The First Protectors: A Novel

by Godinez Victor

  I am going to say that again.

  He encountered a hostile, intelligent, technologically advanced creature that was not from this planet. There was a short confrontation between the retired officer and the creature, and the officer was able to defeat and kill the creature.

  However, we believe this being was just the first of many to come, a forerunner for a global attack and invasion, an invasion against which we, the entire world, must now mobilize.

  I understand that this sounds shocking, confusing, alarming, and perhaps even ridiculous or absurd. I can assure you this is not a hoax. This is not a conspiracy. And we are convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the threat is real and imminent. Preparations have already begun. What details we can share will be available on all federal government websites as soon as this address has concluded. We are also briefing all congressional representatives, and I urge them to conduct town halls and discussions as they deem appropriate with their constituents. Other presidents and heads of state around the world assisting in our defensive preparations already have the information I’m now sharing, and they agree that this is the only prudent course of action.

  That said, I am fully aware that this is disturbing news. Every resource is being marshaled, and we are confident we can meet and repel the threat. The Department of Defense has existing plans for exactly this sort of contingency. Not because we had any warning this was coming—there is no government cover-up here, nor have previous administrations engaged in such a cover-up—but because we have the finest fighting force in the world that is dedicated to planning for every possible threat. And we are prepared. But I am aware that many will find this news disturbing and upsetting. That is understandable. What we cannot allow, though, is for our emotions to lead us into panic. I trust all Americans to rise to that challenge.

  So while we are now on a wartime footing, similar to the state of readiness established by President Roosevelt after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, I am not declaring martial law. While you will see extensive and sustained activity of US military forces across the country, all civil law enforcement, civil law, and civil courts will remain operational. Local police and judges will continue to patrol our streets, enforce our laws, and protect our constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms. Our military forces are acting solely to prepare against the imminent attack, and are not authorized to make arrests, seize supplies without payment, or otherwise impede lawful activity except in cases where such activity interferes with the establishment or movement of vital military equipment. Schools will not be turned into barracks and I am not initiating a military draft.

  Meanwhile, the Treasury secretary and his staff will be working with financial exchanges, banks, and other critical financial institutions to ensure our economy continues to function, that food, gas, medical supplies, and other vital material gets where it needs to go. We are Americans, and we are all in this together. I cannot emphasize that enough. Now, more than ever, we are all each other’s keeper, and I ask not just for your calm, but for your vigilance, your fortitude, and your compassion.

  The president paused, unsure what to say or do next. This was the end of his prepared remarks. There was no more guidance or script. Whatever came next, he’d be operating alone, making it up as he went, with hundreds of millions of people living or dying as a result. Maybe nothing he was doing mattered and the mrill would wash over the world like the tide and all his words were as useless as spitting at the waves. Worse, maybe he was just pouring out fear and panic, and the world would die in agonizing, extended terror. Just shut up and let it end quickly.

  He thought about Lincoln again, on that steamboat, at the end of the war that had drained the country and drained the man. He’d borne up through it all, though. Whatever weariness and despair had filled his body, he had seen it through. Do your part as long as you can, as well as you can, until it’s someone else’s turn.

  Lockerman looked up at the camera.

  My fellow Americans, my fellow citizens of the world, my friends, I don’t know how this will end. I don’t even know how this will begin. We’re going to war. More accurately, war is coming to us. I know many of you will doubt everything I’ve said, and there will be anger and protests. I understand these sentiments. Nor will the road be any easier for those who do believe.

  We’re arming and preparing as best we could in the little time we’ve had. The evidence indicates we will soon face a vicious enemy, fully committed to exterminating us. We cannot depend on their mercy or their restraint. They are coming in search of a new home, and mean to take ours. This first fight will test our technology. The coming battles will test our spirit. For now, all you need to do is be safe, be strong, help your neighbors, and hold your children. There may come a time, soon, when the fight will not be overhead, but on the ground, among us, in our streets. There will be no front line, no home front, and we will not know where the next attack will fall. But I know this.

  We will fight to the end, with hope and purpose. We are not empty-handed. We have tools, weapons, shields, our courage, and our love. We will hold those to the end, come what may. I will be speaking with you regularly, telling you what I can, asking for what we need. Other leaders will be giving similar updates to their people. For now, for the next few hours, be strong and brave. We expect to engage the enemy before the day is through, and we will do everything we can to keep that fight above the planet and, if we cannot, assist those on the ground who are affected. Don’t be afraid to help each other. We are all in this together and, God willing, we will all come out of this together. May God bless us all, may God bless the United States of America, may God bless all the people of the world.

  11

  The technicians clustered around Ben’s ship like nursing piglets.

  Propulsion, navigation, weapons, life support, all the systems were still being finished even as the launch clock ticked over to T-minus 30 minutes. The smell of sweat and stale coffee filled the air in the cramped hangar. Ben and Rickert threaded their way through tangles of cable and around half a dozen workbenches with open laptops wired into the various ports on the black and gray spacecraft.

  “You think this is going to work?” Rickert asked, dodging a shower of sparks.

