One.
The two of them circled slowly, the overhead light of the locked cargo-bay gleaming off the surfaces of their exo-skeletal armor. As they circled each other, they slowly reduced the tint to their visors. In a moment, I could see their eyes. They looked wary of each other, circling slowly, their arms held out in some kind of dance-like pose I didn't understand. A mating ritual, perhaps. The captain had said they'd go through something primitive, animalistic. I knew I shouldn't watch - but I couldn't help myself.
Slowly, he stepped forward to her, flicking his left fist out. She met it with her own, and their two limbs came together at the wrist, the back of his wrist to hers, with a loud CLACK as the armor met. They held still, staring at each other.
"They are watching," he said, his voice calm.
"They always watch. Especially the males," she replied, her voice equally calm, but carrying a slight note of disdain.
"Your honor," he said, bowing his head slowly but not taking his eyes from her.
"And yours," she replied, mirroring his gesture.
They returned to circling, their steps a slow, slow dance.
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Defender (n): Any of the genus Homo Sapiens Novus, a genetically engineered race of humans created in the early 30th century for the purposes of serving as ground-troops in the military structure of the old Earth Federation government. See also Genetic Engineering (Human), Novus Revolt.
- Encyclopaedia Galactica
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The first Defender I ever saw was the police officer who patrolled the beat in our neighborhood when I was twelve. We'd only recently moved to the big city, and Defenders were very rare out in the country. The Sheriff's Department had one - but one was all they really needed in Creek County, Kansas. Not much crime that would rate another. In New York, however, they apparently had a lot more, and that's where my parents moved to at twelve - Queens.
I don't remember what the officer's name was. We all just called him "Officer Friendly" - because he was. He always smiled at us as kids as he kept an eye on things, patrolling his beat. Even the adults just called him "Officer Friendly". Back then, I didn't know he was a Defender - I found that out in high school history class. At twelve, he was just a really nice cop. He was dropped off by a police van in the morning, and picked up by the same van at night, which dropped off his replacement. That's all I really knew about him at twelve. He was just a nice cop who patrolled our neighborhood.
He was tall - good God, they all were, I guess. A little over two meters, as I remember. Very broad, very muscular. Black hair and black eyes - like all of them, of course. His skin was pale, pale white, though. No color at all - it looked like it had been painted, really. He never burned in the sun, either. I always burned as a kid, and I wondered how he avoided it. Blonde-haired blue-eyed little boys burn easy in the summer sun, even in New York with all the smog in the air. In fact, it was that oddity that precipitated my first conversation with Officer Friendly.
"Hey, Officer Friendly - howcum you never get sunburn?" I asked one day, still smarting from my own reddened skin despite my mom slathering me down with sun-block.
He stopped in his constant patrolling, and looked down to me, smiling. "Hello, Johnny Summers. I'm sorry, I was listening to a report of a robbery a few kilometers from here on the radio," he said, tapping the little plug he wore in his left ear. "Could you repeat the question, please?"
"I said howcum you never get sunburned? You're lighter than me and you never burn. Why not?" I asked. It never occurred to me at age twelve to ask how he knew everyone's name in the neighborhood. He just did. He was Officer Friendly - the nice cop.
"My skin isn't made like yours, Johnny. Your skin is light colored because you lack melanin - apparently a good portion of your ancestors were from Northern Europe, where they needed to be paler. My skin is structured completely differently, because I have to do different things than you will when you grow up. It's light colored because the analog I have for melanin in my skin is actually a completely different chemical that's photo-reflective rather than photo-absorptive, making it more efficient," he replied with a smile. When he saw on my little face he was drawing a blank, he tried again. "You get darker when you get exposed to the sun. I get lighter. Look," he said, and pulled back his blue uniform-sleeve a bit. I looked - his hands looked like they'd been spray-painted white. Where the shirt covered, it was a pale pink, like on me beneath my shirt.
"That is neat!" I replied, grinning. "I wish I could do that."
"No, you don't, Johnny. Trust me - you're much better off as you are. You'll understand better when you grow up," Officer Friendly replied with a smile, and with a wave, he resumed his beat.
