Defenders by Will McIntosh Page B

head. “Earlier it asked what it gained by talking to us.”
    Wood raised one eyebrow. “Awfully cocky attitude.”
    “I know.”
    Wood studied Five a moment longer, then sighed and turned away. “I understand it told you we wanted to discuss surrender.”
    Oliver nodded. “Is it true?”
    Wood started to answer, stopped, began again. “It’s one option.” He rubbed his upper lip for a moment. “Put it this way: If you can get our friend to discuss whether they would accept our surrender, and under what terms, we would be interested to hear what it has to say.”
    Oliver nodded slowly, digesting this.
    “That’s not to say there’s nothing in the works. There may be.”
    “But you don’t know?”
    “If I knew for sure, so would they.” Wood jerked a thumb in Five’s direction. “Then we’d have nothing in the works.”

12
Lila Easterlin
July 17, 2029. Savannah, Georgia.
    As rooftops came into view below them, Lila had second thoughts about the plan. She watched her father, a bead of sweat dangling from his nose, his fingers squeezing the throttle. The plane had automatic stabilizers, but still, it was not exactly safe for someone who’d never flown one to just take off and go.
    The breeze kicked up and the plane wobbled, the stabilizers on the wings whirring, trying to compensate. They were above the tall pine trees, the highway visible on Lila’s right, a long strip shrinking in the distance.
    “You’re doing great!” Lila said, having to shout over the wind.
    Dad only nodded, his attention glued to the task. He kept going up, up; Lila had imagined clearing the trees and then staying as low as possible.
    “How high are you going?” she asked.
    “High enough that we’re out of range of Luyten weapons. There’s no hiding the fact we’re up here. If any Luyten on the ground can just point a heater or lightning rod and cook us, we won’t make it far.”
    Lila hadn’t thought of that. Being in the air—away from all the Luyten on the ground—made her feel safe from them, but every Luyten they passed would know they were there.
    “How high can we go?” she asked.
    “I don’t know. How high can you go and still breathe?”
    Lila thought about mountain climbers. At the top of tall peaks, climbers could barely breathe, but how high was that? She missed her feed; whenever teachers had wanted her to remember some esoteric detail like the heights of mountains, Lila had rolled her eyes and ignored them. “Like, I don’t know, maybe twelve or thirteen thousand feet?”
    Dad nodded. “I guess if we’re getting too high, we’ll know.”
    When the altimeter read thirteen thousand feet, they were still breathing fine, although Lila felt slightly out of breath, and inhaling deeply didn’t make the feeling go away. The cold was worse. Lila was wearing a thin short-sleeved tunic, and she was trembling. Their emergency packs, which included warm clothes, were back in their fried car.
    The ground below was a patchwork of black-and-white towns, brown fields, green forest.
    “How do we find Atlanta?” Lila asked. The ultralight had a built-in GPS system, but with satellites down it was useless.
    “I’m just heading due west.”
    Was Atlanta due west? It must be, more or less. Certainly they’d spot the downtown skyscrapers if they were anywhere close.
    Dad glanced at her. “I can’t believe you were able to assemble this. It would’ve taken me a week.”
    “You told me to find something productive to do.”
    “I did. And you did.”
    Lila studied the airspeed indicator. They were going just over sixty miles per hour, which meant maybe a two-hour trip. She turned to look over her shoulder at Savannah.
    Smoke was rising from a thousand places. Some of the larger buildings were visibly on fire, the flames licking the sky. A container ship was sinking on the river.
    “Oh, shit.”
    The words jolted Lila awake, set her heart pounding. She looked around and immediately spotted what had caused her