Defenders

by Will McIntosh

  “Has anything been communicated to you about… your own status?” Faruk asked.

  “Nothing.”

  She was tired of people asking, and she found herself getting irritable when the issue was raised. It seemed inconceivable that she could be compelled to stay in this lunatic asylum, yet even if the defenders’ other demands were resolved through peaceful means, it was conceivable the defenders would simply refuse to allow Lila to leave. What could Washington do, send in Navy SEALs in the middle of the night to steal her back? Actually, that might be their plan. The thought of being trapped here, with the other emissaries gone, was intolerable. She wouldn’t let Kai join her, no matter what. She wasn’t going to risk his and Errol’s lives.

  Lila waved goodbye to Faruk as he headed toward whatever event was awaiting him next. His special defender friend was especially needy, and must hold a privileged position, because he rarely seemed to work. Lila had a free hour and decided to walk in Victory Park.

  She admired the elaborate flower beds. Defenders seemed to favor sunflowers, likely because of their size. Lila wondered if they drew pleasure from flowers, or if they planted them simply because parks were supposed to have flowers.

  Maybe she could negotiate some sort of guest-worker status with the defenders. That was a thought. She could agree to fly to Australia three or four times a year for a few weeks. She could tolerate that. The defenders were, after all, her life’s work. If they wanted more of their kind, she and Dominique could work on creating new defenders who were less volatile. These new defenders might even take on leadership positions, become examples for the existing defenders on how to be more reasoned, and less violent.

  Her mood lightened as she walked, and planned. She was also feeling better because there were no Luyten around, she realized. Usually there were a few in the park, planting flowers or picking up the defenders’ trash. They never gave any indication they noticed her, but she knew they knew exactly who she was, and how she felt about them, and that bothered her.

  Lila spotted a glint of green plastic buried in fallen leaves. She kicked it loose: a flattened Lido Lemonade bottle. She chuckled. “Bits of us are still here, even fifteen years later.”

  A deafening honk made Lila jump. It was followed by another, and another. To her left, where she could see the road nearest her, defenders poured into the street.

  “Oh, no.” Had they really done it? No. Surely it was a drill.

  A deep roar, like the sound of a raging fire, rose from the east. Lila looked toward the sky.

  The sound grew louder.

  She jumped at the first thump. It was followed by a dozen more. Missiles rose overhead, angled toward the coast.

  The roar from the east grew steadily louder, punctuated by ever more thumps.

  Hundreds of Alliance bombers came into view on the horizon.

  Many were being blown out of the sky by surface-to-air missiles, but they just kept coming, filling the sky. Cluster bombs shot from the bombers and curled toward the buildings below. She felt the impacts deep in her chest. Clouds of dust and debris rose as if in slow motion.

  A terrible sadness enveloped Lila as she watched. The bombs kept dropping, leaping out of the fighters, surging toward the ground like they were eager to meet their targets. She watched, hand over mouth, as Victory Tower—the tallest building in the defenders’ so recently constructed city—seemed to slide sideways before tipping, crushing several other buildings as it crashed to Earth.

  From horizon to horizon, the sky was filled with Alliance bombers. There were so many explosions they blended together to create one endless, deafening boom.

  She had to find shelter, or she was going to die. Lila kicked off her shoes—heels for the funeral—and ran, her palms covering her ears. They’d planned to rendezvous in the sewer pipe if the invasion came, but it was too far. She had to find something nearby. She raced toward the streets.

  Above, defender fighter jets roared into view, flying higher than the invaders. They fired cannon bursts, creating a series of blinding flashes, like a sudden burst of fireworks. Alliance aircraft seemed to disintegrate, raining onto the smoldering city.

  As Lila reached the street she realized how stupid she’d been to kick off her shoes. There was broken glass everywhere.

  Hearing gruff shouts, she ducked behind a parked vehicle. A platoon of defenders thundered past. On the other side of the street, a convoy of vehicles roared by, defenders squatting elbow to elbow in their beds, no doubt on their way to retrieve the heavy weapons stored out in the country. They must be loving this—more war at last. She thought of Erik, wondered where he was. They were special friends no more.

