Infinity Wars

by Jonathan Strahan

  Innocent or guilty, the trial was on Earth, not here at the station. Ekundayo brushed her fingers against Jaxon’s cheek. He hadn’t shaved, and the stubble was rough against her fingertips. “I hate goodbyes, and I’m leaving soon.”

  Jaxon laughed. “I’m going with you. Neva, too. We’ve got orders to escort my fire kittens back to Earth. Sturgeon thinks that if I go through the jump point with their collars and then call them, they’ll come.”

  She didn’t have to go alone. Ekundayo had an overwhelming urge to sing her relief to the stars, but she couldn’t broadcast without the Patchwork. She was human, herself and nothing more. She wondered if there was some way to create a Faceless-human hybrid, a being that could bridge the gap between the Faceless and humankind and negotiate a peace. It had worked before, with the Pisceans, and—except for those damned wings—having a few extra parts hadn’t been nearly as bad as she’d feared. Maybe she should have taken Sturgeon up on the offer of a Leonid leg after all. She smiled at Jaxon. “Sorry I don’t smell good.”

  “That will also be different,” Jaxon put his hand over hers, “but not necessarily tragic.”

  DEAR SARAH

  Nancy Kress

  IN SOME FAMILIES, it coulda been just a argument. Or maybe a shunning. Not my family—they done murder for less. I got two second cousins doing time in Riverbend. Blood feuds.

  So I told them by Skype.

  Call me a coward. You don’t know Daddy, or Seth. Anyways, it warn’t like I wanted to do it. I just didn’t see no other way out of Brightwater and the life waiting for me there. And Daddy always said to use whatever you got. I was always the best shot anywhere around Brightwater. Shooting good is what I got.

  And like I said, I couldn’t see no other choice.

  “MARYJO! WHERE THE hell you been?”

  “I left a note, Daddy.”

  “All it says is you be gone for a few days. Where are you?”

  I took in a real deep breath. Just say it, Jo. His face filled the screen in the room the recruiter let me have to myself to make this call. She didn’t even seem worried I might steal something. Then Daddy stepped back and I saw our living room behind him, with its sprung tatty couch and magazine pictures on the walls. We piggyback on the Cranstons’ internet, which works most days.

  “Daddy… you know there’s nothing for me in Brightwater now.”

  He didn’t answer. Waiting. Mama moved into the screen behind him, then Seth and Sarah.

  I said, “Nothing for any of us. I know we’ve always been there, but now things are different.”

  I didn’t have to say what I meant. Daddy’s eyes got that look he gets when anybody mentions the aliens. Eight years now since the oil rigs closed, and the gas drilling, and most important to us, the coal mines. Everybody I know is out of work since the Likkies gave us the Q-energy. Only they didn’t really give it to us, they gave it to the rich guys in Washington and San Francisco and Seattle and Oklahoma City, who just got a whole lot richer selling it back to the country. “A trade partnership” they called it, but somehow people like us got left out of all the trading. We always do.

  I stumbled on. “I want more, Daddy. You always said to use whatever you—”

  “What did you do?” he said, and his voice was quiet thunder.

  “I enlisted.”

  Sarah cried out. She’s only eleven, she don’t understand. Seth, who’s a pretty good stump preacher, pointed his finger at me and started in. “‘Mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted, who did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his hand against me!’”

  Psalm four-something.

  Mama said, “Did you sign anything? Come back and we’ll hide you!”

  Jacob—and where did he come from? He shoulda been out digging bootleg coal for the stove—yelled, “Brightwater is good enough for the rest of us! We been here two hundred years!”

  Mama said, all desperate, “MaryJo, pride goeth before a fall!”

  Sarah: “Come home!”

  Seth: “‘And the many will fall away and betray one another!’”

  Jacob: “You always thought you were better than us!”

  Mama: “Oh dear sweet Jesus, help this prodigal girl to see the light and—”

  Then Daddy cut it all short with that voice of his. “You’re a traitor. To us and to your country.”

