The First Protectors: A Novel

by Godinez Victor

  The drone was destroying Shanghai’s glittering financial district, a collection of exotic skyscrapers on a tongue of land surrounded on three sides by the Huangpu River. Glass and fire filled the night, as shot after shot pulverized the skyline. With his enhanced vision, Ben could see the chaos and death on the streets below. Razor-sharp glass tore pedestrians to crimson shreds, and chunks of concrete and steel struck the ground like bombs.

  The drone spiraled up around the massive Shanghai World Financial Center, with Ben in close pursuit, firing wildly, his desperation outweighing his caution. The drone shot through the trapezoidal opening at the apex of the building, and Ben followed. Just as his balky targeting computer locked on for a final shot, the drone fired a rapid burst at the adjacent, pagoda-styled Jin Mao Tower. The blasts struck roughly 200 feet below the nearly 1,400-foot peak, shredding a dozen floors. The building shuddered and crinkled, then tipped over and plunged toward the ground. Ben turned toward the wreckage and opened fire, trying to pulverize it before it speared into the street. Only a couple shots found their mark before the spire drilled into the throng of cars and pedestrians. Debris burst outward, enveloping the fleeing crowd. Screams filled the air and, a moment later, Ben’s voice joined the chorus.

  In a froth of rage, he drove his ship down a corridor of skyscrapers, chasing after the automated drone. His own ship was barely holding together now, damaged portions flying off as alarms screamed for his attention. Guns and engines still working, at least. As he drew a bead on the fleeing ship, a turret on the enemy craft rotated backward and fired at the same instant as Ben. The two shots bypassed each other and then stabbed into each ship. The vessel tore apart around him, as shocking and painful as if his skin had been stripped from his muscles and bones.

  The largest hunk of Liberty-1, with Ben still strapped inside, careened off the side of a building, gouging school bus–sized hunks of concrete. The antigravity device was torn open and vomited out a blue flame. The exotic blast sprayed across Ben’s right arm and leg, searing his flesh. He howled in agony and in memory of agony from that shitty beach and hill in the desert. The ship bounced against a wall again, then finally crashed into the ground. The impact ripped the battered pilot from his seat and he flopped onto a tangled pile of steel rebar poking out of slabs of jagged concrete. He almost blacked out, but the nanobot medics in his body wouldn’t allow it. Microscopic repair crews were already mobilizing, fanning out across his wounds.

  His head felt as heavy as one of the concrete blocks he’d landed on. He seemed to be bleeding from somewhere just above his eyeline. Or maybe his head had landed in a puddle of his own blood? Or . . . he noticed the dusty form of a pair of legs deeper in the rubble. Then another. Dead. Obviously dead. He’d brought the building down on top of them. He’d killed them. Hadn’t he? Why had he done that? He was supposed to protect people. But there was something else. Somewhere else he was supposed to be. His mind felt full of lazy bees, a sluggish and aimless buzz.

  Some 50 yards away lay the shattered remnants of the alien drone.

  Ben tried to stand, but something held him in place. He looked down and noticed he was impaled on three steel bars, poking like fingers from a concrete slab. He couldn’t remember that happening. Blood. Blood everywhere. It had mixed with the dust and formed a black sludge. The rusty metal had reached into his left side, under his armpit, in his gut, and through his thigh. His side smoldered, but he felt no pain . . .

  The nanobots at work.

  They were trying to work, trying to fix him. They couldn’t fix the people crushed in the wreckage, though, could they? No time to think about that. This mission wasn’t over. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  A small crowd was now gathering around the crash sites. Even in their dazed, terrified state, a few of the onlookers already had their phones out to video the scene. Beyond the shocked and curious faces, Ben saw the wreckage of the drone twitch. Someone had to deal with that. He had to deal with that.

  With a roar, he pushed up on his one good leg, the rough metal sawing through his body. With a last thrust, he toppled off the metal spikes, three gouts of blood shooting out of his wounds as he tumbled onto his back. He gasped, the pain finally overwhelming his defenses, and the handful of smartphones was now a dozen, as sirens and gawkers both swarmed.

  Then a piercing shriek of metal.