  A new sound lit the air: dozens of huge booms, far away. Artillery fire, maybe naval gunfire? Alan had said the Alliance would pound the city from ships. Lila stumbled, caught herself, and pushed on as the tops of buildings disintegrated.

  Pain lanced the underside of her foot. Lila stopped, balanced on one leg to examine it. A nasty shard of glass was sticking out. Eyes watering from the pain, she pulled it out and tossed it aside.

  Something slammed into the side of her head, knocking her down. Blackness swept over her as she lay on the sidewalk, her cheek pressed to the concrete. She fought it, struggled to get to her knees. At first her body wouldn’t respond; her hands opened and closed spasmodically, clawing the pavement. Through sheer force of will she made it to her knees, touched the side of her head. There was a deep, straight gash an inch above her ear. It felt as if her scalp, her hair, was hanging lower than it should. Her hand came away bloody.

  Struggling to her feet, Lila staggered on.

  She wondered if Oliver was still alive, if the others had reached shelter in time. Then she thought of Kai, their little man, Errol, and she nearly sobbed.

  Up ahead, one of the enormous exhaust grates built into the sidewalks was leaned against a storefront, exposing a huge open hole. Lila ran bent at the waist, listing to the right, correcting, drifting right again until she reached the hole.

  There was an enormous ladder, the rungs too far apart. She hugged one of the ladder’s vertical bars, paused, and took one last look at the city, the bombers overhead like a chain-link steel roof, the air stinking of soot and gasoline. Then she slid into near darkness.

  She reached a huge horizontal sewer pipe as the earth above continued to rattle, the booms only slightly muffled. She sensed she wasn’t nearly far enough underground to be safe if a bomb landed nearby, but looking around, she couldn’t see a way to go lower.

  Then she spotted an opening, and limped a hundred feet deeper into the tunnel. Shrouded in darkness, there was a ragged hole in the side of the enormous pipe. She stepped through and found herself in a wider tunnel, freshly dug, angling downward. It was pitch-black.

  Every fiber in her was repulsed by the thought of climbing into that hole.

  A bomb struck fairly close; dirt rained down onto her head. The open wound burned. She had to go farther down. Alan had said the Alliance would pound the city for hours, maybe days.

  Lila sat, then eased herself down the steep grade. The thought of being alone in a dark tunnel for hours or days terrified her to the core.

  She kept sliding, freshly dug earth tumbling down with her. Once she was down, would she be able to climb back up? The thought sent bright stabs of panic through her as she dropped. It was too late to go back.

  The tunnel leveled out; Lila spotted a faint blue glow ahead. Cautiously, she got to her feet, walked the final sixty feet, the light growing brighter. She reached a curve in the wall and, heart drumming, followed the curve a dozen more feet.

  The tunnel opened onto a dimly lit room packed with Luyten. Some were curled into balls; others stood along the walls. One was wounded; it lay near the center while two others tried to stanch the bleeding from a half dozen ragged gashes.

  Lila turned and fled back through the tunnel, running blindly, hands in front of her, expecting to feel a Luyten’s cilia wrap around her ankle
at any second and drag her back into the room where they would tear her apart. She reached the slope, stumbled in the soft earth, landed face-first, sprang up immediately, and clawed at the dirt, panting in fear. Overhead, bombs thumped like the whole city was being reduced to dust. Lila felt blood dripping off her hair onto her shoulder and chest as she scrabbled in the soft dirt with her hands and feet, trying to find purchase.

  She’d managed to climb twenty feet or so, the angle growing steadily steeper, when she lost her grip and slid down again.

  Lila pressed her forehead into the dirt and shook her head. There was no way. She was trapped.

  It occurred to her that if the Luyten were chasing her, they would have caught her before now. She turned and sat, listening to the sounds of Luyten moving around in the bunker. Five had told Oliver they were going to remain neutral. Maybe they meant it.

