War Girls

by Tochi Onyebuchi

  Once back in the hallways, Agu leads Onyii to the door he found and uses the code from the earlier keypad to open it.

  They step out onto metal grating that rings the giant circular expanse before them, at the center of which stands a gigantic pillar. Agu crouches, aims his rifle, and fires. Just as Onyii comes down to one knee, she sees two guards, one ahead and one to their right, collapse. She aims her rifle up at the ceiling and scans for another walkway, then they both look down to see absolutely nothing. Along the wall, there are four lights glowing in metal consoles. There are no ladders, no obvious way of getting up or down to the other walkways. The consoles must control the platform. That has to be their way down.

  They go to the first, and Agu puts his hand to it. He focuses as his fingers extend and break into segments that type a lightning-fast sequence into the keys of the console. The blue-and-red wheels above it spin until their red parts all angle in different directions. Something unseen unlocks. He must’ve stolen the code from the guard when he hacked the body. A loud hiss sounds, followed by steam. But they can’t see anything changing. They look at each other before proceeding to the next one. Agu does the same. The wheels form a different pattern. Immediately the floor opens out beneath Onyii. She falls, but, a moment later, something jerks her up. Agu has his hand wrapped tightly around her wrist. She watches her pistol and knife fall into the cavernous depths. They seem to fall forever, until Onyii hears a tiny splash.

  Agu pulls Onyii back up, and she comes to one knee to catch her breath. Slowly, they shimmy to the next console. Agu hacks it, then more hissing rises from below. They proceed the same way to the last console.

  This time, when Agu finishes, a giant rumbling fills the space.

  They raise their rifles at the ready. Out of the water far below rises a giant pillar with an enclosed platform on top of it like a helmet. Glass rings its middle, rusted metal running along its top and its bottom. Water slides off of it in mini rivers. It comes to a stop when it meets their level. Then its front opens and a walkway haltingly unfolds to reach them. Rust and wear line the metal walkway, but Onyii and Agu hurry across it in case it decides to betray them like the other walkway.

  Inside, Agu looks for another console or something to control their descent, but, before he can find anything, the front opening closes, breaking off the walkway, and the chamber starts to descend into the water.

  The walls rattle all around them, so hard that Onyii’s teeth chatter. The two of them hold on to the guardrails sticking out of the wall. The air pressure changes once they go underwater.

  The container grinds along rails. She can hear it struggling, then it jams into place and begins to lift.

  It rises only a short way before it stops. Agu takes a moment to get to his feet, and Onyii rushes to his side to prop him upright. For a second, he rests his body against hers, then he becomes alert and battle-ready again. Onyii wipes the blood from her nose, then nods, and, guns at the ready, they wait for the container door to open.

  The door groans open, shedding water. A stream of it rushes in to fill the container up to their ankles. Oh no. They’re not all the way above water. Then the door jams. More water rushes in, then Onyii realizes what’s happening. The rails moving their container have stopped working. If they don’t get out soon, the whole container will fill with water and very well might break from its rails and submerge them completely.

  She slings her rifle behind her and splashes through the water to the door. Already, it’s up to her thighs. She’s able to slip her fingers through the opening and pull, but the door doesn’t give at all. Agu joins her and they pull. Nothing. The water level rises and rises. Now her waist is completely underwater. Agu struggles to keep his feet planted on the ground. They pull.

  Onyii’s arms strain with the effort. She can feel her joints stretching to their snapping point. In her mind’s eye, an image flashes: Agu’s body floating facedown, lifeless, in the water. She grits her teeth, closes her eyes, but she slips in the water and falls. It’s high enough now that she falls completely. When she gets upright again, it’s up to Agu’s neck. His face is firm and expressionless, but veins pulse at his temple with the effort. His whole body is being pushed to its limit.

  A painful ripping sound, then a spray of gears and wires. Agu falls back into the water as blood and oil spill from his torn arm. Onyii pulls him close to her, his face against her chest as, using her metal arm, she pulls with all her strength. I have to save him, I have to save him, I have to save him.

