Ecotones: Ecological Stories from the Border Between Fantasy and Science Fiction

by Ken Liu

  He turned in time to catch an old LED flashlight one of the crew had found. He thumbed it on and made his way to where Callaghan continued to proclaim his authority. Avery glanced at the hull, the persistent hammering reminding him they weren’t alone. “This is a military operation now.”

  He and Rodriquez shared a silent look before heading deeper into the ship, looking for anyone who could help with defence. They busted open every pod they found, spilling more amnio over the already flooded drains. The people waking deserved an explanation but there was no time to say more than “Help the others, convene in the cargo bay” before they moved on to the next room. Few were in any condition to fight. The best they could do was hope the hull held long enough for them to get their shit wired.

  They cleared the last of the pods and made their way to the lab, and the cargo the success of their mission depended on. The room was dark, unpowered, but the door waiting inside was cold. Avery consulted a manual thermometer encased in a clear plastic housing by the door. “Minus one ninety.”

  “That’s got to be cold enough, let’s go,” Rodriquez said as he hovered by the passageway. Outside the aliens continued to knock.

  With no first-hand account of what was attacking them or why they needed to prepare for anything, they rushed to the small arms locker, but to Avery's disbelief found that it had been re-appropriated by one of the science teams without consulting him. They rolled out multiple carts loaded with carefully labelled supplies, hoping to find the shelves and hooks behind them properly equipped. No such luck.

  “You gotta be fucking kidding me,” Rodriquez muttered.

  Avery scanned the room and managed to out-curse Rodriquez when he found a drawer helpfully labelled Unnecessary Weapons. Inside were four SMG and a half-dozen sidearms. One weapon for each of the twelve military members of the original crew, before resource allocation had diminished his team to three.

  By the time they reached the bay, it was crowded with people rubbing their eyes and asking questions he couldn’t answer. Avery was trying to organize them when a runner pushed through the edgy throng followed by an emergency response team.

  “Communications are down. Captain Callaghan ordered me to report that he is triangulating the fleet’s position based on their trajectories when we hit the atmosphere.”

  Avery nodded. If they survived the day, that would be useful. The team were working their way through the room, calling for calm and assessing the structural damage, when an ear splitting shriek froze everyone in place.

  Giant metallic burrs flooded into the cargo bay through a small breach he hadn’t noticed. They whirred through the air with a high pitched drone, hundreds of needle-like projections vibrating while they hovered as if making their own assessment. They looked more like an intelligent weapon than a life form as they darted into the crowd.

  The scientists around him quickly fell into disparate camps. Many pushed their colleagues aside in their rush to flee the cargo bay while others flailed, trying to defend themselves with makeshift weapons. A small group stood their ground in naïve awe, oblivious to the potential danger and actively obstructing Avery and Rodriquez’s efforts to defend the lander.

  “We have to block that breach,” Avery shouted.

  “We’re on it!” one of the ERT shouted.

  A burr buzzed by Avery’s head. Too close to fire at, he batted it away with his bare hand, sending it towards the opposite wall. It changed course before impact and came at him again. Rodriquez shot it just as another one careened into the back of his shoulder. It split open like a hot coddled egg, spreading pain as its remains dripped down his arm. Avery twisted, wiping some kind of burning, viscous liquid from his sleeve, and discovered a two inch red worm crawling towards his neck. He jerked his arm, scraped the worm off and stomped on it, unleashing a string of obscenities.

  “If you’re done dancing, I could use some help.” He turned to see Rodriguez providing too little cover for the ERT folks, two of them wielding what looked like fire extinguishers. He added more fire power as the men doused the breach in foam vacuum sealant. It began to harden even as more of the burrs fought to get in, solidifying around them.

  Their combined efforts turned the tide, and more civilians joined the fight or went to the aid of those who had fallen. Several people lay prone, with broken burrs on or near them, but—worryingly—no sign of the red worms.

  Callaghan limped in just as the last of the tiny targets were eliminated. He gave a hearty whoop. “We won!”

