Date: 2013-01-01 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Science Fiction; Space Opera; Action & Adventure; space exploration
Description: A captivating new short story from Hugo Award winner Will McIntosh. An unlikely crew has met up in Las Vegas to pull off the ultimate robbery. The target? Life itself.
Publisher: Orbit

The Heist

Will McIntosh
orbitbooks.net
orbitshortfiction.com

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The Heist

“Nobody gets hurt. If anybody gets hurt, I’m out,” Frank said under his breath.

“Frank, how the hell are we gonna hurt anyone?” Marty slowed, held out his empty hands. “We’re old, we’re unarmed. What are we gonna do, bite someone?” He grunted. “I can’t even chew through a bagel.”

“I’m just saying. I spent my life on the right side of the law, and I’m not changing now.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a saint,” Marty muttered. He lifted his head to take in the casino. It was a thing of beauty—shining chrome, flashing lights, whooping alarms to signal that some poor rube just won a week’s worth of the good stuff, and never mind that the suction cups attached to his arm had siphoned off a month before he made the big score.

A year ago Marty would have as soon vomited up his spleen as step inside one of these leech traps, but now it represented everything to him—hope, life, vigor. Fewer trips to the fucking doctor.

Thelma and Bill were in the bar, at the table closest to the slots, right where they were supposed to be. Thelma glanced Marty’s way, but didn’t wave or acknowledge him. Good—she was on the ball. He was uneasy about pulling this off with someone he didn’t know. It was a long shot as it was, even if everything went as planned. There were so many blank spots and question marks in the plan.

“Why don’t we play some of the five-minute slots?” Marty said to Frank, nice and loud, pointing at the machines closest to the security door that led into their Shangri-la, the inner workings of the casino.

Marty attached the five cool, sticky cups at the end of the payout line to the underside of his left forearm, like most people did. Theoretically you could attach them to any part of your body—your ass, under your armpit—but the point here was to be invisible, so Marty resisted the temptation. He pulled the lever, watched the electronic wheels spin and click into place one by one.

He lost.

He felt nothing as the payout line sucked out the equivalent of five minutes of his life. They called it a payout line, but the sunken eyes of hard-core gamblers roaming the casino, dreaming of striking a thousand-year jackpot, told you it did more drawing in than paying out.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Thelma strain to stand, rising in slow motion. She was clutching an oversized purse that looked like a burlap grocery bag. Bill stood as well, muttered to himself just like they’d practiced. So far it looked, blessedly, to be one of Bill’s good days. Hopefully it would stay that way. Thelma took Bill’s elbow, led him toward the glassed-in security desk that sat beside the door to Shangri-la.

The seat of Bill’s white pants sported a big, wet, brown stain. Marty bit his cheek to keep from grinning.

“Excuse me, sir,” Thelma said in a sheepish stage whisper. The guy in the security cage looked up from a computer screen. Thelma sighed in exasperation. She was good—better under pressure than she’d been during rehearsals. “My husband had an accident.” She hissed the last word; by now the security guy could no doubt smell what kind of accident he’d had. Bill was doing a nice job of acting like he was two years farther down Alzheimer’s Road than he was. “I desperately need to take him to a bathroom, but they’re for gentlemen or ladies only, and I need privacy to take care of this. Can you please help me?”

Marty couldn’t hear the security guy’s reply through the glass, but he was pointing, giving Thelma directions. Thelma’s eyes were big; she was nodding like she was hanging on his every word, although she knew exactly where the employee bathroom was.

The security guy buzzed them in. Thelma opened the door and led a shuffling, muttering, shit-soaked Bill inside. As easy as that.

“Why don’t we try our luck over that way?” Marty pointed toward the far corner of the casino, where the other security door was located—the one that had no security cage nearby because it was a fire exit.

*  *  *

There was nothing but day slots back there. By the time the door clicked open, meaning Bill had changed and got the fire alarm disconnected, Marty had lost two weeks of his life. Not that it would matter if everything went as planned.

He and Frank slipped through the cracked-open door. The narrow gray hall beyond was empty. “This way.” Marty pointed to the right.

When he’d imagined this scene in his mind, their strides had been smooth and confident, eating up carpeted hallway. Now that they were actually there, they were a sad-looking bunch, limping and shuffling. Marty was bent by such bad osteoporosis he was forced to crane his neck just to look straight ahead.

Thelma slowed them down because she was ninety-two. By rights she shouldn’t be able to walk at all, but although she moved slowly, she walked with a definite swagger. Marty liked that. She was a tiny woman with chipmunk cheeks and alert blue eyes. There was not a hint of that rheumy film of stupor in her old eyes.

Two employees stepped out of an open door—dealers dressed in the casino’s signature blue-and-white jackets. Marty and the rest looked straight ahead, like they knew just where they were going. The dealers walked right past. Marty’s heart was racing, but he wasn’t surprised the dealers hadn’t challenged them. As he’d told the others: you go balls-up like you own the place and no one bothers you. Especially if you were a harmless-looking senior citizen.

Marty turned left at the end of the hallway, heading deeper into the guts of the casino, toward the nucleus, where there were no blueprints online, where, as far as Marty knew, no one but the aliens who owned the casino ever went.

When they reached the door of the utility room, Marty expected Bill to get to work, but Bill was having a spell. He was staring at nothing, breathing heavily through his open mouth.

“Come on, Bill. Open her up.” Marty took Bill’s wrist and turned him toward the door. Bill squatted, pulled his electronic pick out of his instrument pouch, and got to work.

A minute later, they were inside. They locked the door behind them.

Marty didn’t need to tell Thelma to get to work. She unslung her bag from her shoulder and pulled out the bomb. It looked as sophisticated as Thelma had promised, with microprocessors and slender wires visible inside a rounded stainless-steel shell. Marty found a plastic chair for her to sit in while she attached the bomb to the main circuit panel.

“It can’t go off,” Frank said from the door, where he was watching the hallway. “Not even by mistake. Not possible, correct?”

“Frank, would you relax? Please?” Marty said.

“I want to hear you say it.”

“Frank, take a deep breath,” Thelma said over her shoulder. “There’s no explosive material present.”

Frank raised his hands in the air. “That’s all I wanted to hear. Thank you.”

Thelma muttered something under her breath as she worked the bomb into the high-tech circuitry of the casino’s electrical system. Even knowing the bomb couldn’t go off, it looked scary. Security would shit a brick when they saw it. Marty had been afraid all of Thelma’s experience at the FBI had happened too long ago, that her electronics skills were of the horse-and-buggy variety. Evidently she kept up with things in her field.

Marty suddenly realized that there was no turning back now; they were really going through with this. In an hour’s time, Marty was either going to possess thousands of years of life force, or he was going to be in jail. He rubbed his face, felt his fingers pressing his skin. “This is not a dream,” he said softly.

“It can’t be. I stopped dreaming last year,” Thelma said without looking up from her work. Her hands were trembling, but her movements seemed sure. “I don’t know why. Some chemical in my brain ran out, I guess. Dried up. I miss dreaming; I got to be young in my dreams.”

“Thelma, I’m gonna make your dreams come true,” Marty said.

“When I was young, I heard that from men a lot.” Everyone chuckled, though they kept their chuckles to a whisper. “I was smoking hot. Have any of you ever seen a picture of me when I was young?”

“I was ugly as hell when I was young,” Marty said. “I had acne scars, squinty eyes. Aging has a way of evening us all out. It’s very fair that way.”

“Yeah. Now we’re all ugly as hell,” Frank said. “Very democratic.”

“All right, we’re set.” Thelma gripped Marty’s wrist, pulled herself out of the chair.

