Infinity Wars

by Jonathan Strahan

  Ekundayo found a passageway that led deeper into the ship. It opened into a high-ceilinged chamber filled with a field of delicate red flowers. Several soldiers milled around, and all of them had human faces. Ekundayo could see why they would be drawn to this place. It smelled like grass and rain and other things she remembered from her planetside childhood. She had the urge to share the flowers, to sing them out into the universe.

  “Human check—when was the first time you met a hybrid?”

  The voice belonged to Jaxon this time, and Ekundayo could hear the worry in his voice.

  Jaxon was the first hybrid she’d ever met. “We met right after I came to the station. The rest of my cohort were all jockeying for position, and they wanted nothing to do with someone like me, someone who couldn’t fight. You were nice to me.”

  The ship heard her broadcast, and it triggered other memories: a Piscean-Squidder hybrid killed in battle on some planet with a green-tinged sky; a human-Leonid hybrid who came voluntarily to join the Patchwork. There were whispers of a Leonid with a Faceless head, not grown on but grafted. Something had gone wrong with the graft. The Leonid was on a warship packed with Faceless soldiers, and they loaded her into a transport pod and sent her to a hospital ship.

  Ekundayo didn’t know where or when the memory was from, but she recognized the ship. “This isn’t a warship, Jaxon. These Faceless aren’t soldiers. This is a hospital ship.”

  There was a long pause, and then it was Neva who answered. “I just checked with Bianchi, and his orders are to proceed with the mission. He says the Faceless sent a hospital ship to acquire the fire kittens because they thought we’d be less likely to attack it.”

  “These aren’t soldiers.” Ekundayo didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to kill a bunch of civilians, but those were her orders, and she wouldn’t fit into her flightsuit unless she removed the wings. The idea of becoming Faceless terrified her. It was a little thing, compared to the outcome of the war, but she couldn’t bear the thought of losing herself in this sea of alien minds.

  “Stay focused on the mission, Ekundayo. We can’t let the Faceless get the fire kittens. Do your part and we’ll get you out.”

  THE MAIN CONTROL center of the ship was a chamber of pulsing red cords, similar to the ones in the tube on Ekundayo’s back, but larger. It looked more like a circulatory system than a brain. The nerve cords tangled around a spare torso here, a Faceless head there. Without thinking, Ekundayo reached out with her tentacles to touch one of the cords. The outer surface was harder than she expected, and warm to the touch. Sturdy. She wasn’t sure how she’d tear through it to gain better access for the counter-virus. Knowing that this was a hospital ship, she wasn’t sure she still wanted to. Humanity was counting on her, but she couldn’t believe what Bianchi was ordering her to do. Fighting soldiers was one thing, slaughtering innocent civilians was something else entirely. Except what if they really were there to get the fire kittens? That was a military objective.

  Ekundayo felt a shift in the ship’s activity. It was preparing itself for a radiation storm. Bursts of radiation were common in the Trapezium Cluster, and the station was shielded enough to protect everyone on board, but the shuttles—if the shuttles were still out there when the radiation hit, the teams would die. She had to take off her wings.

  But this was a hospital ship, and these Faceless weren’t soldiers.

  “Human check. When was the first time you encountered the Faceless?”

  It was Neva again. She was trying to help Ekundayo by giving her one of the strongest memories she had. The first Faceless she encountered was Dad, quarantined and sick with Patchwork. He was a scientist, not a soldier, but the Faceless had infected him anyway and grafted a featureless gray head onto his back, like some strange fungus was growing from his fevered flesh. It was before the Patchwork had fully adapted to absorb humans, and his body was rejecting the disease. For years, she’d had nightmares about it, visions of her dad’s body covered in a million gray-mushroom heads.

  Neva was trying to make Ekundayo angry enough to complete the mission.

  Another memory came to her. She was a small red creature that looked a bit like a dog. A god with four heads and half a dozen legs came down from the sky and lifted her into the great star fields of the afterward. Embraced in the pulsing vines of a life support chamber, deep within the ship, she was content to become something other than what she was.

  This ship was not a warship. Were they here on a mission to get the fire kittens, or did they have a more benign goal?