  She leaned against the tunnel wall, drew up her knees. This was insane. The World Alliance was bombing defenders while Lila took refuge in a shelter filled with Luyten.

  Lila shrieked and scurried backward as a thick Luyten appendage pressed against her. She backed into the shelter, where the Luyten squeezed past her and continued into the shelter.

  The Luyten in the shelter simply ignored her. Rather than risk being in the way of other arriving Luyten, she sat against the wall, in a wedge near the exit where the wall angled.

  Looking around the makeshift shelter, she spotted crates of food tucked into the far corner, plastic barrels of water. Blue iridescent lights jutted from the walls at rough intervals. Lila wondered if the Luyten preferred the blue tinge because it approximated the light of their home world, because it made it more difficult for defenders to detect them, or simply because it had been easiest to pilfer from their masters. One thing was certain: They’d prepared for this. Thanks to Oliver, they’d had warning.

  Every Luyten in the shelter could hear her thoughts. In the dim light, her mind conjured unbidden images of Luyten cooking cars full of screaming people, crawling up from the sewers in Atlanta, bearing down on her father…

  Yet in the end, when they’d lost, they set down their weapons and marched into those camps, leaving themselves at the mercy of humans. And Lila’s people had betrayed them.

  Why were they tolerating her presence now, she wondered?

  46

  Oliver Bowen

  June 9, 2045. Sydney, Australia.

  Head down, shirt pressed to his mouth, eyes half closed against the dust and blinding flashes, Oliver ducked under a huge pipe that was probably a standard household-sized plumbing pipe in this Brobdingnagian city.

  The explosions went on and on.

  Oliver paused, then turned to Alan, who was behind him. “How long is this likely to go on?”

  “Until any more bombing would be pointless. Then they’ll send in troops and drones.”

  That wasn’t an answer. “Well, how long is that likely to take?”

  “There it is,” Galatea called out, pointing. Sure enough, there was the pipe where they’d held their covert meetings. The still-smoking wreckage of a bomber was strewn to one side of it. They picked up their pace, eager to have cover, although a drainage pipe wouldn’t lead far enough underground to shield them from a direct hit.

  Galatea, who was a few paces ahead of Oliver, stopped suddenly.

  “What is it?” Oliver caught up to her and peered inside.

  The pipe was full of bodies. Twenty or thirty of their colleagues lay in a burnt, bloody tangle thirty feet inside the pipe. Oliver turned away, gasping, trying to catch his breath. The sight in the tunnel had knocked the wind out of him.

  “They must have been spying on us,” Sook said. “They knew we were meeting here, and when the invasion started, they guessed we’d seek refuge here.”

  “We have to get out of here,” Alan said. “They might come back.”

  “I have to see if Lila is in there,” Oliver said, struggling to keep his voice steady. “Go on, I’ll catch up.”

  “No,” Galatea said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll help you.” She turned to Sook and Alan. “Shout if they come.”

  47

  Oliver Bowen

  June 9, 2045. Sydney, Australia.

  At the start of the Luyten War, Luyten had dropped from the sky like falling stars. This time it was humans who dropped from the sky.

  “It looks like most of them are dropping over there.” Sook pointed to the west.

  During the long, cold night in a restaurant sub-basement, they’d finally agreed that their best course of action was to leave the safety of the basement when the bombing stopped and find Alliance soldiers to take them to one of the ships off the coast. Oliver couldn’t leave without finding Lila, but Galatea had convinced him it would be both suicidal and pointless to wander the city looking for her. Wiser to get a platoon of soldiers to search for her.

  “We’re better off heading east,” Alan said. “Most of the force will be coming off the boats.” They headed east along the top of the drainage bed, less than forty feet from Trafalgar Street. Because Alan had a degree in military history to go along with his extensive knowledge of modern weapons, they were grudgingly following his lead for the most part.

  Another wave of Alliance paratrooper planes buzzed overhead. Then, moments later, another.

  “Here comes the full invasion,” Alan said. “They’ll drop a few kilometers west of the city, then sweep this way.”

