The Matsumoto (The Matsumoto Trilogy Book 3)

by Sarah K. L. Wilson

I nodded.

  “I don’t think it’s just the computers anymore. I think it’s soul deep.”

  “You think our souls are connected?” he was staring at his feet.

  This was worse than I would have ever guessed. Rejection wrung my heart in a new way. By now I should be immune to any form of emotional torture, but oh! I’m not. I’m not.

  “I won’t do it again. I promise.”

  “I don’t think you can promise that,” he said, finally looking into my eyes. And their cinnamon color bore into my heart and wrung me out like a rag. There was no mercy in their depths.

  “Ok. Yeah. I guess not. Well, I have you fixed up, and there’s a cabin beside this one that I can sleep in so I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He hung his head down into his hands, bent almost ninety degrees at the waist.

  I think it was just all too much for him. He saw me kill today. His innocent dove turned viper. He saw that when we are close our minds can’t stay contained. We’ve crossed too many barriers and we can’t go back. Even over the distances he could never really be free of me.

  It would be too much for any man. And Roman had already been through hell.

  My tears were falling before I could stop them.

  He was silent. I took that to be assent. I stood up, picking up the first aid kit, and walked towards the hatch, but as I passed his chair, his hand clutched at mine. He didn’t look up, but I clung to his hand like life itself, silent tears slipping down my cheeks.

  He stood suddenly.

  “Come here,” he said, and I turned to him woodenly. He wrapped his arms around me, tucking my head under his chin. We stood like that for a long time. Me, with tears flowing freely, not sure if I felt – or even should feel – relief or despair at his embrace.

  Eventually he pulled back a little and looked at me, a half-smile, not really all that reassuring, but like he was still with me in the moment, and then a fiercer hug. His eyes were glassy from unshed tears. And then for a moment I could hear his thoughts again, too.

  Love her always. Scared. Wrong. It could happen at any time. How can I protect her when I don’t know if I’ll even have my own body? What would happen if we switched at a time when I wanted her not there?

  He looked in my eyes again, his emotions so tangled that they were unreadable to me. To be fair, I couldn’t have parsed what I was feeling beyond fear and desperate need. A single tear slipped loose, tracking down his cheek. Compassion seared me to the core, and I reached up a hand to gently stroke his hair behind his ear.

  I broke this beautiful man. How could I possibly put him back together again? I’d grown used to being fissured myself, but I didn’t realize that I was cracking seams into him at the same time.

  “You’re scared. It’s ok to be scared. I’ve really ruined you, haven’t I?” I said.

  He let go of me and sank to the bed as if his knees couldn’t hold him. He sat there, looking at me for a long time in silence. I crossed my arms over my chest, holding myself together.

  He laughed harshly.

  “It’s not you. It’s...” he let it hang there, “...everything. It’s everything. Some days I just don’t know if I should keep going. And now this. You want to be Emperor? Really?”

  I sniffled messily.

  “I don’t know what I want besides just to live. And to be with you. But I can’t just be left alone. My name and my face guarantee either persecution or power. I’ve discovered that there is no in between for me.”

  “I thought when I found you we could ride off into the sunset,” he said, bitterness and cynicism warring for his tone.

  “There aren’t any sunsets for me. The only red in my life is blood.” I examined my knuckles. “Mine, or someone else’s. That’s my only option these days.”

  He took the first aid kit from my hands gently, and opened it up.

  I was starting to shake, from fear or stress, I didn’t know which.

  “Here,” he said, taking my hands. “Let me bandage those.”

  The gesture, in the midst of so much shared disappointment, was so bitterly sweet I could barely breathe. He cleaned my wounds gently as I spoke, watching his eyelashes, since his downturned eyes were hidden from me.

  “I have to do what I can to erase my family’s great debt. It seems like we owe everyone. We’ve ruined everyone. I can’t run away from that. Not even into sunsets.”

