Infinity Wars

by Jonathan Strahan

  MINES

  Eleanor Arnason

  WE RUINED EARTH. Not completely. Some places are still okay: archologies in the far north and south and the off-planet colonies: a handful in space and one on the Moon. They’re for the very rich, the very well educated; and the lucky few who maintain the machinery. The rest of us live with rising oceans, spreading deserts, and societies that are breaking down or already broken.

  I was born in a refugee camp in Ohio. It still rained there, though most of the rest of the Midwest was dry. We lived in a tent and got one meal a day. There was some health care, thanks to Doctors and Dentists Without Boundaries. I didn’t die of appendicitis, because of the Doctors. The Dentists pulled some teeth and taught me to brush and floss.

  When I was ten the recruiters came around, and I joined the EurUsa space force. That got me to another camp, where I lived in a barracks and ate three meals a day, meat and dairy as well as grain. There was regular medical and dental care. I thought I had died and gone to heaven, though I wasn’t allowed to go home.

  “You’re soldiers now,” our house parent—a grim retired sergeant —told us. “Nothing matters except the army and your unit.”

  There was one other thing that happened. The girls got hormone implants, so they would never have menstrual cycles. Periods are not easy in a war zone. Pregnancy is worse. The boys got vasectomies, no reason given. I figured there were plenty of people on Earth already, though a lot less than there had been at the start of the 21st century; and people who’ve been in combat can make bad parents.

  The camp had a school. I learned all the education basics, plus military discipline and how to operate war machinery, starting with the AK-47. “The best low-tech field rifle ever built,” our house parent said. “They’re still in use in Africa. You know the old saying: you can’t have a revolution without an AK-47.”

  When I was fifteen I had the second operation, which implanted a comm unit in my brain. Now I could speak to robots and my unit members directly. At twenty I was shipped out to the war.

  A funny thing. Just as everything was going to hell at home, scientists at MIT—the new campus in western Mass, since the old campus is underwater—discovered that FTL was possible. Expensive, but it could be done. The two large governments that remained—EurUsa and RuChin—built a couple of ships each and sent them out to visit planets that looked habitable at a distance. You can see a lot with space telescopes. The ships found a couple of planets that were borderline habitable—microbial life, but nothing more and air that had oxygen, but not enough. They could be settled maybe, but the settlements would always be on the edge of failing. Not what anyone wanted.

  Then they found a beauty. There was vegetation and animal life and air we could breathe. Nothing was intelligent, so we didn’t have to worry about the Prime Directive or trouble from the natives. Taken all in all, it was an almost perfect planet.

  The trouble was ships from both the European-American Alliance and the Asian Co-operative Union arrived at the same time, and both put down settlements on the planet. For a while everything was quiet, while lawyers argued over who owned what at the World Court. The settlements grew into colonies. The World Court could not come to a decision. And then the war began.

  This was a Fifth-Generation war. For the most part it consisted of hacking and drone attacks. A full-bore hot war would endanger the huge, fragile FTL ships when they were in-system, not to mention the huge, fragile home planet back in the Solar System, and the space colonies, which were even more fragile than Earth. Both sides held back. But there were soldiers on the ground, though their actions were limited.

  (Remember warfare in the early 21st century: the huge, vulnerable aircraft carriers that were mostly not attacked, the atomic weapons that were mostly not used. Fifth generation warfare grew out of those contests. The theory was to wear the enemy—especially the enemy’s civilian population—down, without triggering a world war.)

  That brings the story to me, arriving on a planet with purple-green vegetation and slightly heavy G. The home star was dimmer than ours, and the planet was closer in. There were solar flares, but they were predictable. Most of the time we could get to shelter. We were getting a little more radiation than on Earth, but not enough to worry about.