Marty drew a cell phone out of his pocket. He dialed the only number in the phone’s memory: the Atlantic City Police Department. A woman answered.

“Yes, hi.” He worked to sound breathless, scared. “I’m pretty sure I found a bomb, in the Lifespring Casino.”

“A bomb where, sir?”

“A utility room. I work here, and I snuck into a utility room to, um, smoke a doob, and there’s something new in here, and it looks like a bomb, and it’s counting down.”

“Your name, please?”

“I don’t want to get into trouble. I’m sorry, I have to hang up now.” Marty disconnected.

They waited, no one saying a word, as seconds ticked by. Based on his thirty-odd years on the force, Frank had estimated it would take the average police station less than a minute to get an evacuation under way after a bomb threat.

Despite knowing it was coming, Marty jumped when the alarm whooped. He checked his watch. “It’s twelve minutes after ten.” He had to shout to be heard. “At eighteen after, everyone should be out of the building. At that point we’ll have about three minutes to get down the hall and out of sight before the authorities start to arrive.”

He double-checked Thelma’s bomb. The red readout was at fifty-seven minutes and counting. Out in the hall, anxious voices rose and then fell as people passed, heading for the exit.

At seventeen minutes after ten, Marty signaled to Frank. Frank opened the door a crack; looked left, then right; then waved them out into the empty hallway. Marty led them to the left.

A hundred yards down was the security suite, where they watched for cheaters and filmed everything that happened in the casino. Bill got the door open, disabled the cameras, and wiped the recordings. They were in and out in less than three minutes.

They were two turns and about two hundred yards from the unmarked core. Things were about to get interesting. Marty realized a snippet of song was playing in his head: Now you’re messing with a son of a bitch. Just that one line. He couldn’t remember the rest of the song or who sang it, but it felt right. His subconscious had done well.

“Now you’re messing with a son of a bitch,” he sang under his breath. Balls-up. Nothing to lose, everything to gain.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Bill whispered.

They all stopped. “Jesus. Did we give him too much Kaopectate?” Marty asked. They’d attempted a fine balance that would induce a single bout of diarrhea, but maybe the added excitement…

“I have to take a piss.”

“Holy shit,” Frank said. “Can’t you hold it?”

“He had three shots of Jack at the bar,” Thelma said.

“What?” Marty said, struggling to keep his voice low. He glared at Bill “Why the hell would you do that? It’s ten in the morning.”

Bill shrugged. “To take the edge off. I was nervous.”

Marty looked at Thelma. “Why didn’t you stop him?”

She gave him a stern look. “I’m not his mother.”

Marty looked around, trying to remember where the nearest bathroom was on the blueprints he’d studied. The thing was, while he was studying the blueprints, it never occurred to him to note where the goddamned bathrooms were.

“Wasn’t there a bathroom down the last hall we passed?” Thelma asked.

“Yeah. Come on, this way.” Truth was, Marty didn’t know, but he figured the odds they’d find a can closer to the core, where only the aliens went, were low. He didn’t even know if the Procyoni used cans.

“Hold on. We lost Bill,” Frank said. They stopped. Bill was a hundred feet back, staring at a framed print on the wall. Marty cupped his hand around one side of his mouth, called Bill’s name in a low growl. Bill went on staring. Marty hustled back down the hall, gave Bill’s arm a shake. Bill gave a little start, like Marty had waked him.

“Sorry,” Bill said.

“Try to stay focused.” Marty gave his shoulder a squeeze.

It turned out Thelma was more observant than Marty, because there it was, a bathroom halfway down the last hallway they’d passed. They filed in; then Marty locked the door behind them.

“Christ, what if he goes off to la-la land at just the wrong time?” Frank said, his big brow pinched into a series of ridges, while Bill returned his three shots of Jack to the ecosystem.

“He always snaps out of it if you shake him hard enough.”

Frank shook his blocky head, like he felt sorry for Marty for being stupid enough to put their lives in the hands of a guy with Alzheimer’s.

Speaking in a ragged whisper, Marty snapped, “You know another tech guy we can trust?” Most of the people Frank knew were dead, and even when they’d been alive, most of them were cops who barely knew how to turn on a computer.

Bill zipped his fly, rising onto his tiptoes.

“Okay, let’s boogie,” Marty said.

His heart stopped when the bathroom door rattled. “Is someone in there?”

Marty held a finger to his lips as they waited for whomever it was to move on. There was a sharp rap on the door. “Hello?” They heard keys rattling, looked at each other in wide-eyed panic. Marty cast about for somewhere to hide, but there were only two stalls in the little bathroom and not much else. Frank gripped Marty’s shoulder, motioned for him and the others to move away from the door.

“Hang on,” Frank called out.

“Didn’t you hear the alarm?” the voice called through the door.

Frank unlocked the door, gave Marty a last, forlorn look, then opened it just enough to slip through. Through the door, Marty could hear him say, “Sorry. I had a bad case of the shits.”

“We have to get you out of here. The bomb squad is on its way.”

“The bomb squad?”

Their voices grew dimmer, then faded completely. Marty stared at the floor for a moment, feeling both grateful and terribly sad. Frank had forfeited his own chance for a thousand years of life force so Marty and the others could have theirs.

Marty opened the door, motioned for Bill to go first so Marty could keep an eye on him.

“That was a very noble thing Frank did,” Thelma said. Marty’s back and neck were killing him from all the walking, but Thelma didn’t seem at all tired. “If we’re successful, and humans ever develop the technology to transfer life force on our own, I’ll gladly give a share of mine to Frank.”

“Thanks, Thelma. I will, too, and I know Bill will.” Maybe humans would develop the technology to transfer life force, but Marty doubted it would be in Frank’s lifetime. Marty was more confident they’d figure it out in his daughter’s and his grandkids’ lifetime. Sharing his haul with them was all part of his plan. For the time being, though, only the Procyoni could make transfers.

Raising his voice so Bill could hear, Marty said, “Turn right up here.” One final hallway, fifty feet, and they would be at the casino’s core, the Procyoni’s operation center. As they turned the corner, Marty squinted, trying to get a look at the door ahead. It was a big, reinforced steel job, with a sign reading NO ADMITTANCE: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY and below that words in the Procyoni’s bizarre squiggles—probably the same message repeated.

As soon as he reached the door, Bill pulled out his instrument pouch. “Piece of cake,” he said as he unrolled it on the floor beside the door.

The lock was electronic. Bill stuck something that resembled a meat thermometer into the slot above the keypad, then worked a flat tool like a file into the crack in the door.

It clicked. Bill pushed it open, grinning. He was enjoying this, no doubt about it. Since they’d met in prison forty years earlier, neither Marty nor Bill had so much as stolen a pack of chewing gum. Bill had parlayed his tech knowledge into a legitimate business, but it was always clear he still missed the shady side of life.

Beyond the door was a short, brightly lit, dead-end hallway. The wall at the end was beige and smooth. Surely there had to be a door. As they moved closer, Marty scanned the wall, searching for a seam, the outline of a cleverly hidden door.

There was something peculiar about the wall—it had an odd sheen to it. Marty reached up and touched it. He recoiled, grunted in surprise when it twitched like the flank of a colt. “Christ.”

“What?” Bill asked, eyeing the wall uneasily.

“It moved.” Resisting the urge to flee as fast as his arthritic knees would carry him, Marty reached out again, pressed his palm against the wall. It flinched again, but Marty held his hand there. It was warm and supple, firm on the surface, spongy beneath when he pressed a little harder. “It feels like skin.”

Thelma reached up and poked it with one finger. “You’re right, that’s exactly what it feels like.”

Bill got right up close to the wall, looking down his nose through the magnifying halves of his bifocals. “There are hairs in it.”

