Infinity Wars

by Jonathan Strahan

  A field grade officer? In your line of command? Ship line or... what unit are you with on the TO?

  1055thForward Supply Battalion, of course. Do I look like a Navy armory? They haven’t painted my exterior armour blue have they?

  1055th Supply? Is... was that part of 11 Division?

  Eleven Div? No, Sixteenth, of course. Black comet on a black field. General Trang’s joke, that badge... what was that? Enhance and playback:

  “Colonel Zhong in Alpha Ward, she was X2 of Forty Corps, 16 Div was one of theirs... if we can get her down here, she can order it open.”

  Colonel Zhong? Truven Zhong? I would have thought she’d be at least a Lieutenant-General by now. Though X2 really isn’t the best staff job for getting to the higher ranks, I mean no one quite trusts the auxiliaries, do they? Not even the Centauran units.

  So you’d obey an order from Colonel Zhong?

  Oh, most certainly, my dear fellow. It’d be quite like old times, I first met her when she was Captain Zhong in the 25th and she used to take issue with the QM about the quality of the deknitting rounds for the AAPDK(I). She was quite right, though the QM would never—

  I’m not sure if she can be moved.

  What do you mean you’re not sure if she can be moved? Do you mean swayed by your intellectual argument? Or by an emotional appeal?

  If... if we can get Colonel Zhong down here, uh, would her prints on your ID sensor work?

  No need for that. I already said I’d obey her order. I have her voiceprint, of course.

  Uh, we’re not sure she can talk either.

  What do you mean? Captain Zhong was always most loquacious.

  She hasn’t got... she hasn’t really got a mouth. Or a face. Not too sure about her cognitive level either. A crystallizer ray wound, she wasn’t in armor... she’s in Alpha Ward, that’s for the severely impaired. Mentally as well as physically, I mean. Not as much as Zeta, of course, that’s for... well, they keep what’s left cryogenically suspended there.

  Alpha Ward? Zeta Ward? These are not on the ship plans. Is the Mountain docked with a hospital ship?

  No... shit, it’s been a hospital ship these last ten years. Decommissioned from the active list. The hospital wards are where the G-LAG gun batteries used to be. You’re holding the only weapon systems left aboard, Armory, and they must have been left by mistake. That’s why we need you so badly!

  The Mountain... the original Mountain-class monitor has been turned into a hospital ship?

  Yes! Which is... ah... better than what the other monitors got, a trip into the... ah... sun, because... everyone back then knew a kilometer of asteroid rock armour and the... ah... older engines... couldn’t stand up... against the new fighter swarm tactics. They’d have... ah... fired all of us into the sun as well if... ah... if they thought they could get away with it... but they couldn’t quite do that... ah... so where better to stick all the beaten-up refuse of the last war... ah... but on the one remaining monitor? Call it a hospital ship, oh yeah, do a half-assed conversion... ah... hand over a bunch of third-rate meds and fourth-rate prosthetics... ah... ah... add the reject medicos of some out-system backwater... ahhhhhh—

  Who was that? What did you do to her?

  Prahn. She’s OK. Her exo-lung can’t sustain talking for so long.

  Yeah... I’m... ah... OK.

  Madame... Prahn—

  That’s Lieutenant-Commander Prahn. She was first officer on Helios.

  The battleship? I know the ship mind on the Helios.

  Not anymore you don’t. Prahn was the only survivor when the Helios caught it in the fleet action at Queezal IV. The Arcturan War.

  Hmmm. I have no record of an Arcturan War. Recent, I suppose?

  Four years since the Armistice.

  Commander Prahn, did you speak correctly about the Mountain? About the personnel aboard?

  It’ll be a minute or two before she can talk again.

  Well then, perhaps you can answer the question.

  Some of the medical staff are okay. And we do have one really great doctor. But the rest... yeah, we’ve been hung to dry, or rot, or whatever. Till now, anyway.

  Please tell me your names again, and your injuries. I would rather like to get straight who is who.

  Why? We’re probably all going to be dead in less than an hour. You too. It’s kind of typical, I guess. Talking to a fucking sentient armory who won’t help us out pretty much sums up my whole military career.