  Ekundayo remembered training for battle as a giant scorpion. She learned how to exploit the seams of Faceless soldiers by practicing on a dead one—and was infected by residual Patchwork that had not been properly cleansed from the corpse. She didn’t want to fight against her own people, so when she joined the Faceless she became a navigator on a hospital ship. It was not enough to save her from the fighting. The ship was broadcasting songs of mercy when they were attacked. They only barely made it to the Orion jump point.

  “Ekundayo, human check. I’m only allowed to repeat this one time. When was the first time you encountered the Faceless?”

  The beings on the ship were doctors and patients. Some of them were scientists. They weren’t here for the fire kittens, they were fleeing an attack. Killing them would be like killing Dad. If she removed her wings, the counter-virus would infect the ship and eventually kill everyone on board. If she didn’t remove her wings, she wouldn’t fit into her flightsuit.

  She couldn’t destroy a hospital and slaughter a shipload of innocents. She also couldn’t leave her team—and the teams on all the decoy shuttles—waiting for her in a lethal radiation storm. There was only one choice left. “A god with four heads and half a dozen legs comes down from the sky and lifts me to the great star fields of afterward.”

  Neva didn’t answer, but there was a quiet sniffle before her sister cut the com connection. Ekundayo had failed the check, failed the shitty mission Bianchi had forced on her, possibly failed all of humanity.

  Ekundayo broadcasted her location and told the shipmind that she was infected with a dangerous virus. A mostly-Squidder nurse appeared at the entrance to the nerve center and beckoned with her tentacles for Ekundayo to follow. As soon as they were out in the open corridor, the nurse enclosed Ekundayo in a quarantine bubble. The bubble was spherical and clear, made of a flexible material that flattened slightly where it met the floor.

  “Human check, do I pass?”

  It was Jaxon. “You’re supposed to go back to the station.”

  “Yeah, we talked about that. Sturgeon wanted to, but Neva and I said no.”

  “I failed my human check.”

  “But you’re passing this one.”

  It was a dirty trick, testing her by risking their lives. “There’s a radiation storm coming, you’ve got maybe half an hour to leave if you want to get back to the station without getting fried.”

  “We got that warning from the station immediately after your last check. That’s what made me absolutely certain your failure was a lie.”

  “You have to go.”

  “Then you’d better figure out a way to get into your flightsuit and into open space so we can save you. The decoys are gone, but we’re not leaving without you.”

  She could hear the tremble in Jaxon’s voice. He’d always been scared of shuttles; now he was staying out in one despite an approaching radiation storm. The thin layer of metal that formed the hull of the shuttle wouldn’t be enough to protect him.

  She pressed her tentacles against the surface of the misshapen sphere that contained her. The quarantine bubble was smooth and airtight. It wasn’t meant for the vacuum of space, but it might hold long enough for her to get into her flightsuit. If she could get the bubble out through one of the airlocks, she could spare the Faceless on this ship and get back to the shuttle.

  Ekundayo pushed against the side of the bubble and rolled it down the corridor. She came to a c
onstriction. Had it always been like that or had the shape of the passageway changed to keep her from moving? The bubble was caught on all sides.

  She leapt at the wall of her bubble, leaning in hard with her shoulder. The bubble stretched on impact to keep her contained, and the now-oblong shape squeezed through the constriction with a high-pitched squeal. The walls shuddered at the sound.

  Ekundayo kept moving.

  Several nurses trailed behind her in the corridor, their gray-mushroom heads dancing with faint shadows of expression. A thousand whispers in her mind told her to stop, but she didn’t listen. She pushed harder, spinning her bubble so fast she had to jog to keep up. She couldn’t remember the meandering path she’d taken when she first arrived, but she could sense the ship itself now—feel the pulse of the nerve center, the circulation of nutrients through the walls—and with this deepened connection she found an airlock.

  She pushed her bubble inside. The nurses didn’t follow. Instead they sealed her in. All she had to do was blow herself out of the airlock and remove her Patchwork parts, but there weren’t any visible controls, only the red pulsing threads of the ship’s nerves.

