War Girls

by Tochi Onyebuchi

  Ify joins her, and they paw and scrape at the ground. Suddenly, it gives way, and dirt and brush fall into what looks like a small underground tunnel.

  “Get in,” Onyii says, pushing Ify so hard she nearly trips. Before Ify even makes it all the way into the cave, Onyii is moving brush and broken boards and slabs of metal. Sparks fly from her right arm. Some of her circuitry must have been fried in the blast.

  “No, wait,” Ify says.

  “Stop,” Onyii shoots back in the kind of voice she hasn’t heard herself use in a long time. She grabs a chunk of sheet metal and, gritting her teeth, rips a piece of it off, then twists it into a sharp-ended pike. She tosses it down after Ify. “If anything comes—anything—swing as hard as you can, and don’t stop until its blood covers you.”

  Before Ify can say anything, Onyii covers the rest of the tunnel’s opening by dragging the remaining discarded steel over the space, then covering it with brush until she’s satisfied that anyone running past won’t give it a second look.

  Then she’s off. More thunder overhead, and the rapid-fire booms of mortar rounds landing in and around the camp. Columns of smoke sway in the air. The attack seems to be coming from everywhere. Onyii runs past the school before getting to the armory, where there are still plenty of weapons. She drapes a bandolier of rifle rounds over her shoulder and grabs a sack and stuffs it with banana clips taped together by twos. All around her, War Girls grab weapons and take up positions. Some nurse wounds. One leans against a wall with her bandaged leg out in front of her. No time to get to her. Not while they’re still under attack. Onyii darts into the forest. Before long, she hears footfalls near her, and she drops into a crouch, swinging her rifle in an arc, stopping only when she sees it’s Chinelo and a few of the older girls. Onyii doesn’t say anything, just nods, and they head in a line deeper into the forest until Chinelo raises a fist, signaling for them to stop in front of a tree.

  One of the girls threads a wire out of the socket at the back of her neck, smashes a metal fist into a tree, revealing a control panel, and plugs in.

  The ground opens up beneath them, groaning.

  Below them are cockpits. Cockpits attached to weapons Onyii hasn’t used in far too long. Cockpits attached to a life she thought she’d left behind. When was the last time Onyii sat inside an ibu mech?

  Onyii glances down the line. Amaka. Chigozie. Kesandu. Obioma. Chinelo. Then Onyii nods, and they all hop into the cockpits that have opened up beneath them.

  Screens glow blue all around Onyii. When the familiar murmur of her console thrumming to life fills the air, it’s like she’s being held by her dearest friend. Familiar smells and sounds rush back into her brain and muscles. The control board, the gearshifts, the pedals, the triggers. Her cockpit. Hers.

  She slides her rifle and bandolier over her shoulder, drops them by her feet, and inputs the commands that get the mech to make its first movements.

  Thick fiber-optic wires hiss loose, and the mechs disconnect from their underground ports. A platform raises them through the earth so that Onyii’s view is first of dirt and then of thickets of elephant grass, then of the tops of the forest’s trees. Tree trunks split. The air howls around them. Then there’s a loud thunk as the platform settles into place.

  They are a row of fierce machines, with shoulder cannons and arms outfitted with Gatling guns. Some of them are already holding massive spears or swords or staffs.

  Onyii activates her comms and sees the faces of the other girls in a column of holos on the screen to her right.

  “Amaka, ready,” says Amaka.

  “Chigozie, online,” says Chigozie.

  “Obioma, online.”

  “Kesandu, online. Let’s do this.”

  “Chinelo, systems go.”

  Onyii settles into her seat. Tenses her shoulders. “Onyii, online.” She grips the gearshift. “Activate thrusters.”

  She shoots into the air so fast, she’s slammed back into her chair. Her skin flattens against her face, against her body. Her bones rattle. Her teeth smash against each other. Branches thwack her windshield. Then there’s nothing but the sky above. In the moment, all sound vanishes, and the inky blanket over them shines with diamonds threaded through it.