  I cried, “I joined the United States Army! You fought in Afghanistan and Grandpa in—”

  “Traitor. And not my daughter. I don’t never want to see your face again.”

  A wail from Mama, and then the screen went black and dead, dead, dead.

  The recruiter came back in. She was in a fancy uniform but her face was kind. “Is everything all right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I warn’t about to talk on this with her. Anyways, she knew the situation. The whole fucking country knew the situation. If you have money, you’re glad the Likkies are here, changing up the economy and saving the environment. If you don’t have money, if you’re just working people, your job disappeared to the Likkies’ Q-energy and their factory ’bots and all the rest of it. So you starve. Or you join one of the terrorist groups trying to bring the Likkies down. Or, like me, you do what poor kids have always done, including Daddy and Grandpa—you join the army for a spell.

  Only this time, the army was on the wrong side. The military was fighting our home-raised anti-Likkie terrorists in American cities, even on the moon base and in space. I was going to be defending my family’s enemy.

  I went outside and got on the bus to go to basic training.

  BASIC WARN’T TOO bad. I was at Fort Benning for OSUP, one stop unit training. I’m tough and I don’t need much sleep and after the first few days, nobody messed with me. The drill sergeants mostly picked on somebody else, and my battle buddy was okay, and silent. I had the highest rifle qualification score and so I got picked to fire the live round at AT4 training. The Claymore blew up with more noise and debris than anybody expected, but all I could think of was this: Daddy taught me to shoot, he should be proud of me. Only, of course, he warn’t.

  I didn’t see no aliens at Fort Benning.

  Once somebody suggested sniper school, and I was kinda interested until I found out it involved a lot of math. No way.

  I had three days after OSUT before I had to report to my unit at Fort Drum. I checked into a motel and played video games. The last day, I called home—at least the phone warn’t cut off—and by a miracle, Sarah answered instead of anybody else.

  “Hey, Squirt.”

  “MaryJo?”

  “Yeah. How you doing?”

  “How are you? Where are you? Are you coming home now?”

  “No. I’m going to my unit, in New York. Sarah—”

  “In New York City?”

  I heard the dazzle in her voice, and all at once my throat closed up. It was me who taught Sarah to shoot and about her period and all sorts of shit. I got out, “No, upcountry New York. Listen, you doing okay?” And then what I really wanted to ask: “They forgive me yet?”

  Silence. Then a little whisper, “No. Oh, Jo, quit that army and them Likkies and come home! I miss you!”

  “I can’t, Squirt. But I’ll send—”

  “Gotta go! Seth just come home. Bye!”

  A sharp click on the line.

  I spent my last night drunk.

  The next day I got on my first plane ride and reported to Fort Drum. And right there was my first alien.

  “DOES ANYBODY HAVE any questions?”

  Nobody did. The officer—a lieutenant colonel, the highest rank I ever expected to see talking right at us—stood in front of a hundred sixty FNGs (‘fucking new guys’) talking about Likkies. Only of course he called them by their right name, Leckinites. I don’t know where the name come from or what it means; I mighta slept through that part. But I knew nearly everything else, because for a solid week we been learning about the aliens: their home planet and their biology and their culture and, a lot, how important their help was to fixin
g Earth’s problems with energy and environment and a bunch of other stuff. We seen pictures and movies and charts, and at night we used our personal hour to argue about them. Near as I could tell, about half the base thought the Likkies were great for humans. The other half was like me, knowing just how bad the aliens made it for folks on the bottom.

  And now we were going to meet one for the first time.

  “Are you sure you have no questions?” Colonel Jamison said, sounding like we shoulda had some. But in the army, it’s best to keep your mouth shut. “No? Then without further delay, let me introduce Mr. Granson. Tensh-hut!”

