Still…it seemed the giant wall and mounted defenses had caught the lion’s share of the incoming fire. The wall itself had collapsed in multiple places, strewing chunks of wall materialeverywhere. The pieces looked more like large foam blocks than anything solid.
Our point defense and antimissile chaff had worked as intended. They had thrown a lot of missiles at us, and very few had gotten through. Our defenses had mostly worked. This time. It seemed like a miracle.
My eyes caught the broken form of three different Cheetah mechs around the grounds. These were the ones that had attempted to drop into our base from above. All three of the mechs were in the process of getting systematically taken apart by honeybees. I watched as they swarmed over the fallen mechs, carefully extracting guns and unfired missiles. A black-painted scout unit stood court over the looting.
One of the Cheetah units wasn’t fully dead, and a constant stream of swears was emanating from the machine. “Droogies!” the voice shouted, followed by some insane-sounding high-pitched laughter. “I’m in their base! I’m in their base! Donate now, and I’ll stay until lights out!”
I turned away.
I spied Lulu, Rosita, Ariceli, the Serrano brothers, Miguel 1, and a few others standing over something. A medical honeybee stood by the group, but it wasn’t doing anything. Cindy the pig also sat nearby, snorting. Several chickens pecked around the pig as if nothing was wrong. As we approached, Lulu sat on the ground and put her face in her hands. She was sobbing. Rosita’s camera was out, bearing silent witness.
I didn’t want to look, but I had to.
When Lulu sat back, she revealed Mrs.Gonzales, also sobbing, draped over the form of Mr.Gonzales. It took me a second to recognize the man because his ever-present giant cowboy hat was no longer there upon his head.
But it was him.
“No, Beto, no,” Mrs.Gonzales was saying over and over. “What am I going to do now? What am I going to do?”
Mr.Gonzales lay on the ground, eyes open in death, his leg bent backward. It looked as if he’d caught an errant pulse, likely one that had come in from the fallen-in section of the wall.
“No,” I said, stopping. The sight of him there was like a kick to my stomach. “No,” I repeated. I pulled my helmet off and dropped it to the ground.
“Fuck,” Sam said at the same time, also removing his helmet.
I rushed forward, and I fell to my knees alongside Lulu. She wrapped her arms around my waist.
“What was he doing out here?” I demanded. “He was supposed to be in with the fabricators! He promised he wouldn’t go outside!”
We’d built what was basically a blast bunker around the fabricator and recycler units inside the barn. Mr.Gonzales had insisted on being outside to help with the defense. His hands were too shaky to hold a pulse rifle, so we’d asked him to “defend” the precious fabricators. He along with a few other men had agreed to stay in the bunker during the attack. They had a mounted Conquistador gun in there with them along with a few grenades, but that was it. They weren’t supposed to leave the bunker no matter what.
“He was trying to get Cindy back in the barn,” Lulu said between sobs. “She got scared by the explosions and ran outside, and he went after her. She was bothering the mortar teams. It’s my fault. I’m the one who brought Cindy to the base. Roger told me not to, but I did it anyway, and now Mr.Gonzales is dead because of it. It’s my fault.”
Rosita wrapped her arms around my sister from the other side. “No,” she said, her voice surprisingly vehement. She grabbed Lulu’s chin and turned her face. “No, it’stheirfault.” She jabbed a finger at one of the downed mechs. The closest Cheetah was still talking, loudly exclaiming something, but I couldn’t hear it from my position.
There was a distant explosion.
Roger crackled in my ear. “The remaining Heavy units have been disabled. We lost twenty-three drones and two scouts, and we had seventeen human casualties. In addition, twenty-nine drones requirecrucial repairs, though these repairs should be completed before the next assault. Overall, a good result.”
“Go fuck yourself, Roger,” Lulu said between sobs. “Go fuck yourself to hell. A good result?”
Harriet and a few others emerged from the bunkers. Harriet rushed forward to Sam and wrapped herself around him. Mrs.Serrano rushed to Axel, who sat on the ground, his ankle getting wrapped by a medical drone. She cried.
“What am I going to do now?” Mrs.Gonzales repeated.
I felt it there in my chest: a strange breathlessness, a sense that I was unraveling.Goddamnit,I thought.Goddamnit.
I kissed Lulu on the head. “Rosita is right. Don’t think for one second this is your fault.”
My sister looked up at me, her red-rimmed eyes huge.
“I don’t want to move to Earth anymore,” she said. “I want them dead. I want all of them dead.”
I nodded.
Several of the other older folks emerged from the shelters, and they started calling names—names of people who wouldn’t be able to answer.
“I do, too,” I said.