His palm still pressed to the wall, Marty moved his face closer and saw the fine, silky white hairs growing out of it.

“Look at this,” Bill said. He’d found a seam: a single vertical line running almost floor to ceiling. He tried to work his fingers into the crack, managed to wedge them maybe an eighth of an inch deep. “There’s nothing mechanical that I can see.” He shrugged. “No moving parts at all.” He unrolled his instrument kit, pulled out the long, thin file, and tried to work it into the seam, wiggling it back and forth.

The wall tensed, like a muscle spasm, right around the spot where the file was probing. Bill shouted with surprise, jumped away as the file was pushed right out of the seam.

“Holy shit,” he said, gawking at his file lying on the floor. He looked at Marty. “You don’t need a tech, you need a medical doctor.”

No wonder the aliens didn’t allow the media to tour their private facilities. It would scare the hell out of people, and that would be bad for business. People are happy to allow aliens to suck away their life force, while politicians are paid with years instead of dollars to look the other way, but only if the aliens seem cute and friendly. Marty wondered what was behind that wall.

Bill was staring at him. They were both staring at him. “What?”

“We’re fucked,” Bill said. “You realize that, right? We have to get the hell out of here before we get caught.” He shrugged. “We’re fucked.”

“I don’t think there’s any call for that sort of language,” Thelma said. “I agree with you, and I understand you’re disappointed, but try to keep a civil tongue.”

Marty went on staring at the wall, trying to think. He’d gotten his hopes so high that going back to his apartment seemed like returning to prison. There had to be a way to get that door open.

“Marty, come on.”

He turned. Bill and Thelma were already a dozen steps down the hall. He hadn’t even noticed they were going. He turned back to the wall. Making a fist, he pushed his knuckles into it. The wall bowed, giving a good three or four inches before he couldn’t push any farther.

“There’s got to be a way,” he muttered.

“Marty!” Bill called.

Marty looked at them over his shoulder. “What are we gonna do? Go home? Watch TV?” He waved them away. “Go if you want.” He turned back to the wall.

Every problem had a solution; every Gordian knot could be untied. This was nothing but another locked door. He pressed the wall again. It couldn’t be too thick if it gave like that.

“Marty, for goodness’ sake.” This time it was Thelma.

They were so close. But even Alexander the Great couldn’t unlock a door that wasn’t there. Although Alexander hadn’t untied the Gordian knot, the ballsy son of a bitch had hacked it in half…

Marty turned. His partners were still there. “Bill, let me see your tools.”

He met a frowning Bill halfway, examined his instrument pouch, and plucked a razor cutter out of its sheath. When he extended the blade as far as it would go, it was about four inches long. “Come on.”

They followed him back to the wall. Marty chose a spot low on the wall. He pressed the blade to it, and sliced.

Bright arterial blood spilled out, pouring over Marty’s hand and down the wall, which twitched and bucked like it was in pain.

“Oh my God,” Bill whispered.

Marty made a deep horizontal incision, then made a second pass over it, pressing as hard as he could. The blade broke through; the wall was only a few inches thick. Pressing the blade to the edge of the wound, Marty made a vertical cut to the floor. Blood pattered onto the carpet like heavy rain. His hand was covered; blood dribbled off it as he went on cutting, slicing another vertical line from the other edge of the horizontal incision. The wall shuddered furiously as he pushed the blood-soaked flap inward, grimacing at the sound of tearing skin as the spots his blade had missed gave way. Finally, the whole flap of meat came free, flopping to the floor on the far side of the wall.

“Jesus, Marty,” Bill said.

Marty crawled through the little door, repulsed by the feel of the bloody flap of meat beneath him. When he was through, he turned to help Bill through, and then Thelma. Then he stood, wiped his bloody hands on his shirt, and he looked around.

They were in an open space filled with strange, terrifying things. Big, blubbery blocks crawled along well-worn tracks in the floor, which was made of the same fleshy material as the walls. There were faces embedded in the walls—faces with long, hooked noses, like the aliens had, round mouths babbling gibberish. The faces scrolled up the walls, disappearing at the top while new ones appeared below to replace them. Other larger things lumbered in tight circles—some just featureless blobs on two or six or ten stumpy legs, others filled with holes or covered with lumps. Marty expected one of these unspeakable things to notice them and drag them, screaming, toward some horrible death, but none did.

“They’re machines,” Bill said.

“Machines?” Marty took a breath for the first time since he’d laid eyes on the room. Of course. This was the aliens’ technology. But if it was, shouldn’t the payout lines in the casino resemble slimy tentacles or something? But again, who would play in a casino if there were tentacles sticking out of the slot machines?

There was not a Procyoni in sight; they’d evacuated along with everyone else. Marty’d had little doubt about that: if you possessed a hundred thousand or a million years of life force, you weren’t about to let yourself get blown up. No amount of life force could save you from that.

“Okay. Where is it?” Marty asked Bill. He had a very bad feeling about this. After studying one of the payout lines, Bill had been certain he could hijack life force from the source. But he’d assumed the source was a machine made from steel and carbon and microfiber. What was it he’d just said? He was tech guy, not a medical doctor.

Bill set off into the room, looking things up and down, keeping his distance from the Procyoni’s idea of machines. Marty and Thelma followed a few paces behind. Marty glanced at his watch: they had about thirty-eight minutes before the bomb’s timer ticked to zero and the bomb squad realized it wasn’t active, unless they managed to disarm it before then.

“As soon as it’s possible, I’m going to give a hundred years to each of my eight grandchildren,” Thelma said, her eyes bright with anticipation.

Marty smiled. Who would’ve thought Thelma was a starry-eyed optimist, still sure they would walk out of there with a wealth of life force?

“Here you go.” Bill was pinching a cable between his fingers. It wasn’t an intestine or a vein, just a good old-fashioned plastic-coated cable, like the ones on the payout lines. “This is where the conversion takes place.” He followed the line until it disappeared through the wall of what looked like a yurt made out of flesh. Tentatively, Marty ducked through the semicircular opening in the thing.

In the center of the small room, a midnight-black ball hung suspended in a tank of what looked to be water. Hundreds of slender filaments, like hairs, only thicker, shot out from the ball in every direction.

“This is not good,” Bill said.

No, it surely wasn’t. And every minute that ticked by brought them closer to the point of no return, where they’d have very little chance of getting out of there without being caught.

“Look at this.” Thelma was standing below a transparent oval portion of the rounded wall of the little hut they were standing in. Alien writing scrolled along it, moving from bottom to top. Set lower on the wall was what looked like a keyboard.

Thelma worked the keypad of her phone. The phone beeped. She held it up to the scrolling message board and laughed with delight. “There’s an app for everything.”

“What are you doing?” Marty asked.

Thelma looked at him. “Translating.” She consulted the screen on her phone. “‘Eight million units, input, São Paulo. Three million units, input, Monte Carlo. Two million units, exchange, London—’”

“I’m not sure how that helps us,” Marty said.

Thelma shrugged.

“I’m going back out to the cables,” Bill said. “Maybe I can tap into them from there. At least I understand how they work.”

“Good idea,” Marty said. He didn’t have a better one at least. He went to examine the black ball that looked like it was caught in a three-dimensional spiderweb. It was hard to tell if it was made of meat like everything else, or of polished stone, or something synthetic. It was beautiful and, for some reason Marty couldn’t put his finger on, terrifying. He had no doubt it was the bank for the casino’s life force. It might hold a million years or more, depending on how often the aliens transported their winnings off-world.

Outside, Bill cursed. “For Christ’s sake. This ought to work.”

Thelma gasped. “Martin, come see this.”