  Cautiously, Oliver lifted his head above street level. The city was unrecognizable—a postapocalyptic nightmare. The enormous scale of the infrastructure meant that much more wreckage. In places, Trafalgar Street looked impassable.

  “If all goes well, how long will it take before the Alliance is in control?” Galatea asked Alan.

  “Based on how quickly they’ve put boots on the ground, I’d say they’re planning a quick, violent assault. Either they control the continent in a matter of weeks, or they won’t control it at all.”

  Oliver clapped his hands to his ears as dozens of defender fliers roared by overhead. Oliver recognized them as the ones lined row upon row at one of the first factories they’d passed on the initial tour. They were enormous, angry-looking things, almost rectangular save for a pointed nose, loaded with turrets and cylinders that were clearly weapon systems.

  “I was hoping the Alliance had gotten all of those during the bombing.”

  “I’m sure they got some,” Alan said. “Hopefully, most.”

  The thumping of many pairs of boots in the street sent a thrill of fear through Oliver. Risking a glance, he saw defenders carrying automatic rifles, running in step. Their eyes were wide and wild, their teeth clenched.

  Gunfire erupted. Two of the lead defenders dropped heavily; the rest scattered left and right. Two more were hit by what must have been large-caliber ordnance, because it tore right through the defenders’ body armor, spraying flesh, blood, and bone.

  Oliver and his companions watched from their cover as the defenders disappeared down side streets, behind vehicles. From the west, a baritone moan and a metallic clicking rose. More of the defenders’ gigantic weapons.

  “We should get out of here,” Oliver said, but no one moved. They were mesmerized by the sight of defenders fighting humans.

  “Look,” Galatea said.

  Oliver looked where she was pointing, and saw a defender climbing out a third-story window clutching an assault rifle. He perched on the ledge right above the spot where the Alliance shots had originated, and jumped.

  The defender hit the debris boots-first with staggering force, yet stayed on his feet. Howling, he unleashed a barrage of rapid, booming fire, point-blank. Oliver couldn’t see the human troops hiding in the debris, but he knew they were dying.

  Four Alliance soldiers broke from their cover. Screaming, his face twisted with rage, the defender turned his fire on the fleeing soldiers.

  When he finally stopped, they were in pieces.

  “Let’s go,” Oliver repeat
ed. This time, everyone moved.

  48

  Lila Easterlin

  June 9, 2045. Sydney, Australia.

  Seemingly all at once, the bombing stopped. Lila had been half dozing, in a twilight state where Luyten and defenders lurked in the corners of her vision, constantly jolting her from any chance of real sleep. Now she woke fully, listened for the muffled thump of bombs exploding overhead. All was silent.

  Lila jumped as something dropped into her lap. It was a defender-sized package of cereal. Weetabix. She turned to see a Luyten returning to its place beside the food stores.

  “No milk?” Lila called. The package hissed as she ran her finger along the airtight seal.

  49

  Oliver Bowen

  June 9, 2045. Sydney, Australia.

  The bridge across Sydney Harbor was gone. From behind an overturned piece of a bombed fountain in Dawes Point Park, they watched a flotilla of defender submarines head out toward the sea, silent, dipping under the water then resurfacing like porpoises crossed with tanks.

  “It’s going to take us forever to get to the beach with the bridge gone,” Sook said.

  “Hopefully we’ll encounter some Alliance troops before then. We just have to keep moving toward them,” Alan said, pointing in the direction he thought they should go.

  “Down,” Galatea hissed. Everyone ducked. Oliver had a tight view of the street running along the river through a cracked place in the fountain. He counted four defenders as they passed, walking single file, the first three carrying assault rifles, the fourth something larger and heavier, with two enormous barrels and a shoulder brace.

  When the defenders were out of sight, the emissaries waited five minutes, then headed toward the beach. They stuck to the backstreets, which were tight alleys to the defenders but felt wide and exposed to Oliver. They had to backtrack often to navigate around fallen buildings, and did their best to stifle coughs that might give them away as the smoke-filled air tortured their lungs.