Six Strings to Save the World

by Michael McSherry

  I put on as much speed as I can muster, and soon I’m staring down the eye of an Autotuner fighter. I channel my Rez and aim my guitar as I move forward, and right as the Autotuner releases a burst of red energy at me, I launch a bolt of energy in return. The electric surge boils its way through the Autotuner’s shot and touches the fighter. The Autotuner fades to black and plummets out of the sky as two rebel fighters engage the remaining Autotuners.

  Just as I turn my head I get a glimpse of two Rez bolts slicing through the air toward me. With a shrieking violin note, a disc of Rez intersects the incoming projectiles. The explosion is so close it sends me careening sideways, spinning through the air as I try to right myself.

  “Eyes forward!” Tori calls, racing ahead.

  The rebels are meeting the Autotuners head on now, the two waves flowing into one another. The chaos of it all is immediate. Autotuners and rebel ships unleash bolt after bolt of Rez, banking sharply as they track one another and enter frenzied dogfights. Two of the destroyers break their rank and begin to push forward ahead of the other ships, advancing toward us.

  “Patching comms,” Mixy announces.

  “Payload incoming,” Baahir’s voice

  “Payload?” I ask over the comms.

  “A little surprise we engineered,” Baahir responds. “Experimental kinetic weapons—iron rods—dropped from orbit. Too low-tech for the Synthesizers to expect it.”

  It happens in an instant. Something falls from the sky like a giant silver spear, hurtling so fast I can barely track the motion, even with my Resonator cranking my senses to ten. It looks like a giant rod of metal moving without any rocket trail behind it. But when it hits the top of one of the approaching destroyers, the effect is immediate. The destroyer trembles in the sky as the thunderous impact fills the air, drowning out the sounds of battle for a second.

  Then the destroyer starts to list sideways. The failing destroyer continues rotating in a slow descent, its cannons still firing even as the nose dips down toward the ground. It turns, giving a better picture of what the Thor ordinance did. The ship’s side looks like it was struck by a meteorite; the hull is caved in with fires pouring out of honeycombed enclosures. Large support beams cross over the shattered hull like bare ribs underneath the black shell.

  “Experimental my ass,” a rebel pilot’s voice pipes over the comms. “How long have you been waiting to use that, piano man?”

  “Long enough!” Baahir laughs.

  The destroyer’s red lenses flare with weakening beams of Rez. It breaks formation with the other Synthesizer ships, propelling itself forward toward us it begins to descend slightly. A few more Autotuners begin to hemorrhage out of the failing ship as it begins picking up momentum, barreling toward us.

  “It’s trying to break our charge!” Lydia’s voice cuts in. “Sweep in on the flanks.”

  The rebel ships respond to Lydia’s commands, individual dogfights breaking apart as the locust-swarm of fighters parts before the ruined destroyer. The only problem is, Lydia is still flying straight at the thing. I catch a glimpse of her blue Rez trail blazing forward, zig-zagging as she dodges beam after beam of the destroyer’s Rez.

  No time to think.

  Just do it.

  I launch myself forward as fast as I’ve ever gone before, picking the guitar strings in a frenzied tremolo, my Rez boiling behind me as the acceleration pulls at my skin. As I touch on the wake of Lydia’s Rez I accelerate even more. It feels like every organ in my body wants to jump down to my feet. I spare a moment to look behind me, finding Tori following the same Rez draft as we slingshot forward after Lydia.

  The destroyer is halfway submerged in the sandstorm now, looking like some sort of nightmarish shark, its cannons still firing forward toward the scattering rebel ships, three cannons attempting nothing other than grounding Lydia. But Lydia is too fast for them to trace accurately, and the beams the destroyer fires rocket uselessly in random directions as Lydia jogs from side to side, drawing nearer and nearer to the ship.

  “You’re going too close!” I yell over the comms.

  “It can’t shoot me if I’m on it!”

  Regret is a funny thing. Most of the time it’s on a slow fuse; a little time to contemplate and process, and then comes the regret. Not now. As I draft Lydia’s Rez wake toward a gigantic spaceship brimming with advanced alien weapons, the realization is immediate: I’ve made a terrible mistake.

