War Girls

by Tochi Onyebuchi

  But, as the sound of a gate clanging open rings loud enough for everyone to hear and the truck slows to a stop, Onyii remembers that Kachi had died in the first year of the war.

  “Oya, come out!” barks a soldier from outside. “Hurry up-oh!”

  Onyii leaps out into a campground that offers no shelter from the blistering sun. Everything is too bright.

  There is only one soldier at their truck, and he grabs Onyii’s arm, but she breaks away and swings the piece of metal she’s still holding up to the man’s neck. “I will watch them all come out first,” she hisses. “You will not separate me from my sisters.”

  After a moment of shock, the soldier snorts. “Fine, you stupid goat.” Then he backs away.

  The first of the girls comes to the edge of the flatbed and raises her hand to her eyes to shield them from the sun.

  “I am here,” Onyii says, reaching her arms out to catch the first girl as she jumps from the edge of the truck. Onyii catches her and helps her gingerly to the ground.

  She does this for all of them until the truck is empty and the girls surround her, some of them clinging to her torn pant legs.

  “It’s okay,” Onyii says, and she knows she’s lying, but she has learned that sometimes it is her job as big sister to lie to them, if only to bring them a moment of peace. Of relief.

  If you shall do it, do it to me, she says to the world. To the war that is waiting for them.

  * * *

  With Onyii and her charges gathered, the soldier leads them deeper into the camp, where the other truckloads of girls await in a cluster. Familiar faces put Onyii at ease. Chinelo is there, along with Kesandu and several of the others.

  The sun sucks the moisture out of everything. The buzzing doesn’t come from mosquitoes. It comes from metal sizzling. Tent flaps billow in a breeze that brings no relief. A few mechs stand stationary at the edges of the encampment.

  One of the tents is bigger than the others, and out of it strides the brigadier general. His face shines with sweat. He takes off his beret to wipe his forehead, then slips it back on. The soldiers guarding the girls stand at attention when the brigadier general nears. He waves them at ease with a smile that chills Onyii.

  On their way in, peering from the back of the flatbed truck, Onyii had counted two Diggers, machines to plumb the earth for the minerals that powered so many of the devices in her own encampment, their energy supply for their wireless network. Here, she sees no Obelisk and no Terminal, no way for them to communicate with the outside or with each other. Two aerial mechs rust in the distance, their giant frames towering over the men who lounge in the shadows they cast. A part of her can’t believe this is actually the Biafran military and not some gang of rebels or random terrorists come to collect child brides. She had seen them in action over the years, prowling roads and dipping into the wilderness to snatch up unsuspecting girls and make them slaves.

  At the thought, Onyii hugs a few of the girls closer to her side.

  “You must be hungry after your journey,” the brigadier general says to Onyii. He ignores Chinelo, as though to say, No matter your tricks. I know that you are the one who leads them. “We have food waiting for you in the barracks. You have arrived just in time for lunch. Impeccable timing-oh!” He snaps his fingers, and the soldiers all move at once to surround the girls with their guns at the ready.

  Onyii moves to walk with them, but the brigadier general holds a finger out.

  “No, not you. You come with me.”

  Onyii tenses, can feel herself readying to attack. It takes every nerve in her system to keep from lashing out, but Chinelo catches her gaze and, with a single look, reassures her. A cloud of insects surrounds the girls, as Chinelo brings them tightly around her. Not mosquitoes, Onyii realizes. Chinelo’s bees.

  Her muscles loosen a bit, and Onyii turns back to the brigadier general and follows him to his tent.

  It is almost the largest structure in the entire camp, and a heavy metal desk sits right in the center of it with glass paperweights and a tablet and stylus on it. A half-eaten apple spoils at one corner.

  Around them are ammo crates and shrines to gods Onyii can only guess at. A whole bunch of useless things.

  The brigadier general takes a seat behind his desk.

  There’s nowhere for Onyii to sit. She wouldn’t have taken the seat had he even offered it.