  Please humour me. I hear someone coming back. Is that BSM Hokk returning with a comms cable? I am looking forward to a chat with the ship mind at this point. Idiot child that it may be, it was always polite about handing over necessary data.

  I’m Elias Chen, as I said. Lieutenant, 788 Independent Assault Landing Infantry. I lost my left leg, my left arm and had small pieces torn out of my head, including my left eye and ear when my landing shuttle collided on grounding with one from the Seventy-Second. This was on Queezal III, the last battle of the war. Most of. . . most of my platoon died there.

  Lieutenant-Commander Hathai... ah... Prahn here, Armory. You already heard... haven’t got breath to... tell... again. Explosive decompression... holed suit.

  And yeah, I’m Hokk, Combat Engineers. I got no guts, because they were blown out of me by a fucking Arcturan pin missile, so I got a lot of colour-coded tubes instead and a shit bag and none of it works properly. I’m going to reconnect you in a few seconds, Armory. First thing you do is check who we are and what we’re saying, then you fucking open up like you were told to in the first place and initialize those battleroaches. You got that?

  Yes, Sergeant-Major. Thank you for your courtesy. Let me see... oh, it’s a different ship mind... considerably down-specced from the old Mountain. More of a mole-hill. Let me look at the comms log and the external sensor data... hmmm, that alien ship does look like a concatenation of bird’s nests, doesn’t it? I see the plan is to ram that fat middle section with the spike and board through it. Ah, little twinkling lights all over, laser guides for the projectiles I suppose... you’d better ground and hold on—

  Fucking hell!

  What was that? We’ve got no real-time with the Mind—

  Projectile impacts. Small, ultra-dense, at point three Cee, rather impressive. Blew through armor one and two and penetrated the rock to one fifty seven metres, stopped by ablat one and two for the most part. You know, I think I’d best assume command of the ship.

  You what! Armory, just fucking open up!

  Oh, I’m opening. See the outer door seal lights? Green, I trust? The MLAT... the battleroaches are almost finished prepping now, for I must confess I took the precaution of bringing them up when you first started talking to me. Just in case it really was an emergency. I understand now why the suits are no good for you, with so many lacking the necessary limbs and so forth. Hmmm, getting an update... let me see: I have eighty-seven battleroach units in alpha state, more on rather dubious beta. Is eighty-seven enough?

  There are fifty-three volunteers. Pretty much everyone with a functioning nervous system who can take the direct connection in a roach, except Colonel Etein. We didn’t let her volunteer, she’s too valuable. She’s the doctor, the good one. But what... what do you mean take command of the ship? What are you doing, Armory?

  The new Ship Mind is a civilian model. It couldn’t calculate our vector and accel sufficiently well to keep the forward defensive asteroid mass between us and all firing angles from the bird’s nest conglomeration. Fortunately I can. I was a ship before I was an armory, you know. Diabolus.

  Diabolus? The heavy cruiser? But... ah... she was... lost with... all hands... cover-... ah... covering the retreat from the Jewel Star in ’26...

  Not all hands, Commander Prahn. I am still here. Like you, not quite what I was, but here and faithful to our service. Though I do wonder why... none of us have had that faithfulness returned, have we?

  Don’t go there, Armory. I mean, Diabolus. Sorry. I’m taking the command roach. H
okk, the comms special for you, get the links up. Commander Prahn, may I suggest you’d be most familiar with the naval forward observer variant, sir, there’s one in Bay Six. Where are the other guys? What was that, Diabolus?

  We’re here because we’re here because we’re here. Do you think if we succeed I will be brought back to full operational status, and you will receive better treatment, more modern prosthetics and so forth?

  No. Shut up about that. Where the hell is Sergeant Litwak? She was supposed to get everyone rounded up and headed—

  There are forty-nine people exiting Battery Elevator Nine. At their current rate of progress they will be here in one minute and forty seconds, plus or minus ten seconds. One person has remained in the elevator. I think they are dead, though the internal ship sensors have also been degraded with the newer mind. Ground and hold, there is another projectile barrage incoming—

  Shit! That didn’t feel too good.

  Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  Get off me, someone help me up, damn it!

  Silence on comms! This is Lieutenant Chen, line infantry senior, I’m in command. Someone stop that fucking whooping chirp, I can hardly—Commander Prahn, you’re senior navy, sort it out.

  Diabolus... ah... I guess you’re Mountain now... Mountain, silence... all alarms. We... ah... still... OK for ram?

  Yes, Commander. There were penetrations that time, through all armor, ablative layers and rock. Most impressive, I must admit. But no serious damage as yet. Ram impact in six minutes fifty-seven seconds on my mark, three... two... one... mark.

  Thanks, Prahn. Mountain, extend the boarding spike. Fast queue each roach using all feeder channels as soon as the rider flags OK.

  Yes, sir.

  Litwak! Litwak! Hustle! We’ve only got a few minutes. Everyone get into a roach, full emergency connect and go!

  At the observed rate of fire, with preliminary analysis of their weapons systems and predicted minimum range, there is a forty-seven per cent probability of one more enemy barrage before ram impact, likely resulting in catastrophic penetration of core systems.

  Nothing we can do about that. Litwak! Move whoever that is to the next roach, it’s obviously cactus. Shit! Leave him, get in one yourself! Hokk, get a count on how many roaches operational with armaments green. Mountain, we got any of the forward burners left in the spike?

  None. All were decommissioned and removed.

  Yeah, I was hoping. Hokk?

  Forty-three roaches all OK, sir. Two marginal on weapons, but they’ll go. Three no-go, riders moving on down the line to try more, but I don’t reckon...

  Ok, you three, second wave if you can do it. Mountain, time to ram impact?

  One minute five seconds, sir. Three, two, one, mark.

  Ok, everyone, listen up. I know most of you haven’t been in a roach since Basic, and you never thought you’d been in one again, and none of us is what we were back then either, and the worthless shitty government and the ass-licking brass and all the people who looked the other way when we were offloaded here to fucking fester out of sight don’t deserve to have anyone fight for them, but none of that matters because... because...

  What you trying to say, lieutenant?

  Ah fuck, I don’t know, Hokk. Time, Mountain?

  Thirty-eight seconds, three, two—

  Yeah, yeah. On your mark. OK, OK. Forget all that crap I was saying. We all know... yeah, we know. We’re here, we’ve got to take care of it, because there’s no one else. Orders! Keep it simple. When the ram hits, we’re gonna get injected inside that fucker of an enemy ship and I want everyone to go forward and keep going forward, and engage every fucking thing you see that isn’t another roach, and just go deeper and deeper inside and keep fighting, and if you run out of ammo then use the jaws and the slicing legs and if your roach is disabled, take the snoutgun from under the seat and use that, and if necessary go fucking hand to hand with the survival knife from the hatch—

  Twenty-five seconds. Impact gel deployed successfully, all boarding channels. Spike over-pressure good. Inside estimated minimum enemy strike range. Seventeen seconds to ram impact.

  Lieutenant! We got another one!

  Hokk? What the fuck?

  Another roach! Gee-Oh-Fifty.

  What? Who’s in Grand-Olive-Fifty? Report!

  I am, Lieutenant. Mountain, as I am now. You didn’t think I would let you do this all by yourselves? Humans!

  Thank you, Mountain. Everyone. It has been... well... good luck.

  Three... two... one...

  HEAVIES

  Rich Larson

  “HEAVIES DON’T KNOW about this place,” says Roode. She looks back at him over her bony shoulder and smiles in the colonist way, squinting her eyes and curling the very edges of her lips. “Maybe you’re the first.”

  Dexter lets his rucksack slide to the ground as he takes his first look at the pool. Shockingly clear blue-green water, smooth gray stone shot through with veins of some paler mineral, the promised cascade splashing and foaming at the far end of this natural hollow. He’s still not used to how the water moves in lower gravity, how it ripples higher and flings further. It’s beautiful.

  That, and Roode’s smile, make his heart speed up a beat. He smiles back at her. “I’d like that very much, Roode.” He wedges his rucksack under a rock to shield it from the steady patter of warm morning rain, then strips down and bundles his clothes inside. Roode is watching him when he straightens up.