  But hey, I suppose I’ve just got to lean into it.

  Tori and I are busy flying, trying not to die, when Lydia touches down on the ship’s topside, three hundred yards away from the nearest turret. The lens swings around, trying to focus on Lydia as she flies forward, toes sliding against the black surface. She covers the distance too fast for the cannon, plucking her keytar off at the last moment and winding up for a swing. With a sharp yell she brings her Resonator around, crushing it forward against the turret.

  I have to blink against the light as the cannon explodes, pieces of it flying skyward. Lydia’s already skimming forward when I come level with the destroyer’s hull, hurtling forward with Tori on my heels. Behind me, Tori slices downward with burst after burst of Rez, rending the destroyer’s weakening hull piece by piece. I’m too busy trying not to ram face-first into the destroyer to do any damage to the ship, but I’m pretty sure Lydia’s taking care of that.

  As we rush forward, a tsunami wave of blue Rez materializes overhead. The wave hangs there, blotting out the sun, putting us beneath a curtain of bright blue. I’d call it beautiful if it weren’t so terrifying.

  The wall of Rez starts to drop down toward us. I push forward even harder and Tori ceases her assault on the destroyer. Together, we close the distance on Lydia, coming to draft only a few feet behind her. Overhead, the blue curtain splits just slightly, permitting a sliver of a view above the falling wave.

  Lydia’s Rez hits down atop the destroyer on either side of us with a deafening roar. The ship’s hull groans with the impact, then caves. The entire ship drops abruptly, violently, falling down into the sandstorm ocean below us. Several seconds later, I hear the destroyer hit ground. For a moment, the sand is pushed back and away by the impact. Then the dust washes back over, obscuring my vision.

  A roar of approval breaks over the comms.

  In the crowd of voices, I hear Mom cheering.

  It helps.

  “That’s one!” Lydia yells. “Keep pressing!”

  The destroyer’s death dive leaves a gap of open air in its wake. Rebel fighters fill the void, pushing forward and launching several more volleys of Rez weaponry at the Synthesizers.

  “Second kinetic round incoming,” Baahir warns. “Brace.”

  A second hammer-blow sounds a moment later, the roar of the impact deafening, much closer this time as I fly through the cloud of sand. I break through to clear skies and the battle overhead just in time to catch a glimpse of a second destroyer breaking apart, torn by a through and through shot from Baahir’s experimental weapon. This destroyer goes down without any last-ditch efforts. Explosions begin midline where the ship was hit and continue down its center. It dives down into the cloud of sand, veering sideways and crashing to the earth below.

  “That’s the last shot!” one of the pilots yells. “They scrapped the satellite!”

  “Let’s get this done with,” Lydia says.

  Many of the rebels have won their dogfights by now. They break away from the diminished Autotuner crowd and veer toward the destroyers. The remaining ships are spreading apart somewhat, forming a wide half-circle with our approaching forces at their focus. The Carnegie loops back into my field of vision, racing forward. Its cannons blaze full force, focusing on one of the destroyers as the sub bobs and weaves between intersecting Rez bursts.

  “We ought to clear the cloud,” Lydia suggests over the comms. “We can’t find the complex this way.”

  “On it,” Mixy’s voice comes back. The Carnegie dives suddenly down into the sandstorm, disappearing from
my view.

  “We should take the flanks,” Baahir says. “Make them close their ranks. Swarm them.”

  “Do it,” Lydia answers.

  I spot Lydia and Tori a half-mile ahead of me, quickly approaching the remaining destroyers. They bank hard to the right, decelerating sharply as a band of eighty or so rebel ships catch up with them. That group makes their approach on the destroyers’ right, gunning down stray Autotuners as they attempt to dodge the nearing ships’ cannons. Twice, a lance of Rez catches a rebel ship, sending it down in wash of flames.

  The rebels close the distance, sweeping wide outside the Synthesizers’ line. On the opposite end, another grouping of rebel ships sweeps around the other side. I join in with a line of ships, blasting a defending Autotuner with a beam of lightning as I dodge return fire. The two streams of rebel ships are now moving in opposite directions, meeting in the middle on the other side of the destroyers and mingling.