  Her sound systems activate, and all she can hear is boom boom boom. Her mech shudders with each explosion.

  The others fly behind her, then settle in the sky.

  “Amaka.” Onyii welcomes the hardness in her voice. “Take Kesandu and Obioma to secure the Obelisk. If we can’t access our minerals, we’ll lose all power. Chigozie, safeguard the school. Chinelo.”

  Static, then Chinelo’s voice loud and clear. “Let’s slice up some Green-and-Whites.”

  Onyii lets herself smile as their formation breaks apart and they head to their assignments. Just as Chigozie speeds off, an aerial mech, night-black with a green-and-white flag painted on it, speeds past.

  “Chigozie!” Chinelo shouts.

  But the Nigerian mech has already fired several rounds from its arm cannon into Chigozie’s back. Chigozie’s mech spirals through the air. Onyii hurls herself at the enemy mech. It gains on Chigozie, darting away from Onyii. It’s too fast. Onyii can’t catch it. But she speeds straight for where Chigozie will fall and cuts through the air, so fast everything around her blurs.

  She twists around so that she’s facing up. Right when Chigozie’s mech sails over her, Onyii fires her shoulder cannons. Missiles twirl just past Chigozie and crash straight into the enemy mech’s core and cockpit. The explosion rattles Onyii. Her comms line buzzes.

  “Nice shot.” It’s Chigozie.

  Onyii toggles up her rearview and sees Chigozie’s damaged mech arc upward, trailing smoke, but operational.

  “I’m fine,” Chigozie says. “I can handle the school.” Chigozie’s mech pauses in the air, then its thrusters fire, speeding her toward the school building.

  “Onyii!” Chinelo calls. “I’m getting hungry-oh!”

  Onyii detatches a bladed titanium staff from her back and grips it in one hand. Her engines warm around her. Then her mech cuts like an arrow through the sky, and the feeling returns. This is it. This is what she has been waiting for. The katakata. The chaos.

  She catches one Green-and-White from behind, slicing clean through its core and racing off before it even has a chance to explode. Still racing forward, she spins and cuts through another enemy mech, then hops higher as missiles pass under her.

  Onyii looks down at the camp below her. Crabtanks stomp through it. Their turret guns fire into every building they can find. Onyii charges downward, staff ready, and slices the top off of the first crabtank, then bounces into the air just as Chinelo’s missiles hit another. She flips to reorient herself, then charges into a formation of four enemy mechs. They break apart when she gets close.

  She drives her spear through the mech closest to her. A second swings a massive hammer at her. She ducks. It hits its comrade, who spins to the earth. Onyii pulls her spear out of the first and guts the mech with the hammer. She pulls it close to use as a shield to take the Gatling gun fire the last of the Green-and-Whites shoots at her. The enemy mech on her spear shudders and writhes with each volley. Onyii charges forward and rams her new shield into the last mech, increasing speed, going faster and faster until she lets go of the spear, cuts off her back thrusters, and gets her front boosters to stop her in midflight. From her shoulder cannons, she lets loose another volley of missiles that turn two enemy mechs into a giant ball of fire.

  “Help!” Amaka’s voice bursts through Onyii’s screen. “I got one on my back. I can’t shake it.”

  Onyii sees them high above. Amaka’s mech with its Gatling gun arms hanging at its sides spirals through the sky. A Green-and-White follows Amaka’s every move. Onyii flies higher to meet them. They circle, blasting right past Onyii. She gives chase. Rising into the clouds, then diving
toward the camp. Spinning and twirling to avoid the missile detonations. Onyii tries to get the enemy mech between her and Amaka in her sights, but it’s too fast. Just when the reticle centers on it, the mech shifts or dips or finds cover. Then Onyii sees where Amaka is heading.

  “No, Amaka! Don’t go into the forest!”

  The trees are bunched too close together. Amaka would get caught in the branches. She’d be a fish flopping on dry land.