  Rodriquez shook his head. “We haven’t won shit. They’ve been raining down on the hull ever since we landed, there’s got to be thousands of them out there.”

  “And out there is exactly where we got to go.” Avery slapped Rodriquez on the back. “The day is young and you’re only seven up on me.”

  A young scientist blanched and sputtered. “We can’t. They’re waiting for us out there.”

  Avery looked around the room at all of the frightened faces, people who thought they’d wake up to spend a life time in a sterile lab, playing god. “We have vital intel we have to share and missing landers we have to find. There won’t be any communication with the fleet until we get a receiver set up.

  “We can’t stay in here forever.”

  Ekki hid behind a fall of rocks and watched as the vessel cracked open further.

  Dozens of upright beings with bilaterally symmetrical appendages emerged in a slow, spreading pattern that radiated out from the opening. As the Aloika attacked the newcomers attempted to drive them back, but their weaponry was only partially effective against the armoured shells the parasites had created for themselves. Many were taken, their bodies writhing noisily as they fought the conversion.

  Ekki found the chaos unnerving. It brought back painful memories of disorder. A loud noise from one of the beings recalled the pattern, and she realised that they communicated verbally, like animals. Their pattern contracted as those at its farthest reaches pulled back, collecting the fallen they passed while those nearest the conveyance held their position until all who were mobile were inside. Fascinating.

  In time, the remaining Aloika burned themselves out in futile efforts to regain entry. Ekki glided closer. She moved quietly, over rocks and between gullies where her small patterns had been crushed by debris from the newcomers’ ship. The material was of a type she was unfamiliar with, and she absorbed a small piece of it for future study.

  She cautiously approached one of the abandoned beings. It lay next to many of the hard husks that protected the Aloika in space. Ekki had shed her husk long ago. On the planet it was cumbersome and unnecessary. The newcomer was still alive, but appeared weak, as it made small sounds from inside a flimsy husk of its own. She reached into the wound and withdrew the Aloika before it could burrow further, crushed it before tossing it aside.

  Her appendage was covered in the newcomer’s fluids, and she altered her vision to study its pattern. The complexity was astounding. Not even her oceans held life this advanced. Down and down she spiralled through the layers, until she reached its core… and recognized its primary construct.

  She tried to speak to it but failed. Its mind was too primitive. Ekki swam through the being’s pattern, looking for answers. She found many dormant strands that needed only to be reactivated, but there were other strands that were missing entirely. Whether they had been discarded or never acquired didn’t matter. She had not the skill to manipulate patterns on this level.

  She tore apart the thin husk to find a being encased in an opaque membrane. Desperate for knowledge, she tore this open as well, soaking up what data she could. The being expired and Ekki felt a pang of guilt. Would she have been able to save it if she’d known more? She recalled the other vessels that had been scattered across her world. Did they all hold similar patterns? Did they boast enough variation to be viable? She had so many questions and all of the answers lay with frightened, cowering children.

  Ekki stashed the body in the gully for future stu
dy, and considered how best to approach the ship.

  Avery dragged Rodriquez back into the cargo bay just before the door closed. His buddy was barely bleeding but was curled in on himself, unable to walk. One of the worms had burrowed into his neck and disappeared.

  He laid him on the floor and yelled for a medic. The only one they had was busy with triage and it took long minutes for her to get to Rodriquez.

  She looked at his wound and shook her head. “I don’t know what we’re dealing with here. I can’t go digging around in his neck. He needs a surgeon.”

  “We don’t have one.”

  “I tried digging one out of Henderson’s bicep. I didn’t find it until I got to his shoulder. He’s got seven inches worth of stitches. Rodriquez can’t afford that.”

  Rodriquez grabbed her arm. “Get it out of me.” Avery knew it was bad when Rodriquez stopped cursing and reverted to Spanish that was fit for church. He nodded, but the medic kept shaking her head. She left them alone to wait for a surgeon that wasn’t coming.