  I don’t like war stories, so I won’t tell you mine. In the end, I was invalided out. I could have gone home, but why bother? I’d lost touch with my family, and I had no desire to live in a refugee camp, even if it was top of the line. It was easier and more comfortable to stay in Leesville, named after General Izak Lee (ret): a town of pre-fab buildings next to a purple-green forest. The trees in the forest had trunks that went straight up. Leaves grew directly from the trunks, big and frilly. Some trees had leaves going all the way up, and others had bare trunks and a big cluster of leaves on top like a palm tree, except they looked nothing like palm trees. (I know. We had palms in Ohio.) The leaves were iridescent, so they changed color when the wind moved them: purple to green, green to purple. No branches None at all. It was something the life here had never tried, the way it never tried backbones.

  The ground was covered with bright yellow, moss-like plants. These were parasites, like fungus. Filaments ran down to the tree roots and fed off them. More filaments ran to other trees. The forest used these to communicate with itself. Don’t think it was saying anything interesting. The xenobotanists said the filaments were mostly reporting moisture or lack of moisture, sudden attacks by bugs and slower attacks by vegetable parasites. It was nothing to write home about. The vegetation wasn’t intelligent, any more than the bugs were.

  I got interested in the local life after I was invalided out and had time to read something besides military manuals.

  Why? Why not? It was there, and it was the only complex ecological system we had found besides Earth. So, I talked to the scientists in Leesville and read their reports. In another life, I might have become a xenobiologist. In the meantime—here and now—I defended maize.

  There were fields around the town, planted with Earth crops. The hope was we’d finally be able to live on what we grew, instead of rations shipped from Earth. The local plant and animal life was inedible and not easy to convert to something we could eat.

  The enemy sent in drones that dropped to the ground in the forest, crawled into the fields and dug down, becoming land mines. When people stepped on the mines or machines rolled over them, they blew. This made farming difficult, and we really wanted to be able to farm.

  It turned out the best way to find the land mines was using African Giant Pouched Rats. They are rodents, but not rats and only giant compared to rats. They have an amazing sense of smell. Do a search on them, if you don’t believe me. They can find mines faster than robots can, and they’re so light they don’t set the mines off. Taken all in all, they’re cheaper than robots. They don’t cost any more to ship than a robot does. Once we had them here, they reproduced themselves, provided you had two of them and some rat chow. Though at the time I’m talking about they were new and not yet common. One of the army’s interesting innovations.

  They’re cuter than robots and more affectionate, though the last doesn’t matter to the army.

  Were we worried about them going feral? No. They couldn’t eat the local vegetation, and thanks to their caps, we could always find them. We haven’t lost one yet.

  I ended up with Whiskers. She had been modified to be smarter and live longer than natural African Giant Pouched Rats; and she had a metal cap on her head and wires in her brain, that allowed her to talk with me.

  My mind comm had been turned off when I left the army. Can you imagine the silence? My buddies were gone. The robots we had worked with had vanished. It was like being alone in a huge, pitch black cave—except for Whiskers, who was a flashlight in the darkness. Her warm body lay next to me at night. Her friendship kept me sane.

  This day we were checking fields west of the town. Whiskers ran between the rows of maize, their bright-green leaves star
tling against the purple and dark-green forest. I watched from the field’s edge. Overhead the planet’s primary shone, always dimmer than Sol. High, thin clouds moved across the sky. A mild wind moved the forest’s frilly leaves.

  No. No, Whiskers said. No. Then, Yes. I checked her position and marked it. Whiskers moved on. No. No.

  I called her in finally. She ran back, up my arm and onto my shoulder, nibbling my ear gently. I could feel her happiness.

  Why do you love me, Kid? I asked.

  Genetically modified, she replied. Designed to be smart and love you.

  Only that? I asked.

  Enough.

  Her warm body huddled against my head. I walked home through the town’s muddy streets, between the prefab buildings. It was sunset now, the streetlights coming on, the air smelling of the alien forest. Like Whiskers, I was happy.

  My apartment was a one-storey walkup: a living room, a kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom, all small. Okay by me. I’d never owned much, and I wasn’t about to start. Whiskers jumped off and ran to her food bowl, full of rat chow. I heated rations and ate them, while Whiskers finished her chow.