Of course, he was right. To have skin like his, I'd have had to be a Defender. And God knows nobody wanted to be one of them. The way he died showed me that.
I talked to him often after that. One time I even got lost. It wasn't hard. Twelve-year-old country kid in New York playing hide and seek with the neighborhood kids, got turned around - boom. Lost. I wandered around for what felt like forever, but probably wasn't more than an hour or so, crying. I looked, and way in the distance a couple blocks away, I saw a pale-skinned cop with black hair, looking around like he was looking for someone. I ran for him, hoping it was who I thought it was. It was - my mom had asked Officer Friendly to go find me, since I was late for dinner. So he did. I was crying and sniffling and hugging him and God I was about as relieved as a twelve-year-old can get, I guess. He just took my hand in his, and led me home, telling me everything would be alright. And it was.
I was seventeen when Officer Friendly died. Some gangers decided to knock over a store in our neighborhood. Four of them ran out of a beat up Chevy Dynamo while a fifth kept the engine running. I saw the whole thing from across the street.
They screamed for the money. "Gimme the money! Gimme the money!" They waved their guns, and even shot the owner, Mr. Longwood, in the leg just to show they were serious. Good God, I was scared - too scared to run, really. I just stared.
Officer Friendly came running up the street. God, he could run fast. I remember thinking if 'I could run like that, we wouldn't have lost the all-state track meet last month'. He burst through the door, and the gangers turned and shot him. That was the most terrifying part. Just bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang as they all opened up on him. Like fireworks. Then he was on them. I remember thinking it was like watching a cheap 'kung-fu-theater' flick, just played really, really fast. Before you knew it, they were on the ground. He spent a few moments pulling out some plastic ties - he slipped them around their wrists and ankles, and just pulled them tight. I didn't know it at the time, but it would take an elephant to snap those things. When he was done, he staggered back out of the store, and I finally got a look at his front as the thug in the Dynamo floored it and took off with a scream of burning rubber.
Blood. Good God, I'd never seen so much blood. It was like a horror film. I didn't know what to do. I ran up to him, but then just stood there, helpless. "Can someone call an ambulance?!" I yelled.
"It's alright, Johnny, I already did," Officer Friendly replied. Then he sank to his knees, and just sat there on his heels, the blood coating the front of his shirt from a dozen bullet wounds.
A crowd gathered by the time the robbers woke up and started struggling, and we could hear the sirens in the distance. "We've got to help him!" I yelled. The pool of blood at his knees was slowly spreading, and I didn't know whether to scream or vomit.
"It's alright, son. He's just a Defender. The police vet will help him." one of the men said, and went in to take care of Mr. Longwood.
The police came - humans, like the rest of us. They took a look at Officer Friendly, but didn't help him. They just walked past and started grabbing the robbers and dragging them out.
"But he's going to die, we have to help him!" I yelled.
"It's alright, kid, relax. It's just a Defender," one of the cops said, carrying one of the robbers in a fireman's carry over to his car.
I knelt by Officer Friendly, not caring that I got his blood on my pants. God, my mother was upset when she saw that later. A good pair of jeans, ruined. "Is there anything I can do?" I asked him.
One of the cops going by me thought I was talking to him. "Nah. Don't worry about it, kid."
"But he's my friend. I've known him since I was a kid."
"It's alright, Johnny. Run along home, now. Your parents are probably worried about you," Officer Friendly said, and gave me a weak smile. Then he slipped to his side, and lay there. After a little while, he stopped breathing, and his eyes closed. He was dead.
And all I could think was 'And I never even knew his real name.'
Of course, as a Defender, he really didn't have one. Just a number. I found out years later that the NYPD just used their badge-number. Maybe that's why he liked us all so much, even though in the end, I was the only one who cared when he was hurt and dying. Because we'd actually given him a real name.
I guess that's why I ended up going into medicine. The feelings of helplessness as I watched him die, and nobody else would do anything. By the time the ambulance got there, he was dead. Of course, Officer Friendly was just a Defender. Legally, he was just the property of the NYPD. Like a police-dog. Well, maybe not like a police-dog. I think a police-dog the cops would have stopped to take to a vet. But none of the adults really cared - to them, he was nothing. He was just a Defender. It was his job to protect the people of the neighborhood, like it was the job of a streetlamp to light up the night, or a door to keep out the cold. It's not like he was a human, or anything.