  The door groans, then slides all the way open.

  One arm wrapped around her abd, Onyii swims out and finds the nearest ledge. When her fingers find purchase on the edge of the platform, she almost cries with joy. She pushes a stunned Agu onto it, then climbs up, soaked through.

  Agu has his broken arm cradled across his chest and tries to sit up, but falls back down. Onyii pulls him to her and rests his head in her lap and, before she realizes what she’s doing, softly shushes him. She rocks back and forth. When he tries to rise, she presses down on him. Stay still. Rest. It’ll be okay. The thoughts whisper through her. Agu must hear them, because he calms.

  “My arm,” Agu whispers.

  The skin is torn in places, and the gears that had served for joints just below his shoulder have come loose. Wiring bunches at the tears, some of it severed.

  Onyii reaches for her bag, then realizes it’s gone. It must have slipped off her in the container. And now it’s unreachable. She pats her pockets, then opens one on her vest to pull out a small, wet tube of MeTro.

  Agu’s arm hangs from his shoulder, the skin ragged, the inner machinery exposed. She holds it together with one hand, puts the MeTro tube in her mouth, and fishes in her vest pockets for more tools. She manages to hold the small implements in her fingers as they unfold. Her fingers shake. She closes her eyes and wills them to be still. Never before has she been nervous in the field, especially when it has come to caring for a wounded comrade. But now her heart races, and she struggles to keep the images and the worry from filling her head.

  The machines in her hand whirr to life. She goes to work, drilling and fusing, snipping wires where they need to be snipped, wrapping others together with a small band, connecting them to circuits, hardening over singed outlets, all work she has done on her own arm a thousand times. When it looks like Agu’s arm is sufficiently repaired, she pulls the skin together and squeezes out MeTro sealant along the tear, melding the break into scar tissue. Without knowing why, she leans forward and blows softly on his forehead. A memory comes to her: she did the same to Ify when monsoon season had given her a fever.

  It takes a moment for Agu’s breath to slow, but eventually, it returns to normal. He looks up at her. A smile ghosts across his face, then is gone. He sits up from her lap and tries to flex his hand into a fist. Some of the fingers refuse to move, others bend halfway but can’t finish.

  “Sister,” he says, then with a finger of his good hand, he points.

  Onyii follows his gaze and sees them.

  Behind her, towering so high that their heads disappear in shadows, gigantic bipedal, humanoid machines, each painted a different color. Terrifying mobile suits, one of them with a mega rifle attached to a forearm, another with a massive staff clipped to its back, another still with bladed chains coiled on a wrist-catch. Onyii stares in awe.

  The Igwe. This is what they are after.

  With her mechanical eye, she zooms in and snaps photos of their features. The cockpit located in the torso, the advanced precision-targeting screens in their faces, their jet propulsion systems, the specs for each of their individual weapons, as well as the ammo caches attached to them, containing their bullets, their missiles, and the generators for their lasers. These are the things that could level entire villages, that could make Onyii’s tiny mech look like a mosquito.

  When she finishes, the connecting cord snakes out o
f its outlet at the back of her neck, and she plugs its loose end into the outlet at the back of Agu’s neck.

  She hears static, then a sharp whine, and disconnects. The damage to his arm must have short-circuited parts of his nervous system. Dread fills her stomach. He can’t download her intel.

  Onyii tries to connect remotely with the others but gets only static. They must be too far away. Or maybe the walls are too thick, blocking out any signal.

  With no way back, they’re trapped. Onyii looks around, then sees up above, on a landing, a console just like the one Agu had hacked in the other room. They race to it, and Agu puts his good hand to it. His fingers detach, and after a few seconds of fast typing, lights flare on in the underground hangar.