“What?” She held her phone in front of his face. At the top of the screen was another paragraph of so many million units inputting and outputting to various places. Below that was a single sentence, set apart from the rest.

Do you think I’m stupid?

Marty felt a crawling sensation on his skin, like spiders scurrying up his legs and back. “Do you think that’s meant for us?” He looked at the ball in the tank.

Thelma shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s an odd thing to have in a report.”

Marty ran his hand over the thin tufts of hair on top of his head, trying to think. His gaze fell on the keypad-looking thing embedded in the wall. “Wait a minute. Can you translate in reverse with that app?”

“Of course. What do you want to say?”

“I want to ask it, ‘Are you the round object in the water?’”

Thelma typed on the pad, handed Marty her phone. He took it to the keypad, hunted and pecked his way through a series of squiggly lines, dots, and slashes, until he’d entered the translated message, then handed the phone back to Thelma.

She held it up to the scrolling message board. “‘Affirmed. Leave immediately,’” Thelma read from her phone.

“Holy crap,” he said. He stared at the ball, barely able to believe he was talking to it, that it was something alive and aware. What good did it do them, though? He checked the time: twenty-one minutes remaining.

Try this: “We’re very old. Can you please give us a few years?” Marty said. Thelma typed it out; then Marty entered it.

“‘Shall I fetch you cocoa and slippers as well? Leave immediately,’” Thelma read. She smiled. “Well, it has a sense of humor. You have to give it that.”

Marty rubbed his mouth, thinking. He needed to go to the bathroom, but figured he could hold it another twenty minutes.

Bill ducked his head inside. “It’s no good. Nothing’s working. I say we get out of here.”

Marty looked at Thelma. She smiled sadly. “We do seem to be at a dead end. Even if we managed to talk that bowling ball into giving us what we want, there won’t be time left to get away.”

They were right, but Marty still didn’t want to leave. Maybe somewhere deep inside he wanted to get caught, to go back to prison, where he’d spent almost a decade of his life.

No. That was psycho bullshit. He didn’t want to go back to prison; he wanted to go on living. He wasn’t afraid of dying; it was that he enjoyed life so much. He enjoyed watching the news, eating a good Reuben sandwich at Hanson’s, watching his granddaughter’s softball games. He didn’t want to go, and he didn’t have much longer before he’d be forced out of the game by his Reuben-clogged heart.

“You two go. If they catch me, I’ll tell them I was working alone. They won’t be looking for you.”

Thelma put her fists on her hips. “It’s time to go, Martin. We did our very best, but we came up short. There’s no shame in that.”

Marty shook his head. “I want this too much.” He squinted at the ball in the tank, the thing that had what he wanted. He wondered what it wanted. Surely everything wants something. He held out his hand to Thelma. “Give me your phone.” Thelma set the cool rectangle in his palm.

He typed, What do you want? and then punched the translation into the keypad.

The reply scrolled across the board. World peace. Wait, I’ve changed my mind. I want you to go away.

Everyone was a comedian, even living machines made by aliens, if that’s what the thing was. Marty typed frantically: Surely you want something. What would make you happy?

He knew he was fishing. Even if there was something it wanted, how could Marty possibly get it in the next… he checked his watch… sixteen minutes?

“Mom, please. I don’t want to go to the dentist.” Bill was still there, and he was, in Frank’s words, in la-la land.

“Bill, go. Get out of here. If they catch you, tell them you shit your pants and you can’t find your wife.”

Bill looked around, clearly confused about where he was.

Something scrolled on the board. Marty captured it with the phone, hit Translate.

I want to get out of here.

Marty tried to imagine the three of them trying to smuggle this thing and its tank out of the casino. He typed: Give us each a thousand years, and we’ll smuggle you out and set you free. What the hell, maybe it was gullible.

Marty wondered if it could even survive on its own; maybe it wasn’t capable of living free.

Smuggle me out; then I’ll give you each ten thousand years.

Marty grunted a laugh. Evidently it wasn’t gullible. He looked over at Bill, who was muttering to himself, all but gone. Thelma was silently following Marty’s conversation. When he met her eyes, she nodded for him to continue. An optimist to the last.

What more was there for Marty to say? The thing had called his bluff. He typed: If you have any ideas about how to get you out of here, I’m listening.

You breached the outer wall. I assume you cut it with a sharp object?

Yes, Marty replied.

Can you swim?

“Can I swim? What the hell—” Was it back to its comedian routine?

Then Marty got it, like a jolt of electricity shooting through his old bones. The casino stuck out over the ocean on pilings. The Atlantic was right under their feet. He turned to Thelma. “Can you swim?”

Thelma shrugged. “Three-time girl’s champion of PS-51. It’s been a while, but I imagine I can if my life depends on it.”

Marty checked the time: eight minutes. “Looks like we’re taking on another partner.” He typed out another message as fast as he could: “I can swim. Tell me what to do.”

The reply came immediately. Cut the floor. Break the glass. Lift me out and carry me. Jump into the water.

“Bill, give me the razor cutter.” Bill was still in la-la land. Marty pulled the instrument pouch out of Bill’s back pocket and rummaged through it.

The cutter wasn’t there.

“Oh no. Did I leave it outside?” he asked.

“You must have,” Thelma said. She canted her head, considered for a moment. “You did. I remember seeing it.”

Marty ran. He hadn’t run in fifteen years, didn’t know his eighty-one-year-old legs were capable of it, but he ran. Dropping on hands and knees, he poked his head through the hole he’d cut, spotted the cutter, and snatched it up.

From down the hall, he heard faint voices. Procyoni voices, speaking their bizarre whistling, growling language. He backed out of the breach, lurched to his feet, nearly fell, then ran again.

With Thelma standing over him, he cut the floor. “As soon as I’ve got it open, get Bill through the hole, then go yourself. I’m right behind you.” He was so breathless from running, and from the adrenaline running through him, he could barely get the words out. The blade sliced through the third side; he pushed down on the flap of bloody skin and meat. It collapsed. In the darkness below, he could hear the roar of the surf.

Before he was even on his feet, Thelma had Bill on the edge of the hole. She gave him a brisk shove. Bill shouted in surprise. Marty didn’t wait to hear if he was swimming or drowning; he rushed into the hut and stopped short.

What could he use to break the glass? He still had the cutter, but it wasn’t going to shatter the glass in that tank. He clapped his hands over his pockets. They were empty except for Thelma’s phone, which was no help either. He had nothing but his hard head, his pathetic geriatric fists.

“No.” He wasn’t going to come this close only to leave empty-handed. Turning his back on the tank, he elbowed the glass. The glass made a thunking sound; pain lanced through his elbow. That was all.

Ignoring the pain, he did it again harder.

The glass cracked.

“Now you’re messing with a son of a bitch.” Marty put all of his weight behind it, drove his elbow into the glass. A spiderweb of cracks appeared. He hit it again. Water squirted, soaking his elbow, sending a cold spray across his shirtsleeve.

One more and the glass gave way; water washed over his shoes. Marty reached in and grabbed the creature with both hands. It was heavier than it looked, firm and slippery like a dolphin.

The Procyoni voices were just outside the room when Marty stepped off the edge and dropped through the hole. He plunged into ice-cold water, losing his grip on the creature.

He came up sputtering. It was February—the water was frigid. What had he been thinking?

“Marty?” Bill called.

“Martin? We’re over here.”

It was dark, but not pitch-black. The swell of a wave swept over him, filling his eyes and nose with icy salt water. As his vision adjusted to the dimness, he was able to see the waves approaching and could rise over them.

He’d dropped the creature. He felt around in the water, then ducked under, waving his hands, hoping to find it by touch. When he couldn’t hold his breath any longer he came up, wiped water out of his eyes, strained to catch some glimpse of the thing near the surface. It was no use. It was gone.