I often wondered if he would have lived had they given him a gun. Officer Friendly didn't have a gun. Defenders who worked as cops never had guns. They didn't really need them. In retrospect, though, I guess it wouldn't have saved him. It just would have meant that the robbers would have been dead. As it was, they went through standard neural repatterning therapy, and probably ended up happy and productive members of society instead of becoming dead meat dropped into the local recycling tanks. Maybe it was better he didn't have one, I guess. But I still wonder about it sometimes.
When I was in college, I was still interested in medicine. I went the usual route of pre-med, then med-school, but ran out of cash pretty fast. Mom and Dad weren't rich, and there wasn't a whole lot of jobs back in those days. So, I signed up for the Federation Navy's ROTC program. Tons of paperwork - Lord, the military lives on paperwork. Back in those days, they needed doctors for space-duty. Not a lot of doctors wanted to, though. It was very dangerous back then. We'd only recently discovered hyperspatial drives, and we were still exploring and colonizing, and at times the frontier of colonial space was a dangerous place. Not because of aliens, of course. God, no. We've explored the whole galaxy, now, and if there were anything out there smarter and more dangerous than a wolf, we'd have found it - even the feared Jabberwock of Faladin-6 can be taken down with two or three good needler bursts. So far, Lions, Tigers and Bears remained the toughest critters man has ever run across. Which, of course, is probably why they're extinct.
No, the danger was from the colonists, not aliens. The colonies were pretty wild and lawless, and maintaining order was part of the Navy's job. The Navy needed doctors to have aboard their scout ships, not only to treat the crews, but to treat injured colonists - mostly the latter. But, as it was dangerous and the pay was peanuts compared to what you could earn in private practice back on Earth, Mars or Luna, few physicians were interested. As for me, I decided to go for it. I kept thinking about Officer Friendly as I signed the papers. I wondered if he was smiling up in heaven - if they even go to heaven.
Since I was going to be serving aboard naval space vessels, I had to take courses in Defender-related veterinary medicine. Oh, they looked human, but they weren't, really. Their whole physiology had been re-built from the ground up. They had about four times the mitochondria in their muscle cells as humans did, for example. The skin, which had fascinated me as a child, was more like hide than human skin. They regenerated from small injuries like losing a finger or an eye - most of my training was to help them deal with bigger injuries they couldn't regenerate from. Faster, stronger, could get by on less food and water... They even constantly grew new teeth, replacing a full set every sixteen years or so. They were supermen, really. The government produced them. They reproduced like humans did, but the children grew up fast. Physical maturity was reached at age four. Newborns were turned over to the government, where government doctors used neural repatterning and RNA therapy to teach them virtually everything they needed to know - and to give them the right mental attitudes, I guess. None of my medical training indicated how long they would live. I always found that strange. There simply was no information on geriatric therapy. Either they didn't grow old, or they never lived long enough to grow old. I guessed the latter.
God, how arrogant we were in those days. We thought we had the perfect answer. War? Crime? Violence? Let the Defenders handle it. The perfect warriors, and they work for free - just feed and water them. Meanwhile, the rest of humanity was free to pursue other careers. Lots of people joined the military - but only the Defenders carried guns. Of course, they didn't join, and they couldn't leave. They were just property. Just weapons, to be ordered into battle when needed. What arrogance we humans had back then. Of course, we're not much better, today, really.
Well, then again, maybe we are. Maybe the Defenders ended up teaching us something. I hope so, anyway.
When I finally graduated from med-school and had finished space-training, I was assigned to the scout-ship EFSS Oneida. I guess that's really where the story begins. I just had to explain Officer Friendly, first. He deserves to be remembered, I think. And if it wasn't for him, I probably never would have gotten into medicine, and all the events that happened aboard the Oneida would never have happened. Maybe he is smiling down at me from heaven. I hope so.
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