Six Strings to Save the World

by Michael McSherry

  “Do it!” Alpha screams from across the flight deck.

  I look up in time to see that three Autotuner ships have linked themselves together and are hurtling downward, directly toward where Tori, Dorian, and I stand. They’ve built up too much speed, coming like a missile at the flight deck.

  “Move!” Lydia screams at us.

  Dorian and Tori jet sideways with a burst of Rez. I try to do the same but my Rez is hazy, unfocused, and I can’t move. I try to get to my feet, but every fiber of my body is screaming in protest.

  With a burst of speed, Lydia is suddenly here, laying her shoulder into me like a truck, sending me pinwheeling across the flight deck. The explosion behind me is instantaneous, and I turn to see that Lydia only almost made it out. Where the Autotuner ships struck the destroyer’s flight deck, there’s a small crater of metal slag. Lydia is flying through the air, trailing smoke, limp limbs fluttering in the wind behind her as she sails over the edge of the deck.

  “Go!” Dorian points, and Tori launches herself off the side of the destroyer, trailing Lydia down toward the ocean.

  More ports open on the flight deck, pouring dozens more Autotuners out around us. Dorian leaps among them, discharging Rez as he goes and dismembering the Autotuners with passing hands and scalpel-like precision. Alpha again comes at me, preparing to land a killing blow.

  Dorian meets her at the last moment, seizing her by the wrist. She howls in surprise as Dorian glows with furnace-hot Rez. The flesh of her hand boils away as I watch, revealing a bright metallic hand underneath. She brings her other hand to seize upon Dorian’s wrist, but the skin on that hand, too, boils away from the heat. The flowmetal skeleton sags slightly, dripping a few dots onto Dorian’s skin.

  “LET ME GO!” she screams at him, but the metal skeleton of her hands is welded tight to Dorian’s arm.

  Dorian holds his Resonator at his side, tapping out a rhythm on his bass one-handed.

  He turns to me, plants a boot on my shoulder, and kicks me across the flight-deck. I slide up to the lip of the destroyer, turning to look back at Dorian and Alpha. The Autotuners turn toward Dorian and Alpha, ignoring me entirely. They fire on Dorian with concentrated bursts of Rez, but the beams seem to evaporate against Dorian’s heat.

  “Get out of here, kid!” he yells at me.

  “Like hell!”

  Alpha is shrieking wildly now, more of her skin boiling away as Dorian’s glow continues to brighten. Her frame is mostly skeletal now, shimmering and sparking, flexing and warping. She slams her head forward into the side of Dorian’s out of desperation. He grimaces in pain but turns back, slamming his forehead back into her face.

  The destroyer’s hull beneath Dorian is melting, pooling into molten flowmetal. Dorian turns back to look at me.

  “Think I found a way inside!” he yells over as Alpha continues to scream, her voice modulating between human and machine static. The ground beneath him lurches, sagging downward.

  “Don’t!” I scream. “Don’t do it!”

  “Every song’s gotta end.” He smiles at me. “Take care of that guitar!” His smile looks right. Genuine. No sadness. No anger. Relieved.

  A hand seizes upon the back of my neck suddenly, yanking me off the lip of the deck. Tori has me by my shoulder, dragging me away. With her violin cradled close, she plucks a staccato note with one thumb and jets us away from the destroyer. In my periphery, a group of rebel ships darts away. The Carnegie races below us, tracing a course a few feet above the waves, Lydia laid out atop the sub. I try to claw my way free of Tori’s grip but her hand is like wrought iron, keeping me held close as she propels us farther and farther from the Synthesizer ship.

  The horizon flashes bright as the destroyer splits in two, a tiny sun erupting outward from its midsection. The ocean below the destroyer pitches outward, its surface marking the spread of a still soundless shockwave. When it reaches us the air hits me in the face with a roar of hurricane-force wind. Through my tears, I watch as the separate halves of the destroyer begin to lilt, their red-lensed turrets fading to black. The destroyer crashes down to the water below.

  Dorian’s last song was a show-stopper.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I flick between news streams, knowing I should be terrified of what I’m seeing. But instead, all I feel is… numb.