“Oh, damn it.” He was going to cry. In his whole adult life he’d only cried once, when he lost his Susie, but he felt it coming now on a wave of despair and frustration.

“What’s the matter?” Thelma called.

“I lost it. I had it in my hands, all of our dreams right there in my hands, and I lost it.” His teeth were chattering uncontrollably, his body aching from the cold.

“No one could have held on. Don’t blame yourself.”

He’d had it in his hands. Now he had nothing; now he was just a drowning old man, with nothing to offer his family but boring stories of the old times.

The mournful sound of sirens rose in the distance, probably reinforcements coming to join what must already be a traffic jam of red-and-white emergency vehicles in front of the casino. They’d never slip past it, not soaking wet.

Shadows flickered through the hole he’d cut in the aliens’ floor. There were figures moving, probably trying to see down under the pier, but the surf had pushed Marty and the others a good forty feet from the hole.

“Marty?” Thelma said, sounding incredibly composed and patient given the situation. “We have to get out of here.”

“We’ll have to swim for it, get as far down the coast as we can. A quarter of a mile, if we can manage it.” Who was he kidding? His hands and feet were numb, and he was ten years younger than Thelma. They’d be lucky if they could swim a hundred feet.

Keeping his negative thoughts to himself, sunk in a black despair, Marty paddled out from under the casino into bright sunlight. The casino’s parking lot was frantic with activity. Hundreds of evacuees stood behind yellow police tape as emergency personnel raced around. A smaller group of aliens, tall and wiry, with long, curved necks and horselike noses, stood apart from the rest of the crowd.

No one noticed three old coots in the water, probably because they were so cold and weak they could barely keep their heads above the surface. Marty sputtered and coughed. He’d already swallowed a gallon of salt water. His nose and throat burned. They weren’t really swimming; they were fighting not to drown while the current carried them down the beach.

By the time they made it a few hundred yards, Marty’s arms and legs were moving like he was swimming in glue. No matter how hard he willed them to move faster, they kept slowing. The others weren’t doing much better.

“Let’s head—” That was all Marty managed. Crippling pain shot from his chest, down his arms. His teeth clamped down on the pain and he let out a gargling growl.

“Martin?” Thelma called. She sounded very far away, getting farther. “Bill, help me—something’s wrong with him.”

Marty felt hands on his back, tugging, straining to pull him toward land. His arms were clamped across his chest and wouldn’t move. He’d never felt such pain.

Thelma’s head went under. She still clutched his shirt, still struggled to push him toward shore. Bill was on the other side of him, half pushing, half clinging to Marty to keep from going under himself. They weren’t going to make it. Marty tried to tell them to save themselves, but could only let out a choking squeal.

New fingers gripped his wrist and ankle. Only they weren’t fingers—they felt like threads, like slender fishing lines. Suddenly Marty was gliding toward the beach. His face went under, his cheek dragging the sandy bottom for a moment. He broke the surface in shallow water, among gentle whitecaps rolling in toward the beach.

The black sphere was a foot from his face, moving on a hundred fine tentacles, dragging him, Thelma, and Bill into the sand.

Then it was gone, back into the water.

Thelma lifted herself to a sitting position and reached for Marty’s pocket. “Hang on, Martin. I’m calling 911. I think you had a heart attack.”

From the searing pain he’d felt in his chest, Marty thought Thelma might be right. But it was gone; it had morphed into a tightness, like a pulled muscle.

“Hang on.” He struggled, managed to sit up. “I think I’m all right.” He rotated his shoulder. “In fact, I’m sure I am. I feel—” He couldn’t put his finger on how he felt.

Bill struggled to his hands and knees, then stood in one smooth motion. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

“I don’t think it’s Jesus, Mary, or Joseph.” Marty’s voice was hoarse, almost a whisper. His heart was thumping wildly. Marty had read enough about life force to know it couldn’t turn back the clock. It didn’t make you young, but it made you as alive as an old-timer could be.

Thelma stood, springing up with ease. She let out a cry of surprise.

Marty got to his feet as well. He was shivering uncontrollably, his clothes dripping, his shoes waterlogged. He felt like he could lift an elephant.

Bill grinned at him. Marty grinned back, ecstatic at the thought of having his old friend back in both mind and spirit. Alzheimer’s stood no chance against ten thousand years of life force, if that’s what that wonderful bowling ball had given them.

Then he remembered Frank. “Oh, Frank, I’m so sorry,” he muttered.

“If it wasn’t for Frank…,” Bill said.

They stood with their heads bowed, silent and motionless.

“We’d better get out of here,” Marty finally said.

They headed down the beach at a brisk walk, away from the flashing lights and the casino. They hadn’t gone a quarter mile when Marty heard a sharp whistle. He looked up at the boardwalk. Frank was standing at the railing, holding a Styrofoam cup of steaming coffee.

Head down, Marty headed for the stairs. He felt like shit. He hadn’t asked Frank to take the bullet for the rest of them, but he had, and now he was on the outside looking in, and that made Marty feel like a big pile of shit.

“Tell me you did it,” Frank said. “Tell me this wasn’t all for nothing.”

Marty struggled to meet Frank’s eye. “We did it. I’m so sorry, Frank.”

Frank shushed him harshly. “Don’t say that. Let me be happy for you, for the part I played in it.”

“If it wasn’t for you, we’d be in jail right now,” Thelma said. “Thank you. I hope I can return the favor some day.”

“Me, too,” Bill chimed in. “I won’t forget.”

Marty lunged, gripped his friend in a bear hug.

“Come on,” Frank said, eyeing their wet clothes. “Let’s get you guys home. We’re outside the roadblock they set up around the casino, so it should be clear sailing from here. We’re just four old-timers out for a walk.”

“The coffee’s a nice touch,” Marty said, gesturing at Frank’s cup. “What sort of thieves stop for coffee?”

Frank handed the cup to Marty. “I’m guessing you can use it more than me. Come on.”

They followed Frank down the boardwalk. Marty tried to act like an eighty-one-year-old—frail, and slightly bewildered to be so frail. But inside, his bones and joints were singing.

He looked out at the ocean, thought he spotted a black sheen in one of the breakers, but then it vanished.

What in the hell was that creature going to do, swimming around in the ocean for just shy of eternity? Marty guessed it was better than being cooped up in a fish tank for eternity. And who knew what a thing like that needed or didn’t need? It didn’t resemble the Procyoni in any way; either they’d made it, or it was some other species entirely, and the Procyoni had enslaved it. The Procyoni seemed arrogant and greedy enough to dabble in slavery, although in truth, Marty really didn’t know shit about the Procyoni. Nobody knew shit about the Procyoni. They were secretive as hell.

There was a T-shirt shop up ahead; Marty wondered if they should duck in and buy some dry clothes, assuming the place had a dressing room. It would take time, but their wet clothes were a big, fat red light if they ran into any—

Police. Marty’s pulse jumped into overdrive as a uniformed officer stepped out of the T-shirt shop and headed their way.

“Oh, crap,” Bill said under his breath.

“I got this,” Marty said. “Get ready to go into your Alzheimer’s act.” If the Procyoni had reported the heist—and especially their creative means of escape—they were screwed. But Marty was betting the Procyoni hadn’t deigned to tell the authorities anything. He was betting they wouldn’t want it to be known that four humans had gotten the better of them.

The officer slowed as he drew closer, studying their wet clothes. Marty went right up to him. “Excuse me, officer. Do you know if that shop there has a changing room?” He pointed.

“I’m not sure.” The cop was young, probably not on the job a year. “Can I ask what happened to you?”