  We all leapt to attention and the Likkie walked into the room. If its name was ‘Mr. Granson,’ then mine was Dolly Parton. It was tall, like in the movies we seen, and had human-type arms and legs and head (‘This optimum symmetrical design is unsurprisingly replicated in various Terran mammalian species as well’ one of our hand-outs read, whatever the fuck that means.) The Likkie had two eyes and a wide mouth with no lips, no hair or nose. It wore a loose white robe like pictures I seen of Arab sheiks, and there mighta had anything underneath. Its arms ended in seven tentacles each, its skin was sorta light purplish, and it wore a clear helmet like a fishbowl ’cause it can’t breathe our air. No oxygen tank and hose to lug around like old Grandpa Addams had when the lung cancer was getting him. The helmet someways turned our air into theirs. They’re smart bastards, I’ll give them that.

  “Hello,” it said. “I am privileged to meet with you today.”

  Real good English and not too much accent—I heard a lot worse at Fort Benning.

  “My wish is to offer thanks for the help of the US Army, including all of you, in protecting the partnership that we are here to forge between your people and mine. A partnership that will benefit us all.”

  The guy next to me, Lopez, shifted in his seat. His family used to work at a factory that now uses Likkie ’bots instead. But Morales kept his face empty.

  The Likkie went on like that, in a speech somebody human musta wrote for him because it didn’t have no mistakes. At least the speechwriters still got jobs.

  Afterward, there was a lot of bitching in the barracks about the speech, followed by a lot of arguing. I didn’t say nothing. But after lights out, the soldier in the next bunk, Drucker, whispered to me, “You don’t like the Likkies either, do you, Addams?”

  I didn’t answer her. It was after lights-out. But for a long time I couldn’t sleep.

  FORT DRUM SUCKED. Snow and cold and it was almost April, for Chrissake. Back home, flowers would be blooming. Sarah would be barefoot in shorts.

  She sent me a letter. She was way better’n me at writing.

  Dear Jo,

  I hope you get this letter. My teacher told me what address to put on it and she give me a stamp. She is nice. I got A on my math test last week.

  The big news here is that Jacob is getting married. Nobody knew till now. Her name is Lorna and I don’t like her she is mean but then so is Jacob sometimes so maybe they will be happy together.

  My main reason to write you is to say COME HOME!!! I had a real good idea. If you shoot an alien I bet Daddy would forgive you. Seth too. DO IT!!!

  All my love forever,

  Sarah Addams

  “What’s that?” Drucker said. She was looking over my shoulder and I didn’t even hear her come up behind me.

  “Nothing!” I said, folding the letter. But she already read it. She must read real fast.

  “I didn’t mean to invade your privacy, Jo,” she said—that’s the way she talks. “But I have to say that Sarah—is she your younger sister?—sounds like a really smart kid. With the right ideas.”

  Then Drucker looked at me long and serious. I wanted to punch her—for reading my letter, for talking fancy, for not being my family. I didn’t do none of that. Keeping my nose clean. I just said, “Go fuck yourself, Drucker.”

  She only laughed.

  And who said she gets to call me ‘Jo’?

  FORT DRUM WAS not just cold, it was boring. Drill and hike, hike and drill. But we warn’t there long. After a week, fifty of us had a half-hour to prepare to ship out, down to a city called Albany. Drucker was one of us. For days she’d been trying to friend around with me, and sometimes I let her. Usually I keep to myself, but listening to her took my mind off home, at least for a while.

  “Where the fuck is Albany?” I said on the bus.

  A guy in the seat behind me laughed. “Don’t you ever watch the news, Addams?”

  “It’s the capital city of New York State,” Drucker said without sounding snotty, which was the other reason I let her hang around with me. She don’t ever act like she knows more’n me, though she does.

  I gave the guy behind us the finger and lowered my voice. “What’s going on in Albany?”

  Drucker said quietly, “It’s bad. You ever hear about the T-bocs?”

  I shook my head. Our buses tore through the gates like it was fleeing demons. Wherever Albany was, the army wanted us there fast.