  Ben, exhausted and bleeding, looked over as the mountain of debris that had been the alien drone bubbled up and then tumbled aside to reveal a gleaming white two-legged robot.

  Three red eyes blinked on, expanded and contracted, then targeted. Gun barrels slid out from each arm where hands should have been, and the machine opened fire on the crowd in long, ripping bursts. The gold bolts punched through the shrieking masses, dismembering, vaporizing, and boiling the victims. Severed arms and legs landed with a sickening thump amid the larger bodies and burning vehicles.

  Get up, sailor. GET. UP.

  Ben staggered to his feet. The robot ignored him and marched off down the street, killing everyone in its path. Cars screeched to a halt before it, and the machine tore them apart with its guns, fireballs mushrooming into the night; the jagged, dancing light bouncing off the glittering glass and polished metal. The screams were everywhere, and were soon joined by sirens, as the Chinese military and Shanghai police, already on alert, rushed to the scene. Troops scrambled out of an armored personnel carrier and opened fire. The bullets pinged harmlessly off the juggernaut, and the spotless machine vaporized the dozen soldiers with a single sweep of fire. Police ducked behind their cars and attacked, also equally ineffective. The robot shrugged its right shoulder, and a bulky chunk of its upper arm detached and slid down to the weaponized forearm and attached itself to the gun. A red targeting laser flickered on and touched half a dozen police cars. Then the gun attachment spit out six missiles in quick succession, the firing chamber rotating with each launch. The rockets streaked through the air and shredded several cars, sending cops and bystanders flying.

  Ben tried to run, to give chase, but his body was depleted. He felt his wounds mending, his broken ribs and pelvis and collar bone being knit together at a furious pace. The pain was a bulldozer, as shards of bone were literally dragged through muscle and forced back together. Charred skin was repaired, scar tissue sloughed off.

  The energy expenditure was immense, a caloric furnace beyond anything the human body was designed to handle. Ben dropped to one knee as his vision dimmed, his body shutting down as the energy demands overwhelmed the supply. The nanobot swarm in his body, sensing the danger, diverted all their stored power, one milliwatt at a time, to maintaining Ben’s heartbeat, his brain functions, his respiratory system. The tornado of wireless digital information Ben had become accustomed to vanished, and the visual readout that played before his eyes shut down. He could feel his superhuman strength and speed drain from his limbs as the nanomachines repairing his wounds worked overtime. But even his unaided hearing was enough to track the path of the marauding robot, as explosions and screams of pain and terror continued to echo down the streets now clogged with rubble and stranded cars.

  He begged his body to move, but he was weaker than a newborn colt, unable to even wobble to his feet. He fell and lay sprawled in a pile of debris, small pieces of sharp concrete digging into his cheek. Consciousness was slipping away. His body was killing itself to heal itself. He rolled over with his last strength and stared straight up into the night sky. An orange haze danced at the periphery of his vision, the city on fire, but he could only look up. The buildings sparkled above the destruction. Beyond them was only smoke and cloud. Then the obstructions cleared, for just a moment, a whisper of wind, and a single star appeared. It shone, for a moment, then disappeared again in the gray. His eyes rolled back and the world went dark.

  The nano swarm made one last attempt. The tiny machines coalesced in his chest, near his heart, and bound themselves to each other, forming complex molecular connections. They formed a sphere and, inside, a small pe
llet made of deuterium and tritium. The surrounding nanobots pooled their remaining energy into a single laser blast that superheated the pellet and triggered a small, fierce explosion that blew off the outer layer of the ball of exotic material. The intense pressure forced the core to generate a self-sustaining reaction. Deep in Ben’s body, nuclear fusion, the same engine that powered the star he’d seen through the haze a moment before, took off. The nanomachines absorbed the heat and transformed it into the energy they needed to do their work and revive their host. It thrummed through his body, an electric blast that surged across every nerve, cell, neuron, and muscle fiber. He awoke like a shotgun blast, yelling out loud with raw physical sensation as his vision exploded with data.

  Every muscle arched and twitched, as if on the verge of releasing bolts of lightning.

