered Five. How had they arrived here, at this insane moment? She wanted to tell this creature to go to hell. But that wasn’t an option; even she understood that now.

“Yes. We have a deal.”

October 24, 2047. Southeastern Alaska.

A Harrier swooped by, just above the tree line. Forrest, who was driving their BvS10, jerked the wheel, taking them off the road and pulling to a stop.

They listened to the thump of the Harrier’s propellers. Dominique watched out the window, praying it didn’t turn back.

“Do you think it saw us?” Forrest asked.

“I don’t know. It was close. It could have.”

“If it did, they wouldn’t necessarily engage us,” Peter Smythe said from the back, crowded in with a dozen others. “They might call in reinforcements first.”

What was there to do, though? Ditch the vehicles and head off into the woods with whatever they could carry? In the side-view mirror Dominique saw the door open in the next vehicle back. The president stepped out, his eyes turned toward the sky. Dominique and Forrest got out as well.

“Do we just hope they didn’t see us?” Wood asked.

No one answered.

“What are the odds? Sheena?” He turned. “Did they see us? Your professional opinion.”

Sheena looked into the treetops. “It’s a close thing, but I’m going to say no. The foliage is too thick, and we’re on something that’s barely a road; they wouldn’t expect to find us here.”

Wood nodded, satisfied. “Let’s take a break since we’ve already stopped.” He raised his voice. “Twenty minutes, everyone.”

It was fascinating to Dominique to watch Anthony Wood lead. Not once had she heard anyone question why Wood should be in charge, given that the United States no longer existed, and his brother, not him, had been the sitting president when it fell. No one questioned him because everyone wanted him to be in charge. He was that good at it.

“I’m going to take a walk, stretch my legs a little. Want to come?” Forrest asked.

“Sounds good.” Dominique barely remembered what it felt like to take a walk, let alone a run. She’d run almost every day of her life until she found herself at CFS Alert, where there was nowhere to run but outside, where the snow was always three feet deep.

They headed off down the logging trail. Forrest checked his watch. “We’ll go nine minutes, then turn around.”

There was nothing to see except trees and brush, the same view they’d had for days, but it was nice to pass it slowly, to hear the wind and the occasional bird. “How far do you think we are from the nearest town?” Dominique asked.