  Avery watched her abandon another soldier with a gut wound only to begin cutting into another woman’s leg. He knew it was the right call and he clamped down on emotional objections that would change nothing.

  Rodriquez began to twitch. Avery pulled him up into a half seated position as wild, flopping movements threw his limbs in all directions, as his speech regressed even further. Broken prayers were repeated amongst deep ragged breaths, interspersed with pleas to ease the pain. As the spasms passed he curled into a ball, leaning his head into Avery’s chest. “Help me.” It was the last sensible thing he said.

  Across the bay, a man lurched to his feet and attacked the medic with clumsy determination before he was taken down and restrained. Rodriquez’s struggles became stronger and more co-ordinated. Avery tightened his grip and ran through a short list of horrible options as a third victim launched a weaponless attack against Callaghan, sending him to the floor.

  The two traded blows briefly before the infected man awkwardly reached for his weapon. His shot went wide, but it easily found a target in the crowded room. As fresh cries rang out, three shots from different directions felled him before he could try again.

  Callaghan scrambled to his feet shouting, “They’re being taken over!”

  “Calm down,” Avery barked, the order reverberating through the room.

  “The aliens are taking over!” Callaghan cried again.

  “We don’t know that. You’re just speculating,” the medic snapped, hard at work on the bystander who’d been shot.

  Avery held Rodriquez as he struggled to stand. “What else could it be?”

  She shook her head and gestured with bloody hands, clearly frustrated. “It could be any of half a dozen different things. All we know is that housing an alien alters people’s behaviour. They could be coated is some sort of poison or psychotropic drug like a frog, in which case they might come out of it.”

  Avery latched on to that option. “You think this is just a bad trip?”

  “He tried to kill me!” Callaghan shouted, pointing at the dead man.

  The medic took a deep steadying breath. “He could have been hallucinating. There are a lot of possibilities here. It could be a slow growing parasite like some kind of tape worm, which would give us time to get proper medical support. It could be a brood parasite laying thousands of microscopic eggs, in which case we’re screwed, or Callaghan could be right.”

  “Of course I’m right.”

  Avery tightened his grip on his friend. He didn’t want it to be true, but he couldn’t risk it. He nodded towards the dead man. “We’re not waiting. Cut him open, find out.”

  She knelt next to them. “Even if I find a worm in his brain that doesn’t mean it’s taking over. For all I know, they could be symbiotic lifeforms looking for a way to say ‘hi’.”

  “Just find it,” Avery said. Next to him Rodriquez had stilled. The Spanish was gone now, and in its place was a stuttered string of mismatched syllables. Had the alien gained accessed to his speech center? He drew Rodriquez close, wishing he could will the worm into himself.

  Rodriquez’s struggle became frenzied and he almost slipped from Avery’s grip as he twisted and got partially to his knees. Avery’s response was automatic. Back on Earth they’d wrestled so many times he’d lost count. He grabbed hold of Rodriquez’s coveralls and tried to turn his friend back around, but it was no good. Rodriquez tucked in his chin and stood up, ducking under Avery’s arms. If the coveralls hadn’t been slick from all the fake amnio they’d absorbed when Rodriquez had first put them on, Avery might have been able to keep his grip. It was a classic move, one the smaller man had used time and again and it gave Avery hope that, fundamentally, Rodriquez was still himself and that by tomorrow they might share a strained laugh over rations.

  Rodriguez lunged to his feet as a shot rang out. Rodriquez tilted and fell to the floor.

  Avery twisted to see where the shot had come from. Across the room, Callaghan was defensive. “He was one of them. I didn’t have any choice.”

  Avery scrambled to Rodriguez’s side and applied pressure, knowing it wouldn’t matter in the end. The bullet had opened his femoral artery. He gathered his friend up in his arms and whispered, “I should have let you shoot him,” as the guilt settled over him.

  Rodriquez offered no smart-ass reply, only a silence that seemed accentuated by soft shallow breaths. When they stopped, a part of Avery stopped with him. He looked up and his eyes seemed to focus beyond the shocked faces that had begun to gather. They needed something from him that he wasn’t ready to give.