  They hear the grinding of metal moving against metal, and water starts to rush in. Lights burst to life in the eyes of the Igwe. Now Onyii can see that thick cables connect them to the walls. A quick scan reveals the path to Onyii. A long, thin metal grating staircase that will bring them chest-level with the giant mechs. She and Agu race up the stairs and along the metal walkways until they each get to the cockpit of a different Igwe. When they get near enough, a slot on the torso unfurls, and inside lies the cushioned chair and the consoles and touchboards of a mech, a seat Onyii has not occupied in far too long.

  She jumps into hers, and Agu follows suit.

  Onyii feels as though she has leapt into the embrace of an old friend. Even though the text is in a language she does not understand and the controls are all in different places—the foot pedals, the gearshifts, the weapons board, the jet activators—her muscle memory takes over, and it’s as though she’s been piloting this mobile suit all her life.

  The water rises over the platform on which the Igwe stand.

  A new set of controls glows at Onyii, and she calls up an informational description on her screen. “They can transform,” she breathes. She inputs a sequence on the touchboard, and the Igwe folds in upon itself until it turns into a massive robot horseshoe crab. It’s as though electricity runs through Onyii’s veins. She can’t remember the last time she was this excited.

  Agu’s face appears on her comms screen, and she taps a sequence of keys that transmits the instructions to him. On her screen, she watches his mech do the same.

  Together, they plunge into the water.

  They follow what appears to be a tunnel. Doors open as they approach, before they finally find the open sea. When they break the surface of the water, the fog lifts from inside Onyii’s head. She can see and feel the rest of the world now. The bottom door of the Igwe storage room closing is a distant sound.

  Onyii establishes a connection with Chinelo, but as soon as Chinelo’s comms recognize her, Onyii hears the muffled sound of automatic gunfire. It’s coming from inside the facility.

  Chinelo allows Onyii into her comms, and through the bees Chinelo has deployed for surveillance, Onyii sees the aftermath of the shooting: one of the abd, Golibe, nursing a bleeding arm; a worker in a jumpsuit on the ground with a pool of blood spreading beneath her; then a group of other workers of different shades and skin tones huddled together with their wrists and ankles bound and with gags in their mouths.

  “The dead one is a Nigerian,” Chinelo explains. “Named Daurama. She was an officer and soldier for the Nigerians, guarding these workers and running patrols of the facility. When they discovered we were here, they beamed out a distress signal. She tried to attack Ginika, but Golibe put her down.”

  “And the hostages?” Onyii asks.

  “Internationals. Some of them are from the European Colonial Bloc. From space. It turns out more countries than the British have been providing secret aid to the Nigerians.”

  “Let us go!” shouts one of the hostages after he shrugs his gag loose. “We have nothing to do with—”

  One of the abd silences him with the butt of a rifle.

  Chiamere approaches Chinelo and says something to her that Onyii can’t hear.

  Then Chinelo says to Onyii, “We have a problem. The Nigerians are coming.”

  Onyii turns to face their way back. Already, on the distant shoreline, a dozen Green-and-White ground mechs glow blindingly in the light of the midday sun.

  CHAPTER

  30

  It feels like so long ago, but Ify remembers every detail. She is sitting in a chair with blinding lights pointed right at her face. Someone has come and put a brush to her cheeks and her forehead, then a small pad to smear on some chemicals. When she sees the question in Ify’s eyes, she says it’s to help with the lighting. Someone else brushes the back of her neck, while a third person tries to straighten her dirty brown shirt, the shirt she has not changed out of since she was captured. Rescued. That is what she is supposed to call it now. Her rescue.

  She looks for Daren and for Daurama, but they are nowhere to be seen. Maybe they are in another room.

  The lights are too bright, but a woman in a Colony-style suit sits down on a hovering chair across from Ify and crosses her legs. People busy themselves around this woman too, brushing her cheeks and blotting her forehead, and she acts like they’re not even there.

  “Can you spray her?” the woman asks, and Ify knows she means her. “They can see and hear her, but they can’t smell her, and I shouldn’t have to either.”