  Muted.

  Gargantuan destroyers have appeared all over the world, descending into the atmosphere above major urban centers. Initial estimates from obviously terrified reporters have the Synthesizer ships in the high hundreds, more descending every minute. But they’re not attacking. Instead, the Synthesizer warships are beaming worldwide messages to cell phones, computers, and televisions. More than once, the broadcasts are disrupted by a simple message, delivered in white text on a black background: “Resist and you will be punished.”

  Chaos.

  Riots.

  Evacuations.

  People aren’t handling the end of the world very well.

  I’m vaguely aware of Lydia approaching from Mixy’s dome.

  “Baahir is reaching out to some of Earth’s militaries, asking for help. Nobody’s responding.”

  “Nobody?” prompts Tori.

  “The Synthesizers might be locking out communications. That, or…” she trails off, shrugging.

  “Or what?” Mom bristles.

  “Or they know it’s hopeless,” I finish, hearing how strange my voice is, how flat it’s gone.

  “It’s not hopeless,” Lydia says, pointing out Mixy’s dome. The Carnegie is flying alongside a stream of rebel ships north-west across Africa. Baahir’s ship is visible up ahead, leading the formation. It’s a skeleton crew. The remainder of Baahir’s people are scrambling to mobilize and avoid the newly arrived Synthesizer fleet.

  “Do you think anyone will come?” Mom asks Lydia, her voice cracking.

  “The Composers are already inbound.” Lydia’s voice betrays a bit of despair. “But even with Overdrive…”

  “How long?” Mr. Patel asks.

  “We don’t know.” Lydia’s skin roils with black clouds. “We can’t wait for them, either way. We need to stop the Controller General from accessing the vault. It’s the only thing we can do. Because once they get what they came for, Earth is finished.”

  “The vault is subterranean,” Mixy says from his dome. “Advance scans show the Synthesizers are already concentrating several destroyers in the area for air support. They will know we are coming.”

  “This is all assuming that Dex hasn’t opened the vault already, right?” Tori asks.

  “They wouldn’t be concentrating on the vault area if they already succeeded.” Lydia thinks quietly for several moments. “We have to get Dex back. Not just because he’s the Key to the vault,” she says, catching my eye. “Because he’s part of Dorian’s… my crew.”

  The mention of Dorian’s name brings an uneasy silence over the deck. The moment lingers too long, like thick tar, and I can see how Lydia’s skin flows with dark ink-clouds.

  “Are we just not going to talk about it?” I ask.

  No answer from anybody.

  “He’s dead,” I say. “I just watched Dorian die. And we’re just off to—” my voice breaks and I try to push through it. “We’re just off to the next thing, and we’re not even going to have, I don’t know, a funeral, or—”

  I bury my face in my hands like I might push the tears down. A hand strokes the hair at my temple and Tori’s voice comes from my side, soothing and quiet. “It’s okay. I’m here with you.”

  “It’s just so…” I choke, not finding the word. “Anybody can just die any second, it doesn’t matter what I do, people just die, and Dex is out there, and if I don’t do something he’s going

  to—”

  Lydia steps forward, kneeling down and taking my face in her hands. She lays her forehead against mine. A new sadness, deeper than what I’m feeling now, washes over me like a wave, threatening to drown me. It’s her sadness, and she’s sharin
g it with me.

  “It’s not up to you,” she says. “You need to understand that. Any one of us will never be good enough alone to do what needs doing. Everybody plays their part, and once in a while you have to trust that it will all come together.”

  “We’re not ready!” I sob, no longer trying to hold back. “I’m not ready! I wasn’t ready for Dorian to just… Even though he wasn’t what I—”

  “No one is ever ready.” Lydia steps back, the drowning wave in my mind receding with her. “But whether I like it or not, I’ve got command of the Carnegie now, and I don’t have the luxury to properly mourn. We’ve got people depending on us. Earth’s people. And many, many more.”

  She makes to step back toward Mixy’s dome, but stops.

  “Dorian carried so much with him for so long… I think that he was relieved to give it all up for us. For me. For them.” She gestures around the deck to everyone listening. “For you.”

