The First Protectors: A Novel

by Godinez Victor

  The botan, or nerds, had been cowards, yes, and their weapon had killed many of his men. Leonov was tempted to let his mind chase this riddle a bit longer, but Ilyushin shuffled a bit, waiting for further orders. Leonov refocused.

  “Captain, continue the recovery efforts. Salvage everything you can. I want a full report tomorrow morning from the engineers. I’m returning to base to oversee our efforts there. We will hold a ceremony for our fallen comrades this evening.”

  Ilyushin saluted. Leonov returned it and walked out of the room, deep in thought.

  Leonov sat in a conference room in the oblast Duma, his muddy boots propped on the polished oak table as he turned over a chunk of the destroyed weapon from the base in his hands. Rodchenko sat nearby, but otherwise the room was empty. Leonov tossed the twisted wreckage onto the table, dislodging flakes of scorched carbon, and rubbed the back of his neck. God, he wanted a cigarette and a drink.

  “Vanya, what is this?”

  Rodchenko frowned and picked up the damaged section.

  “The reports so far are inconclusive, Yuri. The materials are all familiar. Steel and plastic and other elements. But the construction is . . . sophisticated. Incomprehensible, really.”

  “You watched the video of the attack?”

  “Yes. And I’m as perplexed as you. What I saw on that video is not something we could’ve made, or the Chinese or, I think, even the Americans. Or perhaps they have some, how do they call it, ‘skunk works’ project for this.”

  “Come on, Vanya, you don’t believe that. Speak freely. We’re alone in here.”

  Rodchenko shifted in his chair. Leonov could tell his friend was just as eager as he was for nicotine or alcohol.

  “Colonel, I know of only one explanation for the source of this technology, but that explanation contains . . . complications . . . for us.”

  “Indeed it does, friend,” Leonov said. “The alien invasion. This is alien technology. There is nowhere else this could have come from. I believe The General has been misinformed.”

  Rodchenko went even paler than he already was.

  “What does this mean for us?”

  Leonov looked at Rodchenko, dropped his feet, and leaned forward.

  “What does this mean? What do you think it means?! It means there is another player at the poker table, Vanya. Another hand has been dealt. But we’re still in the game. These facilities seem to be entirely automated. So, we bypass them. Leave them to their work. We continue on to Moscow. The Russian government is still weak. Even with this fancy tech, they still fled before us. They’re not worthy of this country. This new enemy, though, that’s something else. The Americans, if their story is true, will be occupied for a while. We have some time to gather our forces and finish our mission.”

  “But Yuri, if this . . . this alien threat is real, it’s as much a threat to us as to them, no?”

  Leonov picked up the shredded alien technology again and ran his fingers across the jagged edges, as if looking for a button or latch that might unlock its secrets.

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps they might look for an ally down here. It’s a big world, Vanya. Perhaps we will share it. For a while, anyway.”

  Rodchenko was silent for a moment.

  “What does The General say?”

  Leonov paused, seeming not to have heard his friend. He could tell Rodchenko was uneasy. They’d all known this rebellion was dangerous. Death in battle was always a possibility. At least they’d been going in with a clear sense of their adversary . . . or so they’d thought. Rodchenko shuffled his feet, the boots scraping on the rough wood floor.

  “He concurs with me,” Leonov said at last, appearing to have settled some question in his mind. “As we speak, he is working to establish communication with the alien invaders. Our job, for now, is to continue as planned. Moscow still beckons, Vanya. Come, let us speak for our dead, and then find a drink.”

  Rodchenko couldn’t help himself.

  “Yuri, I don’t like this. We’re not prepared for this. Our men are not trained for this. The General was . . . mistaken? Misled? Should we reconsider?”

  Leonov knew that Rodchenko would have spoken like this with no other officer, and even now would be nervous at saying those words. They were close to treasonous. Treason on top of the treason we’ve already committed. No going back now.