  “I can see from the look on your face that you are not impressed.” He pulls a narrow tube from his breast pocket. It looks like a small cylinder wrapped in fanta leaf. He examines it, then runs it beneath his nose before putting it between his teeth and lighting it up. Instantly, acrid smoke fills the tent. Even though the walls are right now open to the elements, the smoke hangs in the air, and Onyii sneers at it.

  “I did not see any equipment to mask your activity.”

  He smirks around what Onyii remembers is called a cigar. “That is because we are analog. You were digital. And so are the enemy. And they could see you because of it. The price of connectivity.” He detaches an old black device from his hip. “This? They call this a walkie-talkie. It uses radio frequencies. It is old, not like myself.” He places it on the table, almost too hard. But it doesn’t break. “I am a young man. I will live forever.”

  “What do you want with me?” Enough of this man’s babble. If there is no connectivity, then they must be piloting their mechs dark. If they have so few Diggers, how do they fuel their aerial units? Maybe they already have minerals gathered and prepared. Onyii’s mind races through possibilities, taking apart escape plans as quickly as she can put them together.

  The brigadier general leans back in his chair. “I wanted to see with my own eyes.”

  “See what?”

  “God’s Right-Hand Man.” He chuckles but chokes on his cigar smoke. When his coughing settles, he still wears a smile on his face. “It turns out, God’s Right-Hand Man is a woman. The Child with Demon Eyes. I’d heard of you in the early days of the War for Independence. How you would go where no one else would before anyone else would. How, often, you didn’t even have to be told. You simply followed the smell of the Nigerians. And you killed all who crossed your path. Then, when you were old enough to pilot, you brought death to them from the skies. No one fought like you, the story goes.”

  Onyii’s hands turn to fists. “That was a long time ago.”

  The brigadier waves his hand, makes a dismissive noise. “A few years. Maybe a few more than that. Is not so long. But you are still a child. Time has not decided to choke you in her fingers yet.”

  “What do you want?” Besides hearing yourself talk and talk and talk.

  “I want you to live comfortably.” He kicks his booted feet up on his desk. They thunk. Too heavy to be just muscle and bone. Metal. He’s an Augment. “I want you to have riches beyond your wildest imaginations. I want you to never again have to reach up to snatch a mango from its tree. I want mangoes to be delivered to you. I want you to have servants making ogi for you and frying akara to complement the ogi. You will never have to work again, and you will be able to purchase anything it is in your heart to even want. You just have to return to service.” He puffs and lets out a thick cloud of smoke. “Become a soldier again.”

  “I never stopped being a soldier.”

  After a moment, the smile fades from his face and he rises from his desk. Now that Onyii knows to look, the man’s steps are heavier. He leaves prints in the dirt wherever he walks. “That’s right. That is why as soon as you arrived, you started measuring my camp’s defenses. Maybe you were doing so to tell me how you can be of help.” He stands so close she can smell the mix of acrid cigar smoke and sweat wafting through his clothes. “Or maybe you are trying to escape.” He leans so close their noses nearly touch. “Is not as easy as you think.”

  Faster than Onyii can see, the man grabs her arm and pries the piece of metal out of it.
She’d completely forgotten she had been holding it. The brigadier general smiles at it, holds Onyii at arm’s length, then draws the metal slowly along the side of his neck where Onyii had aimed earlier, before the journey here.

  Blood the color of oil spills from the wound, but the brigadier general manages to pry it open with two fingers, revealing metal plates and pistons working beneath them. “You would not have even scratched me where it matters.” He lets go of his neck, then calmly strides to his desk and pulls out a tube of MeTro surgical sealant. It is like toothpaste, and he draws a line of it along the wound. The skin seals, and soon there is only the faintest scar. The bloodstains remain, but the bleeding has stopped. Then he tosses the tube to Onyii, who catches it in one hand, before sitting back down at his desk. “So, riches will not do it. Shall I appeal to your patriotism? Your love of the Republic of New Biafra?”

  Onyii is silent.