Marty chuckled, gestured at Bill. “Well, we got my friend Bill here out of the home for the day. Turns out we picked the wrong day.” Marty cupped his mouth and stage-whispered to the cop, “He’s got the Alzheimer’s.” Bill’s bottom lip was quivering. He had that thousand-yard stare down pat. “We only took our eyes off him for a minute, and there he goes into the water. Thelma and me had to go in after him. Thelma’s Bill’s wife.”

“Hello,” Thelma said.

The officer nodded to Thelma, glanced at the cup of coffee in Marty’s hand, then seemed to relax. “My grandmother was diagnosed a couple of months ago.” He shook his head. “It’s a terrible thing.”

“It certainly is,” Thelma said.

The officer escorted them down the boardwalk and into the T-shirt shop, which did have a little changing room, as it turned out.

As they got busy finding clothes that fit (except for Bill, who tagged along behind Thelma, taking shuffling old man steps), the officer tipped his hat and said, “I hope you folks have a good day from here on out.”

“Thank you, sir,” Marty called. “We’re planning to.”

The band’s name suddenly came to him—the ones who sang, “Now you’re messing with a son of a bitch.” It was Nazareth. Marty would have given anything to flip through the T-shirt rack and discover a black Nazareth T-shirt hanging there, but what were the odds of that? He settled for Zeppelin.

Meet the Author

Will McIntosh is a Hugo award-winner and Nebula finalist whose latest novel, Defenders, has been optioned by Warner Brothers for a feature film. His previous novel, Love Minus Eighty, was named the best science fiction book of 2013 by the American Library Association, and was on both io9.com and NPR.org’s lists of the best SF novels of 2013. His debut novel, Soft Apocalypse, was a finalist for a Locus Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Compton Crook Award. Along with four novels, he has published fifty short stories in venues such as Asimov’s, Lightspeed, and Science Fiction and Fantasy: Best of the Year. Will was a psychology professor before turning to writing full-time. He lives in Williamsburg with his wife and their five-year-old twins. You can follow him on Twitter @willmcintoshSF, or on his website, www.willmcintosh.net.

Also by Will McIntosh

Soft Apocalypse

Hitchers

Love Minus Eighty

Defenders

SHORT FICTION

The Perimeter

The Heist

Watching Over Us

City Living

If you enjoyed

THE HEIST,
look out for

DEFENDERS
by Will McIntosh

A new epic of alien invasion and human resistance by Hugo Award-winning author Will McIntosh.

Our Darkest Hour.

Our Only Hope.

The invaders came to claim earth as their own, overwhelming us with superior weapons and the ability to read our minds like open books.

Our only chance for survival was to engineer a new race of perfect soldiers to combat them. Seventeen feet tall, knowing and loving nothing but war, their minds closed to the aliens.

But these saviors could never be our servants. And what is done cannot be undone.

Prologue

Lieutenant Enrique Quinto

June 26, 2029. Morris Run, Pennsylvania.

It was a quaint Pennsylvania town, many of the buildings well over fifty years old, with green canopies shading narrow doorways. Even the town’s name was quaint: Morris Run. If not for the abandoned vehicles, filthy and faded by two years of exposure to the elements, and the trash stacked along the sidewalk, Quinto might have expected someone to step out of the Bullfrog Brewhouse and wave hello.

“Lieutenant Lucky?” Quinto turned to see Macalena, his platoon sergeant, making his way to the front of the carrier. Quinto wished he’d said something the first time someone called him Lucky, but it was far too late now. Most of the troops he was leading today probably didn’t know his real name.

“One of the new guys shit his pants,” Macalena said when he drew close, his voice low, giving Quinto a whiff of his sour breath.

Quinto sighed heavily. “Oh, hell.”

“The kid’s scared to death. He hasn’t been out of Philadelphia since this started.”

“No, I don’t blame him.” Quinto looked over Macalena’s shoulder, saw the kid perched on the side of the carrier, head down. He was about fourteen. The poor kid didn’t belong out here. Not that Quinto couldn’t use him; they called raw recruits “fish food,” but sometimes they were surprisingly effective in a firefight, because they were too scared to think. The starfish could get less of a read on what they were going to do, which way they were going to point their rifles. Usually the newbies didn’t shit their pants until the shooting started, though. “Does he have a spare pair?”

Macalena shook his head. “That’s the only pair he owns.”

Quinto reached into his pack, pulled out a pair of fatigue pants, and handed them to Macalena. “I hope he’s got a belt.”

Macalena laughed, stuck the pants under his armpit, and headed toward the kid.

What an awful thing, to be out here at fourteen, fifteen. When Quinto was fourteen, he’d spent his days playing video games, shooting bad guys in his room while Mom fetched fruit juice and chocolate chip cookies and told him when to go to bed.

They reached the end of the little downtown, which was composed of that single road, and the landscape opened up, revealing pine forest, the occasional house, mountains rising up on all horizons. There was little reason for any Luyten to be within eight miles of this abandoned backwater town, but they were all out there somewhere, so there was always a chance they’d be detected.

Quinto tried to access his helmet’s topographical maps, but the signal still wasn’t coming through. He pulled the old hard copy from his pack, unfolded it.

The carrier slowed; Quinto looked up from the map to see what was going on. There was a visual-recognition drone stuck in a drainage ditch along the side of the road. As they approached, the VRA drone—little more than a machine gun on treads—spun and trained its gun on each of the soldiers in turn. When it got to Quinto, it paused.

“Human. Human!” Quinto shouted, engaging the thing’s vocal-recognition failsafe. It went on to the next soldier.

It was always an uncomfortable moment, having a VRA drone point a weapon at you. You’d think it would be hard to mistake a human for a Luyten.

Failing to identify anything that resembled a starfish, the gun spun away.

“Get a few guys to pull it out of the ditch,” Quinto said. Four troops hopped out of the transport and wrestled the thing back onto the road. It headed off down the road, continuing on its randomly determined route.

Pleasant Street dead-ended close to the mouth of the mine, about half a mile past an old hotel that should be coming up on their left. When they got to the mine they’d have to unseal it using the critical blast points indicated on the topo map, then a 2.5-mile ride on the maglev flats into the mine, to the storage facility.

If someone had told Quinto two years ago that he’d be going into an abandoned mine to retrieve seventy-year-old weapons and ammo, he would have laughed out loud.

It wasn’t funny now.

The locomotive and five boxcars were parked right where they were supposed to be—as close to the mouth of the mine as the track would allow. They were late-twentieth-century vintage, the locomotive orange and shaped like a stretched Mack truck. Quinto called Macalena and his squad leaders, instructed them to set the big recognition-targeting gun they’d brought along in the weeds on the far side of the road, and place two gunners near the entrance with interlocking fire. When that was done, they got the rest of the squads moving down the tunnel. The quicker they moved, the sooner they’d be out of hostile territory and back in Philly.

Quinto took up the rear of the last carrier for the ride down into the mine. He was not a fan of deep holes with black walls, and when his CO had first laid out the mission Quinto had nearly crapped his own pants.

Macalena climbed in and took the seat beside him.

“So what are we looking for? I cannot for the life of me guess what we’re doing in here.”

Quinto smiled. It must seem an odd destination to the rest of the men, but they were used to being kept in the dark about missions. The fewer people who knew, the less likely the starfish were to get the information. Or so the logic went.

“The feds have been sealing huge caches of weapons in old mines for the past two centuries, waiting for the day when Argentina or India or whoever took out our more visible weapons depots. They coat them in Cosmoline and pretty much forget about them.”

Macalena frowned, sticking out his big lower lip. “You mean, old hand grenades and machine guns and shit?”