  The senselessness stunned him. He felt like pieces of himself had scattered, looking for meaning, and come back empty handed. He wasn’t sure Rodriquez had even understood he was dying.

  He laid Rodriquez back down on the floor and slowly rose to his feet, turning towards Callaghan and thinking about Edwards’ last words to him. It’s like we’re starting over, and we’ll be there right from the start to build a better, more just world.

  One of the ERT guys stepped between them as Avery tried to wipe the blood from his hands. He was a big man, about forty years old, with the name Bouchard embroidered on his stained coveralls. He stopped just short of laying hands on Avery. “He’s just a kid. He panicked. And your friend was… gone.”

  Avery held the man’s gaze as he steadied himself. The words formed automatically in his mind but they were so at odds with how he felt that he just couldn’t say them. He closed his eyes and wished he could close his ears. He longed for a peace of mind he knew would be forever denied him. He nodded as the words came, “I know.”

  All eyes in the room were on him as he walked over to the where the medic knelt in a pool of blood next to the first gunshot victim. In her right hand she held up a small vial containing one of the alien worms. “Where’d you find it?” he asked.

  “Attached to the brain stem. I have no way of knowing what it was doing there but, it’s changed.”

  He crouched down next to her. “Show me.”

  She held out the vial. “It’s grown tendrils that attached themselves deeper within the brain. I don’t have enough training to tell you anything more specific.”

  “I knew it,” Callaghan yelled, struggling to shake of Bouchard’s restraining hand. “We have to kill them all.”

  Avery looked from Callaghan to the med tech to where Rodriquez’s body lay. He should have ordered her to operate on Rodriquez straight away, but he’d balked, looking for the moderate answer. He shook his head as the guilt goaded him, mocking his caution. “We’re not killing anyone else, but neither are we giving those things a chance to get cozy. Cut them all out.”

  The medic paled and shook her head. “I’m not a surgeon. I don’t have the training for that.”

  Avery feared the day when he confronted a stranger with no way of knowing if they were fully human. “None of us are trained for this. I’ll hold, you cut.”

  The drumming against the hull
stopped.

  The room stilled as everyone listened. Avery brushed his bloody hands against his coveralls, but they were already soaked through. He wondered if he’d ever get either clean again.

  “I need some air,” he muttered as he walked to the door.

  Bouchard stood to accompany him, “You think they left or just got bored?” A heavy thump against the door seemed to answer his question. After a pause, it was followed by two more thumps, then three, four.

  Brouchard snorted a weary laugh. “Who isss iiit?” he crooned, a crazy edge to his voice, as people jumped to their feet and readied their weapons.

  There was no answer beyond the escalating number of knocks. Whatever was out there could count, something the flying burrs had shown no evidence of. Anyone they had left behind when they went out to set up the solar powered receiver was surely infected, if not dead.

  When the count reached seven, Avery thumped back eight times. There was a gap, then the knocking started over. Two. Three. Five. Seven.

  Avery rolled his eyes before he thumped back the next prime number. “We’re being tested.”

  Bouchard’s nod was grim as they waited through the ensuing silence. “We’re as ready as we can be.”

  Avery stepped up to the manual release and cursed its placement, switching his sidearm to his left hand. It felt awkward and insufficient. He gave a nod and pulled hard, the door groaning open as he raised his weapon.

  On the loading ramp stood a… four foot jelly salad, the green one no-one ever wanted to eat. He watched as a prehensile appendage, which had been raised in the air close to the door, withdrew and was absorbed in the main body. It reminded him uncomfortably of the red worms and their tendrils. It appeared to be alone.

  The being wobbled slightly while Avery studied it, looking for vulnerabilities, possible means of attack. Thankfully, there was nothing else wormlike about it. Translucent skin allowed him a glimpse of what had to be internal organs, but his mind kept returning to his Aunt Eustice’s inedible Christmas creations.