  “Do I have to threaten your age-mates? Is that what you want?”

  Her fists tremble. She glares her fury at him, measures the distance between them. She wonders how quickly she could cross it and get at his neck, snatch a paperweight, leap over the table and jab out an eye, disabling it, before inevitably finding the outlet that must be somewhere at the base of his neck and ripping it open.

  “Killing me won’t help you.”

  “But it will feel good.”

  His smirk widens. He spreads his hands, as though to give up. “What do you want?”

  “I want to find my sister.”

  “Your sister?” He gestures to the station’s entrance. “Surely, she is out there somewhere. Are they not all your sisters? You are your sisters’ keeper.”

  “No.” She knows she sounds too firm when she says it, like she’s denying the others. And that’s not what she means, but she can’t figure out how to say what she needs to say to this disgusting man who has them all trapped. “There is one girl. When the Green-and-Whites left, I went to her hiding place, and she was no longer there.”

  “And she wasn’t among your dead?”

  They hadn’t had enough time to really look, but Onyii says, “No. She wasn’t.”

  “And you think they have taken her?”

  “Yes. I will find her. I will bring her back.”

  “Back to where?” The brigadier general raises his voice in anger for the first time since he’s spoken to Onyii. “What home are you bringing her back to?”

  Through gritted teeth, Onyii says, “We’ll make a new one.”

  The brigadier general throws up his hands in defeat. “Chineke mbere,” he curses, then slumps in his chair like a deflated skinsuit.

  Onyii hears footsteps coming from behind. The soldier salutes when he gets to the edge of the station.

  The brigadier general beckons him. “What is it, lieutenant?”

  “The crash site you had us examine.” He has a scratched and weathered tablet in his hands and wipes a coat of dirt off of it before handing it over. The brigadier general glances at Onyii, then swipes across the screen a few times before spreading his fingers then closing them again over the tablet. He tosses it with too much strength to the edge of his desk, where it teeters.

  “Your sister,” he says, almost like a scowl.

  “What?” It comes out of Onyii as a gasp. She snatches up the tablet and tries to see through the dust smudging the screen. With the palm of her hand, she swipes and swipes. Then, when she can see the touchscreen, her fingers dance over the controls. The image rises before her as a hologram. A three-dimensional projection of someone’s line of sight.

  They’re in a forest. There are a few of them. Biafran soldiers. Then the image glitches before they find themselves in a stretch of desert. They crest a ridge, then what they see fills Onyii’s vision.

  “Only animals would do such a thing,” says the brigadier general. But there is no outrage in his voice. Only disdain. “But that is, I hear, how they are made up in the North. Living off of the land like that, we are maybe the first true human beings they see. And they never learn that they are not supposed to eat us. That they are not supposed to do these sorts of things. That it is only beings who are less than human who do these things. But, enh. You can command a dog, but you cannot reason with it.” He shakes his head. “The only thing a dog can teach a human is how stupid it is. And that—”

  The tablet snaps clean in half.

  “What did you do?” shouts the lieutenant, running to Onyii’s side. He raises a hand to smack her, but stops. His hand is raised mid-motion, but Onyii, hunched over the shattered tablet device, can only feel him staring his fear into her back. He is scared of her, and Onyii does not care, because what she saw still lives behind her eyes. Burned into her brain. Flaring so hot and so bright that tears come.

  Tremors take hold of her. First her hands, then her arms. Her legs tremble.

  Then she feels it growing inside her. A warmth that blossoms into heat that radiates throughout her chest, fills her face. It’s the same feeling she got while piloting her mech, fighting to protect her camp. Letting all her soft parts fall away until all that’s left is steel.

  The soldier standing next to her backs away.

  Onyii doesn’t move when the brigadier general arrives at her side.

  He shakes his head and sucks his teeth. “I told you. This is what they do.” He bows his head. When he looks back at her, there’s a new look in his eyes. Concern.

  She can taste copper. She looks straight into his face. “I will fight.”