  “The Take Back Our Country organization. Anti-alien terrorists, the largest and best armed and organized of all those groups. They’ve captured a warehouse outside Albany, big fortified place used to store explosives. The owners, a corporation, were in the process of moving the stuff out when the T-bocs took the building. They’ve got hostages in there along with the explosives.”

  “And we’re going to take the building back?”

  Drucker smiled. “Marines and US Rangers are going to take the building back, Addams. We’ll probably just be the outer perimeter guard. To keep away press and stupid civilians.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling stupid myself. “Okay, then.”

  “Thing is, some of the hostages are kids.”

  “Kids?” I thought of Sarah. “Why were kids in a warehouse?”

  “They weren’t. They were brought there. It was all timed just so. This is big.”

  Big. Bigger than anything that ever happened to me, or might happen to me, in Brightwater. Then Drucker said something that made it bigger.

  “Our kids, Jo. And three of theirs.”

  DRUCKER WAS RIGHT, about every last thing. We were perimeter guards for a real big perimeter—half a mile around the warehouse. There was houses and train tracks and other buildings and trucks with no cabs and huge big dumpsters and a homeless tent town, and every last one of them had to be cleared of people. I was with a four-man stack, flushing out everybody who didn’t have enough sense to already leave, which was a lot of people. We cleared rooms and escorted out squatters and made tenants in the saggy houses pack up what they could carry and then leave. Some of them got angry, shouting that they had no place to go. Some of them cried. One man attacked with a sledge hammer, which didn’t get him nowhere. My sarge knew what he was doing—he cleared rooms in Iraq, where the enemy had more’n sledgehammers.

  Drucker was right about something else, too. There were kids in there. Turns out that seven years ago, while Daddy and Seth and Jacob were losing their jobs in the mines and we got evicted from our house, the Likkies put some of their kids in special schools with our kids so they could all learn each other’s languages and grow up together just like there warn’t no difference between us and them. The T-bocs took that school and transported six kids to the warehouse. Seven bodyguards and five teachers at the school were dead. They mighta been pretty good bodyguards, but the T-bocs had military weapons.

  “I told you it was big,” Drucker said.

  “Yeah, you did.” We just spent twenty hours clearing buildings. Then fresh troops arrived to relieve us, more experienced soldiers. We’d been first just because we were closest. Rangers and Marines were there but they warn’t permitted to do nothing while the negotiators tried to talk the T-bocs down. Drucker and I were off-duty, laying on mats in a high school gym that was now a barracks. I had a shower in the locker room and I was so tired my bones felt like melting. It warn’t a bad feeling.

  But Drucker wanted to talk.r />
  “What do you think about all this, Jo?”

  “I’m not thinking.”

  “Well, start. Do you think the T-bocs are justified?”

  “Justified? You mean, like, right to kidnap kids? How old are them kids, anyway?”

  “Second graders. The humans are seven years old, two girls and a boy, all the children of VIPs. Who knows how old the Likkies are? Maybe they just live a real short time, like insects, and these so-called ‘kids’ are really adults halfway through their lives.”

  “That warn’t what our lectures said.”

  “Do you believe everything the army tells you?”

  I raised up on one elbow and looked at her. In the half-light her eyes shone too bright, like she was using. Was she?

  Drucker sat all the way up. We’d hauled our gym mats into a corner and nobody else could hear.

  “Jo, you told me your family are all unemployed and on welfare because of the Likkies. I imagine that’s a deep shame to people like yours, isn’t it?”

  “Shut up,” I said, ’cause she was right. Shame is what made Daddy and them so angry. All their choices got taken away by the aliens.

  “But it’s not right,” she said, real soft. “This is supposed to be our country. These aliens are just more damn immigrants trying to take it away. Sometimes I think the army is on the wrong side. Do you ever think that, Jo?”

  “Shut up,” I said again, ’cause I didn’t like hearing my thoughts coming from her mouth. “You using?”

  “Yes. Want some?”

  “No.”

  “That’s all right. I just wanted the chance to express my thoughts, so thank you for listening. You’re a real friend.”