  All his senses burned like live wires. He could hear each grain of dust crunching beneath the feet of the stampeding mobs half a mile away just as clearly as the pattering heartbeat of a small mouse watching him with trembling eyes from a pile of trash at the end of the street. He could smell the computers and other plastics burning a thousand feet above him in the mangled Jin Mao Tower, and taste the smoke. It was too much, too much sensation. He forced the data flood back, channeling it. Now he could hear the merciless machine that was sweeping through the city, but he couldn’t see it. It was moving quickly.

  Ben darted to the wreckage of his ship. He swept chunks of the hull and engines aside, the debris flying like a dog digging for a bone. At last he found the weapons locker and opened it with a thought. The two pistols were damaged beyond immediate repair, so he grabbed a bulkier rifle. He’d probably need the extra firepower anyway. The tentacles wrapped around his arm as he ran off, leaping over bodies and past shell-shocked survivors. They needed help, but other people needed it more.

  The robot had gone far in just a few minutes, tearing through the city. The landscape was unfamiliar, alien, but Ben’s internal computer tapped into GPS systems and internet mapping services to give him an orientation. A three-dimensional map popped up and rotated in his vision. He was heading northeast on Mingzhuta Road toward the much larger Fenghe Road, a major highway. The robot had apparently turned southwest on Fenghe. Ben leaped over an abandoned car, then another. Now the street was crammed with burning, smoking vehicles and crying, screaming civilians trying to drag themselves to safety. He moved over and through the thick debris like water.

  Sirens were blasting from every direction and confused soldiers and police tried to administer first aid while hunkering for cover, unsure where the attacker had gone and if it might return. Ben suppressed his urge to stop and help the wounded and dead. There was nothing he could do other than stop the machine up ahead. Ben reached Fenghe and turned right down the wide thoroughfare, the battle now unmistakably near. Tracer fire and rocket trails sliced down toward the street from helicopters and infantry surrounding the robot. The machine was undisturbed, picking off the relatively slow-moving targets with ease while dodging projectiles with even less effort. Blinding flashes of light erupted from the robot’s position as the glistening machine marched through the street. Three streaks of blue artillery arced out of a cannon on the creature’s back and screeched like bottle rockets into an adjacent street.

  The explosion was catastrophic. A blue bubble of light washed over the city, followed by a shockwave that tossed men and vehicles like newspapers. The three attack helicopters slammed into a wall of buildings and detonated, pouring fire and wreckage on the streets below. The soldiers on the ground were nearly incinerated. Ben, though, responded in a fraction of a second, kneeling down as his skin hardened into armor. The blast washed over him and receded, and he kept moving, the rifle cradled in his arm. For a moment, everything was quiet. All the people in the immediate vicinity were dead, all the tanks and cars turned to twisted metal.

  A pair of buildings collapsed, their structures twisted and weakened by the blast. The wreckage coughed up a cloud of dirt and debris between Ben and the robot just as their eyes met. Ben raised his rifle, already dodging as he fired, spraying the target area with a mix of focused and wide-area ordinance, shooting blind. The robot did the same, and the two enemies dissected the neighborhood. Ben tried to filter through the dust, cycling through infrared and other slices of the light spectrum. But the smoke and dust and flames and jagged wreckage made it nearly impossible to identify anything ahead. Without hesitating, Ben leaped forward, rolling and firing, terrified he might hit innocent civilians, more terrified that the machine would deliberately try to do so.

  Out of the gloom, the enemy answered, lobbing rockets and grenades that exploded around Ben, showering him with debris, cutting into his flesh. The nanobots kept working, putting him back together again.

  All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, Ben thought wildly.

  As he darted through the battlefield, dodging and juking, he realized that the robot didn’t seem to be moving much at all. Perhaps it was stymied by the choking dust and smoke, unable to process its next move with no clear path in any direction. Ben skidded to a stop at the edge of a shattered tank, its main cannon splintered with smoke pouring from the shredded cabin. The haze was now beginning to clear as the dust from the collapsed buildings was settling. Soon the view would be clear enough for the robot to resume its rampage. He fired off a few smoke grenades in what he assumed was the machine’s direction, then bolted.