  He daubed ointment onto my knuckles. His rough hands were gentle. He was thinking hard. I couldn’t catch what it was, but it felt intense. Finally his wet eyes looked up at me. His eyelashes clung together with dampness, and it made the cinnamon of his irises glow.

  “I don’t like you hurting people. It’s not you. It was never you.”

  Silent sobs shook me.

  “Promise me you’ll stop. Promise me that from here on in you’ll find another way.”

  I took a deep breath.“I’m so sorry.”

  “Shhh. I’m no god. I can’t absolve you.”

  I nodded, tears dripping off my nose.

  “But please, please for the sake of what is left of your soul, promise me.”

  “There will have to be violence before this is over,” I protested.

  “But not from you,” he said, his eyes boring into me.

  “Why? What difference does it make?” I said.

  “I see you, Vera. I always have. I see the real you. This is destroying you.”

  I nodded.

  “Then you promise?”

  “I’ll think on it.”

  He nodded.

  I’d like that – to be free of violence, to find other ways to conquer evil – but was it really possible? Maybe one day when all of this was over. Maybe after I’d overthrown Nigel and brought back justice...

  He bandaged my knuckles with tenderness, and then kissed the snowy folds.

  I wiped my face, sniffling.

  He pulled me down into his lap and held me.

  “This switching bodies thing is going to be inconvenient,” he said.

  A fish flipped in my belly, and a spark of interest danced in his eye. I laughed, and he smiled with me, but that gleam was still there.

  “Come here,” he said, shifting me off his lap and stretching out on the narrow bed. “We’re both exhausted.”

  “I’ll go to the other cabin so you can sleep,” I offered.

  “I don’t think I could sleep if I didn’t know you were safe,” he said, and there was something in his eyes that I so badly wanted to comfort.

  I slipped into bed beside him, thinking I could shower later. He wrapped his arm around me.

  “Roman?” I asked, but he was already asleep.

  Chapter Eight

  I woke a few hours later. Roman was still fast asleep, so I showered, cleaned my teeth for the first time in forever, and ordered up some clothing from ship’s stores via the tube. Unfortunately they had nothing that wasn’t standard fleet issue, so I ended up wearing a uniform without insignia. At least it fit well and was clean. It was strange to have tailored clothing again after so long in a skinsuit, but there is something about no longer sporting a number and barcode that makes a girl feel more at ease.

  I snuck out of the room quietly, careful not to wake Roman. He needed his sleep, and he could contact me any time he needed. It was an uncommon luxury for the two of us to be safe, even if it was just for a short time.

  Driscoll was the only person on the bridge when I entered. Well, I say person, but what I mean is living human. A dozen shadows worked over consoles. Fortunately the holographic displays could be manipulated by only semi-solid spirit denizens. They almost seemed to fit the artificial calm of the bridge. A starship bridge is manufactured to promote calm and quiet and reduce stress in difficult situations. The furniture curved and sloped ergonomically, the lights and temperature were kept low but crisp, and the colors were calming. The shadows felt like just one more silent installation to calm the human occupants.

  Driscoll looked up at me from his display. H
is eyes were bloodshot and he was leaning on his elbows.

  “You should get some sleep. Please tell me no one else is crazy enough to be awake right now,” I said.

  “They aren’t. I have to stay up for two more hours before the pre-flight is done and I can leave the rest to these rascals,” Driscoll said, nodding to the shadows. His eyes lingered wistfully over one of them, and I realized it was Sammy.

  Despite his current corporeal form, I knew that a great barrier separated them. Sammy couldn’t, or wouldn’t, talk to Driscoll. Like all the shadows, he performed his duties as his Elders told him to, but he seemed not to even notice the humans around him.

  “He was with me for five years,” Driscoll said, noting my gaze. “Driscoll’s Own, of course. Like a son to me, really.”

  Distant? Abandoned? I tried to be irritated, but the bitterness didn’t come. He owed me nothing beyond his vow of fealty, and I owed him nothing beyond that. We’d fight together, but I needed no affection or advice. Maybe he didn’t even know that he was my father.