  It’s absolute chaos. Machine beats meet a clamber of disjointed melodies as Rez missiles burst and pop in the air. The rebel ships are swarming the destroyers, firing into their titanic hulls from all directions. Red-lensed turrets try to track the swarming rebels to shoot them down, firing with increasing frequency as the ships close in closer to one another. More than once, I see rebels swooping between the destroyers, free to fire in any direction.

  “Lydia? Tori?” I ask. “Where are you?”

  “Up!” Tori yells in return.

  Near the top of one of the destroyers, the two of them are landing blow after blow on a deepening scar on the ship’s side. “How’s it coming, Mixy?” Lydia yells over the comms.

  “Count to ten,” comes the calm response.

  I count to ten in my head, lining up between two of the destroyers, looking down into the sandstorm below me. At an even ten, the cloud of sand and dust below us pulses with a sudden, bright red. An explosive force pushes the sand outward like an expanding bubble. I shield my eyes against the wall of air and sand, and when the worst is past, I look down. The Carnegie is sitting in the dirt, immobile, its cannons silent. And fifty yards away is the squarish entrance to the tunnel.

  “I overloaded the Carnegie,” Mixy’s voice comes floating over the comms. “She’s shot.”

  “Can we shoot the doors open?” Lydia asks.

  “No,” Mixy answers.

  “Bring Sola out!” Lydia calls. “Get everybody off the ship!”

  I follow Lydia and Tori in a straight dive to the ground and the tunnel entrance.

  “I think they’ve noticed us,” Mixy’s voice comes over the comms. Sure enough, one of the destroyers focuses a red canon lens down toward the ground, its iris warming to a hot glow.

  “I have the Synergist. Out of here now!” Mixy’s voice cuts into the comms, no longer calm or controlled. A few shapes spill out of the Carnegie, rushing away from the ship. A moment later, a spear of Rez drives into the ground where the Carnegie still sits. The roar is so loud my teeth rattle. The sand cloud rushes back in to fill the bubble of clear air, covering the sky and the battle overhead.

  “Devil machines destroyed my ship!” Mixy bellows, approaching us with Sola held in his arms. Mom and Mr. Patel are right there with him, running through the sand.

  Overhead, the red-eyed centers of four Autotuner fighters swim into view, searching through the cloud cover.

  Mixy, Mom, and Mr. Patel join us outside the tunnel entrance, Sola held like a sack of flour at Mixy’s side.

  “Open the door now,” Lydia orders Sola.

  A Rez bolt hits the ground twenty yards away. The Autotuners are taking potshots, apparently.

  “I can’t,” Sola answers.

  “Open it now!” Lydia answers as another bolt strikes the ground, nearer this time.

  “I literally cannot open the door, you water-balloon. I need control of my hands, and you implanted a spinal inhibitor within me.”

  Without hesitation, Mixy reaches one strong hand to the back of Sola’s neck, crushing the device there. Her body seizes violently in Mixy’s grip for a moment, but settles to calm equally quickly. Mixy sets her down and she stands on her own legs, stretching her arms.

  “Try anything and I will rip you to pieces,” Lydia says, training her Resonator on Sola.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Sola asks.

  Another explosion, this one dangerously close. The Autotuners above are tracking down through the sand clouds now, nearing with every second.

  “Please just open it,” I say, putting my hand on Sola’s shoulder.

  She looks at my hand like it’s some sort of slug, then turns to the doorway. She places two hands side-by-side on the metal plate, and a moment later a small seam opens, snaking down in a jigsaw tooth pattern. Machinery whirs as motors pull back the doorway, revealing the sterile white room beyond the metal.

  “You first,” Lydia insists, urging Sola forward.

  “We should hurry,” I say, pointing above us. The Autotuners are fully visible now, accelerating toward us through the sand. They launch two more bolts of Rez. Lydia swings her Resonator to the side, summoning a wall of blue Rez that crashes against the Rez bolts. Together, we spill into the structure, explosions rocking the other side of Lydia’s shield. Then the motors reactivate, closing the mammoth doors behind us.

  Lydia wastes no time. “We need to get moving.” She looks to Sola, then Mixy. “Think you can take her offline or something?”