  “Vanya, I do not . . . I think our course must hold,” Leonov said, still looking into the distance. “Was The General wrong? Perhaps. Or perhaps he kept secrets we don’t yet know, or do not need to know. Perhaps he knew more than he was willing to reveal. Our course is set. If we turn away, what is left? Not for us, but for Russia? For our men? No,” Leonov said, shaking his head, purpose returning to his eyes. “The only way is forward. Everything else is death.”

  Rodchenko watched as Leonov continued to idly turn the blackened chunk of metal in his hands.

  “Everything else is death.”

  22

  “Are you sure?” Rickert asked as he walked.

  “Yeah, we’re sure,” said the rumpled CIA analyst, hustling alongside him down the hallway. He smelled like coffee and cigarettes. “Well, as sure as we can be of anything these days. We don’t have any human assets on the ground. Nor do the Russians. Beacon at the Volgograd location went dark, and the satellite overpass shows the entire facility covered in smoke. It’s gone. The 2nd Red Army—that’s what they call themselves—was camped in Volgograd and presumably headed for the air base at Lebyazhye. That’s where we hoped they were headed, anyway. Somehow they knew about the installation at Gorkovskiy. Looks like they made a damn beeline right to it.”

  “A mole from our side?”

  The analyst shrugged.

  “Maybe. Or theirs. Or something else. Maybe some local villagers tipped them off. We warned the Russians about keeping the location a secret, but who knows. Everything has been slapdash and half-assed on their side since Saint Petersburg.”

  Rickert nodded. “What about the other Russian sites? Are they still online?”

  “Yeah, and they’re far enough away that they shouldn’t be overrun anytime soon. But who knows? It’s a shitty situation.”

  “The president has been briefed?”

  “Yeah, the team’s with him now.”

  Rickert stepped into the control room. There were a few people inside, but it was mostly quiet. Again, they were basically just observers. The other countries involved in Earth’s defense had complained just as the American generals had the first time around. Nothing anyone could do about it.

  Mankind is going to war with an army of three soldiers and about fifteen computer nerds, Rickert realized. Jesus.

  The analyst seemed shocked, too.

  “Where’s the rest?” he said.

  “There is no ‘rest,’” Rickert said. “This is it.”

  The analyst fished out his pack of cigarettes, realized it was empty, and grimaced as he crumpled and flicked it into an overflowing trash can.

  “You can’t smoke in here, anyway,” Rickert said. “Government building.”

  The analyst snorted.

  “Yeah, well, hopefully that stops the aliens from turning this place into a smoking crater. I doubt they’d survive the lawsuits.”

  The analyst started dialing his phone and plopped into a chair as Rickert pushed open a door leading out to the floor of the vehicle assembly building. The humidity wrapped him in a damp hug as he headed toward the three ships in the middle of the room, but at least it smelled better out here.

  Outside the hangar door, a lazy breeze fiddled with the tall grasses around the building. Farther off, sunlight sparkled off the Atlantic Ocean. It was a day for tourists to gather on the beach, drink cold beer, get sunburned, and yell at their kids not to swim out too far. There are sharks out there, ya know? But the beaches were empty.

  The Army had locked down this stretch of Florida for 50 miles in every direction. They needn’t have bothered. Every beach and holiday spot was essentially abandoned
. Disney World was a ghost town, Times Square was so empty you could pitch a tent and take a nap, and everyone seemed to have forgotten the Alamo. Rickert didn’t understand that mentality. If I was a civilian, I’d be out on that beach right now with the biggest damn piña colada I could find. Hell, maybe I oughta be doing that anyway.

  Ben, Nick, and Eddie were moving around the ships, completing their final preparations. They all looked up as Rickert approached, his forehead soaked in sweat and his armpits not far behind.

  “It’s time to go,” Ben said. “They’re here.”

  “Yeah, but we’ve got a problem,” Rickert said.

  “We know,” Eddie replied. “The Russian installation near Volgograd is gone.”

  “What? Christ, is it on the news? How did you hear?”

  Nick tapped the side of his head. “Nah, each facility shows up on our internal networks. They’re all linked together through the satellites, and we can tap into that.”