  Let me go, Ekundayo pleaded. I spared you from the counter-virus, at least let me go back to my station. My friends are waiting for me, and if they don’t leave soon they’ll die in the radiation storm. This is a hospital. Could you really leave people out there to die?

  Nothing happened. It wasn’t enough to tell the ship what she wanted. Why would they listen to a voice that wasn’t one of their own? Besides, this wasn’t about her team, not really. Neva wouldn’t keep the shuttle out in the radiation storm. She’d stay as long as she could, but at the last moment she’d go. Her friends’ fate did not depend on her, and now that the Faceless knew about the counter-virus the mission was doomed to failure. She just didn’t want to die alone in the airlock of an enemy ship. If she joined the Faceless collective and broadcast her thoughts to them from the inside, would they let her go?

  All Ekundayo had left to lose was herself. It was the thing she’d feared from the beginning, but she was out of other options. She stopped fighting the Faceless and let them in, welcomed all their voices into her mind. Please, she begged, don’t keep me trapped here alone.

  She thought of Neva and Jaxon and Sturgeon, out in the shuttle where they’d be exposed to radiation from the storm. She thought of the counter-virus in her wings and her decision not to use it. Her broadcast became part of the shipsong, and her voice rang out with her shame, her fear... and her hope. Let me go.

  The airlock opened.

  Ekundayo was blown into space. The quarantine bubble held, but it was thin, so thin. The purple streaks of the Orion Nebula loomed over her like clawed fingers trying to drag her into the void of space. She was too close to the Patchwork ship for her team to pick her up; the ship’s self-defense mechanisms would attack them if they tried.

  She reached back with her arms to tear off her wings, but she could only barely touch the tips. Sturgeon had warned her about this—she had to use the tentacles. She let her Squidder tentacles snake down her back and wrapped them around the base of her wings, grasping tight with her suckers to get a solid grip. She tried to twist the wings off, but they’d grown into her flesh. Pain shot through her back.

  Ekundayo pulled again, as hard as she could. The flesh of her back tore, and blood seeped out from the open wound. She released the wings and left them drifting behind her. Her head was spinning, and her muscles started to cramp. Too much exertion, not enough air, and the sickle cell trait that got her this mission in the first place was killing her.

  The inside of the bubble was so very cold.

  She reached for her tentacles, but her arms were trembling from the cold and her fingers refused to bend. Waves of nausea washed over her and she was in so much pain she couldn’t remember what to do.

  Help me. She sent the message to the shuttle, to the Patchwork ship, to anyone and everyone who might hear it. She shouted it into the stars.

  A pair of fire kittens appeared inside her bubble. The heat of their bodies warmed the freezing air. Her shivering stopped, and her mind filled with Faceless whispers, a thousand songs of strength and comfort. She felt compelled to add her voice to the chorus, and she sang the guilt of her failed mission, and her desire for peace, and the fear that she would die inside the quarantine bubble.

  Jaxon’s voice came through her implant. “Focus, Ekundayo. You can do this. Take off the tentacles and get into the flight suit. Quickly now.”

  She tore the tentacles off her shoulder. It wasn’t a clean separation, and she could feel blood oozing down her chest. She still had some of her alien parts, but the rest of them fit inside the flightsuit. She crammed herself into the suit and programmed it to send her away from the Patchwork ship. Her propulsion jets lit up and melted the quarantine bubble.

  Her discarded wings drifted out into the cold void of space.

  Safely in her flightsuit, Ekundayo let the blackness take her.

  EKUNDAYO WOKE UP in an operating room.

  “You’re out of quarantine, and the parts that I grafted on have been removed,” Sturgeon told her. “I even managed to isolate a small amount of Patchwork virus for further study. The whole thing has been a complete success!”

  “Except for the part where I failed my fucking mission.” Every inch of Ekundayo’s body ached, and she couldn’t hear the Patchwork ship. It was strangely quiet in her head without the singing.