  * * * * *

  I spend some time with the Carnegie’s auto-med since Lydia’s busy. It’s not as bad this time, and I can already see a marked difference between my Krueger arm and the rest of my body. I’ve got one hand clasped firmly around the Gibson’s neck. I’m focusing on my breathing, trying not to think about anything, really, when a tap comes at the door of the medical bay.

  Mom comes in, looking a little gaunt, a little sick, and a lot worried. “How are you feeling?” she asks me.

  “Getting there,” I shrug.

  “Are you up for… whatever this is going to be?” Her voice is hesitant. Afraid.

  I don’t answer. Mom studies me for an uncomfortably long time, brows furrowed like she’s reading my mind.

  “I want you to turn and run away from all of this more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life,” she says at last.

  I raise my hand slightly to show her how badly I’m shaking. “That makes two of us.”

  “But you’re not going to.”

  “I’m not?”

  She smiles weakly. “No.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “It’s not in you to quit. Aldus was like that too.” She laughs suddenly, her face brightening. “Your grandmother told me not to marry him. Musicians are so unreliable! But not him. He was always there for me. Even now, when he’s… well, he’s still here for me.” She leans forward and examines the guitar-pick necklace strung around my neck.

  “I’m not up for this. There’s just no way I can—”

  “Caleb!” Mom hisses, flicking me on the nose. I flinch backward. “If Dorian had wanted, he could’ve taken your guitar away and hidden us on some deserted island. But he saw something in you.”

  “What was it? Why did that idiot dump all of this on me? Why did he—” I clear my throat. “Why did he get himself killed saving me? What did he see?”

  Mom takes the Gibson from my hands, holding it up toward the light, studying it like Dad used to do in the shop. A single spark of Rez dances across her fingers as she settles them down atop the strings, muting them.

  “You’re going to have to answer that yourself,” she shrugs, offering the Gibson back to me.

  I take the guitar back in my hands and grip it tightly.

  I know she’s right.

  * * * * *

  The Carnegie flies west, a growing number of rebel fighters trailing in its wake. There are at least three hundred of them now, emitting an aurora of multi-colored Rez behind their loose “V” formation. From time to time, more rebels join the formation, hurtling across open fields or forest canopies and falling in line.

  We buzz over Florida and the Gulf of Mexico in a blur of Rez-fueled speed. Mixy’s drumming pushes the Carnegie to speeds he assures us are only a fraction of the Carnegie’s extra-atmospheric capabilities, and a smaller fraction yet of the Carnegie’s Overdrive abilities.

  A little while later, Mixy mutters a five-minute warning over the comms. Tori, Lydia, and I each pick up a new communicator. I adjust my comm over my ear and give it a quick test, flashing a thumbs up to Lydia and Tori. Nobody’s worried about the fact that the Synthesizers might track our location now. We’re done flying under the radar. Literally.

  After that, I’ve got just enough time to stretch my fingers, crack my knuckles, say a quick goodbye to Mom, and sling my Gibson over my shoulder.

  Then we head topside.

  The sun beats down overhead as we’re met with a wave of oven-hot air. Dry heat sucks the moisture from my lips. Lydia stands ahead of us, her keytar held at her side. I take up a spot to her left, while Tori takes the right side. She flexes her legs, cutting at the wind with her violin bow. Gusts of air cut at us as the Carnegie slows its progress. The rebel ships on either side of the Carnegie even out, forming a line that stretches in a broad curve for a mile in either direction.

  Death Valley shimmers with waves of oppressive heat. But even through the haze, the looming figures of no less than six destroyers hang over the horizon, like giant black scars dividing scorched ground and sky.

  “We could try their flanks?” Baahir’s voice cuts in over the comms.

  “Pincer is no use here,” Lydia responds calmly. Her fingers rest gently on her instruments keys, steady and unmoving. “Give us a read on the complex.”

  “Sensors indicate a subterranean tunnel network belowground,” Mixy replies. “The destroyers’ flight patterns are aligned generally above the complex. No access point detectable at this range. We will need to fly in blind.”

  “Isn’t that your specialty?” Tori chides.