  “I’m getting a good signal on my scans, and all the completed systems are coming online. Once it gets up in the air, though? That I don’t know.”

  Ben reached out to the dimpled surface of the machine, running his hands over the ridges and seams. The ship looked like a bubble perched on the open face of a flower. The cockpit was in the shiny silver sphere, while the petals that fanned out from the bubble were more crude-looking and mechanical. Like everything else in this effort, it was all foreign substance, an exotic recipe that the technicians had followed assiduously but blindly, mixing chemicals and molecules in combinations they’d never dreamed, using sub-atomic manufacturing processes they could barely understand. Would it work? Hell, they didn’t even know how it would work. Assuming it did function as planned, Ben knew he could operate it. But if that made him an expert, then any idiot capable of using a telephone qualified as a network engineer, Ben thought. This ship was a black box, and Ben and Rickert both knew they were still flying blind.

  The two men walked around the ship. At the rear of the ship (or stern, as Ben’s Navy mind insisted), a small ramp extended from an opening in the hull. Inside, a simple chair was installed in a cockpit with no visible controls or displays. Rickert stopped, and Ben did too.

  “You know, no one wants to send you up there. The tech guys still haven’t made much progress reverse-engineering your nanomachines. You’re the only version of you we have. You’re the protector. Of everything. Without the technology in your cells, we’re dead. If you die, we all die.”

  “Technology won’t be enough,” Ben said. “It’s never enough.”

  “The hell do you mean by that?”

  “Did you know a distant relative of mine was a Comanche Indian? The Comanche w
ere . . . interesting. They were barely a tribe at all for most of their history. Just a group of people hunting together. But when they got their hands on Spanish horses, everything changed. Almost overnight, that single technological leap made them the preeminent power on the frontier. They mastered it in a way no one else did. Sioux, Apache, none of them could match up to the Comanche, and they killed everyone in their path. They were truly savages, and, one-on-one, unstoppable.”

  “I guess I never thought of horses as technology,” Rickert said.

  “Technology is anything that makes you better at what you do,” Ben said with a shrug. “A stick or a cruise missile, it’s all the same.”

  “So what stopped the Comanche and their new tech?”

  Ben smiled. “The United States Army. Lots and lots of them. And the Americans eventually learned not to fight one-on-one.”

  Ben continued to examine the spacecraft, occasionally holding his palm over a panel to get a readout on the specific component. “Of course, we need the technology. I just don’t know if it’s gonna be enough. I heard that we’re not giving other countries the full technical readout of the nanobots in my body, just the satellite blueprints. I think that’s a mistake. We need help.”

  Rickert sighed. “Yeah, I know. Politics is alive and well, even at the end of the world. The president means well, or at least thinks he does. Showing too many of our cards might give someone else—the Chinese, maybe the Russians—a chance to figure out something we haven’t, and then try to get leverage on us. At least that’s the explanation I got.”

  Ben rolled his eyes, which Rickert pretended not to see. After all, he was still active duty and Lockerman was still commander in chief.

  “So right now, you’re all we’ve got,” Rickert continued. “So be careful. As tough as it sounds, we’re better off losing a city than losing you. You’re the only thing we can’t rebuild. If it comes down to making a stand or living to fight another day, we need you to do the smart thing.”

  This had been weighing on Ben for some time. Before he’d been turned into an human/alien hybrid and thrust into this interstellar war, he’d had no intention of ever going back to war, even if his leg had healed completely. Then this upgraded body had thrust him into a new mission. At first it seemed like he’d able to fight alone, suffer alone. A one-man army. That had been a cruel joke, though. He might fight alone. But if he failed, he’d kill everyone. Charging up a hill alone just gave you a better view of the entire world below that was depending on you.

  The two men were quiet for a moment. Ben continued to examine his ship, but sensed Rickert’s gaze on him.

  “I read your file, you know,” the general said.

  “My DD 214?”

  “No, not your discharge papers. Well, yes, those too. But your personal file.”

  “What personal file?”

  “Almost as soon as this thing got rolling, the president had the FBI do a full background check on you.”

  “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  “No, you shouldn’t,” Rickert said, shaking his head. He gestured around the buzzing facility. “I’m sure there’s an FBI file on me now, too, and everyone else on this insane project.”

  Ben drew back a bit, folding his arms.

  “So what did mine say? Document all my speeding tickets and late library books?”

  “Yes, actually, but that wasn’t what caught my eye. Your childhood. Your father.”

  “Doesn’t seem relevant. That was a long time ago.”

  “Really? How could it not be relevant? Don’t you—”

  A technician scurried in, interrupting them without hesitation.

  “Lt. Shepherd? We’re ready for the preflight checklist.”

  Ben was grateful for the intrusion, cutting off the conversation Rickert had tried to start. The past was like an anvil crushing Ben’s chest. The weight of the past and the weight of the future.

  Ben nodded, and the technician stepped back. Rickert stuck his hand out. Ben shook it and tried to look confident, but the worry was etched on Rickert’s face, permanent and impervious. Ben didn’t know what else to say. Finally, Rickert gestured awkwardly to the ship, and Ben stepped up the ramp. The door melted back into the exterior with a sound like a small stream.