  Sturgeon’s grin disappeared. “Yes. I only meant the surgery. The procedure was complicated due to the late-stage Patchwork infection. I had to start with an exchange transfusion to get the viral load in your bloodstream low enough to perform the traditional treatments. Everything went remarkably well, and I have a theory about how we can use attenuated Patchwork virus to—”

  “Yes, I’m sure you did wonderful work.” She glanced down to where her leg should be, but there was nothing there.

  “Jaxon seemed quite fond of you when you were part Leonid. I woke you to ask what kind of leg you wanted.” Sturgeon gestured to the tanks along the wall. “The Leonid leg you wore on your mission was too damaged to save, but I have several others.”

  It was tempting to become what Jaxon wanted her to be. He’d never ask her to do it, but there was something appealing about the possibility. But she didn’t want to be a hybrid, she wanted to be herself, or as much of herself as she could, now that she’d been touched by the Faceless. The war had been so much clearer before she knew that the Faceless had a face. The enemy had been plague-ridden and dangerous, the humans had been fighting on the side of good. Now it didn’t seem so simple.

  Sturgeon was looking at her expectantly, waiting for an answer.

  “I want my leg back.”

  THERE WAS NO pain the next time Ekundayo woke, but despite a long stay in the regeneration capsule she felt exhausted, worn down. Jaxon was by her side when she opened her eyes, and Ekundayo wondered how long he’d been waiting there. He didn’t say anything about her human leg. If he was disappointed, he covered it well, with a smile and a gentle hug. “It’s good to have you back.”

  “Don’t get used to it. Bianchi will probably blast me out the airlock without a flightsuit.” Which was what she deserved. Hospital ship or not, she had defied her orders. Commander Bianchi wouldn’t care that the ship had helped her in the end, or that the songs of the Faceless were beautiful.

  “Bianchi shipped out to face his court-martial while you were still in surgery. He lied to Captain Flores about the nature of the target. Turns out he knew all along that it was a hospital ship—got the intel from a communications drone that came through the jump point with the Patchwork ship. It probably won’t go well for him.” Jaxon paused.

  “There’s something else.” Ekundayo met his gaze, tried to project confidence she didn’t feel. “Tell me.”

  “The Captain petitioned for you to have extra recovery time, but now that you’re awake and healed, you’ll
have to stand trial, too.”

  Of course. Of course she would stand trial. If she’d had any time to think about it, she would have known that this was coming. Her hands started shaking, and tears welled up in her eyes. She didn’t want a trial. She knew she was guilty, but if she had to do it again she’d make the same choice. All she wanted was to pop out of existence like the fire kittens did, or at the very least curl up next to Jaxon. “Is the Patchwork ship still here?”

  Jaxon shook his head. “When he found out you hadn’t delivered the counter-virus, Bianchi ordered a more traditional attack. The Patchwork ship escaped through the jump point. No definitive word on whether they had fire kittens on board... but the ship reached the free-floating planet before they had to retreat.” Jaxon brushed away the tears that rolled down Ekundayo’s cheek.

  “If they got the kittens, I’m a traitor to humanity.”

  “No. This is Bianchi’s fault, not yours. Even if he was right about the hospital ship deliberately going after the fire kittens, he shouldn’t have lied.” Jaxon whistled softly to call his fire kittens. “Besides, Sturgeon had a bit of a breakthrough while you were asleep.”

  The kittens appeared, each wearing a collar of heat-resistant fabric.

  “You got them to bring things with them!”

  “It was all Sturgeon, actually. Something about the interaction of the Patchwork and your sickle cell trait gave Sturgeon the idea for an attenuated version of the virus. We threaded the collars with living organic tissue and Sturgeon’s modified virus creates enough of a graft that the fire kittens can take the fabric with them.”

  The kittens blinked back out of existence, taking the collars with them. “How long until we can use it?”

  “I don’t know. It will take some work to scale up from collars to people—or maybe whole ships—but eventually we’ll be able to teleport. So even if the Faceless managed to get some fire kittens, the war isn’t over. Things will be different, but not necessarily tragically so,” Jaxon smiled. “I’ve been talking to Neva, and we both think you’ll be found innocent when you stand trial—refusing to attack a medical facility is justifiable under the Van Maanen Treaty.”