  “I don’t even have my Resonator!” Sola protests, showing her hands and stepping away from Mixy.

  “Rest assured, Sola, it would give me no pleasure to deactivate you permanently. But I will if I must,” Mixy advises.

  “Stay ten feet in front of me,” Lydia orders.

  Sola moves to stand in front of us, now at the center of the square room. We move slowly forward, toward the circular doorway opposite us. Tori has her Resonator at the ready.

  We come to the tunnel entrance. It descends at a steep incline into the ground for as far as I can see. The only lighting comes from evenly spaced LEDs overhead, bathing the tunnel’s interior in harsh white light. We enter the tunnel together, beginning to run. Mom, Mr. Patel, and Mixy soon fall behind, unaided by the enhanced speed of a Resonator.

  “We’ll catch up!” Mom calls. “Just go!”

  Sola sets the pace, and even without a Resonator, she’s impossibly fast, arms and legs pumping with machine precision. We accelerate onward, lights flashing by in a blur as we speed farther and farther belowground. I’m struck by how far this tunnel goes and how deep the complex must be buried. On and on we go until, at last, far up ahead, I can see a break in the uniform lighting, and an end to the tunnel.

  “Do you hear that?” Tori asks, slowing somewhat.

  I train my ears as best as I can. Then I hear it: a woman singing. The voice is sweet, soft, and oddly disturbing given the war raging overhead. It’s a melody I’ve never heard before, lilting and sad. The words take shape:

  From dreams they woke to find;

  The nightmares of my sleep;

  Now taken to the stars;

  A new peace they shall keep.

  We emerge from the tunnel into a large dome of concrete lined with steel girders and dazzlingly bright lights. There’s a wide platform in the center of the room, five or six feet above the ground. The Prima Maestri vault floats at the center of it, suspended in the air by some unseen force. Its mirror polish flexes and bends like liquid mercury as the vault turns slowly in the air. Lines of gold characters float to its surface, glow bright, then slowly disappear.

  I move forward two more steps before Lydia’s hand seizes on my shoulder, stopping me from moving any farther. She points, and I see now that there’s a woman seated near the edge of the platform, her legs dangling barefoot over the edge. She’s holding a twelve-string guitar with a perfect black finish. Its sound is crisp and clean. The last chord of her song rings out slowly as her voice reverberates in the dome.

  My stomach drops.

>   I know that face.

  Alpha’s face.

  But it’s not Alpha. This woman has ghostly white skin matched by long, snowy hair that spools over her shoulders. She wears a simple, light-grey jumpsuit that makes the contrast between her skin and black guitar even stronger. And when she looks up at me, fixes her gaze upon me, I see a hint of something that Alpha never showed: sadness.

  I bring my six-string up, ready for a fight. But the woman raises a finger at me, calm and unaffected, like I’ve interrupted her in the middle of a sentence.

  Somebody’s moving behind the vault. I hear his footsteps before I see him, and when he comes shuffling from behind the mirror-cube, a knot loosens in my stomach and I let go of a breath I didn’t know I was holding. He’s dressed in a similar grey jumpsuit, more form-fitting than what he usually prefers. A side pocket holds his steno-pad, and he has that stupid pencil tucked behind his ear. Veins of gold branch across his visible skin, reaching out to his fingertips. He comes to a stop beside the woman and turns, watching us with gold-rimmed irises.

  Dex waves awkwardly to us. “Hi.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Dex!” I yell, slipping Lydia’s firm grip from my shoulder. “You’re… You’re… I thought you might be—”

  “Dead?” Dex finishes. He tugs his sleeve up slightly to show more of his gold-threaded hands. “No. New and improved, apparently.”

  “Are you okay?” Tori takes a few steps forward.

  He traces a finger over some of his gold veins. “It’s… strange. Not painful.”

  “You…” Lydia starts to speak, ignoring Dex entirely and fixing her gaze on the woman. I’m surprised to find Lydia’s skin clouding to an inky black. She opens her mouth again and speaks, her voice flat. “You’re from Aniente.”

  The woman smiles and nods. “You may call me Finale.”