  I wandered over to the largest holo-display, reading the codes and statistics scrolling through or flashing across the ship’s schematic. My implant translated them for me, which helped. They were in an alphanumerical code I didn’t know.

  “Will they be able to sail her to our destination?” I asked.

  “Sure, if you can communicate with them the way you have been. They don’t listen well to Kitsano.”

  “They don’t listen well to me,” I griped.

  I turned to him and he shrugged.

  “It’s cold in here,” I noted, falling into small talk to avoid having to say what I knew was coming.

  The center of the bridge sunk lower than the rest so that the main holotank could be viewed from anywhere in the room, but concentric half-circles formed console stations with their own glowing tanks, and behind each one was a seat and crash frame that were standard in warships. Though I’d toured many in my time, I’d never been directly responsible for one.

  “They keep it cold to help you concentrate. Dark, too. It’s an old trick,” Driscoll said.

  “If the fleet likes it cold and dark they won’t like Baldric much.”

  “I doubt they’ll like it anyways,” Driscoll said, twiddling some alphanumeric codes into a new spot in his holograph tank. “After all, we did maroon them there. They were still complaining about their captain when we sent them off.”

  “He wasn’t our fault. They should have been blaming their idiot friends in the morgue. Plus they were well provisioned, and you timed the explosives on the shuttle to give them ample time to get off before it blew.”

  “Yes,” Driscoll agreed dryly, “how could they complain with such beneficence shown to them? I noted that the provisions were VX-7 heavy. Any guesses on whether they’ll become shadows now that you’ve removed the population?”

  I rubbed my chin in thought.

  “You know, I hadn’t considered that. I wonder if the shared subconscious is with us now, removed from the planet. Maybe I’ll ask Zeta.”

  He nodded, but he looked down. It was nice to know why he was so cagey about her. I realized, and not for the first time, that the two of us thought a little too similarly for comfort. At least now I knew why.

  “Listen,” I said at the same time as he spoke.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  “I really do want you to know about Driscoll’s Own. We aren’t a terrorist organization. We are revolutionaries. Seventeen years ago I lost someone who I loved very much.” He shook himself with a wry smile. “It sounds strange, maybe, but the only thing I could think of doing was fighting back, so I started Driscoll’s Own – not to kill civilians, or even the Matsumotos, but to start a revolution.”

  “That’s a big undertaking,” I said, leaning backwards against his console. I wanted him to go on. I wanted to hear him confess.

  “We have been working tirelessly ever since, doing whatever we can to bring the tide of change.”

  “Bombings. Killing teenagers,” I prompted.

  “No!” he said, but he still didn’t look at me, and his hands were balled into fists on his lap. “We’ve saved people. Lots of them. Everyone thinks they are dead, but we hide them. We’ve established safe houses, and scientists who can test what the government claims, and imbedded our people into the media and the fleet to try to keep a semblance of sanity.”

  Sounds like an all-out conspiracy to me, Roman said, and I tried hard not to glance up at him. He was leaning against the wall, by the hatch, picking at his nails. Neither Driscoll nor I had heard him come in. He must have called up his own clean uniform, because he was dressed identically to me, although the uniform clung to his frame in a much more appealing way.

  “So you have people everywhere,” I said, “waiting for the moment of the revolution. And you began it all.”

  “I’m not explaining well,” Driscoll said, scrubbing his hand through his hair. “I wasn’t the beginning. I mean, I began the revolutionary component, but there was already a secret society in place to deal with things if the Matsumotos ever became...rabid.”

  “Rabid?” I challenged.

  “Essentially.”

  “And who started this little club? Is there a handshake involved?”

  Driscoll frowned repressively and leaned back in his chair. He looked me in the eyes as if we had finally come to the part he wasn’t ashamed of.

  “Neal Matsumoto started The Hand of Blackwatch when he founded the Dynasty. A man of great foresight and care, that one.”