  Rickert sighed. “I guess I should have known. Still, the destruction of that facility is not a good sign. Things in Russia are falling apart. Even if we can hold off the mrill, you guys might come home to World War III.”

  “We’ll worry about that later,” Ben said. “Right now, our scanners are showing the mrill fleet coming around Venus. They’re slowing down, but they’ll be here soon. It’s time to go.”

  Rickert felt nervous and flustered. “Yeah, good luck. We’ll do what we can from here, but unless they land, you guys are mostly on your own.”

  “We know,” Nick said. “Just stay out of our way.”

  “How about Project X?” Ben asked.

  “They’re working as fast as possible,” Rickert said. “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Ben nodded.

  “Well, we’ll just have to make do without.”

  Rickert held out his hand to the three soldiers. “Good luck.”

  Each man shook it, Ben last. Both men looked strained.

  “Don’t die,” Rickert said.

  “Don’t get killed,” Ben replied.

  As the three men headed for their ships, Rickert retreated to the air-­conditioned control room. He tugged on a radio headset, shivering a bit as his sweat seemed to freeze on his body. The analyst was still on his phone, reporting back to Langley. He nodded perfunctorily at Rickert. The pale blue illumination from the monitors made the spy look like a damp corpse, Rickert thought. Then he realized he probably looked the same. This wasn’t a control room. It was a morgue.

  “All systems green from our end,” Rickert said into the mic.

  “Roger that,” Ben replied. “We’re good to go.”

  “Godspeed,” Rickert said.

  Without another word, all three ships spun to life with a deep hum and then shot straight up into the air, leaving a cloud of startled technicians in their wake and Rickert rocking back and forth in his chair.

  Liftoff was just as exhilarating the second time around. The ground sank away, and Ben felt Nick and Eddie’s exhilaration at taking to the air like a flock of birds. Again, it wasn’t like piloting a ship. Man and machine were one entity.

  Ben had felt this connection on his first flight, but for Nick and Eddie, it was novel. It didn’t take them more than a few seconds to adapt, but Ben felt their initial confusion at suddenly realizing their bodies now didn’t end at their fingers and toes, but at gleaming metal hulls, massive engines, and lethal cannons.

  “Whoa,” Nick said.

  “Once you’re done looking down, you should look up,” Ben said.

  The ground was falling away, and overhead the sky was turning from pale blue to navy to deep purple to black as the ships rose through the atmosphere and bounded toward space. It was hard to tell the difference between heading out into space and sinking down into the sea. The farther you went, the darker it got. People weren’t meant to survive in this crushing blackness.

  The last filaments of terrestrial gasses and gravity slipped away, and the three were now in the final layer of the atmosphere, the exosphere, the last leap from Earth to everything else. Ben tried to seal his dread in a deep compartment in his mind. At the same time, he felt surprise and something like joy spread out from his teammates across their mental link.

  Eddie laughed with delight.

  “My life has not gone as planned,” he said.

  “You never wanted to be an astronaut?” Ben said.

  “Nah. When I was a kid, I thought I was going to be a movie star.”

  “Hasn’t humanity suffered enough?” Nick quipped back.

  The approaching mrill spacecraft popped up on their short-range scanners.

  “Apparently not,” Ben said.

  Eddie sighed.

  “Well, we may not be movie stars, but I’m guessing we make the six o’clock news,” he said.

  “Let’s just make sure there’s a six o’clock news to go home to,” Ben said.

  The three men accelerated toward the confrontation as the sun rose over the Earth behind them, a white spear in the dark. Their plan was to engage the mrill as far from the planet as possible, minimizing collateral damage on the ground. Ben would have preferred to attack even farther out, but the ships the three men were in weren’t long-range crafts. So far, in all the blueprints and schematics they’d seen, there were no long-range ships. That had puzzled the scientists. It worried Ben. Why hadn’t the brin provided those capabilities? No time to consider it now.

  Ben felt his conscious mind decoupling from control of his ship, and sensed Nick and Eddie going through a similar disengagement. The machines in their bodies and the machines around their bodies would do most of the fighting. Ben had warned them about this, explained the inhuman sensation of being unplugged from yourself. But he had also explained that they remained in ultimate control, and that they should assert that control as needed.