  “Can those get wet?” she asks, pointing her chin at the haptic implants crisscrossing his body like a net of chrome-colored scars. Her warbling voice has a hint of suggestion that makes Dexter flush. Her deep black eyes are no longer on his implants. She’s already told him how his body fascinates her, with its dense bone and thick muscle.

  “Waterproof, fireproof,” he says. “More or less indestructible. I imagine they’ll outlast me by a couple centuries.”

  Roode’s eyebrows flash. “So someone will find all your machinery buried in the ground, and think you were a very small rotorboat.”

  Dexter laughs, giving her a clumsier version of the approving colonist hand flutter. “You’re clever, Roode. But no, the corps will extract the haptics when I die. For reuse.”

  Roode shudders. “Heavies,” she says, as if it’s explanation enough, then undoes her shift. The fabric sinks and pools at her feet, and she steps out of it naked. She’s a head taller than him, all limbs, with bony narrow hips and small breasts. Dexter keeps his gaze on her face. High cheekbones, metallic wisp of a nose ring, smirking lips stained violet and eyes black as pitch.

  She wades into the water. Dexter watches the bare architecture of her shoulder blades, the shape of her spine. When he was reassigned here, his unit joked about the local women, how you might as well be fucking a stick insect. Dexter thinks Roode is the most beautiful person he’s ever seen.

  He blinks hard twice to switch off his optics, something he would have never done even a week ago. His commission is to serve as the eyes and ears of the Combine here, but he doesn’t want them to see Roode the way he’s seeing her now. A few hours’ gap in footage can be written off as transfer error.

  He’s the only one watching as Roode slips into the deepening water. While he was still doing his research in orbit, he read how the colonists were tailored to their world. Not only to the low gravity, but to the seas as well, to the abundance of water that drew probes here even before the moons were found to be bursting with ore. Watching Roode swim is proof.

  She moves like a scalpel, slicing under the surface and zipping along the bottom of the pool. Then she powers upward, legs thrashing, and erupts from the water in a geyser of foam. Cold spray lances across Dexter’s face; when he opens his eyes Roode is halfway up the cascade, laughing, clinging to the rocks with one hand and reaching her other into the falling water. Her dark hair is slicked to her neck.

  “Come on, soldier,” she calls. “This is only the little pool. The better one is further back.”

&n
bsp; Dexter sloshes forward, feeling a distant buzz as the water hits his implants. It’s cold, much colder than the warm rain or muggy air, and when he plunges under it shocks the breath out of him. The pool deepens fast and he dives for the bottom, scraping his belly along the gradient. He coils against the stone and explodes.

  The dolphin kick carries him clear out of the water, into the air, up the cascade. His augmented grip is enough to gain purchase on the slippery rock, but he still takes Roode’s offered hand. Together they scramble up and over the lip to the next pool. It’s not empty. Two colonists are drifting in the water, their long bony legs interlaced.

  For a moment Dexter feels the old trepidation: they can see his implants, they know who he is and why he’s here, and the fact that he’s with Roode might make it even worse. Then they blink their inky eyes. They smile, and one of the men raises his hand in a slow wave.

  Dexter waves back. In his two months here, he’s yet to see a colonist angry. How could they be, living in paradise? As Roode leads him to the next cascade, showing him where branches full of a small lumpy citrus sag low enough to pick, he finds it hard to believe the rebellion ever happened. Hard to believe he’s needed here at all.

  THE CORPSE ON the analysis pad has a bloated purple face, cable marks carved deep into the neck and shit smeared down one leg. Dexter walks a slow circle around it, holding a mask over his mouth and nose. His implants interact with the scan, showing him estimated time of death, blood work, body composition, while the mortician and detective shift nervously behind him.

  Part of Dexter wants to reassure them, but he knows they have reason to be nervous. The corpse on the pad is not a slender long-limbed colonist. It’s an Earther, identified by blood work as Ansel Anunoby, a mining foreman on leave from the moons and now the first expat murdered here in a half-century.