  His expression softens. “For the glory of Biafra.”

  She closes her eyes and feels the last of her kindness, her too-soft self, wash away. What she saw forces itself to the front of her mind so that it will always be just behind her eyelids whenever she closes her eyes to sleep. It will always haunt her. Drive her. Complete her.

  “No. Not for Biafra,” she says. “For revenge.”

  INTERLUDE

  Waves shimmering in sunlight. Static. Voices. An argument. Children. Girls. Fighting over a bulubu ball. Static. A flower. Petals lifting slowly underneath fingers made of cast iron and powered by nanomachines. Static. Embers rising from fire like fireflies. Smoke billowing into the air. Screaming. Static. An eto-eto waving its doughy arms while a young woman carries it in her arms across a room. Static. Two girls, sisters, smiling at each other. Static. A woman on a table, cradling the eto-eto. Static. Screams. Static. Static. Static.

  Enyemaka hums to life. She still smells smoke.

  She’s crouched, arms bent as though hugging something, someone. Memories flit through her central processing unit. Was she protecting something? Someone? Her sensors tell her that her back is scarred, that whatever explosion leveled the building she’s in must have come from behind her.

  Slowly, she uncurls herself and rises.

  Bursts of static still fill her vision from time to time, but her backup systems thrum inside her. She can feel, in the wires that serve as her veins and arteries, the nanomachines repairing her.

  Sensory input overwhelms her. Sights, sounds. The stillness in the air. She walks out of the decimated building she woke up in, and before her is nothing but carnage. Small buildings collapsed on each other, flexiglas littering the charred ground. Fallen mechs tower over her, sideways beasts in slumber. Everywhere, bodies. Whole or in pieces, they lie strewn about, utterly still. All the dying is done.

  She does not know what happened here, but she can guess. From how the mechs lie, she can tell where in the sky they fell from. She knows the make and model of each of the shell casings from every bullet fired. Information about blood type rolls down her feed with each puddle she walks past. These bodies are broken. Some of them are clothed in what she recognizes as the Nigerian flag. Others wear patches on their jackets showing the flag that belongs to the Republic of Biafra. She doesn’t remember who this land belongs to, whether it is Biafran or wheth
er it lies within Nigerian territory. All she knows is that there were once people here. Learning and playing and fighting and healing. She remembers two girls in particular. One older, so dark she glowed blue in the moonlight, the other small and sand-colored with irises shot through with purple and gold. When she stops taking in signals of the outside and returns to the fragments of memory, she can see them. Saved on chips in her brain.

  The bodies dressed in all black must be the enemy. But Enyemaka does not see any enemy here. The bodies dressed in black belong to people who showered and learned and played and fought and healed just like the girls Enyemaka remembers. Their skin, where it shows in the places where their uniforms are torn, glows blue as night gives way to dawn.

  Nanobots, swimming through her veins, send commands to Enyemaka’s brain.

  With deliberate steps, she finds a portion of empty land at the camp’s center and begins digging. When she has made a hole large enough for one body, she carries one of the fallen girls and lays her in it gently, then finishes the burial. She finds a nearby plank of metal and bends it into a cross, then sticks it at the head of the grave. She does this with each of the bodies until all the graves form neat rows, their crosses glinting in the growing sunlight. Then, instructed by the nanobots in her brain, she starts walking away from the camp.

  She does not stop walking until she reaches irradiated desert.

  An aircraft lies sideways and broken in the dirt. Red sand already covers a portion of it. Everywhere else, there is nothing but redland.

  At first, Enyemaka believes the sizzling in the air to be simply radiation. The type of energy that eats away at metal just like hers. She shouldn’t stand here too long. But, for some reason, she can’t leave. There’s a mystery in the air. Something, someone was here.

  More memories. The small girl with the big eyes pressed against her back, arms around her neck. Then, the two of them sitting together in a forest, studying the constellations. Then, Enyemaka gently shaving the girl’s head. Enyemaka knows this child. She must find her. The child will have answers.