  “Do such jokes never tire you?” Mixy’s exasperated voice floats over the comms.

  “We’re going to have to engage first,” Baahir interrupts.

  “You two ready?” Lydia asks, turning to face Tori and me.

  I shrug.

  Tori tries to look tough by spitting, but the whipping wind atop the Carnegie throws her spittle down onto her shirt. She grins at me, shrugging as she wipes at her mouth with a sleeve.

  “Well that’s an encouraging level of commitment,” Lydia sighs, holding her Resonator tighter in her hands.

  The destroyers are syncing up their Rez now, the air filling with modulated, fast-paced drum sounds. The synth sounds kick layer after layer of dust up from the ground underneath the ships, making the destroyers look like they’re hovering over clouds. Autotuner fighters are pouring out the sides of the warship, red irises flashing to life as they race forward to meet us. I feel the beat in my chest. I can work with it.

  “Hey Mixy?” I ask, adjusting the knobs on my guitar. “How do you feel about me juicing the Carnegie?” I take several steps forward along the Carnegie’s midline until I’m standing ahead of the others, nearly on the tip of the sub. “Just make sure you don’t miss, will you?”

  I give one last look back at Tori. Then I turn to face the growing destroyers, every second bringing us closer to the Synthesizer warships. One deep breath. Eyes closed. Get outside your head. My fingers find the strings and fretboard, and a bit of the tension in my gut loosens.

  I start playing, left-hand fingers dancing a familiar pattern I’ve played a hundred times. AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” is a flurry of fast sixteenth notes bouncing back and forth between notes. Mixy hears it, matching me with a rattling high hat, propelling us forward with a boost of speed that peels at the skin on my cheeks. I open my eyes and squint against the wind, feeling the electricity pooling around my body, down through my legs and across the Carnegie’s hull.

  Once through the riff.

  Twice.

  My entire body is buzzing with the energy, bolts of Rez arcing off my body and popping in the air like small thunder.

  “Fire!” Lydia’s voice cuts through the air.

  Mixy launches a bolt from the Carnegie’s forward cannon. The Rez beam is as wide as a tree trunk and wrapped in a bending spider web of electricity. It lances forward with a flash. Up ahead, one of the destroyers attempts a course correction to bring it out of the bolt’s way, simultaneously
firing a bolt of Rez to intercept the Carnegie’s beam. Too slow. The destroyer’s intercepting fire misses the beam, and the behemoth warship takes the shot near its nose. An explosion rocks the ship, a blaze of electric energy snaking hundreds of feet in every direction from the point of impact.

  But the ship doesn’t go down.

  Instead, all of the destroyers’ cannons warm to a red glow, lenses turning upon us like a hundred angry eyes.

  “That got their attention!” Lydia laughs. She slams down on her keytar’s keys, matching my place in Thunderstruck as she launches herself ahead of the Carnegie. Even as fast as we’re going, she cracks forward ahead of us with a sonic boom, a trail of deep blue Rez tracing her path ahead of us.

  Two of the destroyers ahead of us meet our first shot with intersecting blasts directed at the Carnegie. Mixy cranks the ship sideways just as Tori and I jump, bolting up and away. The bolts of Rez cut ten feet below me, and as they pass, I can feel the rubber of my shoes melting.

  “Speed’s the only advantage we’ve got!” Lydia’s voice chimes in my ear. “Stay moving!”

  The rebel ships are revving up now, blasting forward on technicolor Rez, drafting in one another’s wake to slingshot forward. The rebels open up with a salvo of Rez weaponry as the destroyers’ weapons cut through the air. Cracking thunder fills the sky as Rez blasts collide mid-air, throwing off waves of color and heat.

  Autotuner fighters swim forward, dodging and weaving between the destroyers’ cannon fire with perfect precision. Up ahead, Lydia’s blue trail meets the nearest Autotuner. A wave of Rez erupts outward, crushing that fighter and three more as it sweeps from side to side. The blue trail darts from ship to ship, explosions following quickly as Lydia launches herself from attack to attack. The Autotuners are turning their turrets on Lydia, but she’s moving too fast to pin down.