  I forgot to say that this was the day I met Marin.

  After the dishes were washed, I called a cab and went out to the porch to wait, Whiskers on my shoulder. It was raining now, not the downpours we’d had in Ohio, but a gentle and steady rain, the kind of precipitation that could last all day, soak deep into the dry soil, and wash nothing away.

  The cab had a driver, which meant the auto wasn’t working. I climbed in back.

  “The usual?” the driver asked. Even the human subs knew my pattern.

  I said, “Yes,” and settled back.

  The cab bumped over ruts and potholes. “You’d think the army would fix these,” the driver said.

  “Not a priority.”

  “Find any mines?”

  “One.”

  “Those bastards keep sneaking in. My partner lost a leg to one.”

  “Lucky to be alive.”

  “Tell her that. She’s not a soldier, so they didn’t replace the leg.

  “Was it one I missed?”

  “Nah. Before you came. They were using robots. Effing incompetent. The mine was right in the middle of the forest road, and my partner drove over it. You’d think they could find that.”

  The cab stopped. I held my wrist to the chip reader, heard it ping, and then climbed out. The driver looked through her open window, obviously hoping. I gave her a handful of change.

  “Thanks, buddy. Have a good drunk.”

  Yeah.

  I went into the bar, Whiskers riding on my shoulder. The minute the bartender saw me they pulled a stalk of celery out of a jar. Don’t think that was shipped from Earth. It had grown in the town’s greenhouses. Maybe we’d be stuck with greenhouses, but we keep hoping for open fields. The local soil provided most of the nutrients our crops needed, and the local pests did not bother anything from Earth.

  (There was a story about a field of zucchini that got out of control and spread. The local town ended up with more zucchini than they could eat, and the fruits left in the field grew more and more enormous, untouched by anything native. Finally, they grew dry and board-like. The local people made canoes out of them. This is a tall tale.)

  Whiskers hopped onto the bar and took the stalk. I ordered a beer. Goddess, it felt good going down.

  “Les,” the barkeep said to me, then nodded toward the end of the bar. A woman sat there in badly fitting civvies. There was something wrong about her posture. An injury maybe. Or she was even more augmented than I was.

  “New?” I asked quietly

  “On leave. Drinking a lot.”

  I had two jobs. One was finding bombs in the fields. The other was finding human bombs, people likely to go off. That may sound like a strange combination, but remember the colony was small. A lot of people did two jobs. And remember I had Whiskers. She could smell a lot more than just mines. Her species had been used in Africa to find TB and HIV. If you don’t believe me, do a search.

  I moved down the bar, Whiskers following, pitty-pat, the celery in her mouth.

  “What the hell is that?” the woman asked.

  “Whiskers,” I said. “My companion animal. She’s an African Giant Pouched Rat.”

  The woman was okay-looking: a dark, warm skin and crisp, short hair. That mouth might have been kissable a few years ago. Now it was compressed. Her eyes, almond-shaped and slanted, were heavy lidded. She looked tired and maybe a little drunk. I couldn’t tell what kind of body was under the civvies.

  Whiskers was up on her haunches, nibbling the celery.

  “New here?” I asked.

  “What the eff do you care?”

  “This is a small town. We pay attention to newcomers.”

  “Your rat has a metal cap. What does that mean?”

  “We can communicate. I need that. I miss communicating with my unit.”

  “Yeah,” the woman said bitterly. “They use you up and throw you out, and you have nothing except silence.”

  “There are other jobs,” I said. “I have one.” I told her about the mines, but not about the crazy soldiers.

  Whiskers finished the celery and helped herself to a fish cracker out of a jar on the bar. I wasn’t sure they were good for her, but she loved them. They came from Earth. You want to talk about crazy? Shipping crackers from Earth. But people liked them, and we couldn’t make them here. The economics of war are strange.