  “The Hand?” I asked, “Why not ‘The Fist?’ That would be more impressive.”

  I’d join an organization called ‘The Fist’ no questions asked.

  Driscoll’s eyes twinkled as he registered my mocking tone.

  “Well don’t blame me. I didn’t name them. The name is yet another thing to blame a Matsumoto for. The list is long, though, so I doubt we’ll get to it anytime soon.”

  Sometimes he talks sense, Roman said.

  “Everything,” Driscoll said, “in Blackwatch is interconnected and controlled by relatively few people. Media companies report the news desired by corporations, because they are owned by the same man. The military is backed by the research from university studies, because the woman in charge of the military has tight ties to the man who oversees the education system. I could go on, but suffice it to say that I have spent years searching out and finding these ties. I’ve traced them to a tiny handful of people, and all of them are whipped into place by the Emperor. Do you realize what that means?”

  That’s crazy. Is it true?

  “It means that if we topple Nigel, and take the reins we can steer the Empire wherever we want. If power is in the hands of so few we can apply pressure as easily as he did, or replace them with our own people.”

  “Exactly!” he said, looking pleased.

  “But I’ve lived as part of the inner circle of the Empire my whole life and I’ve never seen any evidence of this.”

  Remember, you didn’t see a lot of things before I came along.

  That’s true.

  “Look at this file,” Driscoll said, pulling something up on the holotank. “I made it for you. Do you see these five people? Recognize them?”

  “Yes,” I said, feeling the blood drain from my face. Admiral Tagawa, Prime Minister Everard Oshiro, Aia Castberg, Chancellor Iriguchi, Janzen Zaizen. As I looked at their faces with data points listed beneath them and lines drawn from one to another it all fell into place.

  He’s right.

  So you could really do this, then? Replace the Emperor with yourself and the Empire will fall in your lap?

  I think so. But how does one overthrow an Emperor with an army and the wealth and power of seven planets behind him?

  Well, I guess that’s the million credit question.

  “So, our next step would be to find this Hand, then?” I suggested.

  Driscoll smiled.
I didn’t even need to tell him that I believed him.

  “Exactly. Their help would be invaluable. I have already plotted a course to the planet Nightshade, where we can meet my contact there. It’s close and within the Empire, so we would have to cross no borders and could reach it in roughly a week of sailing without much fear of discovery. You know that we’ll be battling the clock. You can’t steal a Fleet ship without someone noticing and pursuing.”

  Well that was true. And that was along the lines of what I’d been planning, although it would hardly do to admit that right now. Besides, my mind was still whirling with this new revelation. It was like I’d been wearing dark eye-protection and just taken it off.

  “I was thinking that New Greenland would be a better destination.”

  “No, we’d be discovered immediately. We need the help of the people on Nightshade first.”

  “You’ve arranged it all nicely, Driscoll,” I said.

  “Thank you, Vera.”

  “And by all of it, I do mean all of it. Because it was your plan all along to fly to Baldric and find me, wasn’t it? Somehow you knew I would be there.” I spoke carefully, gauging his reaction. It was time to lay cards on the table if I was going to trust him with so much.

  He looked at me, caution and worry warring in his eyes.

  I continued. “Most likely spies in Nigel’s court. My banishment here wasn’t told to the public. They were told I was executed, but Oshiro was there to see it done, as were members of the military.”

  “Astute,” he agreed.

  “Which means that somehow you needed a Matsumoto, and decided that as I was disaffected I would make a good candidate.”

  “The only candidate, really,” Driscoll said in the tone of someone walking on thin ice.

  “And you thought it would be easy to manipulate a teenage girl into dancing to your tune once you had me in your sights, didn’t you. You thought I’d be an easy mark. Your shuttle crash was planned by your spies, not by errors from Kitsano’s team. You managed to inveigle yourself into my good graces, and you even swore fealty to turn me to your side. And you thought I’d never realize.”

  Driscoll started to speak, but had to clear his throat first.