  Just as he fled the tank, a yellow globe of pulsating light emerged from the gloom and struck the tank. The already crippled machine glowed white hot for a moment, melting and sinking down through the bubbling asphalt. Then it exploded, spewing molten pellets of steel. A handful of the slugs raked his right side, so hot and fast that they cauterized as they carved and then flew on out of his body.

  Ben crashed to the ground, gasping at the agony.

  He rolled, trying to regain his feet, his body slowed by the damage it had sustained. The nanos were working, but not fast enough. A crunch of footsteps and the robot emerged from the swirl. The three red eyes focused on the human, reading and studying him before the kill shot. His fingers scraped across the pavement, fumbling for his weapon. Even as his hand curled around the rifle, the electrical and biological circuits reconnecting, he knew it was too late, too slow.

  A yellow glow formed deep in the barrel of the robot’s gun.

  A microsecond before the weapon fired, though, the robot raised its gaze. A pair of missiles slammed into the creature’s chest, hurtling it back over the crest it had just crossed. A pair of Chengdu J-10 fighter jets screamed overhead, the roar of their engines ripping open the sky.

  It was the most welcome sound Ben had ever heard. The two planes began to circle back for a second attack run, but he was already on his feet.

  He staggered through the shattered street, firing and rolling and ducking. The robot was almost certainly still alive—was “alive” the right word for the robot? For Ben himself?—but now he had a chance. The confused tangle of wreckage where the robot had gone down lay at the feet of the Oriental Pearl radio and TV tower. The structure looked like a ladder with three legs arranged in a triangle, sort of a mini Eiffel Tower. Three additional legs held up a sphere about 300 feet off the ground, and then the three main legs extended up from there to another large sphere nearly 1,000 feet off the ground, like tomatoes on a kebab. A communications antenna was mounted on the last sphere.

  His internal scanner showed the structure was deserted.

  It was time to end this.

  Chunks of concrete stirred in the crater a few dozen feet away. Ben poured a rocket barrage into the legs of the tower, like chopping a tree. The legs exploded, sending shards of steel, glass, and concrete hurtling in every direction. He kept firing, blasting the supports, and the building swayed. The deep crack of support cables snapping in the structure, the force of gravity taking over, millions of pounds of stored kinetic energy about to be unleashed.

  He ran for the edge of the crater, s
printed up the side, and jumped as the tower began to collapse. The robot, distracted by the crumbling structure and still half buried in debris, now tried to turn back to its adversary, ripping apart its own trapped legs in the process. Too late. Ben unloaded everything he had on the machine. The robot popped like a can of beans left too long on a camp fire, fragments of armor and machinery and purple fluid spraying everywhere. Ben landed and stumbled on the other side of the crater, rolled and jumped, hoping he’d cleared the impact site of the plummeting tower.

  It crashed like a thunderbolt, square on the robot—or whatever remained of it—driving the invader into the earth. The ground shook like an earthquake. Ben’s internal radar detected an incoming clump of twisted metal and concrete. His body reacted before his brain could process the info, sending him twisting and falling back as the two-ton meteor sailed a fraction of an inch past his nose and then bounded harmlessly down the street. Now flat on his back, he wanted desperately to just stay there, to rest and heal.

  He had to make sure, though.

  The mangled cars in the crater and the pancaked tower had formed a single ball of unrecognizable debris coated in a uniform of dust and cloaked in smoke. The sirens and emergency lights were coming back. He had to make sure this was done before anyone else was back in harm’s way.

  Ben climbed down into the charred center of the crater, yanking aside rebar and hunks of concrete. It was in here somewhere. He could see the radio signals still emanating from the robot. It wasn’t dead yet. Or . . . something else. The signal was changing. One last heave, and there it was, the thing’s head. The three red eyes were already fading, blinking, drawing the final reserves of energy in for . . .

  In a flash he decoded the mystery. With a savage jolt, Ben ripped the head free from the ruined metal carcass and turned north, running for the river. The eyes were almost dark now, but blinking faster. No time. He hurled the head toward the Huangpu River. It was almost a quarter mile away, a throw no human could make. He wasn’t just human anymore, though.