  Onyii pushes her thrusters to go faster and hears something come loose inside her mech. It’s starting to fall apart. But she has to get closer. Her cockpit rattles and rattles, but she’s able to detach another spear from her back. She brings it forward. And aims.

  The enemy mech is getting farther and farther away as both it and Amaka gun it to the trees. Onyii wills her mech to stop shaking. Everything goes quiet. All that exists is what’s on her screen. Her target.

  She hoists the spear. Ready.

  The target reticle goes red.

  “Amaka! Dive!”

  Onyii hurls her spear as hard as she can.

  It moves so fast, it whistles through the air.

  They’re all heading for the treeline, but at the last moment, Amaka drops out of the sky. The spear flies right into the core processing unit of the enemy mech, sending it crashing straight into the trees.

  Chinelo’s mech appears next to Onyii’s. Finally, a moment to catch their breath. Onyii’s body feels like electric currents are running through it. Fire in her veins. Her mind is clearer than it’s been in years. The world comes to her in sharper colors. She can practically smell it all through her cockpit.

  “How did they find us?” Chinelo asks through her comms.

  Onyii hasn’t had time to ask herself that question. Too caught up in the thrill of battle. But now that she thinks about it, very little makes sense. The attack didn’t begin until the suicide bomber detonated herself. The crabtanks and the mechs appeared almost right after. They must have been close. Onyii remembers the supplies run she and Chinelo had gone on earlier that day. Were they being watched by Green-and-Whites the whole time? But they had been using an isolated wireless connection and had masked it so that it seemed like no one was here. This wasn’t a major mineral deposit. There was no reason for enemy forces to have stumbled onto this place. Their home.

  Below them, fire takes almost everything.

  Girls, suited and armed with their rifles, make ad hoc formations, firing at the crabtanks that stalk toward them. Aerial mechs duel the camp’s pilots in the sky above. Others light up the ground surrounding the camp with the bombs they drop. There are too many of them.

  Above them, the drone of an aircraft carrier.

  Onyii and Chinelo look skyward. The aircraft is so big it blocks the moon. Its back door opens, and out spill row after row after row of enemy mechs. They darken the sky.

  “There are too many of them,” Chinelo says, breathless.

  Onyii trembles in her cockpit. They’re going to destroy her home. They’re going to take away the only place where she has ever known peace.

  They’re going to win.

  “Onyii, we have to evacuate the camp. They’re going to take it.”

  Onyii grits her teeth and bows her head. Her gearshift and joystick tremble in her hands. When she finally looks up, her cheeks are wet with tears. “They’re going to have to kill me first.”

  As she launches herself at the phalanx of enemy mechs, she lets out an animal cry that fills her cockpit. Her mech’s arms unfold to reveal their Gatling guns, and she fires and fires and fires.

  Until explosions are all she sees.

  CHAPTER

  6

  The first boom sends dirt and twigs falling onto Ify’s head. She coughs and barely has enough time to clear her eyes before another peal of thunder shakes the hole so much it might fall in on her. Through the walls and the ground above her, she hears screaming. People—grown-ups or kids her age—shouting commands. Others crying out in pain or fear or both. It sounds like war. She has her head in her hands and her eyes closed, and as much as she tries to fight it, she’s thrust back into that memory. That vision of her as an even younger child in the darkness of her home, holding that dying dog in her lap as screaming and shouting and gunfire surround her.

  “No, no, no,” she whispers. Her mind jumps to the future waiting for her if she’s kidnapped. She has heard stories. Stories about how the Fulani in the North captured girls just like her, how they raided schools and how they burned those buildings to the ground and forced the girls into long-back maglev trucks to be married to the boys they had turned into killers. Stories about what those boys would be made to do to her, what some of them would do on their own. A life in a mud hut where she will be turned into nothing but a machine for making their children. The thought paralyzes her. It drowns out all the noise from above, turns her world into silence.

  Ify isn’t sure how much time has passed when she hears scratching at the entrance. Something is scraping against the metal and debris covering the entrance to the tunnel. She scrambles backward and paws through the dirt for something, anything, to hit whatever comes through. Once it pokes its hand or foot or head in, she’ll get one good shot. Her hand closes around the bladed staff Onyii gave her. Her fingers can barely wrap all the way around it, but she gets into a crouch and hoists it behind her.