  Ify wants to tell the woman that if she’d had the chance to bathe since she was held in that tiny recovery room—little more than a cell—and before she was given her small meal and before she was shuttled all around this strange new city with no one to guide her, then she would have. And she wants to call the woman a rude name, but she can’t think of any. Words fail her.

  She hopes Daren is all right. She hasn’t seen him since she left the hospital. Since the doctors said she’d recovered from her injuries. That plane crash comes back to her in a rush of memories: the explosion, the spinning, Daurama grabbing her by the neck and threatening her, Daren calming her down, Daren wrapping Ify in a blanket then opening a door and pushing her through, spinning, spinning, and more spinning, then a pain greater than any she had ever known.

  Then she woke up in a hospital. With Daren in the bed next to hers.

  In her hands is one of the paper cranes she’d scooped up from the floor and held close to her ever since. She can’t let it go. If she loses it, maybe she’ll lose Daren too. And she can’t let that happen. She has to be strong for him. She has to be ready for when he recovers and comes back to her.

  One of the helpers sprays a chemical all around Ify. She sneezes, but this seems to put the woman across from her at ease. The woman’s face softens.

  She leans forward. “My name is Safiya,” she says softly, in a deep voice. “I’m going to be talking to you today about what you went through.”

  “Are you a doctor?” Ify asks.

  Safiya chuckles. “No, I am a news reporter. We want your story to be broadcast to all of Nigeria, so they can know that one of theirs has been returned to them.” She puts a hand out and touches Ify’s knee. “You’ve been through so much. If, at any point, you want to stop, just let me know, and we can take a break.”

  Ify has to be strong, so she nods. Okay.

  The woman leans back, satisfied. “Are we ready?” she asks the air. Then she looks at Ify, stares at her, and says, “We have with us today a young child rescued less than a month ago from Biafran terrorists in a daring mission launched by the Nigerian military. This child had been captured many years prior, after her family’s gruesome murder at the hands of the terrorists, and now she has been returned home, thanks to the courage and intelligence of Nigerian Armed Forces mobile-suit pilots. This girl has been through unimaginable trauma but has decided to speak out about the horrors she endured in the wilderness. Here to tell her story is Ify.”

  CHAPTER

  31

  “We have to get back to them,” Onyii says over her comms to Agu. On her s
creen, she sees Agu nod. The oil facility and the coastline are farther away than Onyii expected but still close enough that she can get a clear signal from the others. She uploads a direct feed from what Chinelo sees, and smaller screens pop up revealing what her bees detect via their surveillance capabilities. Onyii sees the hallways, the metal staircases, the walkways, the cavernous warehouse rooms, all of it.

  “There is a space beneath the struts,” Agu tells her. “We can hide our mechs there. My schematics of the oil facility reveal easy access to where the other sisters and the abd are located.”

  She accesses the floor plan stored in his CPU. And she sees it. From a position underneath one of the struts, they can climb a steep ladder that will bring them to the underside of one of the struts, then onto a walkway circling the octagon. Vents then will lead them to the exact room where the others hunker down with their hostages.

  Onyii establishes a link with Chinelo. “Have they tried to communicate at all? Even to demand release of the hostages?”

  Through Chinelo’s eyes, Onyii sees the others shake their heads. “Nothing but silence. They’ve sealed off every entrance and exit.” There’s no despair in her voice, nor futility. Instead, she speaks with grit and determination, and Onyii already knows that Chinelo means to go the distance. This girl who used to concern herself only with fixing things and with learning how to make their tech more efficient, how to keep the lights in the camp greenhouse from going out or how to make sure the water filtration systems worked perfectly—this girl is ready to die for her nation.

  Onyii’s heart sings with pride, but there is a note of despair in it. She does not wish that she could avoid death, only that someone as curious about the world as Chinelo might live to see peace. The wonders Chinelo could accomplish if the Nigerians were not on the cusp of annihilating them, Onyii can’t even imagine.