  Ben’s electronic vision filled with dozens of mrill warships coming around the moon. Then hundreds. He counted 237 in total.

  “Draw them in,” he said. “We have to use the satellites. Drop your mines.”

  One of the capabilities of the antigravity technology on their ships was to generate small gravitational fields on command. This allowed the ships to make sweeping, banking turns otherwise only possible in the gravitational confines of a planet, moon, or other large body. It felt more natural to the three men who had no experience with zero G flight. As the three ships arced over the Earth, they each deployed half a dozen black, featureless orbs from their bellies. The stealthy bombs drifted apart in a loose cloud toward the oncoming mrill force.

  Ben didn’t know if the enemy ships could detect the mines. They were so small that they didn’t show up on his own sensors, and they emitted no signals of any kind. They were unpowered, essentially inert space junk, activated and powered by energy emitted by passing ships. The downside was that they were the ultimate “dumb” bombs, incapable of tracking or following their targets if they changed course. Still, a nifty piece of hardware.

  Ben felt increasingly nervous about the technology on the other side of the battlefield. There was so much they still didn’t know, and that either the brin hadn’t told them or also hadn’t known. On the other hand, Ben forced himself to remember: there was also much the mrill didn’t know. About Earth, about Ben, Nick, and Eddie, and who knew what else. Ben knew, from training and experience, how easy it was to see an enemy as omnipotent and omniscient, while despairing over your own flaws. You never saw the blunders and miscalculations and uncertainties on the other side of the line. You only saw the glint of his weapons and the mass of his army, while every scrap of arrogance and cowardice on your own side scraped like broken glass in an open wound. The truth was that everyone made mistakes in combat. No army, no general, no soldier planned and performed perfectly. Everyone was human. Hopefully even the aliens.

  The mrill ships began to spread out as they approached. Ben calculated that they were traveling at a bit over 150,000 kilometers per hour, more than 40 kilo
meters every second, closing the gap between Moon and Earth at terrifying speed. Despite his fear, Ben was fascinated by the approaching machinery. The small ships were identical to the drones he’d previously faced and the single-man fighter he’d seen in the New Mexico desert. But there were larger ships as well. There were green, bulbous crafts bristling with what had to be weapons, and long smooth cylinders that he suspected were troop transports. Behind those ships and swathed in a protective phalanx of drones and fighters were three large cruisers that had to be the command vessels. They were large gray spheres, with long thin stalks protruding from the front and ending in a cluster of smaller spheres. Ben thought they looked like lollipops with a clump of soap bubbles on the end. They were now less than 30 seconds away from intersecting with the mines, and Ben held his breath. As the men sped back toward Earth, each could almost feel the mrill ships straining to reach them before they could reach the protective cocoon of the defensive satellites. Ben prayed their eagerness made them blind.

  They could now also feel the connections between the mrill ships and soldiers, the same sort of invisible thread that linked the three men. Both sides were networked together, seeing and feeling and working as one. Then another one of those closed-off portions of Ben’s internal computer, one of the secrets he had suspected still lurked within him, came to life.

  He felt a part of himself reaching out to the mrill web, trying to establish a link, to connect the two networks together. Panic spilled over Ben. What the hell was this?

  Nick and Eddie similarly recoiled, unable to stop whatever was happening. Then the connection was established. White noise poured out of the three men, out of the computers in their cells and their blood, flooding the mrill link. A jamming signal of some sort. A last trick the brin had hidden up their sleeve, concealed even from their human hosts.

  The mrill fleet hesitated, uncertain.

  Ben realized instantly why the brin had kept this ability locked away. They knew the humans, in a panic, would have used the jamming capability against the smaller scout force. Probably would have worked. Saint Petersburg might still be standing. Winning that battle could have lost the war, though. The mrill would have had time to adjust before their larger fleet arrived. They would have figured out how to deflect the jamming signal. It was a one-shot weapon. Had to save it for the pivotal moment.