“More or less. Flamethrowers with a pathetically limited effectiveness range, eighty-one-millimeter mortars, LAW rockets, fifty-cal MGs.” Most were outdated weapons, but simple, easy to operate.

Macalena shook his head. “So we’re that desperate.”

In the seat in front of them a private who was at least seventy was clinging to the bar in front of her seat. She was tall—at least six feet. The slight jostling of the carrier was clearly causing her old body discomfort. It was true what they said: There were no civilians anymore, only soldiers and children.

“Yup. We’re that desperate,” Quinto said. “They’ve destroyed or seized so much of our hardware that we have more soldiers than guns.”

“What’s Cosmoline?” Macalena asked.

“I didn’t know, either; I had to look it up. It’s a grease they used back in the day to preserve weapons. Once you chip away the hardened Cosmoline, the weapons are supposed to be like new.”

Macalena grunted, spit off the side. “Dusty as hell in here. And cold.”

“Let’s be glad we’re not staying.”

Macalena’s comm erupted, a panicked voice calling his name.

“What have we got?” Macalena asked.

“Vance is dead. Lightning shot, from the trees to the left of the mine.”

“All stop!” Macalena shouted. The carrier slowed as Quinto dropped his head, covered his mouth as the implications sunk in.

Lucky no more.

“Where are you now?” Macalena asked the private.

“Inside the mine, about a hundred yards.”

“Stay there.”

Quinto looked up at Macalena, who raised his eyebrows. “What do you want to do?”

He wanted to get as deep in the mine as he could, and stay there, their backs against the wall, weapons raised until the starfish came to get them. Of course the Luyten would never come down, because they were reading his thoughts right now. Plus it was far easier to blow the mouth of the mine and leave them to suffocate.

Quinto ordered the small caravan to turn around and head toward the mouth.

They barely got moving before they heard the flash-boom of a Luyten explosive. The cave shook; bits of dirt and debris spewed at them, then everything settled into silence, the cave now truly pitch-black, save for the carriers’ headlights.

They climbed out of the carriers. Some of the troops cried, and there was no shame in that. One woman went off to the side of the tunnel and knelt in the rubble to pray. Quinto didn’t know their names, because he hadn’t served with them long. Troops came, and died, and new troops came. Only Lieutenant Lucky went on, mission after mission. Quinto realized he’d begun to believe he really was lucky, or special. Destined to see the war to its end.

It killed him, to think he wouldn’t get to see how things turned out, whether the bad guys won, or the good guys pulled something out of their asses at the eleventh hour.

Quinto used the walkie to apprise HQ of their situation, so HQ wouldn’t wonder when Quinto’s platoon never returned.

“Lieutenant?” Macalena said. He was studying the topo map he’d borrowed from Quinto. “Did you see these?” A few of the enlisted came over to look at the map over Macalena’s shoulder as he ran his finger along black lines set perpendicular to the mine. “There are five vertical shafts sunk along the length of the mine. I’m guessing they were escape routes in case of collapse, or ventilation, or both.”

Quinto looked up from the map, impotent rage rising in him. “Jesus, Mac, couldn’t you have waited a half hour to notice this?”

It took Macalena a second to understand. When he did, he grimaced, curled his hand into a fist, crumpling a section of the map. He turned and walked a dozen paces down the shaft, cursing quietly, viciously.

Even Macalena was too green for this war. He’d been in the infantry for only four months; before that he’d been writing military technical manuals. The army needed fighters more than writers these days.

If Macalena had waited even fifteen, twenty minutes before examining the old map, chances were the Luyten would have been out of range, and they could have climbed out of this hole and gone home.

“We need to move,” Quinto said. “The fish are going to find those exits and seal them up. Spread out, find the exits. When I get to the surface I’m going to set off a Tasmanian devil, give us some breathing room. As soon as it’s spent, get out there. Understood? Let’s move.”

“Couldn’t we just stay down here? Dig our way out when they’re gone?” It was the kid who’d crapped himself, looking absurd in Quinto’s big pants. “If we go up there now, they’ll kill us. I mean, maybe they’ll get distracted by something and leave…” He trailed off.

Everyone stared at the ground, except for the soldier who was praying.

“Let’s go,” Quinto said.

Quinto grasped the cold rung of the ladder that had dropped down when they unsealed the iron hatch.

“Good luck to you, Lieutenant,” one of the troops waiting to follow him called. It was Benneton, the old woman. The kid who’d crapped his pants was there as well, along with four others.

Quinto looked up into darkness. “Here we go.” He headed up the ladder. A lot of people who’d been as lucky as Quinto might have been tempted to believe the streak would hold, but Quinto knew his past held no hint of his future. More to the point, he knew he had no future.

It was a forty-foot climb according to the map, but adrenaline made it effortless. When he reached the top, he twisted the seal on the hatch, then pushed with his back and shoulders to force the hatch open. Daylight flooded into the dusty shaft as dirt and moldy leaves rained down on him.

The kid, who was just below him, passed up the Tasmanian devil. Reaching among the big spines jutting from the central carbon-fiber sphere, Quinto activated it, tossed it outside, and pulled the hatch closed.

The buzzing of razor-sharp shrapnel hitting, and then burrowing around inside everything within five hundred yards, would have been reassuring if Quinto weren’t absolutely certain the starfish had retreated outside the Tasmanian devil’s range as soon as Quinto thought about using it. At least it would back the fish up so they wouldn’t be able to pick off Quinto and his troops as they climbed out of their holes.

“Here we go,” Quinto said to the boy. “Have your weapon out. Run as fast as you can. Try to take one with you.” His guess was that Benneton would stay behind, shoot from the cover of the shaft until the Luyten cooked her. That’s what Quinto would do in her situation; it would probably afford her a few more minutes of life. He took a deep breath, trying to grasp that this was the end, this was the moment of his death, but he couldn’t.

As soon as the Tasmanian devil went silent, Quinto threw open the hatch, his heart thudding wildly, and ran.

Their carriers were trapped in the mine, so his best chance would be to make it to the locomotive. Of course the Luyten would have fried the locomotive, so really there was nothing to do but run, and when the fish closed in, turn and fight.

Two hundred yards ahead, he spotted four of his troops running north, into the woods, toward the nearest cover. That probably made more sense than what Quinto was doing, but all of the moves open to them were losers. It was always the same: The fish knew their exact location, but they had no idea where the fish were. If you could catch a fish out in the open, it couldn’t dodge automatic weapons fire, but you almost never caught them out in the open.

Quinto glanced back, saw the kid was two steps behind, his dirty cheeks tracked with tearstains.

The locomotive had been melted to a lump. He kept running. Everyone but he and the kid had headed north. Since Quinto wasn’t dead yet, it was safe to assume the fish had gone after the larger group first. If he could get outside their range, which meant seven or eight miles, he and the kid might have a chance. Quinto pushed himself to pick up the pace, but when he did the kid started to fall behind, looking panicked. Quinto slowed.

In the distance, Quinto heard the worst sound in the world: the sizzle-crackle of a Luyten lightning stick, a sound as much felt in your body as heard by your ears. Then another. He was spared the pungent, unearthly sweat smell of the weapon. He was too far away.

When he’d made it through the town, Quinto took another glance back. The kid was a hundred yards behind, one hand clutching his side. No way this kid was going to run another four or five miles. Panting, his throat coated in phlegm, Quinto considered leaving him behind. No. No matter how fast he ran, he wasn’t going to outrun Luyten on foot. He could try calling HQ and beg for a carrier to come get him, but they’d only tell him what he already knew: They weren’t going to feed the fish any more than they had to.

So he stopped, pulled out his comm, and waited for the kid to catch up. The kid stopped beside him, put his hands on his knees.