  As the ramp closed, the interior of the ship filled with a soft glow and the constant chatter of data running across his vision thinned as the ship’s systems asserted themselves. Ben ducked through the short passageway to the cockpit, scanning three-dimensional schematics popping up before his eyes that provided readouts on the ship’s various systems. He settled into the black chair, pushing Rickert’s concerns out of his mind. None of that mattered. Hadn’t mattered in a long time. The squishy material molded to the thin, tight-fitting black flight suit covering his body, and when he laid his arms on the armrests, the leather-like material oozed around his frame.

  It wasn’t quite a full cocoon, but his body was all but merged with the seat. Dozens of microscopic sensors pierced his arms and the back of his head, creating a direct, physical link between the ship and his body and mind. It was just like the first fight in the desert. Machine and man merged into one weapon. With a mental command, Ben turned the silver cockpit bubble transparent from the inside, so he could see the cluster of technicians unplugging and packing up. Across the viewing screen, a map of the defensive satellites rotated into place. Ben zoomed out, and confirmed the mrill drones were still approaching from beyond the sun.

  A technician walked up to the outside of the cockpit bubble, looking into the smooth sphere. He pressed his headset against his ear.

  “Lt. Shepherd, we’re ready to test your primary ignition system. Are you locked in?”

  Ben nodded, then remembered the tech couldn’t see him.

  “Uh, yeah, affirmative, I’m good to test.”

  The notion of “testing” was mostly a farce, Ben thought. None of the equipment in the ship was actually testable by the computers and sensors at ground control. Ben was the tester . . . or the crash-test dummy. The techs could read the output, but they had no way of initializing or deactivating any of the onboard systems. If something went wrong, no one on the ground would know it until the ship exploded . . . or worse.

  But protocol demanded testing. Checklists must be checked.

  With a thought, Ben powered up the antigravity generator. It wasn’t an actual propulsion system but rather generated antigravitons: particles that repelled the gravity-generating force of gravitons. At least, that’s how the scientists thought the antigravity system worked. Rickert had pointed out that gravitons were merely theoretical, and perhaps even impossible in Einstein’s framework of general relativity. And yet, when the antigravity drive was engaged, the ship floated like a leaf in the wind. Even though the craft weighed well over 50,000 pounds, with the antigrav engaged, a strong breeze was enough to nudge it forward.

  The actual propulsion system was what the techs called a magnetoplasmadynamic, or MPD, thruster. Ben barely grasped the physics, but he’d been assured that the ionized lithium gas system, powered by a miniaturized 100-megawatt nuclear reactor, was revolutionary. It would change the world if they could save it first.

  As cutting-edge as the ship was, though, Ben knew it was deficient in numerous ways. It was not the peak of brin technology. The problem was that mankind simply lacked the manufacturing capabilities to take advantage of the most cutting-edge designs in the brin portfolio. They’d had to dumb it down for the primitive apes they were trying to save, Ben thought. Hawthorne, President Lockerman’s science adviser, had explained to Ben at one point that the problem was like asking a nineteenth-century watchmaker to build a smartphone.

  “A watchmaker was one of the smartest engineers on the planet at the time,” she’d said. “If you crammed him in a time machine, brought him into the present, and sat him down for a crash course in modern microelectronics, physics, radio, and all the other stuff that goes into a smartphone in the early twenty-first c
entury, he’d get the basic concepts in a few days. But then kick his butt back to 1823 or whenever, and tell him to make you an iPhone, and he’d be totally lost.”

  Understanding a concept was vastly different from being able to put it to use. To do that, to put a functioning phone on a store shelf, you needed a multi-billion-dollar manufacturing plant. A series of them, for the processor, the screen, the memory chips, the cellular radio, and so on. Not to mention a wireless network to connect the phone to the internet, which was an industry unto itself. Money was only half the equation. Time was the other. Modern factories were the result of decades of labor, stretching from Henry Ford into the era of robotics. Technology was never created in a vacuum.

  Ben thought he understood the dilemma better than Hawthorne realized. After all, his body had become exactly that sort of mysterious machine. SEAL training—hell, all military training—was iterative. You started with the basics: running, lifting, swimming, shooting. From there you graduated to more complex mapping, planning, infiltration, and so on. There was no eureka, no epiphany. Making a soldier was no different than making a computer. Or making art, for that matter, he thought. A marble sculpture was the result of a million tiny strokes, not a single hammer blow. Now everything was moving faster than it should have. Mankind was being thrust forward into the future on a rocket. Or a time machine.

  Ben wondered if it was healthy for a civilization to lunge forward like this, fumbling with toys and tools it hadn’t earned. Well, that would be a dilemma for the sociologists, assuming any survived.

  Ben activated the antigravity field and the ship hummed.

  Ben mentally toggled his mic back on. “Tower, this is Liberty-1, antigrav engaged, all systems reading nominal.”

  “Copy that, Liberty-1. Best we can tell, you’re in the green. You’re a go for maneuvers.”