  I took a handful and consumed them, along with my beer. “R and R?” I asked.

  “Medical leave.” After a moment or two she said she was staying at the medical hostel in town, having work done by the hospital.

  We sat in silence for a while.

  One way to get people talking is to talk about yourself.

  “I got invalided out,” I took another handful ofthe fish-shaped crackers. “PTSD. I didn’t want to go home.” Whiskers’ nose was twitching, a sign that the woman smelled sick. What kind of sick I couldn’t tell. “Home was a refugee camp in Ohio.”

  “Home was the Dust Belt,” the woman replied. “Moline, by the Mississippi. There was enough water to survive.”

  “I’m Les,” I added.

  “Marin.”

  We shook. Her hand was enclosed in wire mesh, making her grip cold and very firm. Some kind of exoskeleton, which hadn’t been removed. Most likely that meant she was expected back in the war.

  We sat together and talked about being kids in the old USA. Her parents had been members of a farming co-op, using water piped out of the Mississippi. Her older brother bought a share in the co-op, but there wasn’t enough money for her so she joined the army. She’d been older than me when she joined, which made it rougher. But she’d tested better than I had on robot interface.

  “Is that what the mesh is?”

  Yes and no. She had operated one of the huge robots, the ones that seemed out of mech-kaiju plays. I’d seen them in the distance, stomping on enemy installations and kicking enemy units out of the way. Some were operated from inside and others at a distance. She had worked inside, striding ahead of our forces. When she moved a foot, the robot took a step. When she moved a hand, one of its huge hands and arms moved. Scary as all hell, though I wasn’t sure how effective. Military R&D is a mystery. I mentioned this.

  “A lot of war is psychological,” she replied.

  I asked why she was still wearing the exoskeleton.

  “This isn’t to run a robot. It’s to run me, though the connections I already had helped when it was installed.”

  Whiskers pattered down the bar, got another stick of celery and brought it back. She could follow some of the conversation via me. But a lot of human interactions are a mystery to a rat, even a smart rat.

  “Why?” I asked. It was always possible she would tell me to go away and stop bothering her. But you would be surprised how many people want to talk.

  A drone had crashed into her bot, she said. Frie
ndly fire. Not the drone’s fault. It had been hit by the enemy and was flying out of control. The bot was destroyed, and she had multiple injuries, including a severed spine.

  “They can fix that,” I said, which was true.

  She’d had stem cells injected. The cells were supposed to connect across the gap her injury had made. It usually worked, but it took time. Meanwhile the mesh enabled her to move almost like an ordinary person.

  We talked some more about Earth and this planet. I could tell Whiskers was uncomfortable, and I knew this was the woman. Finally I said, “I need to go. Nice to meet you.”

  We shook again, her hand hard and cold. Whiskers collected more crackers and pushed them into her cheek pouches, making them bulge way out. Marin laughed. It did look silly.

  “That’s dessert,” I said.

  The rat hopped onto my shoulder. Sick, she told me mind-to-mind.

  Yeah.

  I called another cab, this one automatic, and rode home over the rutted streets. The rain had picked up. The rain bugs were out, forced from their burrows by the water and climbing the building walls. Their shells were iridescent in the streetlights. Funny how much of this planet seemed to shine and gleam.

  Once we were home I pulled a beer out of the fridge and asked, What kind of sick?

  Whiskers pulled the crackers out of her cheek pouches and put them in her food bowl. A snack for later. Not an infection, she said. I can smell those. Something wrong in her body or mind.

  Out-of-whack neurotransmitters and hormones. Those would give off a smell.

  I finished the beer, then went to bed.

  A LOT OF the war was feints and skirmishes, as I said before. The plan for both sides was the same: wear the enemy down slowly, risking as little as possible: a typical Fifth Generation War, carefully limited and held at a distance. No one wanted it to spread back to the Solar System. No one wanted to blow up the handful of FTL ships that came into the system, bringing new supplies and soldiers and scientists.