“You want to call anyone? Your mom or dad alive?”

The kid eyed the comm. “Just my little sister.” He swallowed, looked at Quinto. “We’re going to die, aren’t we?”

“Yeah. We are.”

“Maybe they got distracted by something. Maybe the others killed them.”

“Maybe,” Quinto said. He thought he heard the snap-crackle of something moving through the woods to the north. “Come on.” He tugged the kid’s jacket and headed into the woods on the opposite side of the road.

Should he call his own mother to say goodbye? He would like that, but he didn’t want to risk having her on the line when he died. He didn’t want that to be her last memory of him.

Branches whipped his face as he tore through the brush. It was pointless, but he couldn’t relinquish that last millimeter of hope that he might get lucky, just one last time. He barreled down a slope as the landscape opened, then splashed through a stream and raced up the bank.

He spotted a flash of crimson ahead, behind a thick cover of green leaves, and stopped short. The kid stopped short beside him, looked at him, questioning, just as a bolt of lightning burst through the foliage.

1

Oliver Bowen

March 9, 2030 (nine months later). The South Pacific.

The door was locked. The room was comfortable, replete with a well-stocked kitchen and an entertainment system that was so up-to-date it contained movies yet to be released. But the door was locked.

You’re considered a risk. They don’t know the extent of my power to influence you.

Oliver turned in his rotating chair to face Five, whose accommodations were less plush. Behind the carbon alloy mesh that separated them, Five’s room was empty except for a water dispensation device that resembled a giant hamster lick. Five was lying flat, his appendages splayed like the spokes of an elephant-sized wheel. His skin had a stony, mottled texture, and there were bristles protruding at evenly spaced intervals across it. The cilia protruding from the tips were as thick as nautical rope, and transparent.

“Because you were able to win over a thirteen-year-old boy, they think you might be able to convince me that I’m fighting on the wrong side? That’s absurd.”

But they don’t know that, Five said. They think you’ve become too familiar with me. Too friendly.

The CIA yanks him out of his position at NYU three days after the invasion begins, shifts him from Research to Interrogation as their field agents die off, tells him to figure out how to communicate with Luyten, and when he succeeds, he becomes a suspected sympathizer? Beautiful.

The next time someone comes, ask them when you’ll be informed where we’re going.

Oliver couldn’t help laughing. “You mean you don’t know?” He waved in what he guessed was the direction of the submarine’s bridge. “Pluck it out of someone’s mind.”

I don’t have to pluck. Your minds are all laid out in front of me. No one on this vessel knows.

“No one knows where we’re going?” It seemed an absurd notion, though it also made sense. If no one on board knew where they were going, or why, a Luyten who happened to be flying nearby—within their eight-or-so-mile telepathic zone—wouldn’t be able to find out, either. The mission must be important. “How are they navigating if they don’t know where we’re going?”

They’re given a set of coordinates corresponding to a point in the ocean, and when they reach it, they’re given another.

“So where are we?”

Oliver jolted back in his chair as one of Five’s mouths opened, revealing a bobbing, twitching hole ringed with teeth that resembled the spines on cacti. Smacking, hissing air and background sounds like water draining came from the hole, the sounds so unearthly and repulsive that at first Oliver didn’t register that they were approximating words.

“Find out where we’re going,” Five said aloud.

The ubiquitous hum of the sub’s engine was the only sound in the room as Oliver composed himself. Ultimately it didn’t matter whether the Luyten communicated telepathically or using spoken words, but it was still profoundly disturbing to hear the thing speak.

“You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?” Oliver said.

“Unlike you.” Somehow the creature managed to inject a note of irony, and perhaps contempt, into the awkwardly formed words.

Oliver slid out of the chair, went right up to the nearly invisible net of carbon fiber that separated them. “Don’t assume you know my mind just because you can read my thoughts. We may not be as simple as you think.”

“Yes, humanity is the pinnacle of evolution. The chosen ones, the purpose for the existence of the entire universe. How could I forget?” Aware that Oliver was having trouble understanding his strangely formed words, Five simultaneously broadcast his words directly into Oliver’s mind, giving him the uneasy sensation of hearing the words with an indescribable overlap. “I know your mind better than you.”

Oliver grunted, folded his arms across his chest. “Right.”

“You’re uneasy. You’re afraid I might try to prove my claim.”

It was pointless to disagree. Oliver had quickly learned how absurd it was to deny what you were thinking or feeling to something who knew precisely what you were thinking and feeling.

“You love your wife now—”

“Shut up. I don’t want to hear about Vanessa. Just leave it.”

Five waited patiently through Oliver’s outburst, then continued. “After her affair, her denials, the angry divorce… now you love her. Before, when you claimed to love her, you also despised her.”

Oliver turned, went to the door, and thumped on it with the flat of his palm. “Hey, come on. Unlock this door. I’m not the POW.”

“There’s an irony you’re not aware of, in your newfound feelings for your wife. Should I share it with you?”

Oliver turned to face Five, who was running the fine cilia that served Luyten as fingers across the stump of the limb he’d lost. “No. Thanks for the offer, but, no.”

“It’s something you’d be interested to hear.”

When Oliver didn’t answer, Five continued. “All right, then why don’t I move on? What else can I tell you, to demonstrate you’re as simple to read as I think you are? How about your deepest sexual cravings? Some of these you would never admit to yourself. For example, you’d like to be tied up, gagged with your own dirty sock, and spanked by a woman twenty years older than you.”

Oliver couldn’t care less about his repressed sexual desires. They were what they were; he couldn’t control them, only whether he acted on them. But Oliver knew Five was only playing with him now. It had already dropped the bait it knew Oliver couldn’t resist.

Five grew quiet, waiting for the question it already knew was coming.

“Fine. What’s the irony I’m not aware of?”

All of Five’s eyes fixed on Oliver. “The irony is, your instinct to love her is right, because she never had sex with Dr. Paul.”

As the words registered, Oliver’s vision darkened around the edges, as if he were going to pass out. In some ways, he wished he would. “You told me she had. You gave me specific details.”

“I lied.”

An icy numbness crept through him. He’d destroyed his marriage on the word of an alien bent on wiping out the human race. He’d taken Five’s word as unassailable proof, because Five could reach right in and pluck the truth out of Vanessa’s thoughts. Only he’d forgotten Five had abilities beyond reading minds. The ability to lie, for instance.

He’d told Vanessa he knew she was lying, said her unwillingness to admit the affair bothered him more than the infidelity itself. The floor, which was nothing but steel under a thin layer of beige carpeting, lurched beneath him, either because the sub was adjusting course or his knees were wobbling.

“Why would you lie? I didn’t even ask you about Vanessa—you volunteered the information.”

“I did it to serve as a reminder.”

“A reminder of what?”

“That I might be lying to you at any time.”

It dawned on Oliver that he had no way to contact Vanessa, and had no idea when he would, because he didn’t know where he was going, or why. When he did finally contact Vanessa, would an apology make any difference? He’d trusted the word of a Luyten over hers.

This was going to torture him. In all probability that was Five’s intention in telling him now. Or maybe he was lying now, simply to distract Oliver at a crucial juncture.

“Maybe,” Five said.

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Contents

1. Cover
2. Title Page
3. Welcome
4. The Heist
5. Meet the Author
6. Also by Will McIntosh
7. A Preview of Defenders
8. About Orbit Short Fiction
9. Orbit Newsletter
10. Copyright

Navigation

1. Begin Reading

2. Table of Contents

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Will McIntosh

Excerpt from Defenders copyright © 2014 by Will McIntosh

All rights reserved. In accordance with the US Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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First ebook edition: September 2013

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ISBN 978-0-316-36894-0

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