  The scratching turns to banging.

  Boom, boom, boom.

  Dents bloom in the metal.

  Boom. Boom.

  It comes loose. BOOM.

  The metal door flies inward with a shower of dirt and brush and elephant grass. First the paws. Metal tearing at dirt and stone as the beast scrambles for purchase. Then its head comes through. It looks like a horse’s head, but it’s attached to the frame of a sleek tiger or leopard. Wires and cables run like veins through it. Its core glows green. Ify can’t stop gawking. When it finally lands, it fills the whole space. It stands on four legs and lowers its head. Red light washes over Ify. She can’t move. She wants to move. Needs to move. Her fingers shake around the staff. Her arms burn with the effort of holding it up. The beast backs up, arches it back, then gallops toward her. It’ll reach her in two strides.

  The smell of burning metal fills the air. She screams, drops the staff. It leaps, but sails over her as she crawls for the opening. The gunfire is clearer now. She recognizes the voices screaming. The others are out there.

  The gears and pistons in the beast hiss. Ify dropped her weapon. She has nothing.

  The beast struggles to stand upright in the tight enclosure, banging its head against the tunnel roof and stumbling sideways as it tries to right itself. It’s stuck.

  Ify lets herself breathe a half-nervous laugh, then turns to climb out of the tunnel. She stops when she hears the animal make a whining noise. Its legs retract. It frees itself, then springs forward, metal fangs glistening and ready to rip her chest open. She screams, and a blue light flashes over the beast. Time slows. Ify can see its insides, how every wire connects to every gear and every processing unit. How its drives work, how its optic nerves braid each other. Where its command functions are based.

  It’s only an instant, then the thing crashes into her, knocking the wind out of her. Then, all at once, it’s still. Its green core fades. Ify struggles against the thing’s bulk. Her legs swing and push at the ground below her. She grits her teeth. It’s too heavy. But it’s dead. Or off, at least. It won’t eat her.

  How?

  Ify’s mind races. One second, the thing was getting ready to rip her heart out, then it was in the air, and now it’s turned off, though stuck on top of her. She tries to wriggle free, but it doesn’t budge.

  The Accent.

  Maybe if she can turn the animal back on . . . She doesn’t finish the thought. The idea of this thing alive again and glowering at her with those red eyes nearly stops her heart. W
hat if she can’t control it? What if the tech is too different? She’s only ridden other connections.

  Then she remembers the girls who waited for her outside of class to make fun of her. To torment her and throw dirt and stones at her. She remembers what she wanted to do to them. It all comes back to her like a gust of wind in a storm, and she gets that feeling she always gets before she’s about to fight. The rush of blood to the head. The warming in her chest. The way her fists clench. And before she knows what she’s doing, she’s peering at the beast’s metal organs and CPUs.

  Her Accent is on. The wireless network is a tangle of noise and activity. She tries to ride waves of connection, but they thin down to tightropes. So many devices wink out of existence around her like dying stars that explode before vanishing. She runs along the network’s lines, jumping and sliding from node to node until she finds what she’s looking for.

  Gears whirr against her chest. The beast wakes up and looks around the small cave for a few moments before pushing off of Ify. Ify coughs and holds her ribs. Luckily, nothing seems broken. Still, it hurts to breathe.

  The beast walks backward. Ify lowers herself into a crouch. An explosion outside tosses her to the ground. When she looks up, the beast stands utterly still. She shakes the dirt off of her face before getting back into her crouch. “Okay,” she says to herself, quietly. “Okay. Let’s try this.” She takes one small step toward it, her hand out as though to pet its snout. “Okay, okay, okay. Onyii will surely think me mad for this. But if I can do this . . .” She waits for the thing to lash out and rip her hand off, but it doesn’t move an inch.

  She scoots forward again. “Okay. Now, sit!”